October 29, 2024 • 28 mins
Therésa, preparing for her first Halloween in purgatory reveals her next “brilliant” business idea. Don’t worry, she still introduces us to two chilling sagas, and both are vintage. That’s right; good old-fashioned haunted house stories are sure to keep you up at night.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
THERÉSA (00:19):
Hello, Hello, Welcome back, Ghouls and Girls. This is Haunting,
Purgatory's top podcast.
LEN (00:26):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (00:27):
Only podcast which still makes it the top, Len. It's
called spin. Where we share listener-submitted spooky stories that are
guaranteed to raise the hairs on the back of your
neck or not if you're me. I had all of
my body hair follicles dissolved in a non-FDA-approved experimental procedure
in Istanbul, hair transplant capital of the World, which, of
(00:48):
course is neither here nor there since I'm dead and
wasting what would have been my hottest years here in Purgatory,
for the rest of time. So anyway, it's a very
exciting time for the in-between. It's Halloween.
LEN (01:02):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (01:03):
Oh, you're right, almost Halloween. Although, if I were still alive,
I'd say Halloween is practically over. If you have any
semblance of a social life, it's the weekend before that
really counts. I used to throw an annual Halloween party,
Ghoul Gala, a night of nefarious, naughtiness and wanton witchy wonder.
One year, I went as a sexy toucan, which was
iconic except the beak made it almost impossible to eat
(01:26):
or drink, mingle, dance or flirt with the DJ. It
was the best though MySpace Tom showed up, but I
broke into my dad's stash of quaaludes from like the eighties.
Everyone started taking their clothes off and the zombies became
like real zombies.
LEN (01:43):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (01:45):
Oh right, Sorry, getting off track. We want to hear
how you're planning to celebrate Halloween this year, so drop
us a note in the comments and we might just
liven up your holiday with an unexpected visit from the
great beyond. MySpace Tom style! Now let's get into it.
Today we're keeping it classic with two good old fashioned
haunted house stories. Our first comes to us from Roger,
(02:08):
who was tormented in his neighbor's old farmhouse. I know
what you're thinking. In a different context, it sounds quaint, charming.
It's giving Chip and Joanna, the Barefoot Contessa. Well not
for Roger.
STORY A (02:23):
My brother and I are sleeping there overnight. We're in
the living room and this sound wakes me up. I
knew what the sound was immediately. There's this big oak
rocking chair that sat in the living room. This thing
weighed at least one hundred and twenty five pounds. I
(02:45):
heard it creaking. I look around. The chair's not in there.
It's been moved, but I can still hear it. I
start following this sound and I can see that this chair
(03:05):
is perched at the top of the basement stairs. It
was rocking back and forth without slowing down. I reached
forward to grab it, and it stopped in that forward position,
and then it flew forward and broke into a bunch
(03:26):
of pieces falling down the stairs. My name is Roger,
and this is the story of the haunting of the
farmhouse that I was babysat in. We were living in
the middle of nowhere in the Midwest on a farm.
I was just a kid at the time. My mom
(03:47):
worked a lot of different graveyard shifts, and often my
brother and I would end up at a house down
the road with a family that also had children of
a similar age, and some strange things started to happen.
It was a small house, one story with a large basement.
(04:08):
The mom and dad typical Midwest farm couple, you know.
Mom stayed home, the father was great with kids. They
had an older daughter, Jackie, who was my age, and
they had a younger daughter, Susie, who was about five
years old, and she had an imaginary friend. We always
tried to involve her, but she just wanted to play
with her imaginary friend. My brother and I are sleeping
(04:32):
there overnight. We're in the living room. He was on
one sofa, I was on the other one, and they
had one of those old tiny radios on the corner
of the room. And it turned on in the middle
of the night and started changing stations. That scared the
(04:52):
shit out of my brother and I. If you know
anything about these old time radios, everything in that is mechanical,
you actually got to physically turn the knob. It cannot
change to another station without that knob. I don't know
what it was, but something did indeed move that knob.
(05:17):
My brother and I are sitting there looking at each other freaked out.
He told me to shut it off. I was too
scared to go shut it off. I said, you shut
it off. So he crept across the room in the
dark of night, with the only thing illuminating it being
a little bit of light coming from the front of
the radio itself. He didn't know how to shut it off,
so he just went and plugged it. The thing with
(05:42):
the radio happened at least five or six times. We
told our mom this place as scary as hell and
this is what happened, but she just kind of passed
it off as us being imaginative or making it up
or ,you know, outright lying. We didn't really feel that
we had any option about where we were going to
get babysat when she was at work, so we were stuck.
(06:05):
So one day I was in this house, dinner's about ready,
and the father told me to go grab Susie out
of her room. I had looked in her room and
I had stopped in the doorway, and I had said, "hey,
Susie it's time for dinner", and she was just having a little
(06:26):
classic tea party. She had the little cups out and
some little stuffed animal friends and her imaginary friend was sitting
across from her, she says, well, I'm busy playing, And
I said, well, I don't care if you're busy planning,
your dad said it's dinner time, and I was about
to walk in. She told me that her imaginary friend
did not want me to come in and told me
to stay out. And as I went to step into
(06:49):
that room, the door slammed in my face. That little
girl was fifteen feet away from that door. I totally
freaked out. I went and ran back and got the dad.
I told him what happened. I said, I tried to
get her, and the door slammed in my face. He goes in there and he tries to
open the door. Susie! Susie! He can't get the door open.
(07:14):
The door was not locked. You just couldn't open it.
He's yelling her name, Susie! Dead silence in the room.
The dad kicks the door in. Little Susie was just
sitting there in the middle of the floor like she
was before, completely unaffected, and just looked over and said,
(07:37):
I told you he didn't want you to come in.
I'm a little scared of this little girl at this point.
When she was in a room by herself with her
imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you, and
you felt like something else was looking at you too.
The best way I could describe it is that feeling
(07:59):
of a predator watching you, Like walking by a house
with a dog chained up in the yard that would
clearly just love to get a bite of you.
One night, I hear all this commotion in the kitchen
cupboard just opening and slamming, dishes clinking, silverware rattling. I don't
(08:25):
know any other way to put this. It didn't seem
to be sounds that a person could accomplish. It wasn't
the sound of somebody getting the bowl out or whatever.
The only thing that I could compute at the time,
I thought that like the entire family had gotten up
and it was doing some kind of crazy thing in
the kitchen, because it didn't seem to be anything that
like one person would do. So I wake up and
the lights were off in the kitchen, I went in there.
(08:46):
I turned the kitchen lights on. My brother was with me,
and what we saw, I mean, it sticks with me
to this day. We were sitting there slack jaw looking
at all this stuff. All of the cupboards were open.
Everything had been removed from the cupboards, pots, pans, plates,
cereal boxes, canned goods, et cetera, and had been stacked
(09:07):
on the counters and on the table. It wasn't just
haphazardly piled up like a cup with a bowl on top,
with a jar of spaghetti sauce and then a wooden
spoon balanced on that and then something on that. Somebody
would have had to go in there for hours and
hours and hours trying to do this. The parents woke up,
(09:32):
came in and my brother the very first thing, he says,
we didn't do it. They said, we know you didn't
do it. Go back to bed, and they just kind
of casually and calmly spent the next hour, hour and
a half putting all this stuff away, and not another
word was said about it. Two or three weeks later,
(09:56):
they're having a barbecue. The mom asked me to go
see if I can find Susie. So I run around
outside for a little bit first, and then I said,
you know, I gotta go check in the house, so,
you know, yelling her name, Susie! Susie! Walk down the hall,
look in her room. She's not in there. And then
I hear this creaking. It was the sound the floor
(10:21):
made when you were on the tire swing downstairs, because
it was hooked into the rafters in the basement. And
when the tire swing would go just you know that,
you could hear the whole house. And I hear it.
I was like, oh, you know, she's downstairs. She would
sometimes play in the basement in the pitch black with all
the lights off with her imaginary friend. Now I open
(10:42):
up the basement door. It was pitch black down there. So
I turned the light on and I called her name,
Susie Susie! No response. As I come down the stairs,
that fight or flight feeling starts creeping up on me,
you know, that feeling of a predator stalking up on you.
(11:05):
And I see the swing swinging by itself. All of
a sudden, this tire swing goes boom, swinging all the
way up, nailing the ceiling. Boom, boom, boom. I turned
and ran up the stairs. I was so terrified running
(11:29):
back up those steps that the door was going to shut.
Ran through the kitchen to the outside Susie's standing right
out there eating a hamburger. After that, my brother and
I told our mom that if she ever sent us
back to that house, we were going to run away.
I have no doubt in my mind there was something
(11:50):
very real and supernatural happening in that home. Because I
saw it and experienced it for myself. It convinced me forever that
there are unseen and unknown things that we're not privy to.
I think one of the real tragedies of people that
this happens too, is that you have nowhere to go.
THERÉSA (12:12):
Yikes. Roger raises a good point, though. A hearty paranormal
infestation can really upend your life. I wonder if hauntings
are covered by homeowners insurance. That's actually not a bad idea. Len,
write that down. We'd make a killing, especially this time
of year. We could call it Haunt Safe
LEN (12:31):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (12:33):
Ooh, Ghoul Guard. That's good. While we work on this,
let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors.
Becoming a homeowner is an exciting accomplishment, a cornerstone of
(12:54):
the American dream. But what happens when that dream becomes
a nightmare? Did you move into a new home just
to discover a Satanic cult spent the better part of
the seventies conducting blood sacrifices in the basement, or maybe
the dysentery stricken Victorian children in the attic haven't gotten
(13:14):
the move-on memo yet. That's where Paranormal Protect comes in.
With Paranormal Protect, you can take comfort knowing you're safeguarded
from all the afterlife has to offer. Paranormal Protect- Just
because they won't rest in peace, doesn't mean you can't.
Eh pretty good, right, I think we're onto something here,
(13:35):
and our next guest would make for the perfect first customer.
For most kids, grandmother's house is synonymous with good times,
new toys, endless sugar highs, that one hot cousin who
taught you to smoke. Hi Colin. But for Andrea and
her sister, time spent at their grandmother's house wasn't all
stale Werther's and shag carpet. They were up against something
(13:56):
much more sinister.
STORY B (14:05):
The minute you walked in, you're just kind of on
edge and hoping you don't experience something that you don't
want to experience. There really wasn't a moment where you
didn't feel like someone else was in the room with
you in that house. My name is Andrea, and I
was always terrified of my grandmother's house. I lived at
(14:28):
my grandmother's house until I was about four or five.
I don't have a lot of memories living there, but
what I do have is a ton of memories of
visiting my grandmother. Her house always had a creepy presence.
It was over one hundred years old. When my grandmother,
(14:53):
my mom, and her siblings moved in. It was just
a small farmhouse, and then over the years my grandfather
put in an addition. It's my understanding that once the
addition was put on, things started to happen. Something came
alive in the house. I don't know if it was
the work or whatever. It was like a disturbance. One
(15:19):
of my oldest memories was that we would never want
to be on the second floor of that house alone ever.
And so if you have to go to the bathroom,
you're making someone wait in the outside hallway for you
while you go. You're never going upstairs alone period. The
minute that I would get to the top of the stairs,
(15:42):
I would get this eerie feeling. The energy felt thicker
and heavy. I always felt like I was being watched.
I never felt like I was alone. And there were
certain areas like this one long hallway that was always dark.
(16:02):
I don't think I can remember a time where a
light was on in that hallway. There wasn't a doubt
in my mind that if I looked down that hallway
at the wrong moment, I would see a figure. The
feeling of the house is really heavy, especially on the
second floor. All the grandchildren felt it, But you know,
(16:27):
we weren't the only ones with these experiences or these feelings.
I remember growing up hearing a story about my mom when
she was a teenager walking up the stairs, she would
hear footsteps behind her and my aunt she would have
sleep paralysis, and when she would wake up, she thought
she saw someone hovering above her. My cousin once said
(16:52):
she saw a figure, and just weird things would happen,
and you just never felt comfortable. All of the activity
would happen, mostly on the second floor or in the
new part of the house. The house was an old nunnery,
and there was a woman who ran the nunnery that
(17:15):
passed away there on the second floor. Whether it was
family lore or this place was haunted by this woman
we were terrified of being in this house alone. The
most terrifying part of the house was the second floor.
At the top of the stairs, on the landing, you
(17:39):
can go left and walk down the hallway. Directly at
the end of the hallway was a bathroom that no
one would ever want to use, and if you made a
right that's where my grandmother's room is. She considered herself
very witchy, and when my grandmother would babysit us, in one
(18:00):
of the rooms at the end of the hallway to
pass the time, she would get the granddaughters together and
do little seance ceremonies, and I remember thinking, I can
barely go to the bathroom alone in this house. I
cannot believe we're doing a seance. But it was really
(18:20):
entertaining and a good way to pass time with your grandma.
I never liked sleeping at my grandmother's house. I was
always at my cousin's house. I was always at sleepovers
with my family. I really disliked sleeping there. The minute
(18:41):
you walked in for a family party or for a sleepover,
you're just kind of on edge and hoping you don't
experience something that you don't want to experience. It was
always in the back of your mind. I have like
thirty cousins. We all feel this way. It wasn't just me.
There was always stress around where we were going to sleep.
(19:05):
I just knew I would never get a good night's sleep.
One night, when we were staying with my grandmother, we
were sleeping in her bedroom with her. It was just me,
my grandmother, and my sister. We were watching TV. We
get in our jammies. We all pile into the bed.
(19:29):
I managed to get into the middle. My grandmother's on
my right, my twin sister's on my left. In addition
to the three people, my grandmother's one hundred pounds great Dane,
Dominique is at the end of the bed, all of
us packed in. I really had to fight to be
in the middle. I felt safest in the middle. It
(19:54):
was a really nice night out. There was a really
great breeze, the window was cracked, the room felt cool.
So we're all snuggled really comfortable under the blankets, and
so we're watching for like an hour, enjoying. I think
it was NYPD Blue, And eventually my grandmother dozes off.
(20:20):
Before she fell asleep, she had let us know that
the way that the TV worked was if you turned
it on from the TV, it would go but if
you had the remote, you could actually control the channels.
And then out of nowhere, Dominique starts to get agitated.
(20:42):
She was sleeping on the foot of the bed. She
went from like a restful snoring to on alert. Her
ears are up and she's looking at the TV, you know,
a low growl like hm hmm, and the television just
turns off and then all of a sudden it turns
(21:08):
back on and it's just snow. It was almost like
the scene out of the Poltergeist, where it's just the
white noise and the TV fuzz. Dominique starts to get
(21:29):
her hackles up. She's getting more and more agitated. My
sister and I already don't trust this house. We're immediately
on edge and the channel starts to change another channel.
We're grabbing the remote. We're trying to turn it on
and off. It's not working. The dog's really uncomfortable moving
(21:54):
around in the bed. It's jarring to see a dog nervous,
but like a big hundred pound protective dog that agitated
was really scary. We were just, you know, trying to
shake my grandmother and saying, someone's turning off and on
the TV. She is just like, oh, it's nothing. It's
(22:17):
the wind. It's the wind, And I'm just like, it
has nothing to do with the wind. The wind's not
touching the button on the television. Instinctively, I was like,
she's gone through this so much, she doesn't care. But
that only terrified me more because this is a reoccurring thing.
(22:43):
Neither one of us wanted to get out of the bed.
We were too afraid. The journey from the bed to
the window, I mean it was probably three feet but like,
what if we got off the bed and something grabbed
our feet. I had to take one for the team
and close the window. That journey felt so long. I
(23:05):
scurried back into bed. So we're watching TV again and
we're like fine for a little bit, and then all
of a sudden, turns off and it happens again, turns
back on, channels change, and it continued to do this cycle,
(23:28):
turning off and on, changing channels even after we closed
the window. So we definitely knew it wasn't the wind.
There was something in the room and whatever was was
changing the channels and messing with the TV as we're
(23:50):
tossing and turning. We're not asleep yet. My sister and
I are just trying to calm ourselves down and we
hear someone come in the house. They're kind of making
a ruckus downstairs. We can hear them in the kitchen,
and then we hear them walk up the stairs and
(24:11):
walk down the hallway. We just hear like clobbering boots
walk up and down the hallway. We wake up our
grandmother and we're saying, I think someone's here, I
think someone's here. She's like, it's okay, it's just your uncle.
My uncle Paul lived at my grandmother's house, and so
(24:35):
we were like, oh, okay, he was out that night,
he came home late. Now he's home, And for whatever reason,
knowing he was up and around made us feel so
much better. There was something comforting in that, and so
we finally drifted off to sleep. The next morning, we
(24:59):
go downstairs. My grandmother's making coffee, were eating breakfast.
STORY A (25:07):
Paul called. Paul had not come home from the night before.
My sister and I looked at each other and couldn't
make sense of what we heard outside that room. The
only people in the house is me, my grandmother, and
(25:30):
my twin sister and Dominique, who was at the foot
of the bed all night. Who and what was making
those sounds the night before. I don't think I would
ever go back into that house alone at night. I
can't explain it. Clearly, the house is fucking haunted.
THERÉSA (25:58):
I appreciate the directness in this one most people really
beat around the bush when it comes to hauntings. But
my theory is when you know, you know, and she knew.
Let's take a moment for the real debutante of this story.
Dominique dutifully lying at the end of the bed, A
protective growl at the television set. Now that's a dog.
Ah. I love the idea of cozying up to a
(26:19):
sturdy Great Dane on a crisp fall night. All we
had growing up was our Chiweenie, Lady Macbeth, who was
rehomed after she chewed the handle of my mom's Birkin.
A taste for designer runs in the family. But let's
take a quick break, shall we.
(26:42):
Well, that's it for today. Thanks for tuning in. As always,
email us at HauntingThePodcast@gmail.com if you've had a paranormal experience
you'd like to share on the pod, and if you
haven't had a paranormal experience yet, Halloween is the perfect opportunity.
explore your neighbor's dusty old attic. Bust out the Ouija board. Seriously,
we get so many Ouija board stories. But whatever you
(27:05):
get up to this Halloween, be safe, have fun. And
if you see me haunting Heidi Klum's Halloween party, no,
you didn't. Keep the portals open and the veils thin.
Till next time.
CREDITS (27:20):
If you have a haunting story to share, please email
us at HauntingThePodcast@gmail.com, and if you like what you hear,
please like and subscribe. You can also follow us on
social media by searching for Glass Podcasts or by visiting glasspodcasts.com.
Haunting is a production of Glass Podcasts and partnership with
iHeart Podcast. Haunting is created and executive produced by Nancy Glass,
(27:41):
Andrea Gunning, Ben Fetterman, and Lauren Lapkus, and it is
hosted by Lauren Lapkus as their character Therésa. The show
is directed by Aleah Welsh and produced by Trey Morgan.
It is written by Aleah Welsh, with additional writing by
Nancy Glass, Trey Morgan, and Ben Fetterman. Additional production support
by Curry Richman and Todd Ganz. Additional voice acting by
Trey Morgan as the character producer Len Walker. Editing and
(28:03):
sound designed by Matt Delvecchio and mixed by Dave Saia.
Operations and production support by Kristen Melchiorre. Haunting's theme and
original compositions were composed by Oliver Baines and Dorry Macaulay
of Noiser. Music Library provided by Mybe Music. Special thanks
to Speakeasy Sound Studios in Burbank California. For more shows
from iHeart Podcast and Glass Podcast, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(28:24):
Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast
Hello, Hello, Welcome back, Ghouls and Girls. This is Haunting,
Purgatory's top podcast.
LEN (00:26):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (00:27):
Only podcast which still makes it the top, Len. It's
called spin. Where we share listener-submitted spooky stories that are
guaranteed to raise the hairs on the back of your
neck or not if you're me. I had all of
my body hair follicles dissolved in a non-FDA-approved experimental procedure
in Istanbul, hair transplant capital of the World, which, of
(00:48):
course is neither here nor there since I'm dead and
wasting what would have been my hottest years here in Purgatory,
for the rest of time. So anyway, it's a very
exciting time for the in-between. It's Halloween.
LEN (01:02):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (01:03):
Oh, you're right, almost Halloween. Although, if I were still alive,
I'd say Halloween is practically over. If you have any
semblance of a social life, it's the weekend before that
really counts. I used to throw an annual Halloween party,
Ghoul Gala, a night of nefarious, naughtiness and wanton witchy wonder.
One year, I went as a sexy toucan, which was
iconic except the beak made it almost impossible to eat
(01:26):
or drink, mingle, dance or flirt with the DJ. It
was the best though MySpace Tom showed up, but I
broke into my dad's stash of quaaludes from like the eighties.
Everyone started taking their clothes off and the zombies became
like real zombies.
LEN (01:43):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (01:45):
Oh right, Sorry, getting off track. We want to hear
how you're planning to celebrate Halloween this year, so drop
us a note in the comments and we might just
liven up your holiday with an unexpected visit from the
great beyond. MySpace Tom style! Now let's get into it.
Today we're keeping it classic with two good old fashioned
haunted house stories. Our first comes to us from Roger,
(02:08):
who was tormented in his neighbor's old farmhouse. I know
what you're thinking. In a different context, it sounds quaint, charming.
It's giving Chip and Joanna, the Barefoot Contessa. Well not
for Roger.
STORY A (02:23):
My brother and I are sleeping there overnight. We're in
the living room and this sound wakes me up. I
knew what the sound was immediately. There's this big oak
rocking chair that sat in the living room. This thing
weighed at least one hundred and twenty five pounds. I
(02:45):
heard it creaking. I look around. The chair's not in there.
It's been moved, but I can still hear it. I
start following this sound and I can see that this chair
(03:05):
is perched at the top of the basement stairs. It
was rocking back and forth without slowing down. I reached
forward to grab it, and it stopped in that forward position,
and then it flew forward and broke into a bunch
(03:26):
of pieces falling down the stairs. My name is Roger,
and this is the story of the haunting of the
farmhouse that I was babysat in. We were living in
the middle of nowhere in the Midwest on a farm.
I was just a kid at the time. My mom
(03:47):
worked a lot of different graveyard shifts, and often my
brother and I would end up at a house down
the road with a family that also had children of
a similar age, and some strange things started to happen.
It was a small house, one story with a large basement.
(04:08):
The mom and dad typical Midwest farm couple, you know.
Mom stayed home, the father was great with kids. They
had an older daughter, Jackie, who was my age, and
they had a younger daughter, Susie, who was about five
years old, and she had an imaginary friend. We always
tried to involve her, but she just wanted to play
with her imaginary friend. My brother and I are sleeping
(04:32):
there overnight. We're in the living room. He was on
one sofa, I was on the other one, and they
had one of those old tiny radios on the corner
of the room. And it turned on in the middle
of the night and started changing stations. That scared the
(04:52):
shit out of my brother and I. If you know
anything about these old time radios, everything in that is mechanical,
you actually got to physically turn the knob. It cannot
change to another station without that knob. I don't know
what it was, but something did indeed move that knob.
(05:17):
My brother and I are sitting there looking at each other freaked out.
He told me to shut it off. I was too
scared to go shut it off. I said, you shut
it off. So he crept across the room in the
dark of night, with the only thing illuminating it being
a little bit of light coming from the front of
the radio itself. He didn't know how to shut it off,
so he just went and plugged it. The thing with
(05:42):
the radio happened at least five or six times. We
told our mom this place as scary as hell and
this is what happened, but she just kind of passed
it off as us being imaginative or making it up
or ,you know, outright lying. We didn't really feel that
we had any option about where we were going to
get babysat when she was at work, so we were stuck.
(06:05):
So one day I was in this house, dinner's about ready,
and the father told me to go grab Susie out
of her room. I had looked in her room and
I had stopped in the doorway, and I had said, "hey,
Susie it's time for dinner", and she was just having a little
(06:26):
classic tea party. She had the little cups out and
some little stuffed animal friends and her imaginary friend was sitting
across from her, she says, well, I'm busy playing, And
I said, well, I don't care if you're busy planning,
your dad said it's dinner time, and I was about
to walk in. She told me that her imaginary friend
did not want me to come in and told me
to stay out. And as I went to step into
(06:49):
that room, the door slammed in my face. That little
girl was fifteen feet away from that door. I totally
freaked out. I went and ran back and got the dad.
I told him what happened. I said, I tried to
get her, and the door slammed in my face. He goes in there and he tries to
open the door. Susie! Susie! He can't get the door open.
(07:14):
The door was not locked. You just couldn't open it.
He's yelling her name, Susie! Dead silence in the room.
The dad kicks the door in. Little Susie was just
sitting there in the middle of the floor like she
was before, completely unaffected, and just looked over and said,
(07:37):
I told you he didn't want you to come in.
I'm a little scared of this little girl at this point.
When she was in a room by herself with her
imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you, and
you felt like something else was looking at you too.
The best way I could describe it is that feeling
(07:59):
of a predator watching you, Like walking by a house
with a dog chained up in the yard that would
clearly just love to get a bite of you.
One night, I hear all this commotion in the kitchen
cupboard just opening and slamming, dishes clinking, silverware rattling. I don't
(08:25):
know any other way to put this. It didn't seem
to be sounds that a person could accomplish. It wasn't
the sound of somebody getting the bowl out or whatever.
The only thing that I could compute at the time,
I thought that like the entire family had gotten up
and it was doing some kind of crazy thing in
the kitchen, because it didn't seem to be anything that
like one person would do. So I wake up and
the lights were off in the kitchen, I went in there.
(08:46):
I turned the kitchen lights on. My brother was with me,
and what we saw, I mean, it sticks with me
to this day. We were sitting there slack jaw looking
at all this stuff. All of the cupboards were open.
Everything had been removed from the cupboards, pots, pans, plates,
cereal boxes, canned goods, et cetera, and had been stacked
(09:07):
on the counters and on the table. It wasn't just
haphazardly piled up like a cup with a bowl on top,
with a jar of spaghetti sauce and then a wooden
spoon balanced on that and then something on that. Somebody
would have had to go in there for hours and
hours and hours trying to do this. The parents woke up,
(09:32):
came in and my brother the very first thing, he says,
we didn't do it. They said, we know you didn't
do it. Go back to bed, and they just kind
of casually and calmly spent the next hour, hour and
a half putting all this stuff away, and not another
word was said about it. Two or three weeks later,
(09:56):
they're having a barbecue. The mom asked me to go
see if I can find Susie. So I run around
outside for a little bit first, and then I said,
you know, I gotta go check in the house, so,
you know, yelling her name, Susie! Susie! Walk down the hall,
look in her room. She's not in there. And then
I hear this creaking. It was the sound the floor
(10:21):
made when you were on the tire swing downstairs, because
it was hooked into the rafters in the basement. And
when the tire swing would go just you know that,
you could hear the whole house. And I hear it.
I was like, oh, you know, she's downstairs. She would
sometimes play in the basement in the pitch black with all
the lights off with her imaginary friend. Now I open
(10:42):
up the basement door. It was pitch black down there. So
I turned the light on and I called her name,
Susie Susie! No response. As I come down the stairs,
that fight or flight feeling starts creeping up on me,
you know, that feeling of a predator stalking up on you.
(11:05):
And I see the swing swinging by itself. All of
a sudden, this tire swing goes boom, swinging all the
way up, nailing the ceiling. Boom, boom, boom. I turned
and ran up the stairs. I was so terrified running
(11:29):
back up those steps that the door was going to shut.
Ran through the kitchen to the outside Susie's standing right
out there eating a hamburger. After that, my brother and
I told our mom that if she ever sent us
back to that house, we were going to run away.
I have no doubt in my mind there was something
(11:50):
very real and supernatural happening in that home. Because I
saw it and experienced it for myself. It convinced me forever that
there are unseen and unknown things that we're not privy to.
I think one of the real tragedies of people that
this happens too, is that you have nowhere to go.
THERÉSA (12:12):
Yikes. Roger raises a good point, though. A hearty paranormal
infestation can really upend your life. I wonder if hauntings
are covered by homeowners insurance. That's actually not a bad idea. Len,
write that down. We'd make a killing, especially this time
of year. We could call it Haunt Safe
LEN (12:31):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (12:33):
Ooh, Ghoul Guard. That's good. While we work on this,
let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors.
Becoming a homeowner is an exciting accomplishment, a cornerstone of
(12:54):
the American dream. But what happens when that dream becomes
a nightmare? Did you move into a new home just
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the dysentery stricken Victorian children in the attic haven't gotten
(13:14):
the move-on memo yet. That's where Paranormal Protect comes in.
With Paranormal Protect, you can take comfort knowing you're safeguarded
from all the afterlife has to offer. Paranormal Protect- Just
because they won't rest in peace, doesn't mean you can't.
Eh pretty good, right, I think we're onto something here,
(13:35):
and our next guest would make for the perfect first customer.
For most kids, grandmother's house is synonymous with good times,
new toys, endless sugar highs, that one hot cousin who
taught you to smoke. Hi Colin. But for Andrea and
her sister, time spent at their grandmother's house wasn't all
stale Werther's and shag carpet. They were up against something
(13:56):
much more sinister.
STORY B (14:05):
The minute you walked in, you're just kind of on
edge and hoping you don't experience something that you don't
want to experience. There really wasn't a moment where you
didn't feel like someone else was in the room with
you in that house. My name is Andrea, and I
was always terrified of my grandmother's house. I lived at
(14:28):
my grandmother's house until I was about four or five.
I don't have a lot of memories living there, but
what I do have is a ton of memories of
visiting my grandmother. Her house always had a creepy presence.
It was over one hundred years old. When my grandmother,
(14:53):
my mom, and her siblings moved in. It was just
a small farmhouse, and then over the years my grandfather
put in an addition. It's my understanding that once the
addition was put on, things started to happen. Something came
alive in the house. I don't know if it was
the work or whatever. It was like a disturbance. One
(15:19):
of my oldest memories was that we would never want
to be on the second floor of that house alone ever.
And so if you have to go to the bathroom,
you're making someone wait in the outside hallway for you
while you go. You're never going upstairs alone period. The
minute that I would get to the top of the stairs,
(15:42):
I would get this eerie feeling. The energy felt thicker
and heavy. I always felt like I was being watched.
I never felt like I was alone. And there were
certain areas like this one long hallway that was always dark.
(16:02):
I don't think I can remember a time where a
light was on in that hallway. There wasn't a doubt
in my mind that if I looked down that hallway
at the wrong moment, I would see a figure. The
feeling of the house is really heavy, especially on the
second floor. All the grandchildren felt it, But you know,
(16:27):
we weren't the only ones with these experiences or these feelings.
I remember growing up hearing a story about my mom when
she was a teenager walking up the stairs, she would
hear footsteps behind her and my aunt she would have
sleep paralysis, and when she would wake up, she thought
she saw someone hovering above her. My cousin once said
(16:52):
she saw a figure, and just weird things would happen,
and you just never felt comfortable. All of the activity
would happen, mostly on the second floor or in the
new part of the house. The house was an old nunnery,
and there was a woman who ran the nunnery that
(17:15):
passed away there on the second floor. Whether it was
family lore or this place was haunted by this woman
we were terrified of being in this house alone. The
most terrifying part of the house was the second floor.
At the top of the stairs, on the landing, you
(17:39):
can go left and walk down the hallway. Directly at
the end of the hallway was a bathroom that no
one would ever want to use, and if you made a
right that's where my grandmother's room is. She considered herself
very witchy, and when my grandmother would babysit us, in one
(18:00):
of the rooms at the end of the hallway to
pass the time, she would get the granddaughters together and
do little seance ceremonies, and I remember thinking, I can
barely go to the bathroom alone in this house. I
cannot believe we're doing a seance. But it was really
(18:20):
entertaining and a good way to pass time with your grandma.
I never liked sleeping at my grandmother's house. I was
always at my cousin's house. I was always at sleepovers
with my family. I really disliked sleeping there. The minute
(18:41):
you walked in for a family party or for a sleepover,
you're just kind of on edge and hoping you don't
experience something that you don't want to experience. It was
always in the back of your mind. I have like
thirty cousins. We all feel this way. It wasn't just me.
There was always stress around where we were going to sleep.
(19:05):
I just knew I would never get a good night's sleep.
One night, when we were staying with my grandmother, we
were sleeping in her bedroom with her. It was just me,
my grandmother, and my sister. We were watching TV. We
get in our jammies. We all pile into the bed.
(19:29):
I managed to get into the middle. My grandmother's on
my right, my twin sister's on my left. In addition
to the three people, my grandmother's one hundred pounds great Dane,
Dominique is at the end of the bed, all of
us packed in. I really had to fight to be
in the middle. I felt safest in the middle. It
(19:54):
was a really nice night out. There was a really
great breeze, the window was cracked, the room felt cool.
So we're all snuggled really comfortable under the blankets, and
so we're watching for like an hour, enjoying. I think
it was NYPD Blue, And eventually my grandmother dozes off.
(20:20):
Before she fell asleep, she had let us know that
the way that the TV worked was if you turned
it on from the TV, it would go but if
you had the remote, you could actually control the channels.
And then out of nowhere, Dominique starts to get agitated.
(20:42):
She was sleeping on the foot of the bed. She
went from like a restful snoring to on alert. Her
ears are up and she's looking at the TV, you know,
a low growl like hm hmm, and the television just
turns off and then all of a sudden it turns
(21:08):
back on and it's just snow. It was almost like
the scene out of the Poltergeist, where it's just the
white noise and the TV fuzz. Dominique starts to get
(21:29):
her hackles up. She's getting more and more agitated. My
sister and I already don't trust this house. We're immediately
on edge and the channel starts to change another channel.
We're grabbing the remote. We're trying to turn it on
and off. It's not working. The dog's really uncomfortable moving
(21:54):
around in the bed. It's jarring to see a dog nervous,
but like a big hundred pound protective dog that agitated
was really scary. We were just, you know, trying to
shake my grandmother and saying, someone's turning off and on
the TV. She is just like, oh, it's nothing. It's
(22:17):
the wind. It's the wind, And I'm just like, it
has nothing to do with the wind. The wind's not
touching the button on the television. Instinctively, I was like,
she's gone through this so much, she doesn't care. But
that only terrified me more because this is a reoccurring thing.
(22:43):
Neither one of us wanted to get out of the bed.
We were too afraid. The journey from the bed to
the window, I mean it was probably three feet but like,
what if we got off the bed and something grabbed
our feet. I had to take one for the team
and close the window. That journey felt so long. I
(23:05):
scurried back into bed. So we're watching TV again and
we're like fine for a little bit, and then all
of a sudden, turns off and it happens again, turns
back on, channels change, and it continued to do this cycle,
(23:28):
turning off and on, changing channels even after we closed
the window. So we definitely knew it wasn't the wind.
There was something in the room and whatever was was
changing the channels and messing with the TV as we're
(23:50):
tossing and turning. We're not asleep yet. My sister and
I are just trying to calm ourselves down and we
hear someone come in the house. They're kind of making
a ruckus downstairs. We can hear them in the kitchen,
and then we hear them walk up the stairs and
(24:11):
walk down the hallway. We just hear like clobbering boots
walk up and down the hallway. We wake up our
grandmother and we're saying, I think someone's here, I
think someone's here. She's like, it's okay, it's just your uncle.
My uncle Paul lived at my grandmother's house, and so
(24:35):
we were like, oh, okay, he was out that night,
he came home late. Now he's home, And for whatever reason,
knowing he was up and around made us feel so
much better. There was something comforting in that, and so
we finally drifted off to sleep. The next morning, we
(24:59):
go downstairs. My grandmother's making coffee, were eating breakfast.
STORY A (25:07):
Paul called. Paul had not come home from the night before.
My sister and I looked at each other and couldn't
make sense of what we heard outside that room. The
only people in the house is me, my grandmother, and
(25:30):
my twin sister and Dominique, who was at the foot
of the bed all night. Who and what was making
those sounds the night before. I don't think I would
ever go back into that house alone at night. I
can't explain it. Clearly, the house is fucking haunted.
THERÉSA (25:58):
I appreciate the directness in this one most people really
beat around the bush when it comes to hauntings. But
my theory is when you know, you know, and she knew.
Let's take a moment for the real debutante of this story.
Dominique dutifully lying at the end of the bed, A
protective growl at the television set. Now that's a dog.
Ah. I love the idea of cozying up to a
(26:19):
sturdy Great Dane on a crisp fall night. All we
had growing up was our Chiweenie, Lady Macbeth, who was
rehomed after she chewed the handle of my mom's Birkin.
A taste for designer runs in the family. But let's
take a quick break, shall we.
(26:42):
Well, that's it for today. Thanks for tuning in. As always,
email us at HauntingThePodcast@gmail.com if you've had a paranormal experience
you'd like to share on the pod, and if you
haven't had a paranormal experience yet, Halloween is the perfect opportunity.
explore your neighbor's dusty old attic. Bust out the Ouija board. Seriously,
we get so many Ouija board stories. But whatever you
(27:05):
get up to this Halloween, be safe, have fun. And
if you see me haunting Heidi Klum's Halloween party, no,
you didn't. Keep the portals open and the veils thin.
Till next time.
CREDITS (27:20):
If you have a haunting story to share, please email
us at HauntingThePodcast@gmail.com, and if you like what you hear,
please like and subscribe. You can also follow us on
social media by searching for Glass Podcasts or by visiting glasspodcasts.com.
Haunting is a production of Glass Podcasts and partnership with
iHeart Podcast. Haunting is created and executive produced by Nancy Glass,
(27:41):
Andrea Gunning, Ben Fetterman, and Lauren Lapkus, and it is
hosted by Lauren Lapkus as their character Therésa. The show
is directed by Aleah Welsh and produced by Trey Morgan.
It is written by Aleah Welsh, with additional writing by
Nancy Glass, Trey Morgan, and Ben Fetterman. Additional production support
by Curry Richman and Todd Ganz. Additional voice acting by
Trey Morgan as the character producer Len Walker. Editing and
(28:03):
sound designed by Matt Delvecchio and mixed by Dave Saia.
Operations and production support by Kristen Melchiorre. Haunting's theme and
original compositions were composed by Oliver Baines and Dorry Macaulay
of Noiser. Music Library provided by Mybe Music. Special thanks
to Speakeasy Sound Studios in Burbank California. For more shows
from iHeart Podcast and Glass Podcast, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(28:24):
Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast
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