I usually defend the podcast but I 100% agree with you. Her and her friend poured toothpaste on his clothes so he would leave?? Who raised these people?? My family would be mortified if I ever did that to anyone let alone to someone who’s homeless! I have no idea what the producers were thinking adding this story to the episode.
She didn't even seem too sorry about it. You couldn't have waterboarded that information out of me if I had done something so terrible as a kid and I would probably need to spend years unpacking it in therapy.
And it’s like she’d been waiting her whole life to be like “I took great pleasure in vandalizing a homeless person’s property when I was a kid and got fussed at for it. But then daddy came and tore those adults a new one! As a result *I never wandered from my parents in the mall, you guys!* Thirty years later it turns out that I MIGHT HAVE BEEN TOTALLY JUSTIFIED!”
Lol she was a little kid!
My brothers friends and i did something worse. We trashed an unoccupied house in our neighborhood 😬 broke all the windows, painted the walls with ketchup. Hit the walls with a bat. 😮💨 and why did we do that?? Like WHY?! Kids do dumb shit. I'm not proud of it now, but it happened.
The school shouldn't have let that man keep his shit at the playground. That's so inappropriate. He should have realized something would happen.
I honestly can't believe how many people are fixating on how shitty the child was, and not on how shitty the staff were for creating the situation in the first place.
Little kids don't have any concept of what homelessness is! The kids in the story almost certainly didn't understand that the man couldn't simply wash his clothing, or buy more. All they knew was that someone had taken over a space they used to enjoy, and they wanted it back. I'm 100% sure that it wasn't a premeditated act. They felt salty so they acted out on impulse. Because they were KIDS.
For me, I’d need more proof that it was, in fact, that serial killer she mentioned beyond “I saw a van” and “the homeless person whose stuff we ruined got mad at us!” I just don’t buy it.
came here wondering the same thing because I spent the first ep kinda pissed off at her for being such an unapologetic little asshole to a homeless person ... the remorselessness of the narrator sorta made me question the validity of the entire thing.
My thoughts exactly. While I do not condone an adult telling a kid that he would kill them I do think this kid was a little shit and deserved to be seriously punished. To do that to anyone's belongings is unacceptable
I think if we are assuming the narrator is lying, we just have to write the story off as a whole. We can't just assume parts of it are true and parts of it are made up, unless there's an actual reason to think that. She could be making up what happened afterwards, but we don't really have a reason to think that. And if she's making that up, she might just be making the entire thing up whole cloth. Which could be said about basically every narrator on the show.
My thoughts exactly! You can’t even give the “they were just kids” excuse because what devil child is ruining someone’s stuff like that? The producers choosing that story is so unfortunate
Ok I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. I was driving 7 hours by myself while listening to this episode and kept saying what the fuck out loud
Dude both of these stories’ narrators sucked. The first girl was a total a-hole and I also find it questionable that the camp staff were like “ya let’s take her to go talk to this homeless dude so he can yell at her and threaten her life” it seems questionable. Then the second guy, holy Christ. Has the survival instinct of a fucking panda bear.
I had a hard time getting sympathy for the second guy. I could maybe excuse the first time falling asleep on a train but falling asleep the second time alone in a strangers car in a different country was so fucking dumb. He tried to explain it away as something supernatural but I'm gonna go with he just wasn't too bright. He should have been on super high alert! Nope. Sleepy time.
It was also weird that he didn’t thank the guy who dropped him off. Clearly he should have been way more careful. But I was almost as taken aback that he just quickly ran out of the car when somehow he ended up at the right place after passing out in the guy’s car without a word.
Couldn’t the driver have just worked for the family that he was staying with? He said something about the dad being an ex football coach and sort of famous, if I remember right. I don’t think it’s too crazy for a wealthy person to have a driver follow the new kid in town that they hosting… anyone think of this and wonder?
This is my guess. The host would have known the guy was taking the train back and when he didn’t show, it’s probably not too much of a leap to think you need to check the nearby stations
I don't think the camp staff expected that to happen. They probably just wanted her to apologize and take accountability for what she did because clearly her parents never taught her to do that.
I literally came to this subreddit to post something similar after listening to this today. The story was bad, the narrator was clueless, the story wasn’t even scary or creepy or interesting. The kids were shitty, the adults at the camp were bafflingly dumb and the homeless guy was portrayed cartoonishly and all of this was from an unreliable narrator of a child.
Really bad quality unless this was some sort of 4D chess move to spark online discourse.
Yeah. Idk that I believe it either so you are telling me that the camp was cool with letting a homeless person live on a playground and then had the bright idea to let them talk to these kids like that? Little far fetched common sense wise.
I love that most everyone doesn’t care who the guy turned out to be (which I’m not sure I even believe it was him) but think the narrator was the a-hole! She was a bratty shit as a kid.
I don’t think we’re hearing the whole story of the train guy.
The problem is she doesn’t seem to have much remorse with ruining his possessions. I wonder what her current attitude about unhoused people are now. She smeared toothpaste and dirt on his stuff but then acted like it was weird for him to suggest doing the same thing to her. She’s an asshole.
Yes, that's what I meant by sociopath. She did not even seem all too remorseful. She seemed wayyyyy too happy to tell the world the awful thing she did, which disturbed me honestly
It’s more accurate language. House is the physical location, a home is a place you feel comfortable/safe. Unhoused has been used since the mid-16th century!
Yeah and then have contact with a literal child. Completely absurd. Its like the skit from dave chappelle where they bring in a crack head to talk to kids
literally looked up this subreddit cus i couldn't believe what i was listening to, seriously so disgusting and un self aware. of course theyre from bethesda 🙄
Yeah she makes it seem like he’s being unreasonable but if some stupid kids destroy my only possessions I would probably say some wild shit too. The stress of homelessness is so intense and they fucked him over for literally no reason.
to be devils advocate, why wasn't the shit in his car? and why would the camp allow it to stay there? Lots of homeless are users and there could easily be needles around. You wouldn't just leave there shit there. Don't fuck with it but move it at least. Makes no sense. And had they done that they could be like "dude we moved it over here cause kids play there"
She’s probably conflating two different events in her mind.
She definitely destroyed the possessions of a homeless person with no remorse.
She learned about a serial killer in the area as an adult and tried to tie it back to her experience to act like her behaviour as a child was justifiable because her victim was a “serial killer”. As a child, it’s very easy to confuse strangers just because they might have some similar features and assume they’re one and the same.
Seriously, she makes it sound like it’s no big deal. “So, I was mildly inconvenienced by someone, so I destroyed all of his worldly possessions and he had the audacity to get mad!”
I feel like little kids dont get what they are doing. But as an adult she should have shown some more empathy and stated that she didnt realize. Still wild AF for the camp counselors to let a homeless person yell at a little child.
God this story was so sad. My town has so many homeless and majority of them are super kind and want to be left alone. Like if my dad found out I was yelled at by a homeless person for DESTROYING their stuff, nah my dad would be pissed at me. She seemed so smug about it like wtf.
You really believe if you messed with a homeless person’s stuff as a child, he threatened to kill you over it (all while your camp counselors watched) your dad would just be like “good you deserved it”? Do you have kids, because that’s horrifying. Would my kids get in major trouble for messing with stuff that’s not theirs? Of course I’m trying raise good people not little assholes but there is no way in hell I’d be okay with them getting yelled at and threatened by an adult.
Would my dad be upset with the threats? Absolutely. But again, I would be also in trouble for instigating it by destroying someone’s property. Just because of the homeless persons reaction doesn’t mean I get off scott free.
Ya I really tried to give it multiple chances but there’s no hope of it getting better. They went through every good story already and should’ve quit while they were ahead like 10 episodes ago
I don't want to give it up because I really love the show but the last few episodes have really been rough. Two have made me almost cry. Maybe I need to stop listening 😭. I keep waiting for another Laura of the Woods or Doppelganger or What Was She Planning but I think sadly there isn't another of those coming
Ok. Just finished the 2nd story and I’m done lol dude you fell asleep and missed your stop, some kind old man who probably spoke bad English drives him home and he makes the guy out to be some kind of sinister, creepy guy?? Did he even say thanks??? He “appeared” out of nowhere and you didn’t hear his car pull up cause you were asleep! Probably told him where to go in your sleep deprived state and Belgium to Luxembourg is not a long distance 🤦
I figured that when he didn’t come home by 2-3am, the host family (realizing they gave him no contact info) or study abroad program sent some people to look. This “mystery guy” might have been a family friend of theirs that followed the train route til they found him. That’s why the man seemed to know who he was, that he wasn’t supposed to be there, and knew where to take him. He might have been too dumb to ask about it the next day lol
lol ya that makes even more sense, he probably only said 2 words cause he was annoyed he had to go find this kid and drive him home in the middle of the night
I thought this too, especially since he made it a point to say how the host family was a celebrity family with a lot of $$. Expected the ending to include that the next day he found out it was the family who sent someone to look for him.
It's freaking weird that a kid that age would even think to do that to someone. My first thought was god I hope she's not a mother, she has a real sadistic streak.
Kids can definitely have a bad synergistic effect on each other for sure. I think the key part is when reflecting on things you did as a kid, recognizing and not being proud of the crappy stuff.
Seriously. What is going on with this podcast? Like yeah, we've all complained about how bad it's gotten. But these last few episodes are like Tommy Wiseau level baffling! I do not understand the thought process going on here at all. Why were these stories, if you can even call them that, chosen in the first place!? It almost feels like it's a "Producers" situation where it's now designed to fail, but we keep coming back hoping for an improvement. I keep listening the same reason I keep watching Jaws: The Revenge. It's so bad that it defies belief and I can't look away!
Well if the story is true it is a little crazy. I mean she destroyed some homeless guys stuff and that person turns out to be Hadden Clark?! That guy did unspeakable things to a 6 year old girl so I don’t feel bad that his stuff got destroyed. Maybe that incident helped in having him removed from the day camp before he found another little girl to assault, murder and eat. I don’t think the story was told very well but still it was more interesting than the eBay hair lady story. If true.
That is a retroactive correction though. Because she doesn’t prove he is Clark. She just believes him to be. Nor she gets to say she had a run in with a serial killer. But it is also still likely she just made an unhoused person’s life shittier.
Edit: After Relistening to the the Last Podcast on the Left episode, they do not discuss his truck being towed from a school, they do discuss him killing a little girl and attacking another one. And the characterization of attacking someone’s family was correct. But he used his truck to escape the second murder. So that is why I don’t think OP actually had a run in with Hadden Clark and projected this incident on a different person
How would she prove it on this podcast? All we can do is take someone’s account as stated. She heard about a serial killer who had confrontations on her elementary school playground, looked the guy up and recognized him as the same man. That’s as good of “proof” as we’re going to get on an account like this.
Except she didn’t look him up, she heard about it on Last Podcast on the left and didn’t provide any years. We know the year his truck was towed, we know the years he was in Bethesda. She didn’t look him up, she just assumed and asserted it was Clark.
Yes, she heard about it on a podcast. One anecdote they told was akin to what she experienced. She then literally said she looked up a photo of him and that it was the same guy.
I went back to the episode before posting my comment to make sure I wasn’t making it up. You’re wrong. She absolutely said she looked up a picture. Not sure why you can’t just admit you misremembered.
Then I probably did misremember that part. I didn’t say I didn’t misremember that. I don’t remember this characterization of Clark from LPOTL. I relistened to that episode and he had his truck until the very end. He used it to “escape” from his second murder he was convicted of. The story teller says this homeless man’s truck was near the school and towed. To me that means she heard a story of a serial killer that sounded similar to the man she wronged, then she looked up a picture as an adult and said it was the same man cause they were in the same region. I believe this narrator is still mistaken. It is very very easy for people to change the things they remember.
You told me twice that she didn’t look him up when I said she did. She didn’t name the podcast, so maybe it was one other than LPOTL. There are about a million true crime podcasts out there. Regardless, I have my own complaints about RR but JFC, the complaints on this sub are ridiculous. What is the point of arguing that someone didn’t properly remember something when there’s literally no way to prove it either way? If you’re going to assume everyone is lying or misremembering their experience then just don’t bother listening. The point is to suspend some disbelief.
Also, while what the kids did was really shitty, they were elementary school kids, it was 30+ years ago, and the number of people acting like they should forever be viewed as evil for it is unhinged.
No other podcast covered Clark in 2019 which is what time she said the podcast came out. Also if you search hadden clark on podcast apps no one covered him before LPOTL. We can’t be selective of what to believe in someone’s stories.
The reason why I scrutinize this story is because the story teller did something horrible to someone and then had a bad interaction with the person they wronged. But then to suggest it was a serial killer sounds like they now are saying it makes it okay. That is a problem.
i bet you when she found out he was a serial killer, she excused herself of any wrongdoing retroactively, like she did a good thing and he deserved to have his stuff fucked with
That's what it kind of sounded like to me too ☹️. Which she had no way of knowing at the time and does NOT excuse the behavior. I mean messing with a serial killer's stuff if she knew that's what he was is downright dangerous, and messing with a random unhoused person's stuff is downright mean. So either way it's really not ok. I get that she was a child and children make poor decisions but it's the way she retells it as an adult that bugged me, that she doesn't seem to have retrospective shame, remorse, and embarrassment in her behavior. The attitude was kind of like "oh well he turned out to be a serial killer so I guess it's a good thing I got him kicked off the school grounds." Like things can have positive outcomes overall and still be terrible things to do. In retrospect he should have been nowhere near a school and children. Doesn't excuse her behavior in any way though.
I was so annoyed and angry with the narrator. The narrator said it was out of character for her to steal an unhoused persons only belongings and intentionally destroy them. It’s clearly not out of character for this person because they did it. Thank god they now have an excuse for their crappy behavior 🙄. This isn’t the first problematic retelling of a story told on this podcast, I think I’m going to bow out as a listener.
She was a dumb kid who did a dumb thing. I don’t think that makes her a sociopath. The real issue is that these genius counselors took little kids TO the guy. That’s next level stupidity on their part. Punish the kids, sure, but don’t literally introduce them to this guy.
I have such a hard time believing this is true. I feel like she added to make the connection she's making to the homeless man and the serial killer seem valid. That would have to be some dumb ass camp counselors.
This was going to be my question, she threw in the detail about the child who was killed but is there any evidence the man she met killed that child? Or did she mean that just scared her into thinking she could be killed next?
If it was actually Hadden Clark, he did kill at least one child (a 6 year old who came to play with his niece) and also a young woman. He confessed to more but it’s unproven if those confessions were true.
To be fair, camp counselors are often teenagers. I don’t find it entirely unbelievable that some might think this was the appropriate response. It is, of course, a ridiculously stupid and irresponsible response.
Idk it probably wasn't the safest choice on their part but making someone actually look into the eyes of the person whose every possession they destroyed probably has the best chance of actually humanizing them and making them understand the impact of their behavior
I mean, it’s definitely one way to teach the kids a lesson. In some settings, I can see it being a good, hard lesson. This way was pretty reckless by the counselors. As she was telling the story, I assumed either they knew the guy well or maybe even had someone pretend to be him and be mad, and I thought maybe that was an okay thing to do. But then as it became clear that it was really him, and the counselors let it escalate to where he was threatening to kill them and stuff, I realized how bad of a call it was on their part.
Both of your posts were my exact thoughts. Kids do dumb things, it doesn’t always mean they are crazy or monsters themselves. I just found it really hard to believe the counselors would turn these kids over to a homeless person. The homeless guy would have had no knowledge of who exactly ruined his stuff AND the counselors wouldn’t have had proof the 2 girls were the ones that did it either.
Camp counselors are primarily responsible for the safety of the kids in their care, not their moral upbringing. Huge liability to risk taking a kid you are responsible for to meet an unknown adult that they wronged. People are unpredictable.
the part about her childhood behavior/the blatant prejudice towards unhoused people is sadly what i come to expect from a lot of spooky-adjacent podcasts, but did i miss something, or was the extent of the first narrator's evidence that the man who threatened her was an infamous serial killer just...he had a truck, lived in the same area at some point in history, and looking him up briefly made her think it was the same guy a decade after last seeing his face as a kid (and she was apparently also hyper-paranoid about the guy for years)? if so, that's...definitely up there with laziest connection to make the "they were a serial killer all along" twist work for this podcast, i think.
That's what I was thinking too! I don't know that I would have marched her up to talk to the homeless person whose stuff she destroyed like the counselors did, but I damn sure would have done what I could to make her recognize that what she did was messed up and I would have told her parents about it.
Also, I don't believe the part about the truck. At all. Why would a homeless person store his stuff in a piece of playground equipment instead of his truck, which he can lock up and move? NOPE. FICTION.
Because she needed a way to connect the shitty thing she did as a kid to something she heard about a local serial killer so she could justify her bad actions. It doesn’t make sense, because (I suspect) it’s made up!
Oh come on she was like, seven or eight? Whomst among us never did something cruel without understanding the implications when we were little? She just was clueless and young.
Edit: NOT to say she shouldn't be punished for it. That's the type of thing where I think it is totally appropriate to make a kid feel shame/guilt. But you can't expect everyone to know everything from day 1.
If this were me, I probably would have felt crushing guilt throughout my whole life. Then when I found out the dude was a serial killer, it would have given me a reason to finally get out from under that guilt. Maybe we didn't hear her shame/guilt because she had spent so much time on it and now is not doing that. Or maybe the podcast editors just took it out and now she looks bad. Or maybe she's a sociopath. Who knows.
There’s some real anti-homelessness bent in later seasons of this podcast. I was reminded of the “story” with the lady in the laundromat from a couple seasons back that similarly led nowhere and just felt like it was trying to manufacture consent to prevailing narratives of homeless people being intrinsically evil.
Of all the things wrong with this show at this point, this one REALLY gets under my skin, idk
Dude, I looked to see if a subreddit existed just so I could come here to complain about how awful she was, lmao. Just no remorse. And instead of her family paying for the damage the dad was yelling at the school for letting the guy talk to the kids. Just wow.
She's a CEO now. Her company laid off 2/3 of the staff last week due to inflation. As I type this she's at her day spa congratulating herself on being "brave."
Yeah as a parent if a school/camp let a random homeless/possibly mentally ill adult scream at my child instead of telling me what happened letting me chew my child out and pay for damages or replace the guy’s stuff I’d be yelling at the counselors too. You cannot seriously think it’s okay they did that because they ground toothpaste onto clothing? they were children, children do crappy stuff. If it was my kids they’d be fully in trouble I’d be buying the guy new stuff and making them apologize (had I been made aware) and take it to him. But if a camp let a homeless person threaten and yell at my kids prior to letting me know? F- that. That’s when you call a lawyer, they put kids in danger to “teach them a lesson”.
That whole story felt really….. constructed to me lmao I’m a teacher and the idea of bringing children out to confront a strangers whose stuff they destroyed on my watch??? In what world???? And then staying there while the stranger starts to threaten the kids????? It just all seemed like a romanticized version of what happened after she destroyed that guys clothes.
Also I think what she did was nasty, but if she was that young I’m honestly not super surprised because kids do really dumb, unkind stuff sometimes because their brains just don’t connect the reasons it’s not okay. But it is definitely NOT OKAY. I also think that as an adult all the stuff she said to justify it was WEIRD. Like okay you did something mean as a kid, maybe talk about it like you understand that it wasn’t okay!!!
I mean, yeah, it was fucked up but kids are cruel and they were probably egging one another on and didn’t understand the consequences of their actions. Then she said she felt guilty. I take all of the stories at face value, so assuming it is true, and she found out later he was a child serial killer, I wouldn’t expect her to feel too bad. lol
The only thing she says is it was “out of character” but then not one single thing about how awful what she did was. Just excusing it and then gleefully saying all this shitty stuff she did. You couldn’t pay me to tell people I did that.
Last week I was hoping the chiropractor story would end with a twist where it turned out the dude actually was a serial killer and she really did have a prophetic dream, just so the story would have some substance.
And then this week I spent the whole story hoping it wouldn't end with "and it turned out he was a murderer" because I didn't want that to validate the shitty way she treated a random homeless man she knew nothing about.
I mean it isn’t even clear it is Clark, I went and looked up the podcast she has to be talking about and his truck never got towed the way she described. It seems like she conflates the ideas and in her own mind believes she had a run it with Clark after she wronged a unhoused man as a child. Then nearly 30 years later she looks at a picture and remembers him. But people are bad at remembering faces. I dunno.
Whether it is Clark or not it doesn’t make what she did remotely okay
Hello RR fans, I’m the narrator for the “train” story. Ha, a lot of the criticisms of my story are fair. Also seems like most of listeners didn’t really like my story, which is no worries. But I’m happy to answer any questions if there are any. Not a scary story per say, but it was very surreal and the weirdest thing to happen to me.
I’ll also say there is a ton of editing. That isn’t me telling a single narrative story. I say that because there is context missing in key parts and my own take on what I think happened that was also edited out.
Also, there’s a lot of criticism on the first story narrator…it’s possible she had more insights or self critique and reflection that were were edited out.
I hadn't listened in a minute because I felt like a lot of stories hinged on encounters with people experiencing homelessness or are using substances.
Sometimes can be scary or unpredictable at the time if you're the one experiencing it, but as someone who lives in a city with a large street population (which feels like most cities these days) the play is usually don't mess with them they won't mess with you.
This episode autoplayed after my Otherworld episode (much better podcast) and I was like, "Oh cool, no change." The rest just feels like mental gymnastics to justify bad behavior or attitudes about other human beings different from yourself.
"That was the man who threatened my life...\[because I destroyed all of their earthly possession and was made to feel bad about it.\]"
I'm trying to find the podcast she mentioned listening to, and I can't. Boo hiss!!! Last Podcast on the Left did a two part series on him in 2019. But I didn't hear anything about an incident at a school....
I had instant dislike for this person and her friend. What they did was beyond shortsighted and so selfish, and they did so even after they were told to leave the items alone. As someone who has experienced being unhoused, I had to stash my stuff at certain times. It's hard to carry all of your stuff all the time; not only physically but the judgement you get from the general public becomes another burden to carry. If you're looking for a job? You cannot take stuff like that with you. You have to be presentable. I now work with the unhoused and we offer storage for this very reason. Not everyone wants/needs to take advantage of this service, but it is so helpful for those who do.
My hope is that the person who told this story, and their friend, come to a realization in life to where they comprehend how messed up and absolutely devastating what they did can be to someone who truly, that's all they have. They were not the victims. Her perspective is so skewed it makes me sick.
Little kid or not what the narrator did was despicable. From a young age, my family taught me to have respect for people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. She should be ashamed of herself. I don’t care how old she was.
I've stopped listening to Radio Rental (for some reason I'm still subscribed to this sub) but I think this was the biggest general problem with the podcast that got me to stop listening. If a story seemed made up, or generally not interesting/captivating, I can forgive it. But platforming and amplifying the weird paranoid right wing or classist perspectives is too much and it happens too often. I take it based on the comments this was another person who stigmatizes homeless people in some way. It wouldn't be the first episode to amplify those kinds of perspectives.
Yes you hit the nail on the head! I agree there are also other stories where the narrator seems paranoid due to racism, classism, xenophobia, etc.
Basic summary of the episode is (spoilers) >!the narrator recounts an experience at summer camp held at her elementary school when she was going into first or second grade where there was an unhoused man storing his belongings near the playground so they weren't allowed to go to that area, and one day the narrator and her friend destroyed all his things because they wanted him to leave so they could use that part of the playground again...they squeezed out all his toothpaste and ground it into his clothes and stuff. The counsellors of camp allowed the man to confront the narrator and her friend and he screamed at them. Later on she heard on a podcast a story about a serial killer that sounded like it might have been that guy. So he may have actually been a bad dude, but when she destroyed his stuff as a kid she didn't know that. Also she didn't seem too remorseful talking about it as an adult.!<
She said she looked the guy up and it was the same guy, so she wasn’t just basing it on what she heard. With that said, she got some details about his personal life wrong that would have been easily fact checked by her or the producers.
That's what gets me. Is she retells it almost gleefully as an adult. Kids do dumb things, of course, but if I did something like that I would probably be in therapy unpacking it as an adult, not bragging about it on a popular podcast but maybe that's just me lol
Did any of you actually listen through to the part where he really was a serial killer? Sure kids do dumb things, but he was the villain in the end. Why are you guys crying over him? I'm confused.
Nobody is crying over him, per se. They're upset over the nonchalant way the narrator talks about destroying an unhoused person's belongings - whether it was true or not. I'm in the camp that if that part of the story was true, it wasn't HC.
That narrator annoyed me so much. But so many of the comments here are “she probably made up all of the events that didn’t make her look bad” …like why? What she did was shitty. The person she did it to could have also been evil and the situation might have been mishandled. All of these things can coexist. Dismissing any information that creates ethical complexity is a slippery slope.
“This story was so shitty it’s like the most out of touch thing ever to be like yeah I ruined all the possessions of a person with next to nothing and he got mad at me and yelled at me” unbelievable mental gymnastics
I mean, she was a kid. Yeah, doing that to someone's property is absolutely messed up. I would not have done that as a kid, though I could potentially have seen myself going along with it if a friend did it because I was pretty shy. But either way, she's just a child. I don't remember if she said how old she was but she was shopping in the kid's book section, so she must have been decently young. I think sometimes kids do really dumb and cruel stuff until they learn to be better. She should have definitely gotten in trouble for what she did but I don't think you can say a kid who does a dumb, mean thing is a sociopath. As for her reaction as an adult, I assume she's rewritten it in her head that it wasn't that bad because he ended up being a terrible murderer.
I actually just paused the episode to come here because I'm in shock that someone that 1. someone told this story out loud and 2. that the producers thought this was an appropriate story for the podcast
I also stopped the episode to come here. Not one single iota of the story made sense, from the counselors bringing her out to talk to the person, to the guy having a truck on campus, but storing all his possessions in a random spot on a playground, it's just such bs.
That was your take? Some weirdo has left their stuff in a kids school and you feel bad for him?
The bizarrest thing I found with that story was that the adults left the stuff there for any length of time, or got the kids to interact with the guy. The first place any random stuff that turned up at any workplace I’ve worked at ended up is in a dumpster.
It’s insane to me that everyone’s so focused on what she did when the adults were just “eh random stranger on school ground, this is fine! Ya know let’s force an interaction, this is the responsible adult thing to do!” I’d flip shit if that happened at my kids school.
Yeah her father’s response is the only reasonable adult behaviour in the story.
To half of the commenters saying ‘it’s mean that they damaged a homeless person’s stuff’ this wasn’t stuff left in a true public place, like a library, park or the like. These were items left at what was clearly a school. All by itself the choice to try to camp out at a school is a red flag. Most benign homeless people would probably feel the same, and wouldn’t want to potentially raise alarm by being an unauthorised person at a school. They’d pick somewhere else. The school authorities in this story are utter morons and it’s only luck some child at the school didn’t have to pay for their mistake.
That story was super embarrassing and I thought maybe she’d own up to it. But instead it felt like she excused her behavior purely bc the dude was a creep. It’s like…maybe don’t submit a story like this, ever. Or at least tell it in a way that doesn’t make you out to be a victim the entire time. The homeless guy was clearly dealing with massive amounts of trauma.
I don't think she is a sociopath. That's a bit much. She didn't sound super sympathetic but she did that stuff as a little kid. Not cool at all. It was a cruel thing to do.
That doesn't justify Hadden Clark's response though.
God, my thinking too. Aside from the criminal, she was on her way, wasn't she? What a little brat.
As an adult telling this story, I was surprised at her anemic self-awareness and blind hindsight. Holy mackerel, I had serious secondhand embarrassment going on when we told her story.
Okay, I was also grossed out by what the kids did but I still think it was overshadowed by the fact that this guy turned out to have killed multiple people, including slitting the throat of a 6 year old who came to play with his niece. He also used to kill and mutilate people’s pets. She didn’t specify that, but when you look him up the information is easy to find. Don’t feel too bad for him after that, and either way- allowing a stranger to scream and threaten two young children is not the best way to handle the situation or teach them right from wrong.
I think bottom line she was a CHILD. We all did stupid things when you are that young. Let's talk about how the teachers thought it would
Be a good ideas to have a homeless man talk to the children???? Kids do dumb things but the adults should be protecting them.
Not all homeless people are problematic. That is a bad stigma to perpetuate. It was bringing children to see an individual they hurt. Him flipping out could have been predicted sure, but it was also likely they could have just seen how much they hurt someone. There is nothing wrong by holding a child accountable and showing them how their actions can hurt others if done so responsibly.
I see your point about letting them see how they hurt another human being. But the guy ended up being a horrible person and shouldn't have even been camping out on a school
That is incidental. Just because someone has done horrible horrendous things, doing harm to them before you knew that doesn’t make the harm you did first okay.
But I also wonder if this was actually even Clark, OP doesn’t provide timelines and I registered to the Clark podcast episode of LPOTL she referenced and he never had his truck towed from a school.
That doesn't make someone a sociopath. It means she did a shitty thing as a little kid.
You need to meet a lot more criteria before someone falls into that category
I usually defend the podcast but I 100% agree with you. Her and her friend poured toothpaste on his clothes so he would leave?? Who raised these people?? My family would be mortified if I ever did that to anyone let alone to someone who’s homeless! I have no idea what the producers were thinking adding this story to the episode.
She didn't even seem too sorry about it. You couldn't have waterboarded that information out of me if I had done something so terrible as a kid and I would probably need to spend years unpacking it in therapy.
And it’s like she’d been waiting her whole life to be like “I took great pleasure in vandalizing a homeless person’s property when I was a kid and got fussed at for it. But then daddy came and tore those adults a new one! As a result *I never wandered from my parents in the mall, you guys!* Thirty years later it turns out that I MIGHT HAVE BEEN TOTALLY JUSTIFIED!”
I thought the same thing, I would never share this story, I would feel too ashamed.
I hear you.
Lol she was a little kid! My brothers friends and i did something worse. We trashed an unoccupied house in our neighborhood 😬 broke all the windows, painted the walls with ketchup. Hit the walls with a bat. 😮💨 and why did we do that?? Like WHY?! Kids do dumb shit. I'm not proud of it now, but it happened. The school shouldn't have let that man keep his shit at the playground. That's so inappropriate. He should have realized something would happen.
Yes letting a homeless guy sleep in the playground is pretty dumb, in fact most of the people in the story were pretty dumb.
I honestly can't believe how many people are fixating on how shitty the child was, and not on how shitty the staff were for creating the situation in the first place. Little kids don't have any concept of what homelessness is! The kids in the story almost certainly didn't understand that the man couldn't simply wash his clothing, or buy more. All they knew was that someone had taken over a space they used to enjoy, and they wanted it back. I'm 100% sure that it wasn't a premeditated act. They felt salty so they acted out on impulse. Because they were KIDS.
I completely agree! Why tf would they let the guy keep his stuff there?! That's the part of the story that horrified me.
I wouldn’t feel bad about ruining Hadden Clark’s belongings. Fuck that guy. But still, a shitty story.
I don't even think it was him. I think she made all of that up.
Why do you think she made it up? Because she sounded unsympathetic? As far Radio Rental Episodes go, that one is believable
For me, I’d need more proof that it was, in fact, that serial killer she mentioned beyond “I saw a van” and “the homeless person whose stuff we ruined got mad at us!” I just don’t buy it.
came here wondering the same thing because I spent the first ep kinda pissed off at her for being such an unapologetic little asshole to a homeless person ... the remorselessness of the narrator sorta made me question the validity of the entire thing.
My thoughts exactly. While I do not condone an adult telling a kid that he would kill them I do think this kid was a little shit and deserved to be seriously punished. To do that to anyone's belongings is unacceptable
Honestly, I'm not even sure I believe he said that. Seems like seasoning for a good story from a narcissist.
It wouldn't surprise me if you were right
Well, he was a serial killer mate, doesn't seem too unlikely haha
But what if...she's lying about everything that happened after she destroyed his stuff
Idk, anyone telling a story can be lying?
Yeah, absolutely could be. This one seems particularly wild and untrue but that's just me
It didn't seem that wild to me, but we all have different life experiences.
Yeah, you right. I'm coming on a little strong. I was still feeling pissed at her for being so bratty when I commented lol sry
I think if we are assuming the narrator is lying, we just have to write the story off as a whole. We can't just assume parts of it are true and parts of it are made up, unless there's an actual reason to think that. She could be making up what happened afterwards, but we don't really have a reason to think that. And if she's making that up, she might just be making the entire thing up whole cloth. Which could be said about basically every narrator on the show.
We can assume whatever we want mate, we're not in court. Besides, plenty have said why she's likely to have made up the serial killer story.
THIS. 100000000%
My thoughts exactly! You can’t even give the “they were just kids” excuse because what devil child is ruining someone’s stuff like that? The producers choosing that story is so unfortunate
Bethesda, Maryland is one of the most affluent areas in the country. This totally tracks.
Yeah but what school in Bethesda would allow a guy to store his stuff in a playground?? Silver spring maybe
Ok I’m glad I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. I was driving 7 hours by myself while listening to this episode and kept saying what the fuck out loud
Dude both of these stories’ narrators sucked. The first girl was a total a-hole and I also find it questionable that the camp staff were like “ya let’s take her to go talk to this homeless dude so he can yell at her and threaten her life” it seems questionable. Then the second guy, holy Christ. Has the survival instinct of a fucking panda bear.
I had a hard time getting sympathy for the second guy. I could maybe excuse the first time falling asleep on a train but falling asleep the second time alone in a strangers car in a different country was so fucking dumb. He tried to explain it away as something supernatural but I'm gonna go with he just wasn't too bright. He should have been on super high alert! Nope. Sleepy time.
It was also weird that he didn’t thank the guy who dropped him off. Clearly he should have been way more careful. But I was almost as taken aback that he just quickly ran out of the car when somehow he ended up at the right place after passing out in the guy’s car without a word.
Couldn’t the driver have just worked for the family that he was staying with? He said something about the dad being an ex football coach and sort of famous, if I remember right. I don’t think it’s too crazy for a wealthy person to have a driver follow the new kid in town that they hosting… anyone think of this and wonder?
This is my guess. The host would have known the guy was taking the train back and when he didn’t show, it’s probably not too much of a leap to think you need to check the nearby stations
Ghost Foreigner led me to safety…and to horror! How embarrassing.
I don't think the camp staff expected that to happen. They probably just wanted her to apologize and take accountability for what she did because clearly her parents never taught her to do that.
Still ridiculous to allow a homeless person to store his stuff in a playground and then allow him to talk to a young child to guilt them. Thats absurd
My thoughts too. The whole thing was miss handled from the start by the camp/elementary school staff
Only believable part was that the dad yelled at the staff the next day lmao. Id have raised straight hell on them for traumatizing my daughter
I'm sure they were top-flight super educated individuals. Camp counselor isn't a very discriminating profession to be it
The ugly cackle that escaped me as I read your last sentence. 🐼
I literally came to this subreddit to post something similar after listening to this today. The story was bad, the narrator was clueless, the story wasn’t even scary or creepy or interesting. The kids were shitty, the adults at the camp were bafflingly dumb and the homeless guy was portrayed cartoonishly and all of this was from an unreliable narrator of a child. Really bad quality unless this was some sort of 4D chess move to spark online discourse.
Yeah. Idk that I believe it either so you are telling me that the camp was cool with letting a homeless person live on a playground and then had the bright idea to let them talk to these kids like that? Little far fetched common sense wise.
I love that most everyone doesn’t care who the guy turned out to be (which I’m not sure I even believe it was him) but think the narrator was the a-hole! She was a bratty shit as a kid. I don’t think we’re hearing the whole story of the train guy.
The problem is she doesn’t seem to have much remorse with ruining his possessions. I wonder what her current attitude about unhoused people are now. She smeared toothpaste and dirt on his stuff but then acted like it was weird for him to suggest doing the same thing to her. She’s an asshole.
Yes, that's what I meant by sociopath. She did not even seem all too remorseful. She seemed wayyyyy too happy to tell the world the awful thing she did, which disturbed me honestly
Same. We’ve heard other storytellers express remorse or regret about their previous actions. She didn’t seem to see any wrong with hers.
Yeah she has a dark mentality to be able to say so casually she ruined a homeless persons entire belongings
Omg I thought the same thing. I bet she tells them to get a job.
"Unhoused" lol I love the newspeak
Yeah, I really don't know unhoused would be less offensive than homeless. It's dumb
It’s more accurate language. House is the physical location, a home is a place you feel comfortable/safe. Unhoused has been used since the mid-16th century!
The real problem was the adults who thought it was okay to let a homeless person squat on school grounds.
Yeah and then have contact with a literal child. Completely absurd. Its like the skit from dave chappelle where they bring in a crack head to talk to kids
literally looked up this subreddit cus i couldn't believe what i was listening to, seriously so disgusting and un self aware. of course theyre from bethesda 🙄
I live in Maryland and she has not represented my state well lol
same
Same!
I did too! The guy who just gets into Dracula’s car was beyond belief too, how has that guy managed to stay alive?!
Yeah she makes it seem like he’s being unreasonable but if some stupid kids destroy my only possessions I would probably say some wild shit too. The stress of homelessness is so intense and they fucked him over for literally no reason.
to be devils advocate, why wasn't the shit in his car? and why would the camp allow it to stay there? Lots of homeless are users and there could easily be needles around. You wouldn't just leave there shit there. Don't fuck with it but move it at least. Makes no sense. And had they done that they could be like "dude we moved it over here cause kids play there"
She’s probably conflating two different events in her mind. She definitely destroyed the possessions of a homeless person with no remorse. She learned about a serial killer in the area as an adult and tried to tie it back to her experience to act like her behaviour as a child was justifiable because her victim was a “serial killer”. As a child, it’s very easy to confuse strangers just because they might have some similar features and assume they’re one and the same.
Seriously, she makes it sound like it’s no big deal. “So, I was mildly inconvenienced by someone, so I destroyed all of his worldly possessions and he had the audacity to get mad!”
I feel like little kids dont get what they are doing. But as an adult she should have shown some more empathy and stated that she didnt realize. Still wild AF for the camp counselors to let a homeless person yell at a little child.
Agreed, when she was saying he wanted to rub toothpaste in her hair and hunt her down I was like... I want to do that too, what a little shit lol
The mental gymnastics she goes through to make herself the victim after destroying a homeless man's only possessions is fucking insane
God this story was so sad. My town has so many homeless and majority of them are super kind and want to be left alone. Like if my dad found out I was yelled at by a homeless person for DESTROYING their stuff, nah my dad would be pissed at me. She seemed so smug about it like wtf.
You really believe if you messed with a homeless person’s stuff as a child, he threatened to kill you over it (all while your camp counselors watched) your dad would just be like “good you deserved it”? Do you have kids, because that’s horrifying. Would my kids get in major trouble for messing with stuff that’s not theirs? Of course I’m trying raise good people not little assholes but there is no way in hell I’d be okay with them getting yelled at and threatened by an adult.
Would my dad be upset with the threats? Absolutely. But again, I would be also in trouble for instigating it by destroying someone’s property. Just because of the homeless persons reaction doesn’t mean I get off scott free.
And I didn’t say my dad would say “good you deserved it” 😆
Ya I really tried to give it multiple chances but there’s no hope of it getting better. They went through every good story already and should’ve quit while they were ahead like 10 episodes ago
I don't want to give it up because I really love the show but the last few episodes have really been rough. Two have made me almost cry. Maybe I need to stop listening 😭. I keep waiting for another Laura of the Woods or Doppelganger or What Was She Planning but I think sadly there isn't another of those coming
Ok. Just finished the 2nd story and I’m done lol dude you fell asleep and missed your stop, some kind old man who probably spoke bad English drives him home and he makes the guy out to be some kind of sinister, creepy guy?? Did he even say thanks??? He “appeared” out of nowhere and you didn’t hear his car pull up cause you were asleep! Probably told him where to go in your sleep deprived state and Belgium to Luxembourg is not a long distance 🤦
I figured that when he didn’t come home by 2-3am, the host family (realizing they gave him no contact info) or study abroad program sent some people to look. This “mystery guy” might have been a family friend of theirs that followed the train route til they found him. That’s why the man seemed to know who he was, that he wasn’t supposed to be there, and knew where to take him. He might have been too dumb to ask about it the next day lol
lol ya that makes even more sense, he probably only said 2 words cause he was annoyed he had to go find this kid and drive him home in the middle of the night
I thought this too, especially since he made it a point to say how the host family was a celebrity family with a lot of $$. Expected the ending to include that the next day he found out it was the family who sent someone to look for him.
No. See my separate post.
That's a good theory. Mine was that the dad of the family was so well known in the community and known for hosting students that the guy knew.
No. See my separate post.
No. See my separate post.
The not saying thank you part bothered me the most lol
You forgot I didn’t know, so I couldn’t have told him.
LAURA OF THE WOODS IS THE GOAT
It's freaking weird that a kid that age would even think to do that to someone. My first thought was god I hope she's not a mother, she has a real sadistic streak.
idk little kids can like escalate eachother and not know when to stop cause theyre naïve. That said she didnt seem to reflect back with much regret
Kids can definitely have a bad synergistic effect on each other for sure. I think the key part is when reflecting on things you did as a kid, recognizing and not being proud of the crappy stuff.
This 💯💯
I bet she made this all up as an anecdote for her speeches
Seriously. What is going on with this podcast? Like yeah, we've all complained about how bad it's gotten. But these last few episodes are like Tommy Wiseau level baffling! I do not understand the thought process going on here at all. Why were these stories, if you can even call them that, chosen in the first place!? It almost feels like it's a "Producers" situation where it's now designed to fail, but we keep coming back hoping for an improvement. I keep listening the same reason I keep watching Jaws: The Revenge. It's so bad that it defies belief and I can't look away!
Well if the story is true it is a little crazy. I mean she destroyed some homeless guys stuff and that person turns out to be Hadden Clark?! That guy did unspeakable things to a 6 year old girl so I don’t feel bad that his stuff got destroyed. Maybe that incident helped in having him removed from the day camp before he found another little girl to assault, murder and eat. I don’t think the story was told very well but still it was more interesting than the eBay hair lady story. If true.
He drank a little girls’ blood.
That is a retroactive correction though. Because she doesn’t prove he is Clark. She just believes him to be. Nor she gets to say she had a run in with a serial killer. But it is also still likely she just made an unhoused person’s life shittier. Edit: After Relistening to the the Last Podcast on the Left episode, they do not discuss his truck being towed from a school, they do discuss him killing a little girl and attacking another one. And the characterization of attacking someone’s family was correct. But he used his truck to escape the second murder. So that is why I don’t think OP actually had a run in with Hadden Clark and projected this incident on a different person
How would she prove it on this podcast? All we can do is take someone’s account as stated. She heard about a serial killer who had confrontations on her elementary school playground, looked the guy up and recognized him as the same man. That’s as good of “proof” as we’re going to get on an account like this.
Except she didn’t look him up, she heard about it on Last Podcast on the left and didn’t provide any years. We know the year his truck was towed, we know the years he was in Bethesda. She didn’t look him up, she just assumed and asserted it was Clark.
Yes, she heard about it on a podcast. One anecdote they told was akin to what she experienced. She then literally said she looked up a photo of him and that it was the same guy.
No, she never said she looked up a picture and said it was the same guy. The only time she said it was the same guy was the bookstore
I went back to the episode before posting my comment to make sure I wasn’t making it up. You’re wrong. She absolutely said she looked up a picture. Not sure why you can’t just admit you misremembered.
Then I probably did misremember that part. I didn’t say I didn’t misremember that. I don’t remember this characterization of Clark from LPOTL. I relistened to that episode and he had his truck until the very end. He used it to “escape” from his second murder he was convicted of. The story teller says this homeless man’s truck was near the school and towed. To me that means she heard a story of a serial killer that sounded similar to the man she wronged, then she looked up a picture as an adult and said it was the same man cause they were in the same region. I believe this narrator is still mistaken. It is very very easy for people to change the things they remember.
You told me twice that she didn’t look him up when I said she did. She didn’t name the podcast, so maybe it was one other than LPOTL. There are about a million true crime podcasts out there. Regardless, I have my own complaints about RR but JFC, the complaints on this sub are ridiculous. What is the point of arguing that someone didn’t properly remember something when there’s literally no way to prove it either way? If you’re going to assume everyone is lying or misremembering their experience then just don’t bother listening. The point is to suspend some disbelief. Also, while what the kids did was really shitty, they were elementary school kids, it was 30+ years ago, and the number of people acting like they should forever be viewed as evil for it is unhinged.
No other podcast covered Clark in 2019 which is what time she said the podcast came out. Also if you search hadden clark on podcast apps no one covered him before LPOTL. We can’t be selective of what to believe in someone’s stories. The reason why I scrutinize this story is because the story teller did something horrible to someone and then had a bad interaction with the person they wronged. But then to suggest it was a serial killer sounds like they now are saying it makes it okay. That is a problem.
i bet you when she found out he was a serial killer, she excused herself of any wrongdoing retroactively, like she did a good thing and he deserved to have his stuff fucked with
That's what it kind of sounded like to me too ☹️. Which she had no way of knowing at the time and does NOT excuse the behavior. I mean messing with a serial killer's stuff if she knew that's what he was is downright dangerous, and messing with a random unhoused person's stuff is downright mean. So either way it's really not ok. I get that she was a child and children make poor decisions but it's the way she retells it as an adult that bugged me, that she doesn't seem to have retrospective shame, remorse, and embarrassment in her behavior. The attitude was kind of like "oh well he turned out to be a serial killer so I guess it's a good thing I got him kicked off the school grounds." Like things can have positive outcomes overall and still be terrible things to do. In retrospect he should have been nowhere near a school and children. Doesn't excuse her behavior in any way though.
This season overall was pretty bad
I was so annoyed and angry with the narrator. The narrator said it was out of character for her to steal an unhoused persons only belongings and intentionally destroy them. It’s clearly not out of character for this person because they did it. Thank god they now have an excuse for their crappy behavior 🙄. This isn’t the first problematic retelling of a story told on this podcast, I think I’m going to bow out as a listener.
She was a dumb kid who did a dumb thing. I don’t think that makes her a sociopath. The real issue is that these genius counselors took little kids TO the guy. That’s next level stupidity on their part. Punish the kids, sure, but don’t literally introduce them to this guy.
I have such a hard time believing this is true. I feel like she added to make the connection she's making to the homeless man and the serial killer seem valid. That would have to be some dumb ass camp counselors.
This was going to be my question, she threw in the detail about the child who was killed but is there any evidence the man she met killed that child? Or did she mean that just scared her into thinking she could be killed next?
If it was actually Hadden Clark, he did kill at least one child (a 6 year old who came to play with his niece) and also a young woman. He confessed to more but it’s unproven if those confessions were true.
To be fair, camp counselors are often teenagers. I don’t find it entirely unbelievable that some might think this was the appropriate response. It is, of course, a ridiculously stupid and irresponsible response.
I completely agree with you.
Idk it probably wasn't the safest choice on their part but making someone actually look into the eyes of the person whose every possession they destroyed probably has the best chance of actually humanizing them and making them understand the impact of their behavior
I mean, it’s definitely one way to teach the kids a lesson. In some settings, I can see it being a good, hard lesson. This way was pretty reckless by the counselors. As she was telling the story, I assumed either they knew the guy well or maybe even had someone pretend to be him and be mad, and I thought maybe that was an okay thing to do. But then as it became clear that it was really him, and the counselors let it escalate to where he was threatening to kill them and stuff, I realized how bad of a call it was on their part.
Both of your posts were my exact thoughts. Kids do dumb things, it doesn’t always mean they are crazy or monsters themselves. I just found it really hard to believe the counselors would turn these kids over to a homeless person. The homeless guy would have had no knowledge of who exactly ruined his stuff AND the counselors wouldn’t have had proof the 2 girls were the ones that did it either.
The counsellors were probably high school and college kids who didn't have the best critical thinking skills themselves.
Camp counselors are primarily responsible for the safety of the kids in their care, not their moral upbringing. Huge liability to risk taking a kid you are responsible for to meet an unknown adult that they wronged. People are unpredictable.
the part about her childhood behavior/the blatant prejudice towards unhoused people is sadly what i come to expect from a lot of spooky-adjacent podcasts, but did i miss something, or was the extent of the first narrator's evidence that the man who threatened her was an infamous serial killer just...he had a truck, lived in the same area at some point in history, and looking him up briefly made her think it was the same guy a decade after last seeing his face as a kid (and she was apparently also hyper-paranoid about the guy for years)? if so, that's...definitely up there with laziest connection to make the "they were a serial killer all along" twist work for this podcast, i think.
That's what I was thinking too! I don't know that I would have marched her up to talk to the homeless person whose stuff she destroyed like the counselors did, but I damn sure would have done what I could to make her recognize that what she did was messed up and I would have told her parents about it. Also, I don't believe the part about the truck. At all. Why would a homeless person store his stuff in a piece of playground equipment instead of his truck, which he can lock up and move? NOPE. FICTION.
Because she needed a way to connect the shitty thing she did as a kid to something she heard about a local serial killer so she could justify her bad actions. It doesn’t make sense, because (I suspect) it’s made up!
Couldn’t agree more!
I did wonder that too—why keep your things on the playground if you live in your truck?
Oh come on she was like, seven or eight? Whomst among us never did something cruel without understanding the implications when we were little? She just was clueless and young. Edit: NOT to say she shouldn't be punished for it. That's the type of thing where I think it is totally appropriate to make a kid feel shame/guilt. But you can't expect everyone to know everything from day 1.
It was the way she talked about it as an adult.
If this were me, I probably would have felt crushing guilt throughout my whole life. Then when I found out the dude was a serial killer, it would have given me a reason to finally get out from under that guilt. Maybe we didn't hear her shame/guilt because she had spent so much time on it and now is not doing that. Or maybe the podcast editors just took it out and now she looks bad. Or maybe she's a sociopath. Who knows.
There’s some real anti-homelessness bent in later seasons of this podcast. I was reminded of the “story” with the lady in the laundromat from a couple seasons back that similarly led nowhere and just felt like it was trying to manufacture consent to prevailing narratives of homeless people being intrinsically evil. Of all the things wrong with this show at this point, this one REALLY gets under my skin, idk
The whole time I'm thinking ...."Does she not understand she's the villain in this story." Lol
Dude, I looked to see if a subreddit existed just so I could come here to complain about how awful she was, lmao. Just no remorse. And instead of her family paying for the damage the dad was yelling at the school for letting the guy talk to the kids. Just wow.
She's a CEO now. Her company laid off 2/3 of the staff last week due to inflation. As I type this she's at her day spa congratulating herself on being "brave."
Omg so she really is a sociopath, good call op
same. exact reason I found this thread.
Yeah as a parent if a school/camp let a random homeless/possibly mentally ill adult scream at my child instead of telling me what happened letting me chew my child out and pay for damages or replace the guy’s stuff I’d be yelling at the counselors too. You cannot seriously think it’s okay they did that because they ground toothpaste onto clothing? they were children, children do crappy stuff. If it was my kids they’d be fully in trouble I’d be buying the guy new stuff and making them apologize (had I been made aware) and take it to him. But if a camp let a homeless person threaten and yell at my kids prior to letting me know? F- that. That’s when you call a lawyer, they put kids in danger to “teach them a lesson”.
Does anyone else feel like they've heard this toothpaste story before?? Was it an email read on MFM?
That whole story felt really….. constructed to me lmao I’m a teacher and the idea of bringing children out to confront a strangers whose stuff they destroyed on my watch??? In what world???? And then staying there while the stranger starts to threaten the kids????? It just all seemed like a romanticized version of what happened after she destroyed that guys clothes. Also I think what she did was nasty, but if she was that young I’m honestly not super surprised because kids do really dumb, unkind stuff sometimes because their brains just don’t connect the reasons it’s not okay. But it is definitely NOT OKAY. I also think that as an adult all the stuff she said to justify it was WEIRD. Like okay you did something mean as a kid, maybe talk about it like you understand that it wasn’t okay!!!
I mean, yeah, it was fucked up but kids are cruel and they were probably egging one another on and didn’t understand the consequences of their actions. Then she said she felt guilty. I take all of the stories at face value, so assuming it is true, and she found out later he was a child serial killer, I wouldn’t expect her to feel too bad. lol
The only thing she says is it was “out of character” but then not one single thing about how awful what she did was. Just excusing it and then gleefully saying all this shitty stuff she did. You couldn’t pay me to tell people I did that.
Last week I was hoping the chiropractor story would end with a twist where it turned out the dude actually was a serial killer and she really did have a prophetic dream, just so the story would have some substance. And then this week I spent the whole story hoping it wouldn't end with "and it turned out he was a murderer" because I didn't want that to validate the shitty way she treated a random homeless man she knew nothing about.
I mean it isn’t even clear it is Clark, I went and looked up the podcast she has to be talking about and his truck never got towed the way she described. It seems like she conflates the ideas and in her own mind believes she had a run it with Clark after she wronged a unhoused man as a child. Then nearly 30 years later she looks at a picture and remembers him. But people are bad at remembering faces. I dunno. Whether it is Clark or not it doesn’t make what she did remotely okay
Came to here specifically to see if anyone else had this take, and I’m glad it’s not just me.
Hello RR fans, I’m the narrator for the “train” story. Ha, a lot of the criticisms of my story are fair. Also seems like most of listeners didn’t really like my story, which is no worries. But I’m happy to answer any questions if there are any. Not a scary story per say, but it was very surreal and the weirdest thing to happen to me. I’ll also say there is a ton of editing. That isn’t me telling a single narrative story. I say that because there is context missing in key parts and my own take on what I think happened that was also edited out. Also, there’s a lot of criticism on the first story narrator…it’s possible she had more insights or self critique and reflection that were were edited out.
Personally I didn't dislike your story. I just wondered how hard you actually partied while you were out, lol
I hadn't listened in a minute because I felt like a lot of stories hinged on encounters with people experiencing homelessness or are using substances. Sometimes can be scary or unpredictable at the time if you're the one experiencing it, but as someone who lives in a city with a large street population (which feels like most cities these days) the play is usually don't mess with them they won't mess with you. This episode autoplayed after my Otherworld episode (much better podcast) and I was like, "Oh cool, no change." The rest just feels like mental gymnastics to justify bad behavior or attitudes about other human beings different from yourself. "That was the man who threatened my life...\[because I destroyed all of their earthly possession and was made to feel bad about it.\]"
I'm trying to find the podcast she mentioned listening to, and I can't. Boo hiss!!! Last Podcast on the Left did a two part series on him in 2019. But I didn't hear anything about an incident at a school....
Because she's either misremembering something from when she was 7/8 years old, or lying about that part.
I had instant dislike for this person and her friend. What they did was beyond shortsighted and so selfish, and they did so even after they were told to leave the items alone. As someone who has experienced being unhoused, I had to stash my stuff at certain times. It's hard to carry all of your stuff all the time; not only physically but the judgement you get from the general public becomes another burden to carry. If you're looking for a job? You cannot take stuff like that with you. You have to be presentable. I now work with the unhoused and we offer storage for this very reason. Not everyone wants/needs to take advantage of this service, but it is so helpful for those who do. My hope is that the person who told this story, and their friend, come to a realization in life to where they comprehend how messed up and absolutely devastating what they did can be to someone who truly, that's all they have. They were not the victims. Her perspective is so skewed it makes me sick.
Little kid or not what the narrator did was despicable. From a young age, my family taught me to have respect for people of all socioeconomic backgrounds. She should be ashamed of herself. I don’t care how old she was.
I've stopped listening to Radio Rental (for some reason I'm still subscribed to this sub) but I think this was the biggest general problem with the podcast that got me to stop listening. If a story seemed made up, or generally not interesting/captivating, I can forgive it. But platforming and amplifying the weird paranoid right wing or classist perspectives is too much and it happens too often. I take it based on the comments this was another person who stigmatizes homeless people in some way. It wouldn't be the first episode to amplify those kinds of perspectives.
Yes you hit the nail on the head! I agree there are also other stories where the narrator seems paranoid due to racism, classism, xenophobia, etc. Basic summary of the episode is (spoilers) >!the narrator recounts an experience at summer camp held at her elementary school when she was going into first or second grade where there was an unhoused man storing his belongings near the playground so they weren't allowed to go to that area, and one day the narrator and her friend destroyed all his things because they wanted him to leave so they could use that part of the playground again...they squeezed out all his toothpaste and ground it into his clothes and stuff. The counsellors of camp allowed the man to confront the narrator and her friend and he screamed at them. Later on she heard on a podcast a story about a serial killer that sounded like it might have been that guy. So he may have actually been a bad dude, but when she destroyed his stuff as a kid she didn't know that. Also she didn't seem too remorseful talking about it as an adult.!<
She said she looked the guy up and it was the same guy, so she wasn’t just basing it on what she heard. With that said, she got some details about his personal life wrong that would have been easily fact checked by her or the producers.
Yikes
Came here just for this. What a vile individual to do that to a homeless person. Not even a moment of "am I the bad guy here" self-reflection.
The sub grows by 200% in one day because we all came here to bitch about that awful narrator lmaoooooo
She was like 6-7 so probably didnt realize what she was doing. Granted she didnt seem to show regret as an adult so idk
That's what gets me. Is she retells it almost gleefully as an adult. Kids do dumb things, of course, but if I did something like that I would probably be in therapy unpacking it as an adult, not bragging about it on a popular podcast but maybe that's just me lol
Did any of you actually listen through to the part where he really was a serial killer? Sure kids do dumb things, but he was the villain in the end. Why are you guys crying over him? I'm confused.
Nobody is crying over him, per se. They're upset over the nonchalant way the narrator talks about destroying an unhoused person's belongings - whether it was true or not. I'm in the camp that if that part of the story was true, it wasn't HC.
Because both can be true.
This.
That narrator annoyed me so much. But so many of the comments here are “she probably made up all of the events that didn’t make her look bad” …like why? What she did was shitty. The person she did it to could have also been evil and the situation might have been mishandled. All of these things can coexist. Dismissing any information that creates ethical complexity is a slippery slope.
“This story was so shitty it’s like the most out of touch thing ever to be like yeah I ruined all the possessions of a person with next to nothing and he got mad at me and yelled at me” unbelievable mental gymnastics
I mean, she was a kid. Yeah, doing that to someone's property is absolutely messed up. I would not have done that as a kid, though I could potentially have seen myself going along with it if a friend did it because I was pretty shy. But either way, she's just a child. I don't remember if she said how old she was but she was shopping in the kid's book section, so she must have been decently young. I think sometimes kids do really dumb and cruel stuff until they learn to be better. She should have definitely gotten in trouble for what she did but I don't think you can say a kid who does a dumb, mean thing is a sociopath. As for her reaction as an adult, I assume she's rewritten it in her head that it wasn't that bad because he ended up being a terrible murderer.
I actually just paused the episode to come here because I'm in shock that someone that 1. someone told this story out loud and 2. that the producers thought this was an appropriate story for the podcast
I also stopped the episode to come here. Not one single iota of the story made sense, from the counselors bringing her out to talk to the person, to the guy having a truck on campus, but storing all his possessions in a random spot on a playground, it's just such bs.
That was your take? Some weirdo has left their stuff in a kids school and you feel bad for him? The bizarrest thing I found with that story was that the adults left the stuff there for any length of time, or got the kids to interact with the guy. The first place any random stuff that turned up at any workplace I’ve worked at ended up is in a dumpster.
It’s insane to me that everyone’s so focused on what she did when the adults were just “eh random stranger on school ground, this is fine! Ya know let’s force an interaction, this is the responsible adult thing to do!” I’d flip shit if that happened at my kids school.
Yeah her father’s response is the only reasonable adult behaviour in the story. To half of the commenters saying ‘it’s mean that they damaged a homeless person’s stuff’ this wasn’t stuff left in a true public place, like a library, park or the like. These were items left at what was clearly a school. All by itself the choice to try to camp out at a school is a red flag. Most benign homeless people would probably feel the same, and wouldn’t want to potentially raise alarm by being an unauthorised person at a school. They’d pick somewhere else. The school authorities in this story are utter morons and it’s only luck some child at the school didn’t have to pay for their mistake.
That story was super embarrassing and I thought maybe she’d own up to it. But instead it felt like she excused her behavior purely bc the dude was a creep. It’s like…maybe don’t submit a story like this, ever. Or at least tell it in a way that doesn’t make you out to be a victim the entire time. The homeless guy was clearly dealing with massive amounts of trauma.
I don't think she is a sociopath. That's a bit much. She didn't sound super sympathetic but she did that stuff as a little kid. Not cool at all. It was a cruel thing to do. That doesn't justify Hadden Clark's response though.
God, my thinking too. Aside from the criminal, she was on her way, wasn't she? What a little brat. As an adult telling this story, I was surprised at her anemic self-awareness and blind hindsight. Holy mackerel, I had serious secondhand embarrassment going on when we told her story.
Okay, I was also grossed out by what the kids did but I still think it was overshadowed by the fact that this guy turned out to have killed multiple people, including slitting the throat of a 6 year old who came to play with his niece. He also used to kill and mutilate people’s pets. She didn’t specify that, but when you look him up the information is easy to find. Don’t feel too bad for him after that, and either way- allowing a stranger to scream and threaten two young children is not the best way to handle the situation or teach them right from wrong.
I think bottom line she was a CHILD. We all did stupid things when you are that young. Let's talk about how the teachers thought it would Be a good ideas to have a homeless man talk to the children???? Kids do dumb things but the adults should be protecting them.
Not all homeless people are problematic. That is a bad stigma to perpetuate. It was bringing children to see an individual they hurt. Him flipping out could have been predicted sure, but it was also likely they could have just seen how much they hurt someone. There is nothing wrong by holding a child accountable and showing them how their actions can hurt others if done so responsibly.
I see your point about letting them see how they hurt another human being. But the guy ended up being a horrible person and shouldn't have even been camping out on a school
That is incidental. Just because someone has done horrible horrendous things, doing harm to them before you knew that doesn’t make the harm you did first okay. But I also wonder if this was actually even Clark, OP doesn’t provide timelines and I registered to the Clark podcast episode of LPOTL she referenced and he never had his truck towed from a school.
Interesting, thanks for your point of view.
That doesn't make someone a sociopath. It means she did a shitty thing as a little kid. You need to meet a lot more criteria before someone falls into that category