Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClane Smith, where for the weeks in between episodes, we look at stories and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
it into the previous show. In our last episode, The new Sphere, we took a bit of a dive into the digital world to look at some of the ways in which the Internet might be impacting our way of life, and in particular the way in which we receive and share information, as explored in the episode The Myth that the slender Man has been considered by some academics to constitute a new form of folklore, which, due to the rapidity and mechanics of how we communicate online, can quickly
embed itself in collective cultures. One of the frequent criticisms of where we are now in terms of our relationship to the net is its propensity to fuel and spread fake news and provide of an error of truth to completely fictitious events. As the Internet becomes our public forum for sharing and discussing ideas, more often than not it is through this portal that we develop much of our sense of the world, as such, as demonstrated by the
attempted murder of Paint and Loutner in twenty twelve. What achieves validity online can quickly achieve solidity in the real world. It isn't only since the invention of the Internet, of course, that people have behaved and acted based on fallacious information, however, such as the global reach and speed with which information can spread online, not to mention the self reflective manner in which many of our social media platforms collate the
information that we see. Never before have we been so susceptible to misinformation. The so called slender Man stabbing was not the first incident of its kind, and it certainly wasn't the last. It all started with a text, or rather a series of texts, sent to multiple women by former member of the US House of Representatives Antony Wiener,
back in early twenty thirteen. The then forty seven year old Wiener, who was married at the time to political staffer whom Abadin, was fighting for his professional and personal life, having been publicly outed for engaging in numerous cases of
extramarital sexting. Despite the embarrassment to his partner and the derailing of his career as a public servant by twenty sixteen, the incident was finally beginning to fade from the news cycle as the far more pressing issue of who between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was going to win the presidency that year held the nation in its grip. But then in August of that year, it happened again, only
this time things were a little different. By then, whom Abadin was acting as a senior adviser to Hillary Clinton in what remains one of the most bitterly fought and closely contested presidential elections of living memory. What also made it more complicated was that one of the individuals that Weena was found to have been sexting was only fifteen
years old. Weena was subsequently investigated by the FBI for the offense of transferring obscene material to a minor, and as a result, had various communication devices confiscated, including a laptop which he shared with his wife. Earlier that year, Hillary Clinton was very publicly investigated by the FBI for failing to disclose thousands of emails she sent vi a
private email server. As a result, a number of Clinton's opponents accused her of deliberately trying to hide incriminating evidence. During her time as a public servant, Clinton had long been considered a shady operator by many who opposed her run for the presidency, but now there appeared to be
some legitimacy to their claims. The FBI's investigation, however, centered on the more practical issue of whether Clinton had sent classified information outside of the official channels, either negligently or to deliberately hide it from the official archive, either of which would constitute a federal offense. In the end, however, the FBI dropped their investigation when it was concluded that no offense had been committed. The story, it seemed, was finished.
That was until the FBI opened up Weener's laptop, only to find a whole host of further email exchanges between whomer Abodin and Hillary Clinton that had not previously been investigated. A few days after this story broke erupting from somewhere out of the intersection between the sordid nature of Weener's crime, his relationship to whomer Abodin, and in turn, her connection to Hillary Clinton, a strange rumor began to grow on line.
On October thirtieth, twenty sixteen, the following message was published on Twitter via the handle at David Goldberg n Y. Rumors stirring in the NYPD that Whomer's emails point to a pedophilia ring, and Hillary Clinton is at the center in the febrile atmosphere of such a bitterly fought presidential election, where so many of those on each side of the political divide saw the prospect of a failed outcome for their candidate as nothing less than an existential catastrophe. At
David goldberg Enwyse tweet seemed to strike a nerve. Before long it had been retweeted six thousand times, But then it began to snowball and gain traction elsewhere, most notably in the forums of Reddit and the infamous online messaging board four Chan. Then, almost as if it were part of some kind of co ordinated campaign, another series of emails was suddenly exposed, this time belonging to John Podesta,
the chairman of Clinton's presidential campaign. Podesta's emails had actually been hacked back in March of that year by a cyber spine group based out of Russia known as Fancy Bare. However, it wasn't until late October that twenty thousand pages of emails from Podesta's account appeared on wikileaques. Just as the rumors about the apparent Hillary Clinton led chart sex rig
were beginning to spiral out of control. Hidden among John Podesta's emails was a message sent in June twenty fifteen from the artist Marina Abramovitch to John's brother, Tony Podest, a well known Democratic Party donor. It said, Dear Tony, I am so looking forward to the spirit cooking dinner at my place. Do you think you'll be able to let me know if your brother is joining? Or my love, Marina, what was spirit cooking exactly? Some people began to wander.
A quick search of the term brought up a piece of art by the same name, which was made by A Bramovich back in nineteen ninety six. The piece was essentially a cookbook full of pseudo aphrodisiac recipes, containing strange instructions like how the reader should sprinkle fresh morning yurine over nightmare dreams, or to mix fresh breast milk with
fresh sperm milk on earthquake nights. One also encouraged the reader to cut deep lee into the middle finger of your left hand with a sharp knife and eat the pain. The work was designed purely as a way to provoke and evoke thoughts about the body. To some, However, its
true meaning was something entirely different. Clearly, they believed Abramovich was some kind of monstrous satanic occultist, and her connection to Hillary Clinton via the Podesta Brothers was irrefutable evidence that something very disturbing was going on at the heart
of the Democratic Party. It was Friday November fourth in twenty sixteen, less than a week before the presidential elections, when James Alaphantus suddenly noticed a string of strange comments on his Instagram account accusing him of being a pedophile. Back in two thousand and six, Alaphantus and his then business partner, Carol Greenwood opened a pizza rear and ping pong venue at fifty thirty seven Connecticut Avenue in Northwest Washington,
d C. They named it Comet Ping Pong. By twenty sixteen, Comt Ping Pong had cemented itself as one of the trendier spots in the area with its raw, hipster esthetic, live music events, and gourmet pizza menu. As revealed in the Podesta emails, Comet Ping Pong had also been touted as a possible venue to host a political fundraise of
that year for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Alaphantas's boyfriend also happened to be David Brock, founder of the media watchdog group Media Matters for America and one of the most influential figures in the Democratic Party around that time. Confused by the sudden spate of accusatory messages, Alaphantus showed them to some of his younger staff members, who promptly went on line to see if they could get to the
bottom of it. What they found astonished them. Due to its mention in John Podesta's emails, Comet Ping Pong had been pulled into the sex's ring rumors too. Alaphantus's instagram had subsequently been scoured for evidence of involvement in satanism or pedophilia, and so too was the pizzeria and everything connected to it, from the layout of the menus to
the restaurant's interior design. Anything from a picture of a toddler standing in a supermarket shopping basket posted to Aliphantus's Instagram to a mural painted on the restaurant walls six years previously were confirmed as evidence that Comet Ping Pong was being used as the key venue for the Satanic child abuse. Some even began to speculate that the mere mention of cheese pizza anywhere was code for child pornography.
Three days after James Aliphantus was first called a pedophile, online hashtag pizza gate appeared for the first time on Twitter. This was tweeted thousands of times over the next few days and weeks, most prominently by what were later found to be bots running through servers coming out of the
Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Vietnam. Hillary Clinton would go on to lose the twenty sixteen election, though there has been much debate about the true impact of the reopening of the investigation into her emails only six weeks before the election. Since the margin by which she lost was so slim, many have argued, not unreasonably, that the investigation cost her the presidency. If some were hoping that her loss would put an end to the Bizaar pizza Gate conspiracy, however,
they would be very much mistaken. Soon the conspiracy was jumping from online forums to full scale reports from various citizen journalist organizations like Alex Jones's info Wars, which gleefully promoted the story. One info War's video titled Pizza Gate
is Real was watched over two million times. On November sixteenth, the online provocateur, often described as an old right political activist, Jack but Sobiec, streamed alive video of himself visiting the pizzeria, where he then proceeded to film an innocent children's party taking place in the restaurant's back room. Though he found no evidence of a satanic child abuse ring, many praised him online for his supposedly valiant efforts to get to
the truth of the rumors. The following day, the website to the Vigilante Citizen published an article forensically detailing the various pieces of apparent evidence that the restaurant had links to a child's sex ring. Once again, pictures of children taken from James Alifantas's instagram were highlighted, as well as the imagery used in Comet Ping Pong's menu and branding.
An image of two Ping Pong paddles crossed over at the handle was alleged to be a clear nod to the low go of a blue and pink heart tied together, said to mean child lover in pedophile circles. By then, the truth if it had ever mattered at all, was completely irrelevant. Just through the sheer will of its believers and the repeated proliferation of the rumors, the conspiracy had
taken on a life of its own. It had grown arms and legs, and, like Freddy Krueger's tongue lapping out from a phone in a teenager's dream, it was starting to manifest in the real world. It began smallish at first, with simple phone calls to the restaurant, with callers demanding to know the truth about Hillary Clinton and the depraved sex ring. Then came the death threats. Sometimes the phone
barely stopped ringing from opening to close. Early on December fourth, twenty sixteen, twenty eight year old Edgar Madison Welch or just Madison to his friends, woke up at his home in Salisbury, North Carolina, and rolled out of bed. After getting dressed, the father of two young daughters told his girlfriend that he had some things to do and left
the house. From there, he took a three hundred and fifty mile drive to Washington, where, at some time just before three pm, he parked up outside the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria pulled an R fifteen assault rifle out of the boot and proceeded to march into the restaurant. Inside. Startled diners took one look at the rifle and dashed outside to safety as Welch pressed on, clearly looking for something.
The man later said he'd simply driven there with the intention of taking a look at the place for himself, but by the time he arrived he changed his plans. Spurred on by the thought of innocent children being sexually abused, he decided to arm himself before stepping inside in case anyone there needed rescuing. After pointing the gun at one staff member, he continued into the ping pong room at
the back, and then on into the kitchen. One of the many rumors about the venue was that located somewhere within it was a secret room leading to a set of tunnels that were used by members of the apparent child sex ring to ferry live and dead children in and out at the restaurant, but Welch found no such thing. Police arrived soon after, and after a series of shots were heard from inside, they shouted for Welch to give
himself up. The man did as they said, walking quietly out of the restaurant with his head on his hands and into the middle of the street, from where he was handcuffed and arrested. When asked later why he didn't think he'd found any abused children on the property, he admitted that regrettably, the intel he had probably wasn't a
hundred percent. The story shocked the nation, while many who'd previously advocated for the conspiracy were forced to face up to the likely reality that Comet Ping Pong had not been quite what they thought it was. It seemed then the story might finally be put to bed, but then something new came to light. Welch, it turned out, had at one time been a bit part actor, and then
it all made sense again. His strange trip to the restaurant, his arrest, and subsequent claim that there was nothing strange going on at all and clearly all been an act. Welch too, was one of them. Unexplained. The book and audiobook, featuring stories that have never before been featured on the show, is now available to buy worldwide. You can purchase from Amazon, Barnes,
and Noble Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements have unexplained, including the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain Smith Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own
you'd like to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward slash Unexplained Podcast