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Hello, and welcome to episode 13 of Cult Leader. I'm your Cult Leader, Spencer Henry, and I am

fucking losing my mind, you guys. We got over 20,000 downloads over the weekend, and Cult Leader was on the top charts for iTunes.

So podcast on iTunes has its category or whatever, and if you click on top podcast or whatever, it's a list of 200 of the trending podcasts.

And Cult Leader was that number 110 out of 200, which is fucking insane. Like, Cult Leader is in the essence of podcast brand new.

It's a new show. I don't know what the hell I'm doing, right? I'm just like kind of winging it.

And I'm sitting above fucking NPR. Like, that is insane. So I just wanted to say thank you guys so much. I really appreciate your guys' support.

Our little Cult is growing and turning into a much bigger thing than I ever thought that it would. So thank you. Please keep reviewing and rating on iTunes.

Like, it helps so much. And you Android users are useless. I'm just kidding. I love you guys. Thank you. And now let's get to the reason you're all here.

Today we are going to be talking about Albert Fish. For those of you who aren't familiar with Albert Fish, he was also referred to as sometimes as the Gray Man and the Buggy Man, as well as my personal favorite, the Moon Maniac.

We're going to take it back to the beginning because first of all, this was a mess from the get go, right? So he's born Hamilton Howard Fish on May 19th, 1870 in Washington, DC.

His dad Randall was fucking 32 years old. He was 43 years older than his mom. So his dad Randall is 75 when Albert's born. His mom, Ellen, was only 32 at the time.

His family had a pretty hefty history of mental illness. His mom suffered from seeing auras, visual hallucinations. His sister was diagnosed with mental behavioral disorder. And his brother was confined to a state mental hospital.

So like, the odds aren't great in this family to come out without any sort of mental illness. But what family isn't?

So I don't know what was in the water at that house, but nothing I need to be drinking. We got enough going on up in this noggin. So early on, his dad dies unfortunately in 1875.

But he was only five years old at the time. And it's, I mean, reasonable. His dad was fucking 75. So he's like 80. And he's put into an orphanage after his dad dies by his mom because she can't afford to take care of him.

Which is where he picks up the name Albert because he was tired of all the other children referring to him as him and eggs, which like obviously comes from his name Hamilton. So he's going by Albert now and off to a rough start during his time at the St. John orphanage.

Albert later recalls and I quote, I was there till I was about nine. And that's where I got started wrong. We were unmercifully whipped. And I saw boys doing things that they should not have done.

So he kind of later on ended up blaming some of the stuff that happened and some of the stuff that he was exposed to at that orphanage for him turning out the way he did.

But like, I think he kind of took that and ran with it. So this was his first introduction to pain. And Albert eventually began getting a thrill from the beatings he would receive at the orphanage.

In 1880, at 10 years old, Albert was removed from the orphanage by his mom. And she took him home because she landed a government job. And she was now able to again support him.

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