Professional Weirdo Podcast

Where I research strange stories and tell them to you. Because, let’s face it, I’m gonna research this anyway and blurt it to someone, might as well be a willing audience. Some of these stories might get dark, morbid, murdery…. so listener discretion is advised.

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Professional Weirdo Podcast

Episode 4 - Lost in the Piles

April 12, 2025 • Anonymous Narrator • Season 1 • Episode 4

Don’t we all hoard something a little? I have a footlocker of Pez dispensers. 34 potted plants. A SMALL suitcase of stickers. For this episode I'll tell you stories to inspire spring cleaning.

Song recs for this episode are on the Professional Weirdo Podcast Spotify music playlist:

The Recluse, Cursive
Collector, Here We Go Magic
Wondrous Place, Drug Store Romeos

Sources:

Sound mixing performed by Brother Jay from The Rule of Scary podcast - check that out if you’re a horror movie fan! And hey! Thank you for listening to my stories. Keep it weird out there.

To find song recommendations for this podcast, check out the Spotify Professional Weird playlist

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5jIkaamOZlCwtd2peUk9lF?si=0238d524a374492d

Email me at professionalweirdopodcast@gmail.com

Hello, ya weirdos! Here In the US it’s spring time - maybe it’s different weather where you’re listening from. BEEcause according to my podcast stats I have a listener in Balaclava, Saint Elizabeth, Jamacia and a listener in Gunzenhausen, Bavaria, Germany. How did you two even find me? I’m so excited you all are here!

But, yeah, it’s spring in my corner of the world, and that means people are starting to think about spring cleaning. New beginnings. Opening windows. Shaking off the winter blues. Clearing out. So of course this episode is about - hoarding!

Go ahead and pop in those ear pods and open that food cabinet and let’s find all the expired food to toss. Because after these stories, you’re gonna be very motivated. And maybe a little grossed out. But motivated!

This is episode 4 - Lost in the Piles

Welcome weirdos, to the Professional Weirdo podcast, where I research strange stories and tell them to you. Because, let’s face it, I’m gonna research this anyway and blurt it to someone, might as well be a willing audience. Some of these stories might get dark, morbid, murdery…. so listener discretion is advised.

Don’t we all hoard something a little bit? I have a foot locker full of Pez dispensers. I have 34 potted plants. A suitcase of - a SMALL suitcase - of stickers. A lot of really great reusable bags - that’s good for the environment. And that’s all. That’s it. SIGH - There are books. Oh boy… yeah, a lot of books. Have a mentioned t-shirts? Wait - does saving shows into a queue count? And podcasts? And TED Talks? Is digital hoarding a thing??? But, okay, okay - while I might want to save all the sad animals needing a home, there’s just one dog in the house. I’m holding steady there, but there’s a story coming up where that wasn’t the case. For this episodes stories, I’ll be rating 1 to 5 feral cats. Here we go…

First, a quick list of some names you might find familiar, and what they like to collect, sometimes in great numbers::

Stanley Kubrick - collected mementos in cardboard boxes - photos, notes, newspaper clippings - totaling close to 1000 boxes all labeled and neatly stored, and eventually filling half his house; he even paid a box-making company to make the size of box he preferred

Nicholas Cage collects shrunken heads and skulls

Jack White appeared on the TV show American Pickers to search for an addition to his collection of taxidermied animals

Lisa Kudrow keeps documents, day planners, and faxes from the 1980’s - As someone who is sitting within arm’s reach of the Trapper Keeper I carried as a kid that houses quite a sticker collection, I can appreciate this. And now I really want to show you my Trapper Keeper sticker collection. Maybe some photos for the Instagram channel.

Andy Warhol also did time capsules. He had 600 of them with a total of 300,000 items included, but unlike Stanley Kubrick, these various boxes contained a lot of random items like magazines, toys, watches, stamps, photos, unpaid bills, old pizza crust, and junk mail. I have a theory. Do you ever find out that someone is coming over to your home soon and you panic and just sweep the pile of mail into a drawer, or those magazines that you really do intend to read, but that issue has a Christmas-themed cover and it’s July? Is it possibly that Warhol just swept everything into a box when people were coming over and then later said it was all time capsule “art?” Okay, back to the list…

Johnny Depp has, or had (I haven’t checked in with him about the latest status on this) 2 rooms filled with hats. He also likes limited edition Barbie dolls, among many other collections, which are all kept neatly in 12 rented storage facilities

And then we have the book collectors.

William Randolph Hearst had 7000 books

George Washington had 1200 books

Charles Darwin had 1480 books

Oprah has about 1500 books

Frederick Douglass had 2000-odd books

Marilyn Monroe had 400 books

Harry Houdini had 5000 books

Karl Lagerfeld - German fashion designer & photographer owns 300,000 and has a catwalk to get to the higher stacks.

George Lucas of Star Wars fame had to move his collection into the Skywalker Ranch, starting the Lucasfilm Research Library. It houses 27,000 books, 17,000 films and other media. It’s available to his employees and a special short list of people he has approved, which includes Steve Martin.

Thomas Jefferson’s 1770 childhood home burned to the ground and he lost his book collection there. So, he started over, collecting 6487 books. After the British burned the nation’s Capitol and Library of Congress, Jefferson’s collection was the largest in the States. Which he then donated to the Library of Congress as a replacement.

And finally, the largest book collection according to Guiness World Records -

John Q. Benham - with an impressive 1.5 million books

What a bunch of nerds! (Just kidding, I love books).

2/5 feral cats, because Nic Cage’s shrunken heads - that’s just wrong.

Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale, or Big Edie as she was later known, was the aunt of Jackie Kennedy. Born into high society, she pursued a singing career and later married lawyer Phelan Beale in a lavish ceremony and they moved into a home on Madison Avenue, New York. They had 2 sons and a daughter, Edith Bouvier Beale, known as “Little Edie.”

The couple purchased a second home in the East Hamptons, a mansion called Grey Gardens, and when the couple separated and eventually divorced, Big Edie kept Grey Gardens as her permanent residence, but received no alimony. Little Edie, a Macy’s clothes model, debutante, and New York socialite, pursued acting and dancing in Manhattan, but in her mid-30’s moved back in with her mother in Grey Gardens.

For nearly 20 years the two women lived in the house. Due to complaints from the surrounding residents about the mansion and grounds being derelict, and an article run in the National Enquirer, in 1971 the Suffolk County Board of Health began a series of inspections, finding that out of the 28 rooms in the home, only 3 were used as living quarters - the rest having been abandoned to trash, cats and raccoons. Some accounts said there were up to 300 cats on the property. The dining room itself was occupied with a heap of used food cans that was 5 feet high.

As eviction proceedings began and word got out, Jackie O and her sister Lee Radziwll heard of it and had the house cleaned and repaired over the next year. In addition, back taxes were paid and a stipend set up to allow Big and Little Edie to remain at Grey Gardens.

During this time, Lee Radziwill - younger sister of Jackie - hired filmmakers and brothers Albert and David Maysles to film a documentary about her childhood and the Bouvier family, which included interviewing Big Edie and Little Edie in their home during the summer of 1972. While the original documentary was shelved, as it turned out, the women of Grey Gardens provided a fascinating new story. The brothers raised funds, and with Big Edie and Little Edie’s permission, returned to Grey Gardens to film a new documentary called, of course, Grey Gardens. During filming it was said the filmmakers had to wear flea collars on their ankles, as the house was infested with fleas.

While there was controversy at the time it was released in 1975, with some people thinking the documentary was taking advantage of two women struggling with mental health, they were paid for their participation. And as a fan of the film myself, just my person opinion, I think those women loved being the stars of the film. The world needed to know about those personalities. It’s a cult classic now, and if you haven’t seen it I recommend checking it out. It inspired a musical and a 2009 HBO production starring Jessica Lange as Big Edie and Drew Barrymore as Little Edie.

Big Edie died in 1979 and Little Edie sold Grey Gardens. She performed for awhile in New York, drawing crowds with her new found fame, and eventually moved to Florida where she died at 84 in 2002.

I give this 5/5 feral cats. Plus 2 raccoons.

Alexander Kennedy Miller, born in 1906, bought his first Stutz automobile as a teenager. What is a Stutz? The Stutz Motor Car Company started when Harry C. Stutz build a car under 5 weeks that placed 11th in the Indianapolis 500, and led to him and a friend starting their car company. There were about 39,000 automobiles produced before the Great Depression knocked the company out. It was revived in 1968, and actually still exists today.

But back to Alexander. After getting his first Stutz in high school, he went on to study mechanical engineering in the 1930’s. He operated Miller’s Flyer Service in Montclair, New Jersey after that, where he repaired planes, but also provided mail and delivery services. His business card listed “Expert Automobile Repairing” and “Airplanes Rebuilt and Overhauled”. being too old to fly in the U.S. Air Force during WW2, he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force.

In 1946 Miller retired and moved with his wife to a large farm in Vermont. And now, things go a little wonky. In all the space, Miller constructed sheds and barns to hold a growing collection of scrap lumber, auto and airplane parts, and a couple of Stutz motorcars. Or at least that’s what people in the area and other Stutz collectors familiar with Miller b.elieved.

As time went by, people in the area became worried about the well-being of the Millers. Their house and the rest of the farm seemed to be falling into disrepair. The house didn’t have central heating, and the plumbing and electricity was very old. A wood stove with metal coils provided a means for hot water. Charitable neighbors even offered help at times . The Millers were years behind on paying taxes.

Despite having collected a lot of Stutz auto parts, for money Miller would fabricated parts, mimicking the actual parts, to sell to other Stutz collectors in order to help with their restorations. Okay - makes sense, why sell the template, right? He was also known to buy very run-down Volkswagen Beetles, and once he felt one was beyond repair, would simply park it in his yard and get another one.

In 1993 Miller died after falling from a ladder at the age of 87. His wife passed away in 1996. The Millers hadn’t had any children, and since they owned taxes, the IRS moved in to take stock of the property to see if they could seize enough to cover the debt. And what they found…

30 original Stutz cars, a 1925 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, several Franklins, a wealth of Stutz parts that Miller purchased when the company went out of business, several VW Beetles and in the loft of a barn - a full Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. Close to 50 vehicles all told, But also $1 million dollars in gold bullion, $75,000 in silver bullion, and $900,000 in stock certificates. Christie’s Auction House held a 3-day auction at the Miller farm, selling the collections, also including music boxes, typewriters, sewing machines, and spool cabinets.

3/5 feral barn cats. Who knew alllll about those gold bullions.

Homer Collyer & Langley Collyer were the sons of a doctor and opera singer. Both men were part of the Manhattan elite, went to college, and had promising careers. But when their parents split, Homer, and younger brother Langley, stayed with their mother in her Brownstone in Harlem. By 1930 both parents had died and the brothers continued to work and attend church as usual, but after Homer started to go blind due to tumors in his eyes, they withdrew from society.

Over the years, the condition of the home declined. And because of lack of payment, the phone, electricity, water and gas were disconnected. Despite seeing little of Langley, and nothing of Homer, they were known in the neighborhood. This was exacerbated by articles published about them due to their refusal to pay income tax or move or sell their home, which was technically repossessed by the city. Langley was even interviewed for some of these articles. Because of the local fame, at times people would gather outside their home. This, along with rumors that there were valuables in the house, drove Langley’s paranoia and distrust. He started leaving the house only at night, collecting more items to bring back. While some of the hoarded items were books - Langley once said they had a medical library in the house made of 15,000 books, there was also furniture, instruments, and a lot of trash. Worried that people would break in, Langley set tunnels in the trash, as well as trip-wire booby traps - many rigged with 100 pound bundles of newspaper. In addition to these - uh, creative ventures - Langley worked on inventions, including a vacuum that would clean out pianos and a Model T Ford he modified to generate electricity. He studied ways to help with his brother’s health, regulating his diet with food he felt would cure his blindness and rheumatism. A diet that included 100 oranges a week. But eventually Homer became immobile due to the rheumatism.

A day came when the bank started the eviction and police broke down the front door. In the shocking amount of trash, Langley stood to meet then and without a word wrote a check for the full mortgage of the house. I’m trying to imagine that encounter and how the police must have reacted. To the trash. To the smell. To someone just silently writing out a check.

In 1947 an anonymous phone call reported a smell and police came. Getting in and through the house was no small feat and it took 5 hours of creative entry and searching to find Homer, dead from starvation, but having been dead for what was determined to be only about 10 hours. He was in a chair and among an early x-ray machine, a jawbone of a horse, and bundles of old newspapers.

But Langley was missing. People suspected he had been the anonymous call and had walked away from it all. While workers started clearing out the brownstone, a nationwide manhunt started, but as it turned out, the search hadn’t needed to go farther than 10 feet from where Homer’s body had been found. Weeks after Homer had been discovered, one of the workers clearing out the 120 tons of mostly junk found Langley’s body. He had been killed by one of his booby traps, buried in junk.

The house was too dilapidated and was torn down. Ironically, the place where their Brownstone stood is now a pocket park named after the brothers - wide open space. Fantastic. Let’s take a deep breath together.

3/5 feral cats.

I’m going to start this story off with a bold letter, written by 19 year old socialite Ida Mayfield, newly arrived to New York with a fancy story about her esteemed family and upbringing. She’s writing this letter to 37 year old Benjamin Wood, owner of the New York Daily News. Who, it should be noted, was a married man and to this point, a complete stranger to her. Here goes -

May 28, 1857

Mr. Wood - sir

Having heard of you often, I venture to address you from hearing a young lady, one of your ‘former loves,’ speak of you. She says you are fond of ‘new faces,.’ I fancy that as I am new in the city and in ‘affairs de coeur’ that I might contract an agreeable intimacy with you; of as long duration as you see fit to have it. I believe that I am not extremely bad looking, nor disagreeable. Perhaps not quite as handsome as the lady with you at present, but I know a little more, and there is an old saying - “Knowledge is power.” If you would wish an interview, address a letter to No. Broadway, PO New York stating what time we may meet.

This letter was effective. Ida and Benjamin began a 10 year affair, and when his wife died, they married. In some ways, he was a successful husband - not just owning the New York Daily News, but also a 3-time member of Congress and 2-time member of the New York State Senate. Traveling in such circles, Ida met Abraham Lincoln and the future King of the United Kingdom Edward VII.

In other ways, Benjamin was not a successful husband. It might not surprise you after that letter Ida sent him, but he famously had affairs. To make amends he gave his wife large amounts of money. He signed apologetic letters “Unfortunately for you, your husband, Ben.” And he loved to gamble. She wanted to be careful with money, so she objected to this hobby. To answer her protests to the gambling, he agreed to split all his winnings with her, but not burden her with any of the losses. He once woke her up after a successful gambling night, spreading $100,000 across their bed. Whether it was the pay-offs for the affairs, or his skill at gambling, by the time he died in 1900, Ida was a very wealthy woman and now had inherited the New York Daily News. She sold the paper in 1901, bringing in, what would be in today’s money, between $9.4 -11.3 million dollars. Then in 1907 there was a financial panic that worried her. Notoriously, she marched into the Guaranty Trust Company saying she was tired of everything and removed the balance of her account there in cash - nearly $1 million dollars (today that would have been $23.9 mill.) She stuffed it in a bag and left. From there she moved into 2 rooms in a low-end hotel in NY with her sister and the adult daughter she had had with Ben. And then, she withdrew from society. The women stopped going outside and wouldn’t allow people in - many of the hotel staff had worked there for years and hadn’t seen them. A bellhop had a daily task of knocking on the door to ask if they wanted anything. It was always the same - evaporated milk, crackers, coffee, bacon, and eggs, with occasional requests for raw fish, Copenhagen snuff, cigars and petroleum jelly. Ida would tip him through a crack in the door, telling him it was the last ten cents she had in the world. He would return the next day, get the same order from them, and again receive Ida’s last ten cents in the world. Every day.

In 1928 her daughter went to the hospital and died at 71 years old. But it had been 24 years of Ida’s door being closed to any outsiders. Then In 1931, when her sister became ill, Ida had to let people in. Her sister died there, so multiple people came in and saw the rooms stacked with stuff. This brought up questions about her sanity, but also about who this 93 year old woman was. As word got out and people started to understand where she had come from, and how miserly she’d been living, a war for her likely wealth began among those claiming to be remaining relatives. She was declared incompetent and moved to two rooms directly below her home so lawyers could determine what was in the packed space. Bags, pots, and pans full of cash. One shoebox held $247,200 in cash. Now, we knew from that letter at the beginning that this lady sets goals and goes after them. She knew what she was about. So it’s no surprise that even though she was declared incompetent, as she slept in her new rooms a nurse discovered that Ida was wearing a secret pocket under her dress that held $500,000 in $10,000 bills.

Fearing the hoard could be stolen, everything was being collected, catalogued, and taken to a bank for storage. It all technically still belonged to Ida. There were 54 trunks in the 2 rooms she occupied that held gowns, necklaces, watches, lace from Ireland, Venice and Spain. Tiaras. A letter from Charles Dickens to her husband in 1867. In an old cracker box there was a diamond necklace worth $40,000. I never found a prize like that in my Cracker Jack box. The cash hoard alone amounted to $1 mill (as a reminder - that would be like having stuffed $23.9 mill in cash around your house today).

When she died within the year at 94, there were over 1,103 people trying to claim her fortune. But Ida still had a few tricks up her sleeve. Her name was really Ellen Walsh - daughter of a poor Irish immigrant father and a mother who had grown up in the slums of Dublin. As a teenager she had given herself a backstory and the new last name Mayfield, and had her sister take it on as well. Tough luck for all those long lost Mayfields coming out of the wood work laying claim to her fortune. And the daughter with Ben who had passed away years earlier in the hospital? Turns out she was not Ida’s daughter, but a much younger sister. As far as anyone knows, her husband Ben knew the secret and played along. Maybe with everything.

So good!!! 5/5 feral cats.

That’s it for today. How’s your food cabinet looking? All tidy? Find any $10,000 bills in there? Yeah, me neither. But, you know, if I’ve saved just one person from a can of expired cream corn, I’ve done my job here.

Listen - I don’t know if this is a form of hoarding, or hoarding enablement, but I’ve tried to quickly push a little pile of episodes out here at the beginning because when I discover a new podcast, I like to binge it. So I wanted to get a decent bingeable amount stocked up for new listeners. I’ll probably need to slow down to release them once every 3 weeks or so. If you have friends who like to binge or hoard podcasts, please let them know about this one. And if you’re enjoying it (I hope you are!), rate and follow on wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also follow me on Instagram under “professionalweirdopodcast” where I announce when new episodes are released, and share some other weird tidbits there for fun. And you can email me at professionalweirdopodcast@gmail.com

Songs I recommend with today’s episode can be found on the Professional Weirdo podcast music playlist on Spotify. This episode’s songs are The Recluse by Cursive, and Collector by Here We Go Magic, and Wondrous Place by Drug Store Romeos

I’ll list these, along with the link to the playlist, in the show notes.

That’s a wrap! Sources used for this episode can be found in episode notes. Sound mixing performed by Brother Jay from The Rule of Scary podcast - check that out if you’re a horror movie fan! And hey! - thank you for listening to my stories. Keep it weird out there.