One Tree Thrill (Part 21)

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We're coming to you from California, Nashville, Tennessee, and New York somewhere upstate. We're so excited we have a Q and A for you today. So many of you send in questions and we're happy to answer them for you.

And I feel like we got some juicy ones.

I feel like Octopober questions are the best because everyone's in kind of a mischievous mood to begin with. Yes, let's just get in do it all right? Laura wants to know what was your personal favorite Halloween costume and what was the party that you wore it to? Or like just event or just like space. We're just in your own house, in your own house. Sometimes you just need to wear a costume at home. If you're into that sort of thing, tell us, I don't have a cheerleader uniform at home.

Uh okay. Favorite Halloween costume One of mine was when I there's a photo of that. We talked about it on the tour. Coming to your Halloween Party as the cast of Giant with Paul and Lee. That was really fun. Like, I love a joint costume, or you're not alone, you really need other people to complete the whole picture.

Yeah right, I mean the standalone kind of thing is like.

Oh, I get it, She's Liz Taylor, Like, yeah, that makes sense.

Okay, But then then when everyone else joins in, was Tyler involved in that one too?

So yeah, oh that's right.

So Tyler was James Dean, Paul came in as Rock Hudson, and Lee came in as the Cow like ay.

Cow, which I love that about Lee.

I love that. Yeah, I mean I love Halloween. You guys know, this is like my super Bowl. In fact, I just came from the middle school where I was at eighth grade lunch and I was going from table to table like reminding kids to come to our Halloween festival on Sunday. And this kid that has typically like been very rough on me as I was like, you guys call me and all the other mothers. You know, the witches in town are put it on this haunted house.

It was an experience.

And it was when the show first came out, so it wasn't the hit it is today, Like no one knew what we were doing.

That was sweet. I love that.

I mean, well, Joy, you were talking about that one year at Hills, which made me think. I think that that was the same year that I love a good costume that I can just recycle because it's like why not, if it's great, I'm gonna wear it again.

Nobody's gonna remember.

And I had like gone through one of my storage bins and found an old red riding hood costume that I had, and I had made the cape.

So it was like this huge.

Like hood that came down over the shoulders and it was red satin on one side and black velvet on the other and it went like down to the floor.

I just loved it.

I'd made it years before for Halloween party in La and then I was like, Oh, I just have this. I'm gonna wear this again, and I loved it.

It all happens at your house, Hill.

And my brother fell in love with you that year.

My little brother was in college and like came to visit from college and got probably way too drunk, and Sophia was the one that held his Viking hair while he threw up you because he was wearing away.

He was so sweet.

I was like, oh, honey, let's hold your hairbag. Everything's gonna be okay. Just try to puke in a bush, not in the house.

Yeah, what are we dressing up for this year?

What are we doing this year?

What should we do this year?

I mean, I'm going as a witch, because well.

I was gonna say, should we just dress up as the cast of hocus Pocus.

Hello, that's a no brainer.

For my son's school. Their mascot is the Hawks, and we're doing Hawk manner. And so I got this big feather like collar. Oh, just to be a very extra fan.

I did that from Maria a couple of years ago. She wanted to be young Maleficent. So I built those wings. I got went and got a whole strip of all these feathers, and I like built a wire frame set of wings and did the whole Yeah, all the feathers and everything. It was a really cool costume. It's fun when you get to work with when you get to make your own stuff. I don't know what am I going to do this year? What are we What are

Oh that's sweet.

Yeah, I love a nostalgia costume. Also, I gotta be honest with you, guys, I don't even know what day Halloween is this year.

It's a Tuesday, which is weird.

That always bums me out a little bit. Me too, I prefer a weekend Halloween.

Yeah, yeah, Halloween should be one of those holidays that travels, like it's always just on the Friday of the Saturday of the week, you know, like Thanksgiving it's always on the Thursday.

Yeah, yeah, Like shouldn't it just be the last Saturday of October?

Yeah?

Just a traveling holiday. What I wouldn't give?

You know what, when we take over the government, that's going to be our number one cause.

To us, we'd like.

To propose a bill that's right, Daylight savings and Halloween perfect.

All right, what we go next?

Well, this one's from Rasa Raisa, Rasa, Risa, Risa. We don't know how to say your name, Rasa, but it's super cool the way it's spelled.

It's very beautiful to look at. Yeah, I love it.

I wish I wish I was more well educated on how to say your name. But you asked us, what do you take pictures of the mosts? What do you take pictures of the most.

You guys, my best friend just told me so hard yesterday for this. So we're up in Big Sir, and we were going down the highway and it's like magic hour, you know, the ocean looks moody, there's pink clouds out and these huge green fields that stretched toward the ocean, and this field that we'd driven by earlier in the day was full of cows, like beautiful brown cows in the sunset.

And I was like, oh my god.

And so I'm like, we have to pull over, and I roll the window down and I'm taking pictures of these cows.

And she goes, what are you gonna do? Frame a picture of those cows and put it up in your house. Yeah. I was like, maybe I might look how beautiful they are.

She was like, You're never gonna look back at that photo. And I realized I take photos of landscapes everywhere, and I never look at them again.

You're a photo hoarder the same way that you're a hoarder. Hoarder, I have to have it.

If I just have it in my connection, if I just have it, I could look at it someday.

Maybe options are Oh my god, I have to look at my phone to see what I have the most pictures of. I feel like it's screen grabs of information that I'm too lazy to relay.

Yes, I have a lot of those too. I mean Maria, but she's also at an age now where she doesn't want me to take her picture anymore. You know, she throws her hands up and doesn't want to. Oh, I have photos of the last.

Thing I got a picture of is George's nose crinkle like George has when she scrunches her nose up. The lines that are created in her flesh are just a shape that I find really pleasing. And so I've made her take this whole series of nose crimple pictures because I'm convinced I'm gonna get it like tattooed, like geometry on my arm somewhere.

Oh yeah, I just is it or is it a little bit obsessive? It's just like nose making your nose.

Yeah, make those black and white and do a sequence like a photo booth sequence with a bunch of them. He's so cute.

It also feels important to grab because, like your nose in your ears are the two things that never stop growing in your life. So it's not gonna look the same when she's twenty well, And.

It's how I can tell she's genuinely happy because she's an actor, Like she can fake a laugh or a smile, but when she gets into nose crinkle zone, like it's I love it.

That's so sweet.

I have mostly pictures of Maria and then photos of I really do like taking photos of my friends in position, like in a spot when I feel like they would want that photo. If I see something that I'm like, oh, this person would want to have this memory or this photo, I like to jump in and take that.

That's so nice. That's like the best gift that you can give people.

I think it's just because I've because as a single mom, I have so there's so many moments that nobody ever took photos of. They're just in my mind because it's just her and I and I have some selfies of us, but whenever somebody would jump in and be like, let me take a picture of the two of you, or just grab a photo and send it to me, it did. It always meant so much. So I think realizing that made me go, oh, I want to do that for the people too.

Yeah, that's one of my favorite things to do out in the world, Like when I see people. When I see a group of people or a family or whoever, you know, there's a whole group of people standing in front of it, or like a restaurant and one person's taking the picture, and I was like.

No, you go get in it. I'll take it.

Yeah.

I love to take pictures for people so they can all be in the photo together.

I see. I try to do that and I always get rejected. I have a thief face.

I think. Jeffrey laughs so hard.

Like we'll be at the beach and you'll see people doing that and I'm like, do you want me to get this picture of all of you? And they're just like no, no, move along.

No. When you get rejected trying to.

Help, you're like, I'm stealing that phone. Yeah.

They think you're the woman like selling roses who's gonna grab the phone and run.

Or they think you're just gonna take a photo with like all the feet cut off or something, or like too much space on the top.

I look like I won't do it right, but you will.

You're a good photo taker.

Hello, guys, Tyler wants to know what is something you owe?

Always want to be remembered for.

Bitchery.

When I think about all the things that people do know me for, it's usually either picking a fight or ending a fight, or saying what I think, And so I don't know that I have any options here.

I think it is just bitchery.

Which I'm good with.

Is it something we've already done or something that we want to do.

If it's something, if it's something that already exists. I think the thing that I hear from people the most, that means the most to me is that my home feels like they're home.

Oh that's nice, like.

For me.

Being the place that people can come to to celebrate or to grieve. Like I love to be the space that people know they can rest, And it means a lot to me that, Like you know, over the years, like so many people have keys to my house. Yeah, so many people know that, like if they need something, they can they can come and stay with me. And I love that feeling and I never want that to change. Like that's been a deal breaker for me in relationships

You, so you have to go. But I do.

I thought that was a really astute question, like what will it be in the future? What is what is something we're going to do that we haven't done yet? Who are we growing into? Like I love the idea that there are outcomes we can't even imagine yet, because life is going to be bigger than what we've previous.

I can't even imagine yet.

God, I've been thinking a lot about that lately. About the word always in this sentence is funny to me because I have a I think one of the reasons I like to surround myself with antiques and vintage things is the reminder of mortality and the idea that always, I mean, you might do something that people will remember in fifty years, maybe one hundred if the earth is

Like?

What can I be remembered for in the people in my life, in the community that I have, and people who know me. I mean, kindness is the first word that comes to mind. I'm not perfect at it by any means, but it is something that is important to me that I would love to. I would love for that to be something that people say about me when I go.

This morning, we passed the cemetery driving to school, as we do every day, and there was something white draped over one of the tombstones, and for a moment I thought it was a Halloween decoration, like a like a front yard like ghost that someone had placed on top of a grave. And it made me laugh so hard, and I made Gus promise that when I die, my grave will be the one with like the hands sticking up out of the dirt, or like a Halloween.

Decoration just around.

So, yeah, kindness seems fun.

Your sense of humor, Like, can my kids just be the creeps please? That's fun too.

It's kind of kindness.

It's like we're just gonna pass out the laughs. Vita wants to know what is a show you would like to start a rewatch podcast about and that you would follow along with watching an episode week to week, Like.

Start listening to a rewatch podcast?

Yeah, Like if there was a show that had a rewatch.

Podcast, what would I listen to?

Yeah? What would we follow along?

I mean, for me, The West Wing, Oh, I love that show so much, and like, who's funnier than like Bradley Whitford and Alison Janny.

I mean those people. I would just like, I would love to listen to them talk.

My husband watches everything and it wears me out because it feels like I have to have a relationship with so many different shows. But what's something juicy from when we were young?

I mean Friends. I would definitely listen to that podcast if there was a Friends reunion podcast.

Yeah, it's something from when we were little, right, Like no, y'all, I would watch it Saved by the Bell situation, that rewatched podcast because I want to know who's bone and who behind the scenes of this like little kid show. I just want dirt and you know it existed there, you know it?

Oh yeah?

And I like that everyone grew up and like, I don't know they they have been on TV since they were little, and a lot of them have really long careers and there's also been some tragedy, but they all seem to genuinely love one another, and I think that's.

You want to go back and watch every episode of say by the Bell thought.

I've already watched like half of them with Gus during the pandemic. Okay, A Fair still slaps man. I'm just like, tell him.

Kelly, tell him.

It was fun. Gus. Gus wanted to decorate his whole room like Saved by the Bell, so I had to buy all that like nineties weird graphics off the internet. And kid loved it, loved it all right.

From Jess, she says, when was the last time you lied? And to whom? I mean?

I'm not going to be specifical, but I definitely saw the emails. But I was really really busy and I did not respond to set emails. And I feel guilty about it, but also know my limits. So if you are the center of those emails and you understand that I'm talking through code, apologies, I can't get to everything.

Man, It's not possible. No, it's just not possible.

No.

I I had to lie to my godson when I was in Detroit recently to stop a temper tantrum.

I mean, listen, he's too worthy of cause you what are you going to do?

And he wanted to go see the fire trucks so bad, and I had to be like, oh, but on Tuesdays the fire station's closed. Yeah, because everyone needs a day off, and you know the rest of us get the weekends off, and that's why there's more fires on the weekends, so the firefighters have to take up they have to take a week day off so they can nap.

And he was like, okay, dude, you're just describing. Oh my god. I was like, I don't.

Mia was like looking at me, just watching me, trying not to laugh. But he was so enthralled by my story. And I was like and and and that's why we can't go see the fire trucks today. And you have to get in the car with your mommy and your god mommy and.

We have to go. And he was like okay, and it was acceptible, acceptible.

So like, listen, you got to negotiate with toddlers differently.

And I do not feel bad about it.

Oh they ascribed to a magical thinking and so yes, you do the same thing. Yeah.

Is it a lie or am I actually just telling him a story?

Yeah?

Yeah, just meeting them on his level.

Yeah.

I hate lying. It just is so it really really really really hate it. And yeah, it's the biggest thing in our house, Like don't it's the biggest thing for me in relationships, Like I'm just I just will never trust you again. If you lie to me, you can tell me anything. I might get mad at you, but I will never get more mad than if you lie to me. That being said, if rules do not make sense in some way, I don't necessarily have much of a conscience about breaking a rule or working around a rule.

Is Maria at the age where she's asking to do stuff and you have to tell her horror stories as to why she's not going to do those things, Like with Gus, I just had to talk about drinking right, oh, and I had to be like it'll kill you, you know, Like.

Now I don't do that with her. I'm just I'm totally honest, Like I'm as honest with her as her age as is age appropriate for her.

So like yeah.

I try not to scare her into things. I try and give her a really balanced perspective of both sides of things. And then I'm like, you have to figure out you have to take a look at both, use your brain and make a decision about what you want looking at like all of the things on both sides. So I don't sorry, is completely off topic.

No, but listen, my dad every time, every time there was a situation as a child, there would be a story about like how you'll die if you do that thing, And I just assumed that was parenting, just like, wait, you're not going to die if you walk across the street or if you go to the mall with just your one friend at eight pm on a Saturday. Who. No, Yeah, those are the kinds of lies that I grew up with. We called them urban legends.

Yeah.

Yeah, there are some little FIBs. I've probably told her. She had to, you know, She's like, can I sleep in your bed tonight? And I'm like, no, you can't.

Why not?

Well I want to? I don't know. I just I'm going to stay up late and I'm going to be working on something, and really I just want to, like land Bet and watch a movie with my boyfriend. So I'm not I'm just not not telling her the whole troup.

Yeah, they don't need to know secrets. It's not a lie, it's an omission.

Let's do this one.

We got to do the one from Brianna. It's our Halloween episode.

Yes, okay, Brianna wants to know. Have you had any interesting paranormal experiences? If so, what happened?

Yeah? I wrote a whole mother book about this.

Come on, you should close us out, Hillary, because I'm sure you've got the craziest ghost stories. Well, so, Sophia, do you have any Yeah, Wilmington four friends who are listening.

Wilmington is so haunted, like as a place, you know, a landmark haunted city. I moved twice because of scary that happened in the places I was living in.

Because of the scary stuff that happened.

I mean, I hung out for a bit because moving is hard, like breaking away.

Nice.

But you guys, things things.

Were not okay there, They were not okay there. And some of the things happened to me alone. But my last like truly insane paranormal experience, thank god, happened to me with another person in the room and like we've neither of us has ever gotten over it.

Well, can you tell us what it was?

Yeah, I mean okay, so, I mean you all know, back in the early days of our show, all of us were uh partnered, and and then.

That's the scariest part of the story. Yeah, the scariest part of the story. And then I, you know, very publicly was not.

And then the first date I went on was with a very sweet boy named Austin Nichols when I was twenty three. And then you know, we dated off and on for years and long story longer when when he was like, I'm not gonna let you tell me we can't date because I because the long distance is too hard, and he came to work with us, you know, bold, gorgeous, romantic gesture.

We laugh about it all the time. We're still good friends.

And when we were actually like properly able to date because we were living in the same city for the first time in a decade, we were sleeping. And this was when I had that creepy apartment on Front Street, do you remember, And I just knew it was haunted and Brian, our hairdresser, lived next door with his boyfriend and we shared a balcony, the four of us. It was like a very cute It was like melrose Place, like the Southern Gothic version.

That's a TV show. Somebody write that, please right?

And I hear this noise.

It like wakes me up, and I'm going, what are they doing at like the bar restaurant downstairs? And then I think, like, what the hell are Brian and his boyfriend doing on the other side of this wall? And then I'm like, wait a second, this is coming from like the alley side of the room, not the shared wall side the room.

And it's getting.

Louder and louder and louder like and it's in the floor and I turn the lights on.

Austin looks at me and goes, what is that noise? And I'm like I don't know.

And we both start to like get like make our way over to it. And I'm thinking, Okay, this is like a two hundred year old building, is like a raccoon about to like burst out of the wall. Are there squirrels in the wall? Like I'm making sense of it by like there must be an animal.

And I would have gone there too.

Yeah, And then when I tell you a volleyball sized orb you who loves an orb? Hillary pops out of the floor, bright white ball, and we both started to scream. And if you have never heard a six foot four inch man that looks like Austin scream at a pitch that this raspy woman cannot hit. The two of us leapt up and ran to get away from it, but it was coming toward us at this point, and the direction we ran was not to the back door.

It was back onto the bed and into the wall.

And we were like we pancaked ourselves against the wall, screaming, looking at each other, and this thing went from like round to tall like at us and then just evaporated.

Didn't go through you or I didn't? What did you do?

Because we were sort of closing our eyes and sort of looking at each other and sort of screaming because.

Like what do you what was it?

And then we just stood there and we were.

Like, well, what do we do now? You can't call the police, can't go back to sleep.

And then like inspected the walls, inspected the floor, not an opening anywhere, and we both were just like are we magic?

Now?

Are we cursed?

Like what I choose magic, But like, what what.

The was that? And like when we talked to people in town about it, they.

Were like, oh, yeah, yeah, now you know that alleyway there were like eighteen murders there in eighteen fifty six, and you're just like what everywhere in Wilmington people know how haunted all the buildings are and they're like, oh, yeah, you know my friend lived in that building once.

That happened to her too. And you're like, okay, okay, I.

Saw my questions, but I'm going to keep them at a minimum. But A did you get like an alien vibe from this thing? Or was it like a ghosty vibe? It was a ghosty vibe. It was like it was energy. It didn't feel it didn't feel like something that had shown up from elsewhere. It felt like something someone some like you know, energy ones created can never be destroyed.

Like something was just working its way through wherever it had to go, and it happened to need to go through my fucking bedroom.

Oo full body chills.

I love.

Have you looked up did you do research on orbs and stuff? Honestly, no, I should have.

I just think because we'd talked about all the ones that were in your house hill for so long, I was sort of like, well, this is just what happens in downtown Wilmington. Like I didn't really think that I needed to look into it any further. But I'm just so happy that one of my friends was with me and saw it, because we still are like, wasn't that so weird?

And it's nice crazy yeah.

Like you like your brother and your your ex witnessed all the shit that happened in your house.

They got it worse than I did in my house.

Well, because hester didn't like the boys in Life or Death. She my, gosh, have you had any ours?

Was so minimal we were It was in our house in Studio City, and it was like electronics would always go on in the middle of the night, and it was always like electronic based and just random things happening around the house. It was like enough that you're like, this is beyond just my certainly faulty wire growing up.

Yeah.

Yeah, And then I do remember Maria one time came in from uh she was brushing her teeth in the bathroom. She kind of ran into my bedroom and jumped in the bed, and then I was like, what's up. She's like nothing. Nothing, And then a few days later she told me that she saw a girl. She was brushing her teeth and she spit in the sink and then stood up and she saw a girl her age next to her. Ohoo, hi, Maria. No, no, don't make that stuff up. And she doesn't. She's because she doesn't lie,

Oh yeah, that's that's a weird deal. That's why I sold my house in Wilmington because I remember bringing Gus there when he was like eighteen months old and him just looking up at the top of the stairs, and I have so many stories about like stare action in that house that I knew my child was being called and was like, no, no, no, this is where this ends. Someone told me that my old house is on the

Yeah, So anyway, my house.

What I found out when I was doing research for the book is I had been told there was a murder of a tenant that lived in my house. Like Hester used to rent out bedrooms when she got older, and this man never used the kitchen, never used the bathroom in the eight years I think that he lived there, and he had come on like a Mormon mission to Wilmington and then fell out with the church, and no one could understand why. And then one day he just

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