TSTEPB3

BONUS: TIPLINE CALLERS

KIDNAPPED BY A GARY, CALLER (voicemail):

Last week you were discussing whether or not Buddha could have been kidnapped by one of the Garys and I... I thought you might want to hear my story, since I was almost kidnapped by a Gary. I was driving home on a highway I drove on almost every night. It was late, something like 2am, so its a bit isolated sure, but its not like I was in some strange unknown place. Suddenly, my Honda starts to shake. Violently. And then I can feel my back passenger side wheel thumping against the ground. So I pull over.

It’s not just a flat. Instead my entire wheel has somehow popped off. No problem. I can do this. Let’s just grab the donut and the jack and.... There’s no jack. And my phone is dead. And I grabbed the wrong charger that morning before work... not my best day.

I was walking on the side of the highway back toward a convenient store I’d just passed when a blue minivan pulled up behind me. A man hopped out and said something like, “Hey there, stranger, looks like you could use some help.”

He couldn’t do much about the wheel, but he offered to give me a ride back to the store. Red flag. I know. But there was a bunch of baby stuff in the van and... I don’t know. I’m sitting in the passenger seat and just like every dumb horror movie ever, we pass the store. He doesn’t say anything. I ask if he noticed he passed it. He says he knows a better place and keeps driving. My skin was crawling. I wanted to jump out of the car, but we were moving too fast. I started looking around for anything I could use as an improvised weapon, and that’s when I noticed all the crumpled to-go bags and sandwich  wrappers. All of them... ever single one... had that GBG Elephant logo. Gary’s Big Game.

I’d heard the stories about the ‘organic replacements’ and my mind conjured up some really dark shit that I’d rather not describe. He noticed that I noticed the GBG wrappers. He knew that I knew what they meant. He looked at me and smiled. I moved toward the door handle and prepared to feel the ripping impact of moving highway, but then suddenly a red light filled the windshield.

Brake lights. Another driver had hit a deer. They were outside their vehicle looking at the animal. Blocking the road just enough so that The Gary was forced to come to a complete stop. I looked at the Gary. He looked at me. And winked.

I yanked the door open and ran away as fast as I could. The Gary didn’t say anything to me. But as I was running away, I heard him call out to the other motorist, “Hey there, stranger looks like you could use some help.”

CLAIRE FROM CALIFORNIA (voicemail):

Hello, this is Claire from.... let’s just say Southern California. I was listening to the podcast and I heard you mention The Blue Mesa Hotel. Now even though this doesn’t necessarily help with the search for Buddha Kline, I thought I should still call in and share my Blue Mesa story. This happened to me back in the summer of 1993 and let me just say first that I’m not a geologist or any kind of expert. I guess what you might call me is a Rock Enthusiast. I like to collect crystals, gems, and really just any unique rock. And when I say I like crystals I don’t mean I use them in any supernatural healing sense. I just like how they look. I used to put gravel in pockets as a kid. Its just always kinda been my thing. So, I’m visiting New Mexico, staying at the Blue Mesa, and I’ve decided that I’m going to go out and explore the local terrain. On my hike I found this really... strange rock. One I’d never seen before. 

Again, I’m not a rock expert or anything, but I’ve seen a lot of rocks in my life and this one was completely new to me. At first I thought it was a big chunk of gold. But yeah right. No way I’m getting that lucky. When I got closer I saw that it was more yellow than gold. And instead of a typical rock shape it looked like a stack of intersecting cubes. On one side was a single perfect cube. About four inches on each side. I ran my finger along its edges. Sharp corners. Right angles. It was a perfect geometric shape that had somehow been crafted by the earth itself.... Or perhaps... something else. Being the rock junkie I am, I pocketed it and started making my way back to The Blue Mesa. I was too excited. I couldn’t wait to find out what it was... The overly ambitious and optimistic voice in the back of my mind was asking me if maybe I had discovered something new to the world. I made it back to my room. It was the Ghost Companion room if you’re wondering. Don’t judge me. I was going through something at the time and thought, hey, girls gotta get her cuddle on somehow. If its gotta be with a ghost its gotta be with a ghost.

So anyways, I really loved the bathtubs they have at The Blue Mesa. Huge fancy old things. I was soaking and daydreaming. I dipped my head under the water, and I remember thinking that I might have sunburned my scalp. It felt... Really really tender. I leaned up out of the water. Wiped the hair from my face.... And then I noticed a clump of hair was still twisted between my fingers after I pulled my hand away. Then I saw the strands of blonde floating all around me. I ran my fingers through my hair again and came away with another handful. Then another. And another, until I ran my fingers over my now bald head. I find it really impossible to describe the terror I felt.

I went back through everything and everyone I’d encountered that day until I remembered the interesting looking rock I’d found. The one made from perfect cubes. I saw it sitting on the table across the room. I just knew that had to be what happened. I picked up some radioactive crap and poisoned myself. What a Claire way to go out, my friends would probably say. By the time I made it to the hospital all of it was gone. My eyebrows. Eyelashes. Every single hair on my body had fallen out. Come to Find Out, though, I had an undiagnosed auto-immune disease. Alopecia. It was common on my father’s side of the family, but he left when I was young and I never knew any of them. The radioactive extraterrestrial rock? It was just a piece of Pyrite. Turns out there are a bunch of Pyrite mines in the area and it's pretty common all over the world. So apparently I didn’t know as much about rocks as I thought I did. It was a crazy couple of hours for sure. I’ll never forget it. The Blue Mesa Hotel, the place where all my hair fell out. Thanks for listening to my call.

MY HUSBAND CHANGED, CALLER (voicemail):

 Hi, I’d rather not say my name if that’s okay... I... its just that I don’t really want any unnecessary attention. But I thought my story might be worth sharing. In 2004, I lost my husband at the Blue Mesa Hotel. Well... not exactly The Blue Mesa.. I’ll explain. My husband and I were having a bit of a rough patch in our marriage and decided that a vacation would be just the thing we needed to get us out of the rut we were in. I wanted to go to Vegas, but he wanted to visit New Mexico. Taos specifically. He was a big D.H. Lawrence fan. And an even bigger horror fan, so, of course, if you’re staying in Taos and you want to be scared, you’re going to want to stay at the Blue Mesa Hotel. 

We booked ‘The Blood Room’... Accordingly to the legend, and the website, the walls of The Blood Room are supposed to drip blood at night. We thought it would be a fun little gag and at least it’d be quiet. Better than staying in ‘The Kennel Room’ and having a damn Dog-man wake you up at 2am. So, the first night comes and we’re all excited to see the blood walls. We were looking around inspecting the ceiling and walls trying to figure out how they pulled it off. But for all intents and purposes this room looked like any other hotel room. We stayed up until sunrise with no sign of the blood. The next night, Friday, we decided to try again, thinking maybe they could only afford to make the room bleed for weekend guests. So we stay up late. And again, nothing happens. Saturday afternoon my husband asked the lady at the Front Desk if there had been any recent sightings or experiences in The Blood Room because nothing had been happening for us. And she explained to us that the Blood Pipes were out of order. The blood pipes... That kinda killed the fun for us. 

We decided to go for an afternoon hike to make up for all the time we’d spent sitting in the hotel room staring at the walls. It was beautiful. Lots of pretty flowers and rocks.... During our walk we found a cave and decided to do a little bit of exploring. Try to get ourselves scared the old fashioned way. The cave had a large opening with plenty of room above us and on both sides, so I didn’t really feel scared. It was... fun actually... at first. When we came upon a split leading into two separate tunnels we decided to each take a few steps in and then report back with what lay ahead so that we could decide which way we wanted to go. Simple enough. 

I came back after three minutes. And then I waited.... And waited.... And waited.... After about fifteen minutes, I started shouting his name. Nothing. I cut my flashlight beam down the mouth of the tunnel... nothing. My heart started pounding. I felt light headed. My mind raced with the possibilities of what could have happened. I didn’t know what I’d do without him. An hour passed before he emerged. But instead of coming back down the tunnel he’d entered. He came back through the tunnel I’d originally gone into. I asked what happened and he said he just kept going and eventually it wrapped around. I was still full of unspent adrenaline so my body channeled it into rage. I was furious with him. We didn’t speak for the rest of the time we were in Taos. 

I didn’t notice it right away, but after we got back home I started to pick up on subtle differences in my husband. Different mannerisms. Verbal ticks. He hated things he used to enjoy. And he enjoyed things he used to hate. He had trouble remembering events from our time dating. And he started going out and drinking with all kinds of people. He never did that before, either. I didn’t know who he was now, but he was no longer my husband. I was sure of that. My husband went into that cave with me. But a different man, who looked and sounded just like him, came out. We divorced in 2005 and he moved to Miami with some hot little thing... Whatever happened in that damn cave.... it took my husband from me and ruined my life.

SELF-HELP, CALLER (voicemail):

Hey umm.... I don’t really follow the podcast, but I heard that you’ve been talking about the Blue Mesa Hotel... I stayed there for three nights back in the summer of 2013. On my third and final night in The Blue Mesa, I woke up with this... feeling. I was really nauseous. It was like my stomach and heart were both squeezing their way up my esophagus. I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t hear it. But I knew I wasn’t the only living thing in the room. I crawled back under the blanket and stayed silent and still for a long time... and nothing happened. I started to question my own mind, thinking I’d just freaked myself out. So, I got up, stumbled into the bathroom and flipped on the light. In the mirror was.. I mean it was me, but it was... a different me. I’m bald, but my reflection had long black hair. And tattoos. I never had the nerve to get the tats I wanted. It was my nose, my eyes, my face. But that wasn’t it.... umm...you’ve seen what it looks like when two mirrors face each other, right? How the reflection just bounces from one to the other, and it looks like it just goes on and on forever? It was like that, but... me’s. Behind the tatted up black haired me was a clean shaven me in an expensive looking three-piece suit. I saw a thin me, a fat me, a me with glasses, a hunchback me, and a me covered in blood. We all moved in perfect synchronicity, all staring back with the same dumbfounded expression like “Whaaat?”  As I reached out to touch the mirror, we all reached out to touch the mirror. Then just as our fingertips met, I was back in bed. People always say it was just a nightmare.. that I just woke up, but it wasn’t like that. I was just... I was in one place and then I was in another. Look you don’t have to believe me. No one does. We know what we saw.