Episode 480: Listener Tales 76
2023-07-27 01:16:15
<p>It’s a lighthearted nightmare in here, weirdos! Morbid is a true crime, creepy history and all things spooky podcast hosted by an autopsy technician and a hairstylist. Join us for a heavy dose of research with a dash of comedy thrown in for flavor.</p><p><br></p>
Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Morbid early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, or on Apple Podcasts. You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.
I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?
Hysterical, a new podcast from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free on Wondery Plus.
Guys, July 25th the paperback of The Butcher and the Wren is coming at you, and this is a huge deal because paperbacks rule first of all.
And, second of all, paperbacks are awesome.
You can really shove them, they're easy to carry around, you can shove them in your bag and you can bring them everywhere.
She's motioning back pocket.
I am, I don't know why, but that, you know, I think it's. It's pretty small, so like you can put it in your back pocket, I think, you know, you got a big back pocket.
Shove it right in there, put it wherever you want. I don't care, just read it, but read it first, preferably. But do what you want, because I support all of you.
But the cool thing about this one, besides being able to put it wherever you want, is. There's a sneak peek of the sequel Wow, the Second Book, The Second Butcher and the Wren Book. There is a sneak peek chapter in the paperback edition, which comes out July 25th. So go get it.
And then you can read a sneak peek chapter of the second one, and you can be like, I read that chapter. None of you did. And then everybody who else who got the paperback can be like, I did too, and then you guys can talk about it.
But everyone else will be like, I don't know what that chapter is. You'll be cooler.
And right now, I'm one of the only people that can say I read that chapter and nobody else did.
And now you can, too, get on my level, get on Ash's level. July 25th The paperback book edition of The Butcher and the Wren.
Go get it everywhere.
I love you guys.
Books and literacy.
Hey weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Alayna, and this is morbid.
Special morbid, though, it's listenertales, which means it's brought to you by you, for you, from you, and all about you, baby. we love listenertales.
And you love listenertales.
Everyone loves listenertales. I could go on forever.
And you know what, this is a nice little break. We've had some pretty brutal cases lately. So we decided that we were going to do a Listenertales episode that is completely based on Haunted houses.
Haunted shit, haunted shit.
We love it and we've got some good ones coming at you. We're going to start this right off with a bang with one entitled Listenertales, a sentient meat product.
No, thank you.
A mythological creature from Ireland, sure, and a very tired English human. Yeah, anytime I'll take it.
The only thing I don't want in that lot is a sentient meat product.
In that lot.
In that lot, I know I felt the English.
I felt the English there, so it says, Hello ladies, I'll forego the gushy stuff, except to say you deserve all the praise you get and more. Wow, oh, it's really nice.
I've loved being on the journey with you and listening to you grow and become even more skilled. As both hosts. But wow, both hosts and researchers. Elena, congrats on the book, you're amazing.
Oh, thank you, Ash, you're amazing and deserve all the kudos there is to give.
Wow, thank you.
Congrats to you and Drew, thank you again. Sorry, you don't get a PDF, but you do get a nice double-spaced word document, you can mark up and edit and shit.
Read this on the show or not, either way, is cool. Hope you enjoy it regardless. Aww, and this is from Alan.
Also in my mind, a PDF and a word document, Excuse me, a pedophile, Wow, whoa horrible. Who are you? and a word document are just the same thing.
Same thing this one's called a chicken wing named Frank.
Oh, I like that. It has dual titles.
I like it.
A chicken wing named Frank.
So it says I have one lengthy tale for you, with one or two meandering but relevant detours. My favorite kind. I've known from an early stage in life that I have been, shall we say, sensitive to things around me. That most people spend their entire lives in blissful unawareness of. My first paranormal experiences came in a way. It often does for bored kids growing up in shitty neighborhoods with no money for the real thing. An almost ever present concern for me and my friends.
And making do as we could for my then best friend. That often meant setting fires and using a magnifying glass to torture ants and the like. Seriously, I'm more than a little amazed that he isn't a serial killer by this point. In truth, I don't know that he isn't, as we haven't spoken in a couple of decades and now live in different continents. As I moved from my hometown of Sunderland in the northeast of England, you know it, you're from Mass and you have one of your very own and now live in Los Angeles.
Might be a serial killer, who knows?
I don't know.
Anyway, as I was saying, when we went kicking around, causing trouble or running from the fires, that had gotten out of control. With the sound of sirens closing in. We used to cobble things together to keep ourselves entertained. One such misguided example of this was a phase we went through of homemade Ouija boards.
Oh, no.
We would cobble them together from letters drawn on scrap paper and then ripped down to size and arranged in a circle.
That makes it ten times scarier.
So, chilling a shot glass for a planchette thrown into the mix, and we would yell at ghosts for attention.
Wow.
One typically damp English summer. We got to doing this almost on the daily and contacted what claimed to be the same spirit repeatedly. I cannot, for the life of me, bring its name to mind. So I'm just going to call the little fucker Casper, even though he was anything but friendly. So as subsecrets.
Subrequets.
I like that word, go. It is quite frankly, shite. What is it? I don't know. Look it up, man.
I'm about to you just taught me a new word, Alan.
Do you want to hear it?
I want to hear what it is, it's how you say it.
Subrequet.
Subrequet Oh, we should have known that.
That was a silent nickname.
Sobriquet, Sobriquet, Alan, you just taught me a new word and I appreciate that about you.
My sobriquet is ash, oh shit.
Sorry, you had a phone call.
Sorry, it was a work call, so.
So that makes it better.
Don't at me.
Don't at me about my work call.
I don't really know why you can't at me at this point.
I was just going to say, Can't you even at you?
You can at me on Instagram, but.
But don't.
Don't about that.
Yeah, don't about that. yeah, don't do that, don't about that you can at me, about other shit, I might see it.
Oh so, anyway.
Anyway, literally.
During one of these idiocy-fueled communions with a denizen of hell, shit started to get wild. My mother, I love that denizen of hell.
I know you're really good at writing.
You are Alan.
Because you're English.
My mother, bless her innocent heart, liked to collect porcelain dolls. For what I can only presume is reasons of closeted sadism, as those fuckers are terrifying. One of the little shits lived on top of the Welsh dresser in an alcove in the corner of the living room. And I swear to God, this thing's head started rotating.
No, thank you. My friends booked it, leaving me to dismantle the board and close the unexpected portal to hell that had just yawned open its maw in the middle of the living room. When I joined them outside, what was to me? At most two or three minutes, they swore blind. I had been gone something closer to 20. Yay for lost time.
Oh, and as a side note, from then on, every time it was thunder and lightning, from then on, a baby could be heard screaming from my parents bedroom. The fuck.
Oh my god. Also sorry if you hear crackling, I'm readjusting.
Either I have some kind of dubious gift or I opened a door I have been unable to close on that day. As ever since, I've been a fucking magnet for spectral bullshit anyway, now I have rambled enough time to get to the grist. When I was 21, I moved to the United States, and via four years working on cruise ships and a wander around various states, I ended up in California.
California, there you go.
Meandering to the point, I was living in a house in Temecula. Sorry, I almost said, Temecula.
Honestly, did the inside voice in my head say Temecula?
TEMECULA There it is. I was living in a house in Temecula, which the landlord sold without warning, forcing me to move in with a friend. One town over in Marietta, at short notice, the house was something of a menagerie sprawling. Oh, I love that word, I do, too. It's a good one.
Sprawling and home to assorted weirdos. I need to paint you a picture of the layout of this rather large, cookie cutter deposit at the end of a cul-de-sac. Downstairs had a full guest suite attached to the main house, but fully equipped as a functioning studio apartment upstairs. My bedroom was directly above that and located halfway down an open hallway that overlooked an entrance hall before coming to my room. At the top of the stairs, you passed my friend C's bedroom and then her daughter L's room.
Then, after passing, my room separated by a shared bathroom, was my friend's younger sister, D's room. Keep this layout in your mind as it becomes important soon. Another important thing to note is that all the adults in the house bar. My friend's husband. M, who was a combat veteran with severe complex PTSD, and D, who was trying hard to be a model and succeeding only at being a problem. Were casino dealers or supervisors at the same time?
As such, all worked nights okay, now. Back to the downstairs studio living. There was a lady named T, her teenage son and her toddler son.
T, t and t.
There you go, all in a studio, mind you, with one bed.
Oh my god.
Weird setup. I am something of a magnet for neglected strays, which I don't mind as I love kids. And every afternoon, when I would sit on the couch in the entry hall reading before work, the toddler would come and hang out with me. Being a mini person and Vietnamese at the same time, he wouldn't say much that I understood. However, occasionally he would point at the empty air and say the lady, the lady.
Put that in your noggin and let's ratchet this up to 11.
No, lying on my bed one night on my day off and with the window open for air. Cause fuck the desert. I heard T's voice directly yelling below me, yelling. If you don't shut up and behave, you're going back in the closet. Yep, toddler in the closet.
No, of course. I told C the next day it was her house. I also, when driving to work with another friend, R told her what had happened the night before. Immediately, she tells me. Her mom, who is a medium and lives with her, woke up last night from a dream, screaming about how she had to help the boy in the closet. What?
Okay, shit, had just gotten very real. Apparently, an old lady had come to her in her dream and led her to a house, where she was told. A boy was locked in a closet inside and was in danger. Oh my God, R's mom agreed to come to the house.
Fast forward eight or nine hours, and the three of us, me, R and her mom are standing at the front door opening, said, Front door. And at this point, naively, still not taking this as seriously as I should be. I take off my suit jacket and walk straight upstairs to dump it on my bedroom floor. Halfway up, I suddenly hit a cold spot, like beyond cold, the kind of cold that makes your chicken skin handbag.
Pull your bollocks up into your abdomen for safekeeping.
He's talking about a scrotum.
I was really, really trying to figure that out.
I saw it on your face.
I was like, I am chicken skin handbag.
Chicken skin handbag. Pull your bollocks up into your abdomen for safekeeping. So he's talking about a tuck. That is a phenomenal way of saying that. Apparently, at least according to Mom, I had just walked right through her.
Mom starts having a chat with this discount La La Rona and finds out that it is toddler's gran on the dad's side. And the boy needs to be helped as he is being abused. Oh, sweetie, apparently this tete-a-tete didn't go over very well. As when Mom asked her to trot off into the light, she grew angry and hurled. Mom, who is a tiny, old, cancer surviving Filipina lady who is clinging to life out of stubbornness. More than bigger into the wall. Oh my God, at this point, all hell breaks loose.
R is crying, Mom is moaning, I'm swearing, lost as to anything else to do. And after checking on Mom, I paced around and happened to pass the door to this clearly cursed guest studio. Now, it was my turn to be roughed up a little bit as I felt a force on my shoulders pushing me to the ground.
Anyway, after much praying by mom and puckering of bunghole by me, the wraith left and it was all over. Or so we thought. Soon after, child services became involved and C made T move out. God only knows what happened to that poor toddler.
It was a mess all around and I can only hope he is in a better place. For a brief period, there was relative calm and harmony in the house, at least as much as they could be, given the circumstances of the misfits clustered there together. Slowly but steadily, a heaviness settled over the house, a brooding presence. One that was a fleeting glimpse. Out of the corner of the eye when walking through a door, or the burning of eyes boring into the back of your neck.
Tensions ratcheted up. M and C split, with M moving downstairs. D was a near constant shit stirrer. L. A young teen, never left her room. And I did much the same. Things continued to escalate exponentially.
The hallway upstairs became heavy, with a feeling of dread that clung to it in a thick. Miasma Miasma is one of my favorite words. I like Miasma, also a good ghost song.
Every time that one comes on, I just go.
She does can confirm now. I said, we all worked nights. This, of course, meant that whenever I got home, it was already dark, and C and M's sloppy housekeeping meant a lack of bulbs. Okay, quick aside, for real, that house was both cavernous and unkempt.
There was once a half-eaten chicken wing left by the front door that was there so long. I gave the little fella a name Frank. And I were tight right up until my desire to not have rotten food on the floor overrode my reluctance to clean up after a grown-ass woman.
Frank, you're out of here.
You're out of here, Frank, anyway. The result of this was me walking the Green Mile to my bedroom with only the company of the light on my phone. At least, I wish that had been my only company. Every single time I walked that corridor. I did so with someone walking right at my back, inside my bubble of personal space and close enough to feel hot breath on the nape of my neck.
That made me have to do like, a little like, wipe it off the back of mine.
When one night, and almost at my bedroom door, with phone in hand, a text came through and I stopped to look at it. This caused the thing at my back to stop too. And by this point, accustomed as I was to the lack of boundaries, I thought, whatever, let me reply, I thought, whatever.
Let me reply to this. It was at this point that it touched me, its hand, a macabre spider clambering its way over my shoulder, up my neck and onto my cheek.
She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there.
In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask. Was it a crime of passion?
If you believe the process, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia.
Or a corrupt police cover-up?
If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down.
Everyone had an opinion, and after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision.
To end in a mistrial. It's just a confirmation this case is.
Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. join Wondery Plus in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
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This live tour experience brings you face-to-face with accounts of doctors who caused irreparable harm. The system that failed to protect their patients and the heroes who stopped them. You'll hear from me Laura Beal, reporter and host of the Dr. Death podcast, along with our panel of experts and whistleblowers. It's hosted by Suspects Matthew Scher. It's an important evening with one of the most iconic true crime podcasts of all time.
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Now I admit this is fucking horrific, and I was suitably terrified. It's just that writing this now, I know what is next. So it feels somewhat insignificant by comparison. Oh God, anyway. After that night, I decided it was time to speak up. Like I said, an instigator. But for some reason, her and I had an understanding and a weird connection.
Not going to lie, a good 40 of that was for me.
Was the booty?
That thing was dummy, thick.
Thank you for saying it.
Please say that entire sentence for me not going to lie.
A good 40 of that, for me, was the booty, that thing was dummy, thick. I'm obsessed with you.
So it was her.
And it turned out she had been having an even more torrid time as she was seeing smoky apparitions coming out of the walls and wandering the house.
All the fucking time yikes.
As soon as we could, we tracked down C and I told her we needed to fix this shit now. Remember, we were shift workers with different days off, and although we all lived in the same house, we could go days without seeing each other. Which will hopefully explain what had been going on sooner. C said she wanted to get a priest involved. She was raised Catholic and well, she owned the house. Think back, if you will, to Frank.
Then think about how utterly lazy this cow was. So guess who went to the church? if you guessed me? Ding, ding, you win a prize. Muggins here takes a trip to the local Catholic church. Now, you have to understand I don't like those places.
Always feel like I'm going to catch fire. I really only have one thing about that priest, complete cunt, he told me. And I quote, Because you are baptized, a methodist, you don't have a sophisticated enough relationship with God, and that is why this is happening. Fuck you.
Suck a dick, and he said, Fucking wank splat.
Wank splat.
Wank Splat I like that, I'll spare you my retort and just say I left without looking back.
Why did you spare us your retort?
You honestly tell me it, tell me fuming. I told C we were going to do this my way. And being the spooky fucker I am, the Witchcraft store in Oceanside, Hell yeah.
We need to be friends. I'm extremely anti-religion, but not anti-deity, and I do have a spiritual side. Relatable. I'm familiar with the tarot, having found an ancient rider weight deck behind a brick in an empty house a friend moved into when I was 16..
That's cool.
That's really fucking cool.
That deck is older than me and has history seeped into it. It has now found its way to Los Angeles, where I take care of it. I'm saying this because I am familiar with the whole reading Paliver.
Wrong? As soon as we walked into that store, we were screeched at by what I can still only assume was a banshee who had given up on the whole death malarkey and found gainful employment.
After scaring the cats, she extended a claw right at me and at D, and at D. Stood next to me and said, You, you cannot live together. Too much emotion. One of you needs to move out. Okay, lady drama, but you have my attention. We did the whole Here's What's Going on thing and sat down for a reading. If the howling woman was to be believed, D and I both had a sensitivity. No shit, and because of feelings between us. It was just being amplified in a feedback loop and we were pulling every spirit in the area towards us.
Look at you two and your lusty lust, causing all kinds.
Of fucking shenanigans you guys kind of like caused a hellmouth.
You did good for you.
Yeah, look at you guys.
Are you meant to be? though? maybe.
Uh, you see if you create a dummy thick?
And you created a hellmouth, if anyone referred.
To my booty as dummy thick, I would think, you know, I think we're meant to be.
So he said, Make of this what you will. It's what she said. Who the hell knows she was right about? One thing at least, there was, for sure, unresolved tension there.
Uh oh, Ellen, is this going to turn into a fanfic? What's going to happen? Long story, slightly less long. They agreed to send a team to the house to do a ghost busting after the upcoming weekend, which happened to be Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is always a little lost on me. And as much as I enjoy it when I get together with friends for it. I never, never feel the lack if I spend it alone.
The rest of the house, being all family, went home to El Centro, leaving me having declined their invitation to join them and having to work anyway alone for four days. Thanksgiving night, the first fucking night I get home from work around two in the morning, walk up the driveway, put my hand on the doorknob and this wave of absolute terror washes over me. I'd be like, Well, hotel it is. Yep, I don't have. How strong it was. I was trembling, crouched down to the ground, trying to curl up fetal without getting on my side.
I have never felt anything like it, and I knew if I went in that house, something terrible was going to happen. Not being a complete idiot and having seen enough horror movies, I knew well enough to back the fuck off and retreat to my car. Smart. I was already calling a friend for a place to stay before I got off the driveway. When I got to my car. I turned around to lean on it while I waited for him to answer and looked up at the window at the end of that to see.
I'm still not sure how to describe it. It was like I saw negative space where the shape of a man should be. I knew something was there watching me. That's a really good way of describing that. Unfortunately, I had to go back the next day for clean clothes, etc.
When I got back, making sure to do it in broad daylight, I parked on the driveway, which I never did, and ran inside and straight up to my room, slamming the door behind me. As I hurriedly changed into a clean shirt and tie, the entire house was shaking and crashing, I could hear banging and slamming against the wall, facing that bloody hallway. I noped the fuck out of there as fast as I could and didn't go back until the following Monday, the day ghostbusters were coming.
It's giving Casita right. The house is mad at you guys.
But like, angry Casita, Yeah, I mean, Casita was pretty angry at the end of El Encanto, Yeah. Spoiler alert When they came, they rang the bell, because that's what people do when they come to your house.
I answered, and I shit, you not. The five of them stepped into the entry hall, looked at each other and immediately left. That's right. They took one look and scuttled off.
Are you kidding?
No explanation. An hour later, the door knocks again and they are back, apologizing for running off. They explained that they had not been ready for how bad it was and needed to prepare more. They could have told you that.
Yeah, you could have been like, Hey, we'll be back.
Shoot a text I don't know.
Or maybe they're believers and like, they're like, I'll be right back.
For some reason, known to no one, C wanders off, leaving me to do all the talking. Seriously, this bitch. They do their thing. Takes about three hours and involved a lot of sage and candles without enchanting. When they had finished and came to report, it turned out we had a total of six spirits in the house.
I honestly thought they were going to say more.
Yeah, oh, the one following me was a child killer in life who had been executed.
Fuck that.
He had attached to me because he had sensed vulnerability. Here's where I tell you that I was abused as a child by an overly friendly teacher. I'm so sorry about that.
That's so messed up.
And that's really fucked up of. That. Ghost at the end of the hallway was a mischievous but harmless male ghost who missed being alive and made all the noise trying to get our attention. Oh my God, he had been who I saw at the window and he never left that spot. As to do so would have meant he had to pass by the killer who he was afraid of. Oh, sweetie.
I just got chills.
I did, too.
Downstairs, there was an old lady and an unrelated old man who were just lost. Oh, outside my bedroom was the ghost of my dad, who had sensed I was in danger and came back to protect me.
My body is warming, it's going warm.
He regularly fought with the killer and kept him out of my room. Holy shit, that's a dad that is a dad. In Elle's room, her grandfather was doing much the same thing for her.
There had been not one but two vortexes in the entry hall downstairs. And that, coupled with untrained abilities on the part of me and Dee, had been a huge pillar of light, pulling everything and anything in. They said they had closed them, but if neither myself or Dee, or, preferably, both of us, left?
I took their advice and moved the fuck out as soon as I could, into a place where the food didn't hang around long enough to gain sentience.
Oh, and you never got to hook up with Dee, damn it darn.
That is my story. I'm going to include a couple of short things as a follow-up, just to show how often this shit happens to me. However, feel free to leave this part out in the rare event you want to read this behemoth out loud. We do.
I just did so. Let's see. Oh, there's not much on this, so I'll read the rest. The place I live in right now is next to Sony Pictures in L.A. on William Street. In fact, it started life as accommodation for cast members way back in the day.
When I moved in, I felt the familiar presence of not being alone and always being watched. One night, in the early weeks, I was woken up by a voice screaming Leave in my ear. I said, I worked in casinos. Well, I left that and I'm now working on a P.h.D. in clinical psychology. Badass.
Casual?
My focus is adult behavior and survivors of childhood sexual abuse. You are a badass you are. Prior to that and Covid limiting my lab time, I was conducting interviews in my apartment with people I know so I could pitch an idea for more formal research.
Later, when I was editing footage of one of my interviewees pausing in the recounting of their abuse to cry. There was a distinct female voice that said, Go ahead, I'm listening in the background. What? Ooh, chills. I had a psychic out again. For this. And it being L.A. It was, of course, one of those TV ones.
That's just how the ludicrous place works. She showed up on my doorstep.
Drum and dancing while chanting. Great impressions for new neighbors. Lastly, I took a trip to Nashville recently as a friend's kid was about to give birth. And as I've known her kids since they were young, she had asked for me to be there.
Oh my god.
Somewhere in New Mexico, I had dozed off in the passenger seat and woke up to a dude sat between me and the driver. Where the middle seat would be. In a truck with a bench seat. He had a camera and was taking pictures, turned to look at me and faded out what my stomach even just went.
Was I wanting that or the stomach?
What?
In Nashville, I had taken a nap one afternoon and upon waking, wandered through the living room and joined my friend outside for a smoke. Walking through, the pregnant daughter was snoozing on the couch, and an old man was standing looking down at her, smiling. I said hello and he turned to look at me and said hello back when I asked my friend who he was.
No old man was over visiting another ghost, just smiling down at a pregnant lady.
Oh, that's sweet.
My most recent experience, as recently as last month. I woke up in the middle of the night to someone stepping on my bed as if they were going to climb up between my legs. Not scary. I just said, Stop that and dozed back off, Stop that.
Stop that.
Just doze back off. I think it was just an entity not used to being perceived. My gift, if you can call it. That seems to be getting stronger as I age. I've now progressed to being able to see, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.
Thanks for taking the time to read what is way longer than I had planned. Feel free to use my name, Alan.
Thanks Alan, Alan, good fucking luck brother.
Your fucking stories are astonishing.
When you write, so like, beautifully.
I love when I can see it all in my head, I can see that place in my head.
That's like my favorite thing ever.
And those ghosts, like, write a book about that.
Please, please.
Because that sounds like such a cool idea. Like you should write a book about those particular ones, it would be cool to write something about. Like a gaggle of ghosts in a place.
Gaggle of ghosts, you know?
I would love that, that's really cool.
I know I'm nervous for you, Alan.
I'm nervous for you, but I feel like you've got a handle on it because you were like, stop that.
Yeah, and you just went back to somebody's booty as dummy thick, so I think you're fine.
I think you're okay, I'm not worried about you at all, actually. I think you're gonna be all right.
I love Alan.
Alan for life.
ALAN Forever, that was amazing. All right, I claim this one and you might be disappointed. LisTener Tale How do I break it to my family? That me shitting my pants in first grade led to a red-eyed demon guy haunting us.
How do you, for all you folks that can't read this along with me, it's shitting s-h-i-d-d-i-n-g.
Shitting.
Shitting it says hello.
Attached is a size 14 font double space. Putiful. Hope y'all enjoy and much love, much love, hello my lovelies.
My name is Natalie, Natalie, there you go, you can use my name and I'm from Mass.
Hey Massachusetts gal, hey.
Unfortunately, from Western Mass, where it's all farms. Hey, I'm going there tonight. I'm so pretty, though. But who doesn't love the smell of fresh cow shit at 7am on the way to work? who doesn't?
No, hate to cows because they're cute, but man, they're stanky. Truth. You know, I kind of want cows, I like, really want like baby cows and like, I know they'll grow up.
I was just gonna say they will not stay baby cows.
No, I'm aware, but then I could continue to have baby cows, baby cows, but I need a bull for that, I guess.
You sure do.
Yeah, and a much bigger yard.
And, uh, experience with that kind of shit.
Yeah, but I do want baby cows, so I know every listener.
I do want baby cows, though.
I do want baby cows. At the end of the day, I'm just gonna start getting like, weird contacts.
Sure, are.
Anyways, I know every listener tale starts out with gushing over our love for y'all, but I'm still gonna do it, so suck it.
Absolutely.
I was first introduced to you guys by my sister and I fell so deeply in love with the podcast. I love the way you guys write and talk about these cases. Please don't ever stop.
Aw, thanks.
Thank you. I got my mom hooked on the pod, and the first episodes I had her listen to was the John Wayne Gacy series. Probably ruined her lovely flight to Tennessee, but sorry, not sorry mom, that was an interesting flight for mama.
I even got my boyfriend to listen to some episodes with me. Side note, He usually doesn't like podcasts and doesn't believe in paranormal spoopy ghosties like What, who am I dating? And he loves the pod too. Aw, I love it.
Thanks everybody. Every time there's a new episode, I get so excited to listen to y'all's banter. it makes my heart so happy. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
You make my heart so happy.
Uh, agreed.
Anyways, here is the time that me shitting my pants.
Scary, red-eyed demon dude haunting my family. Smiley face, smiley face. My sister was also drafting a story about this, but that was a while ago and I don't know if she sent it in. So sorry sis, love ya.
I love it.
So it all started on that day in first grade. The one where you sit in a circle on the hard floor, sharing your name and your favorite color. Now it is important to say that I have had GI issues ever since I was born and also had terrible acid reflux.
On the on the GI issues. So whatever little Natalie had eaten that morning, boom straight to my asshole, ready to come out like a rocket. Needless to say, really had to shit. I remember sitting on my knees, bouncing up and down, anxiously, waiting for the right moment to ask my teacher to go to the bathroom. Isn't it so fucked up that we have to ask another human being for permission to use the fucking facilities?
Like, you wouldn't have never had to shit on the floor if that was the case.
No, you should never have to ask. You should just be like, I'm going to the bathroom if somebody needs to take like, a little kid, you know?
Or, or anything like, even if you're an adult, go to the bathroom.
Just go to the bathroom.
Little me was experiencing social anxiety very young and was gaining consciousness at the time. And realized I could talk whenever I wanted to. And it wasn't just automatic. And that made me nervous. So my dying question of Miss, can I please go to the bathroom? was lodged in the back of my throat, fighting to come out. Oh, that's so sad.
I had waited until I really could not hold it any longer, she said. No.
Oh, fuck that teacher, I hate. that's bullshit. Don't tell a little first grader they can't go to the bathroom.
Honestly, one of the first things I'm going to teach my kids when they go to school is that. Like, if anybody ever tells you you can't go to the bathroom, laugh at them and make your way to the bathroom.
Yeah, one thing you shouldn't say no to is a little kid saying I have to go to the bathroom.
Seriously, like, who the fuck do you think you are?
That's bullshit.
Like, excuse me, miss teacher, but what you're gonna deny that? I have to shit right now? This second in my pants? Wow, okay, the lady easily could, I bet. After this, she never said no to anyone. Probably not.
You taught her a lesson.
This lady would have easily been the beginning of my villain story. So not being able to go to the bathroom, I had no other option than to shit in my pants. There probably was another option. No, there wasn't. But oh well, that was dramatic.
I love you. So after it happened, my teacher then told me I could go to the bathroom. That is like, cruel, yeah, she's a bitch.
Like, So she gave you a nice, traumatic, embarrassing moment. Fuck you teacher.
What the fuck am I supposed to do?
If this specific teacher is listening right now, fuck you.
Fuck you, your booty is not dummy thick. No, it is not, man. I wanted to slap her, but off I went waddling to the bathroom.
I did in fact flush my underwear down the toilet because I really just wanted to hide that. I just did that. I want to hug you. They probably did find out after having massive plumbing issues, but I digress.
Good, I hope they did.
Yeah, they deserved them. I had my mom pick me up and we drove to visit my uncle at the house he was working on. At least I think that's what was happening, I don't know.
I was young. I don't know how, how we got there, but we somehow ended up at this three-story house that my uncle was renting out as apartments. I remember playing outside and barely remember anything about inside this house, but I remember it being spooky. Fast forward to a few years ago, I found out that this house was hella haunted, the third floor specifically.
So my uncle, he was very much in tune with the paranormal I used to babysit for him.
He would tell me stories about that house. It all started when he first began working there. He always felt a presence and it, quote-unquote, lived on the third floor. He told me it had red eyes, and that's the only feature of this entity that he could make out besides a dark shadow. I did some research, and Demons with red eyes were once a legend, known as the Legend of the....
Weed.
Weed road Ogan, maybe, which began in the Flanders region of Belgium in the late 17th century.
And were believed to be victims of a cannibalistic shapeshifter.
Damn.
It's said that he seeks his skin to become whole again as the demonic figure he once was. Jesus that's giving buffy.
Yeah, it is serving Buff Watch the Re-watcher if you're not watching it yet, Yeah, it's funny as fuck.
You like listener tales, you'll like that.
You will love the re-watcher Go listen wherever you listen to podcasts. Wow, that's really ingrained in my fucking psyche.
That was just in there.
Yes, I think I say that in my sleep. During the 20th century, the ghostly being became known as the Necker the Necker. As part of a story told to children who stayed up past their bedtime that they would be eaten alive if they didn't go to sleep.
Damn, that'll get you off to Dreamland. Kind of scary. But this information plays a huge role. Later on, he knew not to mess with it, and he would try to ignore it. But Mr.
Demon Man had other plans.
He would look up and find himself walking across the room. Whatever this entity was was taking the form of my uncle. Like, imagine seeing yourself, but not yourself, standing right in front of you. Nah, I would have peaced the fuck out.
I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.
I was like, at my locker and she came up to me, I'm like, stop around, She's like, I can't.
A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls with a diagnosis.
The state tried to keep on the down low. Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, no, it's hysteria.
It's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem, or is it something else entirely?
Something's wrong here, something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical?
Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.
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This is when my uncle knew that this was more serious than he thought. We never went back to that house after that one day. My dad, however, would go occasionally over to help my uncle with the work. My dad was also very religious and also very in tune with the paranormal.
There was one day they were working on whatever project, and my dad remembers having this one intrusive thought just completely overtake his head. It was almost screaming at him, it was telling him that someone had hung themself in the attic and to go help them.
He told my uncle, knowing he would get it, they ventured to the attic and there was a rope hanging from a crossbar on the ceiling. My uncle said he had never been up there since he started fixing the place up, and he didn't know it was there. Below the rope, there was a box of old handwritten papers, but they never figured out what they were. That's so spooky and so tragic.
This aspect of the house was never fully figured out, and we have no idea how it plays into the rest of what happened. So spooky. After the house was completely renovated and ready to be rented out, shit started to go downhill. I think my uncle had made the tenants aware of the entity, but I can't quite remember. It was mainly the women that would be affected.
It started with sheets being tugged in the middle of the night. I don't like it, and then it progressed to grabbing the ankles of the wrists. I hate that, leaving bruises on their arms.
One story my uncle told me really gave me the chills. This only happened to one of the women. She woke up in the middle of the night, feeling really cold and off, like something was watching her. She was suddenly pinned down to the bed by her wrists and ankles and couldn't move. Her chest felt heavy, like something was pressing down on her.
She tried thrashing around to get out of the grip of this entity, it let go in the uneasy feeling she felt before was gone. She called my uncle the same night to tell him what happened. He went the next morning to swear the entity out of the house. There are so many other stories he told me about this house.
Moral of the story is, this entity was no fucking joke. Now let's go back to my stanky, younger self.
I was wondering, I was like, how does this connect?
I was like, Where does the poop correlate? The visit was short-lived and we went home and red eyes happily came home with us. What a dick.
What a dick, indeed.
Things quickly started to progress. My sister's hair would be pulled, I would be pushed down the stairs. Oh my God, I would remember being in the shower and feeling something grab at my shoulders.
Sounds pervy to me.
It's me too. Shit was whack, truly.
No one really knows this because it still scares me to this day. But this was also the time where I started experiencing sleep paralysis.
I'm sorry.
I know, or so I thought, but now I know it was this entity tormenting me. I would wake up not being able to move, and when I looked around, I saw the dark shadow and red eyes staring at me from the corner. This dream would happen at least once a week. I always had weird dreams, so I didn't really think anything of it at the time.
But this tormenting behavior continued for a few weeks, and my dad faced it eye to eye. It was around five or six in the evening and he was making dinner, He started to feel uneasy, like something was watching him. He looked over at the doorway that led to the porch, and there it was standing in the porch, directly in line with the doorway, watching what?
It had never showed itself the whole time it had been at our house and we didn't know it was the thing tormenting. My sister and I, my dad had put the pieces together and he was pissed. I mean, for obvious reasons, like if something was tormenting my young children, I'd go full mama bear and square up with any demon.
Hell yeah, let's go, let's go cage match.
My dad swore the entity out of our house, and it left as simple as that.
Damn, your dad is powerful.
He is, whatever this thing was only wanted to mess with people, and I'm happy it was nothing more than that. Where it left to, we don't know. But it was probably mad that my stanky ass walked into his home and stunk up the place and wanted to get back at me. So sorry, Fam.
I'm obsessed with you.
Although this isn't the reason Demon Guy followed us back home. What a coincidence. It was that the same, that it was the very same day I shitted my pants for a few years. This happened. My sister and I, and sometimes my dad would feel uneasy whenever we drove by the house.
I don't get the feeling anymore, which makes me wonder what our demon friend is up to now. Hope he's living the life, not being perverted or fucking with people's lives. Me too, but that's my story. If you want to hear the other tales of the house, let me know and I'll send them in.
We do send them in.
Send them in.
Best wishes and I hope y'all keep it weird, but not so weird that.
Take it away, ash. Not so weird that you're a teacher that tells a little kid that they can't go to the bathroom. So then they end up shitting their pants in your classroom. And you're like, Oh, actually, now you can go to the bathroom. Definitely keep it so weird that if that happens to you, you flush your underwear down the toilet. Because, fuck that school and that whole entire system. But don't keep it so weird that you bring a red-eyed demon home with you because you really don't want to experience that, and it sounds kind of messy bye.
Yeah, you know, you know.
You know what I mean?
I hadn't done like a good one in a while. Wow.
That was really good. And Natalie, Damn, that's all I have to say, just damn.
Damn, Natalie.
So should I read? because you'll read the other one? Should I read about the time I bought a demon house? yeah, or living in a notoriously haunted house?
You read whatever your little black heart desires.
I'm gonna go with notoriously, you know what it just like, spoke to me.
I thought you were going to, yeah, and it made me want to say, notorious.
That's what I was thinking. I was like, Duran, Duran.
It's called Um.
It's called we like we, right, you know?
I'm making a motion between our two heads.
And I'm like, it's called something I can't. Telepathy there it is.
There it is telepathy.
ESPN It's ESPN or something.
So, living in a notoriously haunted house, hope you guys enjoy this listener tale about the five years my family spent in the most well-known haunted house in our county.
Oh my God, I thought that said country, and I was like, in our country, like, what the fuck?
All right, let's see. You can probably tell from the title that this story is a doozy. I can let me tell you, my life has been one hell of a wild ride. The five years my family spent in this house is just the icing on the cake.
But first, allow me to introduce myself. Hey y'all, my name is Mary Grace and I'm from a small town in South Carolina.
Not such a pretty name, Mary Grace.
I know Mary Grace, feel free to say all that out loud. I found morbid about a year ago, when my commute to work was an hour and I desperately needed to kill time. You guys were exactly what I was looking for. I've been hooked since day one and now I listen to every one of your episodes while I'm going to bed at night.
Side note Not the best time to listen to stories of people being brutally murdered.
Yeah, I think they just did a study about that. You guys are all fucked.
Yeah, apparently you're all fucked, yeah.
I cannot tell y'all how many times I've considered writing about my haunted experiences. But even thinking about some of the things that happened put an uneasy feeling in my stomach. Today, however, I am determined to get it all out in writing, so here's to trying. It all started in August 2011, about three months before my 12th birthday, November 6th. My family had grown tired of the violence that had surrounded us in our Charlotte, North Carolina, neighborhood.
The last straw was drawn the day my mother was held at gunpoint in our front yard after bravely confronting the man. She saw running away with my brand new bicycle, the one they had spent months saving to buy me.
Oh my god, I love that. She was like, Listen up here, motherfucker, like, I will fuck you up.
We moved in with my grandparents that night and then to a different state entirely within weeks. I was just about to enter middle school and my sister the 10th was the 10th, my sister entering the 10th grade at the time. So we were not thrilled about the move, to say the least. However, my parents needed to heal from the violence and fear they had endured, and somehow mostly shielded my sister and me from good parents.
I know, right?
A Victorian home in the heart of a small town seemed like the place to do it. Hell yeah, it does so in. We moved box after box, we made the nearly 200 year old house a home.
This is like the beginning of the scariest movie.
It absolutely is, I love it. I remember feeling like I was in a castle. We went from a thousand square foot home to a nearly 4,000 square foot one, seemingly overnight.
Damn.
I was in awe of it. From the grand entryway to my massive bedroom with six windows, I couldn't believe it was all ours. I remember wondering how my parents could afford a place like that, but I didn't want to question it. I wouldn't find out until much later that. The rent was extremely low due to the inability to keep tenants occupying the space, a.k.a. Keep them from running out the door. Muttering about ghosts, that's right.
We had moved into a haunted house.
Let's go.
Strange events began occurring almost immediately after our move. It started small. One day, my uncle noticed candlesticks on the ground in the dining room. He figured they had fallen from the candle holders on the mantel, so he simply picked them back up and put them back in the candle holders. As he walked out of the room, he heard something smack the window.
He turned to look and the candlesticks were on the ground again, but this time on the other side of the room. Things like this continued. The candlesticks were moved or thrown so frequently that my mother eventually put them in a drawer.
Chairs would often slide across the room, glasses mysteriously fell from the cabinets and shattered lights turned themselves on and off at will. And playing cards would often be found spread neatly across the living room floor. One day I arrived home from school and went up to my room to feel to feed. I almost said, Feel my Gerbil.
To feel my gerbil, to feed my gerbil, as I did every day. I was shocked to find, and honestly, I never had a gerbil. They soft, They're probably soft, right? I think, our gerbils like the big hamsters.
Yeah, like the big hamsters.
They're probably soft.
What's the other, the other rodent that I'm thinking of?
Guinea Pig.
Yeah, I think, maybe. What are gerbils?
I don't know.
Remember when I asked where hamsters came from? Yep, I remember that, but you know what? Oh yeah, they're the same.
Mary Grace was shocked to find that the gerbil had passed away during the school day.
Oh my God, I'm sorry.
Heartbroken by the loss of my first pet, I found a shoebox and buried him in the backyard. Then I went downstairs to what we called a sitting room. This house had so many random rooms to feed my turtle. You wouldn't believe my shock to find that my turtle had passed the very same day. You.
Poor little baby, oh my god.
I chalked it up to bad luck for my very well cared for pets and buried him next to the gerbil.
Oh my God, I can't imagine how you felt.
It's awful. A few weeks later, I woke up in the middle of the night to a hand pressing the side of my face down into my pillow.
That probably wasn't great. I remember being paralyzed in fear until the next morning came. I was still shaken when I came down for breakfast and my mom said, Do you remember sleepwalking last night? I was confused as I'd never done that before. She continued Yeah, you came to my bedside and told me there was a man in your room.
I told you it was a bad dream to go back to bed. You turned around and left the room. My dad then added It's the weirdest thing mom told me about the sleepwalking. And it happened at about the same time that your dog came flying downstairs and curled up in a shaking ball in my lap. I feel it is important to note that dog hated my dad and never, ever sat with him.
Yeah, it is. That's a very important note.
That is an important note. Soon after that, I stopped sleeping much, I bet. It seemed that every time I closed my eyes, I would have an overwhelming feeling that someone was running towards me night after night.
I would sit in my room awake with the lights on, until eventually, exhaustion would take over, and I would crash until time to get up for school. I sat awake in my bed, re-reading to kill a mockingbird when something outside caught my eye. I looked out the window next to my bed to see a woman in a red dress standing on the sidewalk across the street. She had her hair fastened in a neat bun, and her dress seemed old-timey, I guessed, Victorian style.
She had stood there as if she was waiting for a ride. I watched her for a minute or two, and then her eyes shifted up to my bedroom window. I ducked down as quickly as I could, hoping she hadn't seen me spying. When I sat back up, she was gone.
I had all but forgotten about her. About a year later, I signed up to be a storyteller at the town's Halloween Cemetery tour. That's fucking awesome.
That's really fucking awesome.
I went in a week before Halloween to find out which person buried in the Confederate cemetery I would be impersonating. Her name was Marie Wallace, the older of the Wallace sisters. During the war, her dad left home to fight with the confederacy. One day, she received correspondence from him that he would be returning home very soon. So she put on her favorite red dress, did her hair nicely, and walked to the town so that she may meet him when he arrived and accompany him home.
He didn't show. Day after day, she put on the red dress and went to town, and day after day she waited for her father, who never returned. Marie became known as the woman in red, that was the lady outside your window.
That's so scary and so sad.
Some nights, passerbys will see her standing in town waiting for her father, who never returned. When I read this information about her, my jaw dropped. I know with my whole heart that I saw her that night. Before I had even heard a whisper of this story. I saw Marie Wallace clear as day, stuck in a loop of hopeful anticipation. As I grew older, I became more and more accustomed to our living situation.
I never did sleep with the lights off in my room, but many nights I would fall asleep.
And the doors of my wardrobe and my room standing wide open, I don't like that. The wardrobe was there. When we moved in. Because I had no closet, I decided to keep it. It had a hook lock on the front that I always kept hooked into place.
But somehow, it never failed that. I would wake up to the wardrobe doors standing wide open many nights. As I laid awake, I would hear the laughter of a little girl in what sounded like a ball bouncing outside of my door. We believed the little girl to be Marie Scott, very popular name at the time. Marie was a five-year-old who died in the house. She was cooking over an open flame with her mother when suddenly her dress caught fire and she burned to death.
Jesus Christ.
There are accounts from the town's doctor and our historical library that read No amount of morphine could stop the screams of little Marie. The heat of the flames melted the fabric to her skin. She perished after a mere three hours. Jesus, my whole body is chilling right now.
Oh, that's horrific.
In total, we know about 20 deaths in the home after Marie's death. You better believe I am looking up this home.
Yeah, are we about to cover it?
After Marie's death, the family turned it into a boarding house and then eventually it became a birthing center after turning to a single family home.
This sounds like the murder house from AHS.
Yeah, many of the, you're right. Many of the deaths were, of course, mothers and babies. However, one death in particular happened in my bedroom. A woman was struck by a car in 1930 and was put in my room to rest.
It is said that she died before the doctor could arrive.
Ooh, that's freaky.
Eventually, due to matters out of our own hands, we were told to move and given very little notice to do so. The sweet landlord that we had fostered a friendship with passed at 94 years old, and her estranged son got the house we were living in. So once again, we packed up our lives to move. When we started packing, the activity in the house got insane. I was shoved down the stairs by something that I could clearly feel but not see, and I fractured my wrist.
Oh, wow. My sister came home from college to help with the move and complained that she could not sleep because she was being woken up at night by women cackling on the screen porch connected to her bedroom, just women cackling out on the bedroom.
Just vibing out there, just vibing, just having a fucking time. They were probably playing cards or some shit.
Hell yeah, just cackling. I kind of love that talking about the lady down the street and she's cheating on her husband. You know, they were just sitting there, gossiping, yeah, drinking sweet tea, you know?
Oh, living.
The crawlspace into the attic was constantly coming, open, furniture from downstairs was being found in the hallway. Upstairs furniture that was no more than 60 pounds became far too heavy for two people to pick up. It goes on and on.
I've never heard of that, that's wild.
I have also never heard of that, that's insane.
On moving day, I loaded all of my things to the foyer downstairs and did a quick sweep of the upstairs. After all the boxes from the foyer went on a trailer, my mom told me to do another sweep upstairs. Imperfect teenager. I rolled my eyes and stomped back up the stairs. You would never believe the way my heart started racing. When I found a pile of moving boxes neatly stacked in the center of my once empty home or room. I quickly loaded them onto the trailer and then told my mom that I was going to walk to the new house, two blocks away, still in the historic district.
After I left, my mom began waxing the floors upstairs or downstairs. She loved that house and wanted to leave it as close to perfect condition as she could midway through waxing. My granddad, a hardcore non-believer and all things spooky, yelled my mom's name in an alarmed tone. It wasn't until then that my mom realized all the hair on her head was standing up straight, as if someone was above, standing above her and pulling it. Oh, my God.
She quickly reached up and started smoothing it down. At this time, the front door swung open and then slammed shut, and the old-timey manual bell started ringing like crazy. They both made a beeline for the front door.
The first thing he saw before slamming it shut was a snake sliding down from the banister of the stairs. What?
Okay, Kraft.
I'm screaming.
Holy Cannoli.
So that's my story. There's so, so much more that happened while living there, but I just picked out the things that still stand out in my mind. I hope you enjoyed and that it didn't freak you out too much. It did. Nowadays, I get to sleep soundly in the dark, snuggled up to my soon-to-be husband.
June 4th, 2022 Baby, you're married. Oh, he's your husband, he's your husband.
And actually, it's like a little over a year, happy year anniversary. Oh yeah.
I was like, No, it's not, it's like a month.
No, it was last year. Yeah, congrats. I love this man with my whole heart and honestly wish I could introduce the whole world to him just so they could know how amazing he is. Oh my God, your love is beautiful.
I love your love. Thank y'all for enduring my lengthy tale. Keep it weird, I...
You're so sweet.
Marry Grace. That was compelling.
Incredible.
I can't believe you endured that. Seriously, I'm amazed by you. That was such a cool story. Holy shit.
That's a lot, man.
Holy shit.
We have time for one more.
We have time for one more.
Let's do one fucking more, let's do one fucking more.
I'm excited about these hauntings.
I love haunts, but I don't want one. This one is called Listener Tale about the time I bought a demon house.
Yay, demon houses.
Hello, Oh, I see a dog, sorry.
A doge.
I'm busy.
Oh, I see a dog. Sorry, I'm busy.
It was a dog that this person sent hello, ladies. I've attached a pa-da-fa and a couple of pictures to go along with the tale. About the time my husband and I bought a demon house with a ghost-infested dresser. It's a wild ride. Hello ladies.
My name is Desiree, yes, you may use my name. And I have been obsessed with the podcast for at least a year now, and it has been the highlight of many road trips for me.
Thank y'all.
Thanks, you guys are the absolute best at what you do and it's honestly the best part of my day to get to listen to you. Thank you. Okay, okay, enough of me being gushy about how amazing you are.
I recently listened to The Listener Tale from Brad and his Crazy House, and I just knew that I finally had to submit mine. I remember Brad's tale that was wild.
That was wild.
Actually, it's in this folder. Hearing his story made me feel so validated for what I went through. So Brad, if you're listening to this, you're not alone in living in a crazy-ass house. We are in this together, Bud. I want to apologize in advance because this story is a little long.
I'm also not a writer, so if there's any errors in this, sorry y'all, I never claimed to be a writer.
Never apologize.
I don't apologize. As far as trigger warnings go, I mentioned night terrors, thoughts of suicide and blood, but only mildly. Anyway. Here we go. I met my husband, Drew Ah.
Drew-siver, Drew-siver.
Drew-Drew When I was 15, we began dating right away. I met my soulmate and I'm so thankful that I had him to go through this experience with.
All of your loves are beautiful. I know Allen and C and her, like, What is it? or D? Excuse me.
And her stupid thick, no, no, dummy, thick, dummy thick booty.
I'm like, here for all of your loves.
I love love, even when it's about dummy thick booties. Well, we got married, we got married in 2013 when I turned 20. And bought his grandparents home, where his father and his siblings had grown up. We couldn't have been any more excited. However, that was short-lived because we barely had signed the papers for the house. When one of his aunts asked me if I was sure I wanted to move into a haunted house.
Aw, come on.
Cue me looking into the camera like I'm on an episode of the office.
Like, is she fucking serious? Like? She waited till we signed the papers.
Like, Stanley, is he the fucking serious guy? Come on. Oh wow, you just looked like him. I looked like Stanley, you did the mouth thing that Stanley does.
Yes, exactly.
Me being me, I just thought she was joking. That was until nearly every sibling had chipped in at some point about their experiences as well. They ranged from hearing voices to being held down in bed. I feel like this should have been said before we agreed to buy the house, but whatever.
I told myself I'd just be Zach Baggins for a bit, just for a bit. After all, how bad could it be me saying that line was the worst thing I ever could have said?
We've all been there, yep.
Now, my husband and I did what every good horror movie tells you not to do. And we decided to renovate the entire house. oh no, not just a few cans of paint and new appliances, kind of renovation, but we completely gutted the house.
Oh, no.
Uh-oh, you're waking them all up, I'm worried.
But sue me for wanting to have the house of my dreams, never, never. If I was going to be living in a haunted house, then I was damn sure going to make it worth it. Hell yeah.
We decided we were going to gut the downstairs, where our master bedroom and main living space was. Use the upstairs for storage and update it as we could in one of the bedrooms upstairs. There was a very beautiful, very old dresser that had plate stating, and it was, Oh, I can read, it was a very old dresser that had a plate stating. It was made in 1912..
Because the mirror wasn't even hazy like most old pieces tend to be, and it was huge. It was so big that they actually had the upstairs built around it because it wouldn't fit down the stairwell. That's awesome, that's wild. Something about that seemed weird to me, too, but whatever.
It was just a dresser.
Yeah.
It's important to note that during this time, my husband worked out of state in Pennsylvania. So he was only home on one or two weekends a month. Which meant that I was alone in that house quite a bit. During the day, I would go into one of the bedrooms upstairs to try to unpack our things, but I would always avoid being up there at night. I can't describe it, but there was just a bad feeling up there, so much so that I couldn't even walk by the bottom of the stairs after dark either. We had a small Yorkie. Yes, I will attach a photo just for you. Oh, thank you.
I was literally so excited. Who wouldn't walk past the stairs either? He would walk up to them, then back his way into the next room without taking his eyes off the top of the stairs. He had never even tried to step so much as a paw onto the steps, but one day he got brave.
Before something startled him. And he jumped from the top and fell all the way down the wooden steps with such force that he slammed into the wall at the bottom. He was completely fine, thank God, but he never went over there again. Mikey just almost shot himself, Mikey almost shitted his pants.
Shitted, shitted.
Shitted the whole time, I almost shitted also.
Shitted.
Worried? But the whole time we worked on the house, we experienced small things.
Those kinds of things. I told myself that if that was as bad as it got, then I was fine. It was weird, but I could deal with it. One night, not too long after moving in, I was asleep in our bed when I could hear what sounded like footsteps above my head from the upstairs bedroom. But I wrote it off, saying it was probably just the house cracking and popping. I made it in instead of ing.
The house was built in the 40s, so it was older and not unheard of. To make some noise, I went back to sleep, not giving it another thought until the next day when I went upstairs to unpack more things. And there was a tote sitting in the hallway that I most definitely did not leave there again. I was determined not to draw attention to the happenings, so I just moved the tote back in the room. That night, the same thing happened, only I could hear heavy things being moved across the floor. I got out of bed and locked my bedroom door, because, yeah, ghosts totally can't get through a locked door, right?
Insert eye roll here. Honestly, I feel that way too, though.
I spent the rest of the night listening to the movement upstairs. The next day, sure enough, all the boxes and totes had been moved to one side of the room, away from the dresser. If that wasn't scary enough, there were thousands of dead flies on the opposite side of the room.
Oh, that's when, you know.
Oh, and that probably smelled so yuck-us.
That's Damon.
Oh, I hate it. If there's one thing I've learned from spending my free time watching ghost hunting shows on television, it's that. Dead flies are commonly associated with demonic activity or evil.
See, you know.
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