On the 14th of April 1984, a tragic discovery shook the shores of White Strand Beach in Cahirsiveen, County Kerry, Ireland—a newborn baby boy, discarded and brutally stabbed to death. The investigation that followed cast a spotlight on Joanne Hayes, a local woman who had recently been pregnant. Taken into police custody for questioning, Hayes reportedly confessed to the crime. However, she later recanted, asserting that her confession had been coerced.
Hayes admitted to giving birth to a baby son at the family farm, who tragically died shortly after birth. She confessed to burying him on the premises. Subsequent DNA testing on the buried infant corroborated Hayes' account—the DNA matched her story. The clandestine nature of the birth and death of her son stemmed from the fact that the father was a married man.
Despite the lack of a genetic match between the baby found on the beach and the one buried on the farm, indicating they did not share the same parents, police asserted that Hayes had conceived simultaneously by two different men—a phenomenon known as heteropaternal superfecundation, exceedingly rare but theoretically possible.
Hayes faced a murder charge, yet this accusation was ultimately dismissed by a judge. The infant found on the beach was christened "Baby John," yet his identity and the identity of his killer remain a mystery.
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i think for me, the watcher situation comes down to this:
it's absolutely respectable that the watcher team wants to grow and produce better quality content. it's respectable that they don't want to stagnate and end up pushing the same content out over and over again. that's not satisfying for them creatively, i get that.
however, if higher quality, more heavily produced content is not what your fans are asking for, then you can't ask them to fund it.
this all-or-nothing method they've gone for is frankly bizarre. it feels like they leap-frogged all other alternatives to improving their finances and ended up here, alienating and frustrating the majority of their fanbase (the fanbase they thanked for getting them to where they are).
i think this could have gone a lot better if they:
Hadn't hyped up this video for a week.
Hadn't announced the worth it successor just beforehand.
Hadn't put out a wishy-washy, "boo hoo we're so sad about this", over-produced video.
Hadn't made it $6/month (more in a lot of countries given exchange rates).
Had considered that this means fans in specific countries literally cannot pay for the subscription due to geo/region-locking.
my ideas for improving their funds, aka things they could have tried before blowing their brand up: create their own website with two options - a free version with ads and a paid version without ads, OR make better use of their patreon/make their website extra content, not all their content, for example:
Put the ghost file debriefs on there.
Put shows like survival mode on there (or even shift that show from pre-recorded video to live-stream - live stream access to patrons and VOD access to everyone, maybe).
Put episode commentaries there.
Do reaction videos to their old buzzfeed content, talk about memories and BTS, and put that there.
Put one/two episodes of each show, per season on there (and ONLY there).
Put the episodes up there a few days early.
Make specific, website only content (that's not your main and most popular series aka ghost files and puppet history).
Record the live, in-person shows and put those VODs up there.
EDIT (thought of something else lmao): put extended or even uncut versions of ghost files on there. Paranormal Detour on Detune's twitch channel has shown that people will willingly sit through 6+ hours of a ghost investigation.
EDIT: idk, do livestreams once a week where you watch scary movies with fans on discord or twitch.
(side note: the fact that they're not taking down their patreon and instead shifting all of their podcast content on there, something the patreons who have been loyally giving them money for years didn't ask for, is ridiculous and greedy. add to this the fact that they don't even get a free sub to the new website, instead get 40% off - a measly 10% more than anyone else who subs before the official launch).
the thing for me is that they're claiming they want to make "television" and "television-grade content". that's completely fine. what's not completely fine is acting like your four episodes a month is equal to netflix's entire catalogue.
this really felt like it should have been something they told us they were progressing towards, not something they revealed to be on the imminent horizon. idk, it just feels out of nowhere. no, they don't owe us all of the info about their company. but something had to be better than this.
final thought - it's okay and valid to be upset at the team for this. for a lot of people, it's a complete betrayal (especially the comment that $6 a month is something "anyone and everyone can afford", i mean yikes). i do think some people's anger got the best of them, and some of the comments i've seen across youtube, twitter, and tumblr are plain bullying, racism, and harassment. until we have the whole story, we can't decide that one founder (aka steven in a lot of people's minds) is solely responsible. i know a lot of these awful things are only coming from a small minority of the fandom, but they still get seen.
at the end of the day, all three of them got up in front of a camera and made this video, together. that can only lead us to the conclusion that they made this decision together. acting like these men in their 30s couldn't stand up against it if they truly wanted to, is so strange and parasocial lmao.
tl;dr there were much better ways of going about this announcement, if it even needed to be made at all. however, that doesn't excuse the hateful shit being spewed at the team. for now, all we know is the three founders decided they were done with youtube, and done with their loyal youtube audience.
(i have so many more thoughts on this but i need to stop lmao. however i do wonder how different things could have been if 1. they had hired someone with actual business experience as their CEO from the jump, and 2. this video was more of a "hey we're broke! this is a last-ditch effort to save our company!". guess those questions will remain ... well ... you know ...).
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The existence of Shane Madej has ruined ghost/cryptid hunting shows for me. I just can’t take them seriously unless there’s a rational skeptic present at all times to offer counter-arguments and alternate suggestions regarding potential evidence.
Not because I’m a killjoy, mind you - I love the paranormal too - but a lot of obviously fake evidence gets passed around as if it’s real and it’s refreshing to have someone there to say ‘that’s a wild animal’ or ‘that’s a camera fault’ so that the stuff that’s really convincing is that much more satisfying to find.
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Lori Zimmerman from Hagerstown, Maryland, was just 15-years-old when she disappeared on the 6th of April, 1984. Since her parents divorce, Lori spent most of her time with her mother. They had just moved to their new home. In fact, Lori had only slept there one night before vanishing. On that fateful day, Lori got into a taxi to deliver her to Hagerstown High School. When she didn’t return that evening, her concerned mother reported her missing.
An investigation uncovered that Lori had arrived and left school safely that afternoon. She had caught the bus to stop at a nearby friend’s house for 10 minutes. This was the last time she was ever seen alive. The following week, Lori’s family received the grim news that she wouldn’t be coming home.
A couple were walking along Reno Monument Road when they stumbled across a gruesome scene. It was the partially clothed body of Lori. She had been beaten, strangled, and then hidden under cardboard and leaves. A foreign object had been shoved down her throat and all of her jewelry had been smashed. Police revealed that they didn’t believe Lori had been murdered at the location where her body was found.
The case remains unsolved.
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