EMERGENCY BROADCAST: There's a Bird MONSTER Outside My Window!

Warning. Emergency broadcast. It's me once again. Darkness prevails without a script. I've got some notes, but that's about it. So I have an update for the network as a whole. We had these feed drop sponsors that automatically took up the second spot in our episode lists on your podcast platforms.

It made us good revenue, but people were complaining about them. I think I mentioned this in my previous one about the Christian feed drop, but I'm worried more about how annoying it is to hear a different show after the first episode you listened to. Not to mention our download numbers are down 400,000 downloads since October, just for unexplained encounters. So I'm going to turn that off.

and I'd rather you guys be happy and enjoy the show rather than be drowned out by a different show entirely. Ads are a different story. We couldn't function without normal ads. Nobody can work for free. But anyway, those are turned off. That should be reflected on your end in the next few days. These podcast feeds can move rather slow. Anyway, it's Thanksgiving week, I think. I don't keep up with the dates anymore. I'm sort of lost in my own head.

but I wish you all safe travels this week, and I hope you eat a lot. I'm not a big Thanksgiving eater myself, even when I was fat, but I hope you have a great time. So this Wednesday, tune in for a terrifying episode of Unexplained Encounters, where I'll be discussing, well not discussing, but narrating, several deep woods camping stories. That'll be fun.

And if you are a fan of work stories, my other show Tales from the Break Room features this week on Tuesday. Several stories about working in the mountains. One has a giant spider in it, which I'm sure you arachnophobes will absolutely love.

By the way, if you hear any strange noises behind me or around me, that's my son. He's joining me in the room today. Playing with things, he probably shouldn't, but I'm keeping a close eye on him. While I have you here, I did want to ask, and keep in mind, Spotify now has comments, so you can leave a comment on this show on Spotify on this episode. So in the comments, let me know, what do you think we can do better on unexplained encounters?

What would you prefer to hear? And another question is, how do you think we could make unexplained encounters into a huge global hit? We're in the top charts pretty frequently, but we fell off in the last month or so. But I think we could do better. If there was no limit, what do you think this podcast could do to make it stand out and extraordinary? Just a thought.

Now, in honor of Turkey Day coming up, I did want to share you with you a personal story. When I was in my teenage years after my brother moved out, we lived on this hill in the middle of the woods, very creepy. And I got his room, and his room was at the corner near the wood line. So at night, I swear to God every fall, I would hear the most eerie and unsettling sound just outside my window. And it was like,

So it was freaky at first until I realized why is there a turkey coming around at night every night around my room? And I'm pretty sure a turkey haunted me for the better part of three or four of my teenage years. So there's a Thanksgiving story, I guess.

Perfect timing, my boy. He pulled out my old beta testing cryptid cards. I made a card battling game based on cryptids and mythical creatures that you all love to hear so much in your stories. It's called cryptid fates. I had to change the name recently from cryptid the creepy card battling game because I didn't want to risk any legal action. There's too many games called cryptid that are card games. So now it's called cryptid fates.

In the game, you do battle with your favorite folklore monsters. You can go to cryptidcardgame.com to check it out. I've got a new deck coming out very, very soon based on the Chupacabra and other desert-associated cryptids. That's cryptidcardgame.com.

I've been reading the Spotify comments we currently have, and a lot of folks complain about realism and believability in these stories, and I just want to reiterate that this channel, this show, this podcast is about entertainment. We're not a news station, you won't find factual news reports here, or fact-checked eyewitness accounts. The shows I host are about scary stories to scare and entertain.

You can say it's because I'm lazy, but my idea, always since the very beginning of this show, was that I wanted to share stories from a broad spectrum of people. And you can't really do that if you're super picky about every story you receive and beg for evidence before you even dare to narrate it. And every culture has a variety of different stories, some are gonna sound more believable to you and me, others won't, but their people might believe it more than our stories, that kind of back and forth.

I don't want to focus too hard and what's believable. That being said, if you do send me a story that's just straight up Stephen King nonsense, I'm going to look at you with narrow brow and shame. That's about all for this week, guys. I think a little darkness here wants to tell you something. You want to tell them happy Thanksgiving? Okay, I don't know what that word was. A little bit of hello, huh? Say happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

That works for me. Anyway, y'all have a great Thanksgiving. Thank you so much for being fans and to tuning in for the show. And I'll see you again real soon.