Speaker 1: There's a lot of speculation and stuff about what really
runs Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: A lot of it.
Speaker 1: Does come down to some pretty dark stuff, and when
you look at how things happen and how many people
end up abused and including kids and things, it's hard
to argue with that.
Speaker 3: She thought that moving to Los Angeles would restart her career,
but instead she found herself losing time control and nearly
losing her life. My name is Edwin and here's chris
true scary story.
Speaker 2: This starts in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I was kind of having a hard time finding a place.
I flopping back and forth because you know, it's hard
to find a living situation there is you're not wealthy.
So it took a couple of attempts. I found this
place in Lamart Park, which is South LA. There were
some previous tenants. There was like some household drama going
on where they ended up moving out, and I was
the one person left in the unit. I was responsible
for filling up some of the remaining rooms.
Speaker 2: I remember.
Speaker 1: Meeting the first girl, I'll call her Maria. I met
her on Facebook like a roommate search group. We hit
it off pretty immediately. We were just a few years apart,
and after I showed her the place, she basically wanted
to know what I was doing for the rest of
the day, and I was going to go catch a
movie and she ended up going with me and we
ended up bonding, So she moves in there. The next
vacancy is filled by a different girl who I knew
through a friend of mine that I had met just collaborating.
Speaker 2: I'll call her Leah.
Speaker 1: We're trying to figure out who we're going to fill
the last spot with, and Maria tells me.
Speaker 2: That she has.
Speaker 1: A friend who she's had some sort of on again,
off again friend of me tension with. They've known each
other since they were I think, like in middle school.
She also mentions that this girl, Danica, and Maria were
living in their last living situation together before it fell apart,
and they kind of had to just figure it out
for a little while. And now they're both sort of
in a situation looking for a fresh start, like they
had this sort of reboot where they were staying because
of just the background of.
Speaker 2: What was going on.
Speaker 1: So when Maria goes into what happened, she seems really
distraught and like this has been weighing on her and
she explains to me that her great grandmother passed away.
This was something that was in the news and like
it was a local story. Her great grandmother passed away
really suddenly and tragically. Her car flew off the freeway
in the middle of the morning, like before sunrise, headed
toward downtown, and nobody really knew what happened. Like she
was supposed to be on her way to a dialysis
appointment and nobody really knew what happened.
Speaker 2: Somebody else was supposed to take her and that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: Maria tells me that her and and Danica were living
with her at the time, but when things sort of
fell apart after this woman passed away, Danica and her
had to find just temporary living situations until they could
get something more stable. And she also told me that
the reason that Danica had to stay with them is
because she got thrown out of her mother's because they
just weren't getting along. She also confides in me that
this girl has had some issues with people, like she
has trouble getting along with people. Maria's two other friends
are adamant that, like there's something wrong with this girl,
and I haven't really gotten to know her yet at
this point, So I'm like, I don't know, maybe she's
just insecure, maybe she just doesn't she doesn't, you know,
just being an impath, just trying to be open hearted.
With that said, Maria's like, I don't know, do you
think I should still invite her to move in? And
what I said is you you know her better than
I do for sure, So it's up to you if
you think she deserves a second chance, because maybe she's
going through something because of everything that's been happening. If
you think she deserves a second chance, then you know,
I'm putting.
Speaker 2: It in your hands.
Speaker 1: She ends up moving in and all the vacancies are filled.
Danica in particular had an interest in like the Juju curse,
which is like this legend that comes out of Nigeria
and basically it's.
Speaker 2: Like a sex trafficking curse.
Speaker 1: This is something that has been written about in pretty
credible newspapers like The Guardian. It's also been written about
in like scholarly journals and stuff like that too. I
was shocked to even see something like that written about
in the press that way.
Speaker 2: At the time.
Speaker 1: Her boyfriend, who she was just really starting to see
he's from there. He was kind of telling her, like
some of the legends and stuff, and telling her things
about magic and things. And this is not to bring
up anybody's belief system, because there are there are people
who who have spiritual practices that are misunderstood. But I'm
talking about this information being in the hands of this
particular person. She just seemed so intrigued by it, and she.
Speaker 2: Was the one who told us about it. Things are
going fine. We're getting along enough. We're very different types.
There's some tension between.
Speaker 1: Danica and Leah a little bit, but it's nothing to.
Speaker 2: Boil over yet.
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of going through life working a day job.
Weird things have started happening to me already, Like I'm
dealing with some back pain and stuff like that. I'm
commuting on public transit to get to work, so it's
not an ideal situation, but we're all kind of making
it work as twenty somethings. A little bit of time
passes the closeness between me and Maria, with that being
Danica's best friend, I think some tension maybe started to
build there, But things also started going really well in
my life. I was co hosting a podcast of my own.
I'd lost a day job, but I had been hired
doing something else that was remote and I could be comfortable.
Me and my roommates had just done a game show together,
Common Knowledge on GSN, so things were kind of starting
to pick up. I was having some interesting experiences that
were aligning with what people talk about when you start
having spiritual awakening. I'd had some supernatural experiences previously, like
I'd gone to the Aiggans Museum and had some interesting
contact also, like premonitions and stuff kind of running my family,
but I was having these interesting awakenings and stuff like
that at the same time. People had their crystals, people
were going to psychic readings, and I was more of
a fledgling and that sort of a thing than anybody.
There had been other little cues too that maybe maybe
there was some disdain there as well, like I had
a birthday party and she didn't seem to like watching
me enjoy myself and have fun. There was also a
friend that I had from work who I was kind
of trying to figure out how he felt about me,
how I felt about him. At the time, I wasn't
even sure that I still wanted to date man, but
she just had a really interesting dynamic with him, despite.
Speaker 2: Being a relationship of her own.
Speaker 1: I distinctly remember I was kind of at a low
point because I just lost a friend of mine suddenly
and I couldn't make it home to his memorial.
Speaker 2: Or anything like that.
Speaker 1: When I found out about that, Danica gave me this
look like, I know I'm supposed to comfort you, but
I feel really uncomfortable. It was just a very uncomfortable
moment like that just stuck in my mind.
Speaker 2: One day, there was a.
Speaker 1: Stain in the toilet or something like that. She was
just like, oh, do you mind like wiping off the toilet.
Not to be gross, but there's menstrual blood on it.
At the time, I was not menstruating because I had
a birth controling plant, which stops menstruation in people. But
it's like we all share the chores, and I was like,
you know what, fine, Like I don't want to I
don't want to embarrass anybody. I don't want to hunt
anyone down and figure out who it is, and I'm
not doing anything. In hindsight, it's interesting that she asked
me to do it because of the way menstruation gets
used in certain dark practices, I picked up other interesting
habits that just didn't make sense to me. This was
when I when my hair was in dreadlocks, and I
just remember kind of picking the ends of my locks
and leaving like the little beady ends around which I
come from a creole background, and that's like creole one
on one, do not leave your hair anywhere that strange
person can find it. But I was just absent mindedly
doing all these strange things. There was also incidents where
I walked into my room and there was like strange
powder on my floor. Like I would look at the
bottom of my feet and say, why is it like dusty?
Like if you leave the window open even on like
the windy is, there's not going to be a layer
of dust like this. Just crazy things were happening. There
was like a there was a dead bird on our
step at one point. Just all this weird stuff was
going on. Just a little bit after I started working
my new remote job, I started having these losses of
control and blackouts, brownouts. Basically I ended up wandering the
street and I ended up getting fifty one fifty over
and over again. When I say over and over again,
I still don't know how many times because I can't
access my medical records. Believe it or not, Awful things
also started happening to me, like I got attacked multiple
times on the street by strangers. I was sexually assaulted
multiple times, once in a hospital, once on the street.
It's almost like I was marked for something. I also
ended up injuring myself multiple times too.
Speaker 2: I had an.
Speaker 1: Ankle end up in like a splint, like half of
the cast. Sometime later, I'm walking down Crenshaw trying to
get something to eat. It's evening time, and this dude
randomly comes up to me, punches me in the face
once and then walks off, and I have to like
lip home. I don't want to call the cops. I
don't want to do anything like that. The more I'm
going through these things and the more I'm confused, I'm
not sure what it is. I know that this started
out feeling like spiritual awakening symptoms, but then it just
got really dark. Danica's fiance he had been there when
I kind of had a loss of control. It almost
like felt out on Danica's bed. I knocked on her
door and fell out on her bed, and he had
something in his bag ready, like some sort of liquid
that smelled like pure alcohol, and he just immediately went
for it and like threw it on me and started.
It sounded like he was praying, so I think that
he was trying to bless me for whatever. But at
the same time, this makes me wonder if she took
some of the knowledge that he had for good and decided.
Speaker 2: To turn it into something nasty.
Speaker 1: At one point, it was decided that I just needed
to leave the apartment. Other people got involved because there
were friends of mine from the industry. They also tried
to get in touch with members of my family when
I would end up in the hospital, and friends that
were back home on the East Coast. Basically, it had
been decid, you need to just go home, like just
go home, and by home, they didn't mean back to
Philly necessarily, they meant where I am now, which is
where my dad lives, which is fade though, North Carolina.
I know that even if it was something that was
traditionally diagnosible, I would have had a much easier time
managing it in LA where I could at least get
help with insurance more easily and just have more of.
Speaker 2: A social safety net.
Speaker 1: I know there's a lot of bad stuff out there,
but in the South it's really hard for poor people.
Speaker 2: To get help too.
Speaker 1: I hadn't experienced anything like that, because it's just like,
why are we not trying to get other tests done?
Like why are we not trying to see if it's medical?
It could be a tumor, it could be anything, but
it's just like, Nope, you got a diagnosis and you
need to just go. It's like that in La right,
It's like tag, you're out, Just give up your place
in line. Just fail, like just fail already. I was
just like, I'm trying to pull myself together. I'm trying
to keep my career moving forward. But the more that
I tried to stay, it's like the more the tension was.
I was also getting affirmed in some really interesting ways
that what I was going through was spiritual. My career
was starting to take off. I had movies that were
getting optioned, that were about to get funded and about
to get produced, and this just intersected with all this.
I did have some psychic abilities opening up. People started
coming to me for readings. I ended up doing readings
for some prominent people. I also got invited to be
a psychic card reader vendor at some vendor fairs. I
got to talk about this a little bit on some
podcasts and things too, just psychic stuff, not particularly this story.
So there was a balance, but it didn't seem like
they cared that I was actually being proven in what
I was saying. It seemed like that just caused more
resentment and things just got worse. Danica and I really
started to butt heads. There were times where she basically
menaced me, threatened me Maria too. It was just like
they just needed me, like they just needed me to go.
After a while, it came down to them inviting other
people over to kind of bully me, people that I
didn't know, to kind of make me feel uncomfortable in
the apartment and like bully me to make me feel
like if I said anything, if I stood out for myself,
like I could end up jumped. I had friends too,
but I didn't want there to be any sort of altercations.
But the friends that I knew who were out there,
they witnessed just like some weird aggressive behavior, like there
was no concern for my well being. So after a while,
I was just like, this doesn't feel like, oh, you're struggling.
Speaker 2: We hate to see you struggle. We just want you safe.
Speaker 1: It was just like tag you're out, you're crazy, go
home after one, particularly just like rough Stretch where they
got the new landlord's son involved because the house was
sold in the midst of all.
Speaker 2: That, I just was like, it's not worth it. I'm
going to reset.
Speaker 1: I've reset before, I'm going to reset. That was like
four years ago, basically a little over four years ago
now since I left, I've not experienced anything like that.
I've not had any losses of control. I've not had
any wandering spells. I haven't needed to have any hospital stays,
any emergencies that I had it was due to like anxiety,
like it felt like my heart rate was elevated, But
I didn't have anything that could be classified under a
fifty one fifty, nothing like that. I know, people just
want to believe that I had a breakdown, and they
want to believe that maybe I'm trying to like salvage
the situation and use it to get back in the industry.
I promise you that's not it. You can't make up
what happened to Maria's great grandmother.
Speaker 2: What's so wild?
Speaker 1: Is. It took me a while to even bring that
context together. So when Maria first moved in, she had
a bunch of her stuff and I still have some
of those those items too.
Speaker 2: But she gave me a ring. I never took it off.
Speaker 1: It was so beautiful to me that she would give
me that ring, and it was very much my style.
She even said like, this isn't really me, but I
feel like.
Speaker 2: It matches you, and it was. It was gorgeous.
Speaker 1: It was like a black stone on a silver ring,
and that's usually like protection. She also gave me like
an item of her of her clothing, like a blouse
or something that I haven't really worn since during one
of my first losses of control. Though that ring ended
up coming off. Maybe there was some resentment like if
anybody should have that ring, it should be it should
be someone who knew her or whatever. I'm just thinking,
like three incidents, that's a pattern, right, Like in writing
and anything, three equals a pattern. It's like, what has
to happen for a third time, Like do they they
take over somebody else's apartment, because I really don't think
it's a coincidence that that's why they had to leave
their last living situation, somebody who lost control and flew
off a freeway, and then all of a sudden, I'm
having losses of control, and then I have to leave
my apartment that I lived in first, and the people
that I invited just to fill the the the vacancies
they got to stay. I really do feel a connection
to this lady, the great grandmother. I feel a connection
to her, and I feel like she wanted me to
know that this was what I signed up for by
going out there. There's a lot of speculation and stuff
about what really runs Los Angeles. A lot of it
does come down to some pretty dark stuff, and when
you look at how things happen and how many people
end up abused and including kids and things, it's hard
to argue with that. I think there are multiple curses
that happen around the entertainment industry. I think there are
multiple curses that happen just around what success means in
this country, if not like the entire Western world. The
psychology behind metaphysics is just a really definitive answer on
what's really at the bottom of the physical issues that
we're dealing with. If you look at just how the
like the actual laws and stuff work out there. There's
a lot of loopholes too for people to get.
Speaker 2: Away with things.
Speaker 1: Landlords are always finding sneaky ways to get people out
of units so that instead of just collecting regular rent,
they can keep getting like first, last and deposit over
and over again. There's just all this gray area that's
out there that really leads to some very harmful stuff.
Makes me wonder how many people got labeled a certain
way for having an experience like what I had, People
who couldn't make it out, or people who if they
did make it out, they wouldn't have the ability to
contextualize it. There's also just the culture of like what
does it take to make it? Because they keep saying
it's not enough to be good, to be smart, it's
not enough to be talented, it's not enough to work hard.
I'm like, okay, well what does it take? What does
it actually take? Right? And people don't ever really want
to say. It's like this this unspoken thing. There's also
kind of like this climate of no matter how close
you were to people, if you're not in town, you
kind of don't exist. They don't maintain contact. So it's
like almost like were you ever really there. It's almost
like a just like a like what they call a
liminal space all of its own. In a way, this
kind of started with a roommate horror story because what
was going.
Speaker 2: On between the people who were there when I moved
in was very intense. Maybe there's something about this.
Speaker 1: House too, I don't know, but this generation has it
has to reckon with what it's like being forced to
cram like four grown adults between their twenties and thirties,
sometimes their forties.
Speaker 2: Into one apartment.
Speaker 1: In one of the wealthiest countries in the world, like
California has the fourth biggest economy in the world, the
governor said.
Speaker 2: And that's as a state.
Speaker 1: But that's how so many people live there, just a
bunch of strangers crammed into a single apartment. Sometimes you
got people sleeping in bunk feds. I had to stay
at some hostels and stuff for a little while while.
Speaker 2: I was looking to get into a permanent place.
Speaker 1: So I think this is one of those sort of
just one of those horror stories that also can come
down to just like the horrors of capitalism and just
us just having to.
Speaker 2: Live a certain way.
Speaker 1: Just because we haven't been allowed to grow out of
it into a more humane sort of system. And I
hope that's not like too preachy or anything, but I
definitely feel like we have more than enough resources for
people to be able to have their own space, not
just to have their basic needs met, but to have
like dignified and comfortable lives.
Speaker 2: You know, I.
Speaker 1: Haven't really been the same since physical health wise is
taking a huge toll on me, but I have not
had any losses of clarity whatsoever. This is the kind
of thing that you see people talk about online, but
people kind of lose sympathy because, well, you wanted to
be out there, well, you wanted to.
Speaker 2: Be a star.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it's like, you know what
California with Southern California, what Los Angeles is supposed to
represent in terms of the dream and in terms of
progress and in terms of inclusion, And it's almost like
it's almost like a lore, like a fly trap, where
you're made to think you're getting one thing, but you're
totally getting something else when you get there.
Speaker 3: Chris, thank you so much for the conversation that we
had during this call, and also for sharing your experiences
here with the rest of us. At the true scary
story community. During our call, I kept saying this over
and over. It was it's a very haunting story, and
I couldn't place my finger on why, like what made
it so eerie to me? And I was thinking also
maybe I'm because I'm from southern California, right from Los Angeles,
and I always stayed away from what they call like
the entertainment area I guess of Los Angeles, but I
did know a lot of people who dove right in
and have always been curious as to how that works out.
But I'm glad we we also talked about some conspiration sees,
some things about you know, that undercurrent of Los Angeles
and everything that's in there, and I'm sure it's the
same in other places of the big cities, maybe small towns.
How there's something there, like something that's just always going
to be there, something that's very difficult to get rid of.
I'm interested in knowing what you thought of this story,
like as in what did you get out of it?
Because for me, I lean more into the Los Angeles part,
but I'm interested in finding out anyway. This episode was
edited and sound designed by Sarah Vorheis Wendel A VW
Sound with additional production by me Edwin Coo Arrubiaz and
The Scary FMT. Do you want to share your story
with us, head on over to true scarystory dot com.
You fill out the form and we get in touch
with you anyway. That's all I got for you this week.
Thank you very much for listening. I could scary everyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So