Boo_ep009

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:00:00]:
What follows may not be suitable for all audiences.

Kat [00:00:02]:
Listener discretion is advised.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:00:06]:
The world is full of stories. Stories of mysteries, of curiosities, of oddities. Join Cat and Jethro Gilligan Toth for the strange, the bizarre, the unexpected, as they lift the lid and cautiously peer ins the box of oddities.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:00:35]:
Let me just say, I love our dogs, the two pugs that we have, Banjo and Willie. They're great, but they make it very hard to do a podcast because they will not allow us to be in a room by ourselves.

Kat [00:00:48]:
This is true. And they shed on everything.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:00:51]:
And they shed. That's S H E D on everything. And they shed on everything, too, actually.

Kat [00:00:58]:
That's true. Yeah. You didn't have to be specific about that.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:00]:
I guess not. But yeah. We can't go in and room without them getting all upset with us. We have to share our marital bed with them.

Kat [00:01:10]:
It's true.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:10]:
Which is really awkward.

Kat [00:01:12]:
Yeah. No, they get real mad if we kick them out of the room. And then they spite poop on the floor. They spite poop when we make love.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:21]:
It's not real sexy.

Kat [00:01:24]:
All right, so we're gonna do it. And then who cleans up the poop afterwards?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:30]:
That's a sentence I bet you never thought you'd say.

Kat [00:01:33]:
Maybe when you get a little older.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:35]:
I suppose that's always the case. Hey, welcome to the Box of Oddities.

Kat [00:01:40]:
It's a podcast where we talk about things that interest us. We surprise, share a story with each other and with you.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:51]:
Our website, by the way, is theboxofoddities.com. there you can find all of our social media contacts. There's connections for you to subscribe to the show and all that kind of stuff.

Kat [00:02:03]:
Right. And we hope that you do.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:02:04]:
Yeah, we appreciate it. Two stories today. You do one, I do one. That's how we roll. Who's going to go first today?

Kat [00:02:12]:
I don't know. We have a habit of not figuring this out beforehand. And then, I don't know. We've been just using things that we have around.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:02:23]:
We've spun the fetal pig in a bottle. We flipped the werewolf book.

Kat [00:02:28]:
The blue glass head we used.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:02:30]:
Once we've spun the blue glass head, what other kind of weird things do we have lying around here?

Kat [00:02:37]:
You have one of David Letterman's ties.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:02:41]:
I do have one of David Letterman's ties. I don't know if I want to throw that in the air or not.

Kat [00:02:46]:
No, probably not. We'll just look at it.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:02:47]:
Okay. Okay. You go first.

Kat [00:02:52]:
Okay. Inspiring.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:02:57]:
We have to pay homage to David Letterman's tie.

Kat [00:03:00]:
I think that we should, every episode, a moment of silence, just please bow down.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:05]:
Yeah. Sometime I'll tell you the story about how we ended up with that. But today's not the day.

Kat [00:03:10]:
It's fun. No. All right, so we're just gonna get into it. All right, so imagine a row of eight cats tightly packed into individual cages, wedged along a keyboard, their tails pinned down, pulled taut, and with the touch of a key, a mechanism slams down a nail onto the cat's tail, so that when the keyboardist plays a tune, the cats, which are arranged according to the pitches of their yowls, will cry in pain in musical harmony.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:41]:
Real cats.

Kat [00:03:42]:
Real cats. It's called the Cats in Clover, and that's what we're discussing today.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:48]:
This is a musical instrument of sorts.

Kat [00:03:50]:
It's a musical instrument of sorts and.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:54]:
An animal torture device.

Kat [00:03:55]:
So historians aren't sure when the cruel kitty keyboard was invented. Many credit a guy named Kercher with the original design and said that it was a solution to the. The Mopi Monarch. It was something that was imagined to amuse royalty, essentially to brighten their day. Right now, there's no official record of this cat organ actually being built, but it is described in literature as a bizarre concept. It's used to, you know, to bring joy to people through the horrible, horrible sounds of cats yowling.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:44]:
Oh, my God.

Kat [00:04:46]:
Have you ever heard of this?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:47]:
I've never heard of this.

Kat [00:04:49]:
Yeah, it's interesting. It originally was referred to as the Katzenklavan, and there are stories of one being built, but instead of using cats, it was pigs. And that was very strangely used to. Or the idea of it was used to mock the poor somehow, because these. The idea was, if you have so many pigs to use in such a frivolous way. Frivolous way, and you don't even have one to eat. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:05:28]:
That's a great way to endear yourself to the audience.

Kat [00:05:30]:
Yeah. I mean, there's a reason why some people have had a problem with monarchies in the past. I'm just saying. So when the King of Spain, Philippe II, was in Brussels in 1549, visiting his father, each saw the other rejoicing at the sight of a completely singular possession. At the head marched an enormous bull whose horns were burning, between which there was also a small devil, which I don't know exactly what they mean by that. Behind the bull, a young boy sewn into a bear skin rode a horse whose ears and tail were cut off. Now this is just the French writer describing this horrible story, this situation that he imagines would delight royalty. And so he wrote a book on how to please royalty.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:06:25]:
These are his suggestions.

Kat [00:06:26]:
These are his suggestions to bring a.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:06:28]:
Smile to the monarch's lips. Wow.

Kat [00:06:34]:
Yeah. So the instrument was described by a German physician as well. His name was Johan Christian Riel, for the purpose of treating patients who had lost the ability to focus their attention. So it just seems, again, it's a long way to go, I think, to meet a very strange goal.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:06:58]:
I'm sorry, what year was this?

Kat [00:07:00]:
This was Christian Riehl. Sorry. Johann Christian riel lived between 1759 and 18. He believed that if they were forced to see and listen to this instrument, it would inevitably capture their attention and they would be cured of not being able to focus on stuff. I'm guessing the idea was like, I mean, they didn't know what ADHD was in the past, but they didn't have Ritalin. Right. So they thought, let's make a torture device for cats that'll help, that we can put to music.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:07:38]:
So, yeah, I'm picturing in my head the cat version of the singing dogs doing Jingle Bells.

Kat [00:07:44]:
Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely. It's kind of like that, but horrible. But just. Just horrible. And it's actually brought up in citations about. This was the jingle cats. Here comes Santa Claus, you know, cat's claws. And there's also a guy who recreated cats and clothing of sorts, but instead of using cats like real cats, he put together a piano of squeaky cats.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:08:19]:
I think I saw this.

Kat [00:08:21]:
All right. And he actually did perform for royalty. There's a video on YouTube of Prince Charles in a fit of giggles, listening to Somewhere over the Rainbow as performed on the squeaky toy cat organ.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:08:58]:
There you can hear. You see, now that I hear this, maybe this isn't such a bad idea. It does make me happy.

Kat [00:09:06]:
The. The guy performing is called Henry Dagg and he created this organ out 16 kitty squeaky toys, which is much better than the cats and Clavir. Clavier. Clavier. That actually uses real cats and stabs them in order to achieve music, quote, unquote, by way of screeches.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:09:31]:
How long ago did he make the squeaky cat thing? And where can I get one?

Kat [00:09:35]:
That was in 2010. And I think that we can probably just make one if you're feeling ambitious.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:09:41]:
Well, we do have an entire washtub full of squeaky dog toys.

Kat [00:09:46]:
That's true.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:09:47]:
Maybe we could do something with that.

Kat [00:09:48]:
I bet you we Could. If that brings you joy, you are my royalty, and that is my goal.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:09:53]:
Ew, you're gross.

Kat [00:09:57]:
So that's. That's. I mean, I know it wasn't. It's not a long story, but it's something that I saw and I couldn't not share with you.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:04]:
That's amazing.

Kat [00:10:05]:
It's the cats and Clavier. I'm not sure how to pronounce it because it was, you know, foreign. Let's call it the cat organ.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:12]:
It was foreign. We are such Americans.

Kat [00:10:16]:
Thems talk weird.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:19]:
How big a contraption was this thing? How many cats did you say initially? Real cats.

Kat [00:10:23]:
That would vary because there's 88 keys on a piano. Again, to reiterate, there is no proof that this was ever actually built. It was a concept that came up several times during history for joy and also for curing illnesses. But it varied based on whichever drawing you look at. And in the 2010 squeaky toy version, there are 16.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:48]:
Boy, people in olden days were weird.

Kat [00:10:50]:
The days of yore.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:51]:
The days of yore.

Kat [00:10:52]:
Yeah.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:53]:
I want to hear this again. I'd like to hear Elton John do.

Kat [00:11:08]:
Goodbye Yellow Brick Road on the cat Organ.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:11:11]:
On the cat organ, yeah. Playing the cat organ. I bet you could do a whole segment on really weird instruments.

Kat [00:11:18]:
You know, you could.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:11:19]:
What was the name of that thing that Ben Franklin invented where it was almost like playing the balls? It was like spinning pieces of glass, and you would touch it and play. I'm pretty sure there's something on YouTube about that.

Kat [00:11:31]:
The glass harmonica.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:11:33]:
Yeah, that's it, isn't it?

Kat [00:11:35]:
Spinning glass discs on a common shaft that are arranged with lower notes to the left and higher notes to the right. A glass harp.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:11:43]:
Yeah. Here it is. The glass harmonica invented by Ben Franklin. And here's somebody playing one. They're playing the dance of the Sugar Plum fairy. So if you're listening to this around Christmas time, this will work out well. And the guy playing it is actually dressed like Ben Franklin.

Kat [00:12:08]:
This is pretty.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:17]:
That's interesting.

Kat [00:12:18]:
This sounds nice. I mean, it's. No. That.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:28]:
Let's listen to them together, shall we?

Kat [00:12:33]:
I mean, the cat organs clearly are the superior instrument.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:38]:
I would agree with you there.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:40]:
The box of oddities. It's not for everyone.

Kat [00:12:45]:
All right, let's do that thing in the middle.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:47]:
The thing in the middle.

Kat [00:12:48]:
Yay.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:49]:
Today's five weird things removed from people's butts. Number five, a jar of Folgers. Freeze dried instant.

Kat [00:12:58]:
It's the best part of waking up.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:01]:
With Folgers in your butt.

Kat [00:13:08]:
A 21 year old in Tennessee sentenced to jail. When she arrived, they discovered a loaded gun inside her butt.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:16]:
Oh, no.

Kat [00:13:17]:
Yeah.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:18]:
Nozzle in.

Kat [00:13:19]:
I'm not sure.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:20]:
Number three, a Buzz Lightyear toy. To infinity and beyond.

Kat [00:13:27]:
Number two, a vibrator. Okay, fine. Also, salad tongs.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:37]:
Okay, well, maybe they were using that to try to get him out.

Kat [00:13:41]:
Lost him up there. That's awful. Oh, God, it's awful. Oh, God, I can't stop clenching.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:52]:
And the number one weird thing found or actually removed from somebody's butt was a live World War II mortar shell. Now, who do you call a proctologist or a munitions expert?

Kat [00:14:06]:
A history butt. Not a buff, but a, you know.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:14:10]:
Yeah.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:14:10]:
The box of oddities with Cat and Jethro Gilligan Toth salad.

Kat [00:14:17]:
Tom, I feel like we could do much more of this.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:14:19]:
Oh, we could have done a top on.

Kat [00:14:21]:
I'm so upset of this. I'm so upset. Okay, let's move on.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:14:24]:
Okay. All right.

Kat [00:14:27]:
Can't stop looking at it.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:14:29]:
Stop looking at it.

Kat [00:14:30]:
Okay.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:14:30]:
All right, imagine this. A woman named Juanita Maxwell was accused of beating to death 73 year old Inez Kelly with a lamp in 1979. She has no recollection, no memory of it happening. Wanda Weston, however, remembers the incident with glee. She admitted as much during a murder trial. Here's the thing. They were both the same person.

Kat [00:14:58]:
Wait, what?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:14:59]:
Yeah, both the same person. Juanita Jackson and Wanda Weston, the same person. I'm gonna talk about dissociative identity disorder, so.

Kat [00:15:10]:
Interesting.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:15:11]:
Formerly known as multiple personality.

Kat [00:15:14]:
Personalities. Yeah.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:15:16]:
Okay, most of this information I got from ranker.com, which, by the way, is a great website. Fantastic stuff. So anyway, Max Maxwell had been apparently working at a hotel. She was a maid there. And that's where this elderly lady, Inez Kelly, was staying. And according to Wanda, Kelly had borrowed her pen but refused to give it back. And so Wanda went into the elderly lady's room and asked for her pen back. The older woman said, leave. And so Wanda Weston, the personality identified as Wanda Weston, beat her to death with a lamp.

Kat [00:15:54]:
That is such an overreaction. I mean, you say that I overreact about things.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:15:59]:
Yeah, but you've never beat me with a lamp. Or any small appliance.

Kat [00:16:03]:
Right.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:16:03]:
For that matter, how they. Now, she was sentenced to a mental institution. Sure, instead of prison. But only after they were able to coax Maxwell's character out during the trial.

Kat [00:16:17]:
Oh, my goodness.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:16:18]:
They had to coax her out to testify.

Kat [00:16:22]:
This is so strange.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:16:24]:
You've heard of the movie or the book, the Three Faces of Eve.

Kat [00:16:27]:
Yes.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:16:28]:
Okay. It's the real case of a Chris Costner Sizemore. Sizemore just died recently. A few years ago, I think. 2016. She had 22 distinct personalities.

Kat [00:16:40]:
Oh, wow.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:16:41]:
22. And one of them was Jane, who I think was identified as her root personality. That was the real person that. Well, who knows?

Kat [00:16:52]:
It's so subjective, really hard to say.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:16:54]:
But when Jane emerged, it was not the end of Sizemore's suffering.

Kat [00:17:00]:
Sure.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:00]:
The other personalities didn't die. In fact, when one personality would go away, more personalities would take up the space.

Kat [00:17:08]:
Sure.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:09]:
Here are some of the personalities that she had. There was the banana split girl who would only eat banana splits.

Kat [00:17:18]:
I feel like I can identify with that person. I get you now.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:24]:
Yeah. Yep. Another personality was called the spoon lady who collected spoons.

Kat [00:17:31]:
Okay.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:31]:
That's all she did. Maybe for the banana split girl. The personalities ranged in skill sets. Some of them couldn't drive, for example. Some of them could drive. It wasn't until after four years of therapy and I guess her last doctor, whose name was Tony, it wasn't until after that that they were able to start integrating the personalities.

Kat [00:17:57]:
Oh, my goodness.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:58]:
The final thing before she was able to integrate all the personalities was that she said that it looked as though they all joined hands and then walked behind a screen and then just disappeared and they never came back.

Kat [00:18:12]:
That's so interesting how that is perceived because I don't know, it's hard to even imagine what that must be like and feel like. And that's really interesting.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:18:25]:
Well, what's interesting to me, in this case, the individual perceives the other personality as outside of them.

Kat [00:18:31]:
Right.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:18:31]:
You know, they witness them doing these things when in reality they're doing it.

Kat [00:18:36]:
Right. I mean, in all the movies that you see, most of the time they don't. They see the people, their personalities as other people. And. And that's sometimes used as the twist in movies. I'm not telling you which one because I'm not going to spoil it for you.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:18:53]:
Thank you.

Kat [00:18:53]:
You're welcome.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:18:54]:
I love movies like that with a mind bending finish. The first well documented case for what what is now known as did was studied by a guy named Erbhardt Gemlin in 1791. And the case involved a woman who was about 20 years old living in Germany. And she had just two personalities, but they were very distinct. One was the French woman and one was the German woman. And this is what's interesting to me. The French woman spoke perfect French, behaved like a French Aristocrat. She knew about the German woman, but the German woman did not know about the French woman.

Kat [00:19:38]:
Oh, that's interesting.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:19:40]:
The German woman in contrast, didn't speak French, but spoke fluent German. She had a slight French accent, but they both spoke fluent languages and neither one of them knew how to speak the other one's language.

Kat [00:19:55]:
That is fascinating. I think the thing about this topic is as amazing as it is in the back of my mind, it's always there that so often it's caught by traumatic childhood goings on. And I think so as much as I'm like, oh, that's awesome, tell me more. There's always this kind of pit of sad that lives when we talk about it. And I cannot help but think like, what happened to that baby that would have made this much of a reaction, this kind of self protection have to take place.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:20:33]:
It's funny you mention that because in researching this, almost every single case that I researched, when they mentioned what possibly could have been a trigger for this, it was always childhood sexual abuse. Almost always. And it reminded me of that Sally Field movie years ago, Sybil, where that was the case. She had been abused as a child. Speaking of that, the woman who wrote that book, it was determined later that she made that all up.

Kat [00:21:03]:
Oh really?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:21:03]:
That that wasn't a real case.

Kat [00:21:05]:
Wow.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:21:06]:
Mary Reynolds was born in 1785, moved to Pennsylvania at the age of 19 for no reason. She just, she became blind and deaf and it was like over, I don't know, like a few weeks, six week period. Three months after that she forgot how to read and write.

Kat [00:21:22]:
Oh my goodness.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:21:24]:
And she ultimately, I guess retaught herself how to read and write while she was blind and deaf. Then all of a sudden her demeanor changed and she was described as witty, enthusiastic, buoyant, fond of company, she loved nature. She just seemed like a very peaceful, happy, buoyant person. And that lasted for about five months and then she changed back to blind and deaf and couldn't read and write.

Kat [00:21:55]:
Oh my goodness.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:21:56]:
And this would continue until about the time she reached her mid-30s when the second personality, the buoyant, witty one, took over. And she lived as that until she died in her early 60s.

Kat [00:22:09]:
That's so strange.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:22:10]:
Now here's the most interesting one for me. Okay, this is what really piqued my interest in this. Do you know who Herschel Walker is? I know you're not a huge football.

Kat [00:22:18]:
Fan, but okay, the name sounds familiar, but it doesn't mean anything to me.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:22:22]:
Herschel Walker was a very successful, hugely successful in his day, NFL and USFL football star. He won the Heisman Trophy. He went to the University of Georgia. He was the most sought after high school recruit when he was young in the nation. He was the number one choice. He was recruited by University of Georgia. He had amazing success there. He won the 82 Heisman Trophy. This is according to Wikipedia. He began his professional football career with the New Jersey Generals of the usfl, which was a short lived professional football league in the early 80s. He was like the first big time Heisman Trophy guy to sign with this upstart football league, which by the way, the owner of the New Jersey Generals was Donald Trump.

Kat [00:23:10]:
Oh, really?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:23:11]:
Back in the day, I didn't know that USFL folded. He went on to play for the Dallas Cowboys, National Football League, also the Minnesota Vikings, the Philadelphia Eagles.

Kat [00:23:20]:
So I'm sorry, what you said, I'm just trying to wrap my head around this. A business endeavor that Donald Trump was involved in failed.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:23:30]:
Yes.

Kat [00:23:31]:
Okay, okay, okay. Continue. Sorry.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:23:33]:
He also played with the New York Giants and he was inducted into the College Football hall of Fame in 1999. He played for a long time. I think he retired in like 97 and he started playing professionally in 82.

Kat [00:23:46]:
Wow.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:23:47]:
It was pretty wild. Well, come to find out after he retired, that was just one of his personalities. It was the personality that was known as the hero.

Kat [00:23:59]:
So did he switch back and forth between personalities during that time when he was playing football?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:24:04]:
Yes.

Kat [00:24:05]:
That must have been horrible.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:24:07]:
How he became such an amazing athlete was this personality would take over and cause him to push himself to this point.

Kat [00:24:17]:
Sure.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:24:18]:
I think he. No, he called it the Warrior.

Kat [00:24:20]:
The Warrior.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:24:20]:
The hero was a different personality, but the Warrior. And so the Warrior took over and caused him to become this incredibly talented football player.

Kat [00:24:31]:
Driven, focused.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:24:31]:
Driven, focused, yes. He won the Heisman Trophy. He went on and had a great NFL career. A pretty decent one anyway. And it wasn't really him, it was just one of his personalities. That's.

Kat [00:24:42]:
That's nuts. I mean, and I shouldn't say nuts or crazy because obviously that's our words that we use to describe, but just the idea is amazing that you could be dealing with multiple personalities and yet have that kind of drive and focus and I don't know, I mean, I understand so little about it that it's just. It's mind blowing.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:25:06]:
No, I'm very aware of Herschel Walker's career. He was a great NFL star and had no idea that that really wasn't his primary personality. As a child. He was overweight he had a speech impediment, and he thinks that's when he first developed this as a. As a coping mechanism. His warrior personality, highly motivated. And that was one of Walker's alters who drove his physical fitness and football ability. According to this article on Rancor, another alter was the hero, and that was his public face when he would do interviews or when he would do public service and that sort of thing.

Kat [00:25:45]:
Oh, wow.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:25:45]:
It was the hero that did this. And you know what? What's weird is the hero doesn't even remember the warrior winning the Heisman Trophy.

Kat [00:25:54]:
Really? Well, that would be really hard to talk about it then in news conferences.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:25:59]:
Yeah, I would think so.

Kat [00:26:01]:
I mean, do people pick up on the fact that things were amiss?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:26:04]:
Nope, not until after he retired.

Kat [00:26:06]:
Wow.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:26:07]:
Now, this comes from an ESPN article talking about an interview that was done on Nightline in 2008. They interviewed Walker's therapist, a guy named Jerry Mungady. Munga. Mungadzy. Mungadzi. Jerry. Jerry. Jerry was his name. Jerry. He had met Walker's alternate personalities during their sessions. He said, they'll just come out and say, hey, I'm so and so. I'm here to tell you that Herschel is not doing too well. When he finishes, he would just disappear back within him, and Herschel would come back out.

Kat [00:26:41]:
Wow. So they were protecting each other. They were protecting each other again. It makes sense. If you come from a place of abuse or struggle, that's what they. That's what they're there for.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:26:54]:
Yeah, exactly.

Kat [00:26:55]:
Oh, my gosh.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:26:56]:
Walker's ex wife, Cindy Grossman, was married to HERSCHEL for, like, 16 years before she knew about his illness. It wasn't until after they were divorced that he was diagnosed. And she said, well, that makes perfect sense, because each personality had a different interest. She said, there was one Herschel that loved ballet. There was another Herschel that loved the Marines. There was another Herschel that was fascinated and obsessed with the FBI. And then there was one who was incredibly motivated. Sports guy.

Kat [00:27:28]:
Gosh, that's gotta be tough, because you have a hard enough time keeping track of, like, one person that you're married to and their needs and meeting those needs. And then it's like, why do you keep changing? You love the ballet.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:27:44]:
What? I've never. No. She said in this interview on Nightline, quote, there was also a very sweet, lovable personality. That's the one. He told me I married. He told me I didn't marry Herschel, said his ex wife, Grossman, who later in the interview recalled a conversation with Herschel. And the next thing I knew, he was kind of raged, and he got a gun and he put it to my temple.

Kat [00:28:07]:
Oh, my goodness.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:28:08]:
And that's when she said, I'm out. And she left. And apparently, this was the breaking point for him because he started playing Russian roulette with himself and didn't remember doing it.

Kat [00:28:20]:
That's scary.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:28:21]:
And here's the weird thing. Well, it's all pretty strange. His father didn't know about it. He said, nobody knows Herschel as well as I do. I raised him, and I had no idea. And his football coach had no idea. He wrote a book called Breaking Free, which I plan on reading because this just fascinates me. Just fascinates me, because oftentimes you hear about people who suffer from these ailments and it ruins their life.

Kat [00:28:48]:
Sure.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:28:49]:
Which is understandable.

Kat [00:28:51]:
Yeah.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:28:52]:
But in this case, for a while anyway, his personality made him a huge football superstar.

Kat [00:28:58]:
Right. Well, that doesn't mean that his actual life wasn't in shambles. I mean, he's pointing a gun at his wife.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:29:04]:
Yeah, well, it ultimately got to that point. That's why I said, for a while, you know, when he. It just. You don't hear about stories like this where an alternate personality will drive them to incredible success. I'm sure it happens, but this is the first time I'd ever heard of this.

Kat [00:29:22]:
Yeah. That's amazing.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:29:23]:
And so he's doing well now, and his book is available, Breaking Free. I'm gonna check that out, and I'll let you know when I find out.

Kat [00:29:30]:
Yeah, we'll put links to it.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:29:32]:
That's pretty much all I have. And it's probably just as well, because I hear the dogs whining at the door.

Kat [00:29:40]:
Oh, my God. Just leave us alone.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:29:43]:
Banjo and Willie, we'll put pictures of them on our social media pages, too. I'm sure you'll love them.

Kat [00:29:49]:
That was really interesting.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:29:50]:
Isn't it fascinating?

Kat [00:29:51]:
It is.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:29:52]:
The human mind is just so misunderstood, and there's just so much about it that we have no idea.

Kat [00:30:00]:
We don't know.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:00]:
Yeah, it's crazy.

Kat [00:30:02]:
It's the ocean.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:04]:
It's the ocean.

Kat [00:30:05]:
Yep. It's just. We don't know what's going on in there.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:07]:
Oh, in the depths of the.

Kat [00:30:08]:
It's dark and deep and scary. Scary and confusing, and I don't get it. I don't know what's going on in.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:13]:
Here, but it can lead one to win the Heisman Trophy, apparently.

Kat [00:30:16]:
Apparently.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:16]:
Yeah.

Kat [00:30:17]:
So can the ocean. Sorry. About that.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:23]:
The Box of Oddities.com is our website. The Box of Oddities.com you can hook up with us social media on that page. You can subscribe to the podcast. We have a video version of the podcast on YouTube. All that stuff is is available. So we urge you to to do that. Also, if you have an idea of something you'd like us to look into.

Kat [00:30:46]:
Yeah, you can email us or the curator. The curatorheboxofoddities.com and we'll see you next time.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:56]:
Thanks for joining us.

Kat [00:30:57]:
Keep waving that freak flag.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:58]:
And so let it be known that the Box of Oddities belongs to you and its fate is in your hands. Therefore, it's been recorded, requested by those of whom I report to to beseech you for assistance. The Box of Oddities is free. We ask but one thing of you to provide a five star rating and a positive review. True, that is two things. However. Tis merely a five star rating and a positive review. Also, subscribe to us. Okay, so three things is all we ask. Three things and three things only. Henceforth, the Box of Oddities commits to the telling of stories. Stories of the strange, the bizarre, the unexpected. We wish to offer our deeply felt gratitude and appreciation for your patronage. The boxofoddities.com Copyright 2018. All rights reserved.