November 5, 2024 • 27 mins
Therésa reveals that she applied for a new pet of sorts. But instead of a chic black cat purring on her lap, Therésa was assigned a giant owl as a familiar who wreaks at Haunting HQ. As feathers fly, we dive into Steven's chilling tale: shadowy figures at a secluded religious retreat, nightly visitations, and ghostly encounters that plagued him for years—until a life-altering event finally brought him peace.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
THERÉSA (00:19):
Hello, my haunting crew. Welcome back, Welcome back. I hope
everyone had a fantastic Halloween. I spent the evening appearing
to strangers and making prolonged, unsettling eye contact with only
one member of a large group. Oh my god, Len Len,
how did that get out of cage?
LEN (00:37):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (00:39):
Just grab it, Merlin. No, no! So I applied for
a familiar, you know, cute little animal who typically belongs
to a witch and has ties to the physical and
spiritual realms, thinking I'd get like a black cat or
maybe a golden doodle. Well, in what I have to
(00:59):
assume is the do of my old caseworker, Sharon, who
I didn't even think wanted to see me cross over
by the way, I've ended up with a great horned owl.
Ugh I have to feed him four live mice a day,
and he coughs up whatever he can't digest.
MERLIN (01:15):
[BURP]
THERÉSA (01:17):
It's like halfway between a hoot and a burp. I'm
calling them hurps and no, not like Len's flaky cold sores.
These are phlegmy globs of bone, teeth and fur we
keep finding around the studio. It's disgusting. I mean, before Purgatory,
I was a California vegan, which is essentially just a
regular vegan, except when you're at Nobu, Mastro's, or blackout drunk. Merlin, down! Oh,
(01:43):
He keeps mounting Len. We think he's trying to mate,
which I can actually understand. I've always thought Len looks
a little like an owl, not much of a blinker.
LEN (01:52):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (01:55):
It's okay. Some people just aren't.
MERLIN (01:56):
[HURP]
THERÉSA (01:59):
Oh great, another hurp. While Len cleans that up, let's
get into today's episode. This story comes to us from
Steven in North Carolina, whose life took on a supernatural
hue after an unexplainable encounter during a religious retreat. I
once attended a religious retreat, well sort of. I tried
peyote at Burning Man with a guy who referred to
(02:20):
himself as a wisdom keeper. After the purging ended, we
cried together for eight hours and then baptized ourselves in
a neighboring camp's water reserves. Turns out he wasn't a
wisdom keeper after all. He was just some guy who
worked the Enterprise counter at the Reno Airport. But it
was still pretty profound.
STEVEN (02:41):
I'm Stephen, and I saw something terrifying while on a
religious retreat. I grew up in a small town in
North Carolina, just outside of Winston Salem, right in the
heart of the Bible Belt. And so, I grew up
(03:01):
very religious. I was the poster child for Southern Methodism.
I got involved in a lot of youth group activities,
mission trips, youth retreats, mostly with the churches that I attended,
but I got involved with a faith community that was
(03:23):
very secretive. Essentially, the idea of this community was weekend retreats.
You would sponsor people to go and they spend the
weekend going to worship services, listening to talks, hearing messages,
(03:44):
and at the end of the weekend, there's big celebration.
But we were not allowed to tell anybody what was
going to go on for the weekend. What they don't
know is the people sponsoring them are there behind the
scenes entire time. We're there making sure meals get cooked
(04:05):
and activities are set up, rooms are clean. The fact
that we weren't supposed to tell other people strikes me
as a lot weirder now than it did then. I
remember one time I was at the retreat. It was
(04:25):
a camp that was run during the summer as a camp,
but also was a horse farm. It was out off
the highway, in the middle of nowhere, not a lot
of people around. I was all jazzed from this worship
service that night. I was eighteen. I was all full
(04:45):
of bravado. I sat there and I thought, okay, I'm
on like a spiritual high.
So little Christian Steven did something you should never do.
I challenged the darkness. I essentially said, I feel like
(05:06):
I could take on anything spiritually right now. That was
a mistake. As I said that, out of the corner
of my eye, I saw this shape shoot across the field.
I thought, oh, horse ran across the field, but it
(05:29):
was too fast. This thing crossed a horse pasture in
one or two seconds. I turned and followed where it
had gone, and I saw that there were these three trees,
two trees kind of behind one, forming a little triangle
of trees. So I followed where the shadow had gone.
(05:52):
And there's this silhouette of a human being, no features,
no anything. It was completely shadow, just black, and it's
sitting on the ground, leaning against one of the trees,
the front one. It's sitting on the ground, knees up
(06:17):
to its chest, hands resting on its knees. I close
my eyes, like, that's not real. I could feel that
it was looking at me. I open them up, and
there it is. I start moving around the area. I'm like,
(06:42):
the moon's probably catching the light weird. There's shadows here
and there.
It stays that same sort of figure no matter what
perspective I'm looking at. And I realize as I'm moving,
its head is turning following me. At this point, I'm terrified.
(07:05):
I closed my eyes and I said, this isn't real.
I opened my eyes. Now there's three shadow fingers and
each of them is leaning against one of the trees. Okay,
three shadow figures. At this point, I'm a good little
(07:31):
religious boy, and I just start praying "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be
thy name." I pray every prayer I can think of
because I'm terrified, but I stop because my curiosity got
the better of me. It sounds like a dumb thing
that someone would do in a horror movie. But I
(07:55):
start asking out loud, what are you doing? What are you?
No response, and then I rattled off a few more questions,
no response, and then I said, what do you want?
(08:18):
And the front shape snapped his head to the side
and turned and looked at the building where all of
the campers and retreat attendees were, and then turned its
head back. "Our father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come." So I turned my back on this
(08:39):
and started praying I was just terrified "and lead us
not into temptations, but deliver us from evil," and when
I opened my eyes, they were gone. About that time,
my friend stepped outside. He's standing over on the porch,
(09:01):
just enjoying the evening. He came over and could tell
I was clearly rattled, and so I'm explaining to him
what's happening, saying, yeah, they clearly wanted something, and he
looked over at the building where everyone is. About that time,
one of the adults comes walking up to me and
he said, your person that you sponsored has had a seizure.
(09:28):
She will be leaving. And I said, when did it happen?
He said about ten minutes ago, which was about the
time that figure turned and looked at that building. Later
(09:50):
that night, I was in the same room sleeping with
the same buddy who had stepped out, so he knew
the experience. I felt like somebody was taking a forearm
and pushing on my throat and I started freaking out.
We started doing the prayer thing again and it did stop.
(10:15):
I went to sleep, and I figured that was the weirdest,
strangest incident that has ever occurred. But that's when things
got weird.
THERÉSA (10:33):
Oof. I do not envy Stephen. Shadow figures are nasty spirits.
Carol in accounting is one, and she is extremely unpleasant, especially
when she's auditing expense reports. And yes, I needed the
entire collection of Rhode peptide lip tints because I can't
commune with the living if my lips are chapped. Anyway,
(10:55):
I respect Stephen's tenacity. We need to take a quick
break to hear from our sponsors. But when we get back,
we'll see what horrors lie in store for Stephen. Oh,
good timing, Merlin, that was nice.
(11:16):
I think you just need to stay extremely still.
LEN (11:22):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (11:22):
Great horned owls mate for life, Len. He clearly thinks
you're his partner. If you try to pull away, it's
just gonna upset him more.
LEN (11:35):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (11:35):
Len, I said don't pull away!
LEN (11:35):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (11:35):
Well, I'm not the one who let him get out
of his cage. Merlin, Merlin, you want a mouse, mousey mouse?
Quick under the table now while he's distracted. Whoever thought
birds should live indoors should be committed. As if we're
meant to just coexist beside a living, breathing dinosaur. It's insane.
(11:59):
Not the talons, not the talons, Oh God! I hate this fucking bird!
STEVEN (12:07):
After that experience at the retreat, a lot of different
things happened. One of the big things that took place
for the next close to ten years was I experienced
auditory sleep paralysis at least twice a week. I didn't
see demons, I didn't see a man in a top
(12:30):
hat or the things a lot of people talk about.
I sleep on my stomach, so I would be laying
there and I could not open my eyes. No matter
how hard I tried, I couldn't get them to open.
(12:50):
All I could do was lay there and listen and feel.
I could feel breath on my neck, just this breathing.
I could feel the heat of that breath, you know
(13:11):
when someone's whispering in your ear. The only way I
could get it to go away wasn't falling back asleep.
It was saying that Lord's prayer.
"Our father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come, thy will..." Eventually it would stop. I
(13:35):
was fully conscious and cognizant for these experiences. I one hundred percent
believe that I was being visited by something. Something residual
was sticking to me. I was scared to go to
sleep because in those moments, I was the most terrified
(13:58):
that I had ever been. And to this day, it's
still the scariest thing I've ever experienced. Over the years,
I graduated college, I got married. During that time, a
lot of one-off, strange experiences happened. I would be in
(14:22):
places that I didn't know had history. I would feel things,
I would be able to tell someone something about the
place I'm in, just a historical fact, something of that nature.
One time I was on a historical tour western North Carolina.
(14:46):
We're walking through this big mansion and there's this big
empty tile room that used to be a pool that's
been drained. I'm in there and I start freaking out
out and I have to step out because I'm hearing things.
I could hear splashing and screaming. It sounded like if
(15:13):
you've ever been to an apartment pool on a summer day.
The kids are playing and they're horsing around, they're laughing.
Some of them sound like they're a little unhappy. But
there's no water in the pool. There's no one there,
there's nothing there. That's when I stepped outside. I went
(15:39):
up to one of the people who worked there later
and I said, someone died in that pool. And they
said no, And I said, no, someone died in that pool.
So one of the guides talked to another guide and
turns out a young boy had drowned in that pool.
(16:02):
There's absolutely no way I would have known that. I
a few times heard things that weren't there. I saw
things that weren't there. Or at least they couldn't be explained.
I know, right now it all sounds like I'm talking
about mental illness, But I saw psychologists neurologists, and they
(16:27):
were like, nope, we've got no explanation for you. You
aren't experiencing any other symptoms of any known mental illness.
All these little one off experiences and strange things came
to a head in the summer of 2019. My ex-wife
(16:53):
was pregnant with our first child. She was a high
school drama teacher. I decided, okay, well I'll go with
her up to the school and I will help her
just organize her office for the upcoming school year. I
went in there, the AC's out turned on a bunch
(17:16):
of fans. I decided I was going to alphabetize all
the plays on the shelves that were just strewn about
from last school year. There were a lot. And as
I'm doing it, I start hearing this creak, crack, click
(17:38):
coming from out on the stage. Her office is on
the side of the stage. There's two dressing rooms in
the back of the stage and then her office, so
it's backstage along with everything else. I step onto the
stage and there's nothing out there. I'm thinking, okay, I'm
(18:05):
hearing things. You know, I'm in here by myself. The
AC is probably just kicking on and off. It's fine,
So I go back into the office. I heard a
loud crack, go outside, nothing there, go back in, loud crack,
(18:33):
step onto the stage. Nothing.
The auditorium's dark, and I am just standing there on
this stage looking out, unable to see the seats. I realized,
as I was thinking about it, it can't be the
AC cutting on and off because the AC is broken.
(18:55):
Got a little spooked and I decided I was going
to go back into the office so I step back
in and I'm alphabetizing plays, and I had a large
stack that was ready to go on the shelf. So
I grabbed this stack and I turned to place it
on the shelf. And when I do, no more than
(19:17):
twelve inches from my face, there's the face of a woman.
I go flying backwards into the table. Plays go everywhere.
I'm just laying on the ground at this point, I
look up and there's this woman, probably in her late twenties.
(19:42):
She has long brown hair, She's wearing a brown dress.
She's seen better days. She looked ragged. She didn't look angry,
she didn't look happy. She just kind of stared at me,
almost quizzically. She was there for maybe five seconds, and
(20:06):
then she was gone. I'm freaked out, and I decide
I'm leaving for the day. Two and a half months later,
my daughter's born. That is when everything stops. I had
never envisioned myself being a dad growing up. We went
(20:30):
through the pregnancy and I was stressed and scared. Rowan
was born and all of that fear went away. I
wasn't worried about whether or not I was going to
be a good dad, because if you truly love it.
You're going to be good at it.
(20:50):
I had been having that auditory sleep paralysis experience twice
a week for years. After she was born, I slept
through the night every night. A few years before Rowan
(21:11):
was born, I lost my father suddenly. He passed away
in his sleep. We were close, we were friends. He
was the funny guy at every party. I was an
only child and my parents always wanted another child. He
(21:33):
did communicate growing up. He was always little bummed he
never got the chance to have a little girl. He
told me for years that one day he was going
to have a granddaughter and he was going to love
on her, and I wasn't going to be able to
stop him from giving her all the candy and toys
and everything that she ever wanted. Unfortunately, he never got
(21:56):
a chance to meet her.
Rowan was born. Knowing that she never got to meet
her grandfather, or her Papu as he would have wanted
to be called. It's Greek for grandfather. A few months
after my dad died, I had a dream. I was
(22:20):
sitting in a restaurant in a booth with my back
to the door. I heard Hey, pal. That's what my
dad always called me growing up. I turned around and
I remember saying you can't be here, you're dead, and say, yeah,
I am dead. Let's talk. I knew it was a dream,
(22:41):
but we talked and it gave me closure, and he
told me at the end, I've got your back, like
I'm gonna look out for you and your family. After
Rowan was born, I thought to myself, all this stopped.
Maybe now that I have a family, he really does
(23:03):
have my back.
Weird little things would happen. She would always just kind
of look off into the corner and smile. I would
see her on the baby monitor six seven in the morning.
She's standing in her crib, jumping up and down, and
she is laughing, I mean hysterically, like she has seen
(23:26):
the funniest thing she has ever seen in her life.
She's two at this point she's laughing, and I walk in.
I say, hey, what's so funny. She points at the
corner and she says, Paoo, Pa-poo, funny man. There was
no way she would have known that he wanted to
(23:48):
be called Papu. He always loved to make kids laugh.
That was his thing. He would do anything, He would
make a fool of himself to make a kid laugh
and so for her to be standing there laughing her
ass off, it gave me the feeling that he's got
(24:09):
my back. Seeing all of that and seeing her reaction,
and knowing my dad, I one hundred percent believe that
he is there, she is seeing him, and he's got us.
THERÉSA (24:27):
This had a way happier ending than I was expecting.
I was sure he was done for when we got
to the part about the lady in the Bookshelf, I
thought the scariest thing about high school theater was realizing
your drama teacher peaked as an understudy in an off-off-Broadway
production of Our Town. Papu to the rescue, I guess.
Let's take another quick break and we'll be right back
(24:54):
And we're back. Merlin has finally settled a bit. Right
now he's trying to preen Len. It's actually kind of sweet.
I had hoped my conduit to the physical realm would
be a little sexier with a smaller eye-to-skull ratio, but
Merlin is really starting to grow on me. I like
how his ear tuffs are purely aesthetic. And he can
(25:15):
turn his head almost fully around like that girl in
The Exorcist. Who's a spooky boy? Mamma's apex predator. Well,
Len's got hurps to clean up and I need to
figure out how to leash an owl. But we'll see
you all next time for more Haunting. And remember, if
(25:38):
you have a spooky story to share, email us at
HauntingThePodcast@gmail.com and you could be featured on an upcoming episode.
Bye for now.
CREDITS (25:50):
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 Podcasts. Haunting is created and executive produced by Nancy Glass,
(26:11):
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
(26:33):
sound design 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 Mibe Music. Special thanks
to Speakeasy Sound Studios in Burbank, California. For more shows
from iHeart Podcast and Glass Podcast, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(26:54):
Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Hello, my haunting crew. Welcome back, Welcome back. I hope
everyone had a fantastic Halloween. I spent the evening appearing
to strangers and making prolonged, unsettling eye contact with only
one member of a large group. Oh my god, Len Len,
how did that get out of cage?
LEN (00:37):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (00:39):
Just grab it, Merlin. No, no! So I applied for
a familiar, you know, cute little animal who typically belongs
to a witch and has ties to the physical and
spiritual realms, thinking I'd get like a black cat or
maybe a golden doodle. Well, in what I have to
(00:59):
assume is the do of my old caseworker, Sharon, who
I didn't even think wanted to see me cross over
by the way, I've ended up with a great horned owl.
Ugh I have to feed him four live mice a day,
and he coughs up whatever he can't digest.
MERLIN (01:15):
[BURP]
THERÉSA (01:17):
It's like halfway between a hoot and a burp. I'm
calling them hurps and no, not like Len's flaky cold sores.
These are phlegmy globs of bone, teeth and fur we
keep finding around the studio. It's disgusting. I mean, before Purgatory,
I was a California vegan, which is essentially just a
regular vegan, except when you're at Nobu, Mastro's, or blackout drunk. Merlin, down! Oh,
(01:43):
He keeps mounting Len. We think he's trying to mate,
which I can actually understand. I've always thought Len looks
a little like an owl, not much of a blinker.
LEN (01:52):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (01:55):
It's okay. Some people just aren't.
MERLIN (01:56):
[HURP]
THERÉSA (01:59):
Oh great, another hurp. While Len cleans that up, let's
get into today's episode. This story comes to us from
Steven in North Carolina, whose life took on a supernatural
hue after an unexplainable encounter during a religious retreat. I
once attended a religious retreat, well sort of. I tried
peyote at Burning Man with a guy who referred to
(02:20):
himself as a wisdom keeper. After the purging ended, we
cried together for eight hours and then baptized ourselves in
a neighboring camp's water reserves. Turns out he wasn't a
wisdom keeper after all. He was just some guy who
worked the Enterprise counter at the Reno Airport. But it
was still pretty profound.
STEVEN (02:41):
I'm Stephen, and I saw something terrifying while on a
religious retreat. I grew up in a small town in
North Carolina, just outside of Winston Salem, right in the
heart of the Bible Belt. And so, I grew up
(03:01):
very religious. I was the poster child for Southern Methodism.
I got involved in a lot of youth group activities,
mission trips, youth retreats, mostly with the churches that I attended,
but I got involved with a faith community that was
(03:23):
very secretive. Essentially, the idea of this community was weekend retreats.
You would sponsor people to go and they spend the
weekend going to worship services, listening to talks, hearing messages,
(03:44):
and at the end of the weekend, there's big celebration.
But we were not allowed to tell anybody what was
going to go on for the weekend. What they don't
know is the people sponsoring them are there behind the
scenes entire time. We're there making sure meals get cooked
(04:05):
and activities are set up, rooms are clean. The fact
that we weren't supposed to tell other people strikes me
as a lot weirder now than it did then. I
remember one time I was at the retreat. It was
(04:25):
a camp that was run during the summer as a camp,
but also was a horse farm. It was out off
the highway, in the middle of nowhere, not a lot
of people around. I was all jazzed from this worship
service that night. I was eighteen. I was all full
(04:45):
of bravado. I sat there and I thought, okay, I'm
on like a spiritual high.
So little Christian Steven did something you should never do.
I challenged the darkness. I essentially said, I feel like
(05:06):
I could take on anything spiritually right now. That was
a mistake. As I said that, out of the corner
of my eye, I saw this shape shoot across the field.
I thought, oh, horse ran across the field, but it
(05:29):
was too fast. This thing crossed a horse pasture in
one or two seconds. I turned and followed where it
had gone, and I saw that there were these three trees,
two trees kind of behind one, forming a little triangle
of trees. So I followed where the shadow had gone.
(05:52):
And there's this silhouette of a human being, no features,
no anything. It was completely shadow, just black, and it's
sitting on the ground, leaning against one of the trees,
the front one. It's sitting on the ground, knees up
(06:17):
to its chest, hands resting on its knees. I close
my eyes, like, that's not real. I could feel that
it was looking at me. I open them up, and
there it is. I start moving around the area. I'm like,
(06:42):
the moon's probably catching the light weird. There's shadows here
and there.
It stays that same sort of figure no matter what
perspective I'm looking at. And I realize as I'm moving,
its head is turning following me. At this point, I'm terrified.
(07:05):
I closed my eyes and I said, this isn't real.
I opened my eyes. Now there's three shadow fingers and
each of them is leaning against one of the trees. Okay,
three shadow figures. At this point, I'm a good little
(07:31):
religious boy, and I just start praying "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be
thy name." I pray every prayer I can think of
because I'm terrified, but I stop because my curiosity got
the better of me. It sounds like a dumb thing
that someone would do in a horror movie. But I
(07:55):
start asking out loud, what are you doing? What are you?
No response, and then I rattled off a few more questions,
no response, and then I said, what do you want?
(08:18):
And the front shape snapped his head to the side
and turned and looked at the building where all of
the campers and retreat attendees were, and then turned its
head back. "Our father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come." So I turned my back on this
(08:39):
and started praying I was just terrified "and lead us
not into temptations, but deliver us from evil," and when
I opened my eyes, they were gone. About that time,
my friend stepped outside. He's standing over on the porch,
(09:01):
just enjoying the evening. He came over and could tell
I was clearly rattled, and so I'm explaining to him
what's happening, saying, yeah, they clearly wanted something, and he
looked over at the building where everyone is. About that time,
one of the adults comes walking up to me and
he said, your person that you sponsored has had a seizure.
(09:28):
She will be leaving. And I said, when did it happen?
He said about ten minutes ago, which was about the
time that figure turned and looked at that building. Later
(09:50):
that night, I was in the same room sleeping with
the same buddy who had stepped out, so he knew
the experience. I felt like somebody was taking a forearm
and pushing on my throat and I started freaking out.
We started doing the prayer thing again and it did stop.
(10:15):
I went to sleep, and I figured that was the weirdest,
strangest incident that has ever occurred. But that's when things
got weird.
THERÉSA (10:33):
Oof. I do not envy Stephen. Shadow figures are nasty spirits.
Carol in accounting is one, and she is extremely unpleasant, especially
when she's auditing expense reports. And yes, I needed the
entire collection of Rhode peptide lip tints because I can't
commune with the living if my lips are chapped. Anyway,
(10:55):
I respect Stephen's tenacity. We need to take a quick
break to hear from our sponsors. But when we get back,
we'll see what horrors lie in store for Stephen. Oh,
good timing, Merlin, that was nice.
(11:16):
I think you just need to stay extremely still.
LEN (11:22):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (11:22):
Great horned owls mate for life, Len. He clearly thinks
you're his partner. If you try to pull away, it's
just gonna upset him more.
LEN (11:35):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (11:35):
Len, I said don't pull away!
LEN (11:35):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (11:35):
Well, I'm not the one who let him get out
of his cage. Merlin, Merlin, you want a mouse, mousey mouse?
Quick under the table now while he's distracted. Whoever thought
birds should live indoors should be committed. As if we're
meant to just coexist beside a living, breathing dinosaur. It's insane.
(11:59):
Not the talons, not the talons, Oh God! I hate this fucking bird!
STEVEN (12:07):
After that experience at the retreat, a lot of different
things happened. One of the big things that took place
for the next close to ten years was I experienced
auditory sleep paralysis at least twice a week. I didn't
see demons, I didn't see a man in a top
(12:30):
hat or the things a lot of people talk about.
I sleep on my stomach, so I would be laying
there and I could not open my eyes. No matter
how hard I tried, I couldn't get them to open.
(12:50):
All I could do was lay there and listen and feel.
I could feel breath on my neck, just this breathing.
I could feel the heat of that breath, you know
(13:11):
when someone's whispering in your ear. The only way I
could get it to go away wasn't falling back asleep.
It was saying that Lord's prayer.
"Our father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come, thy will..." Eventually it would stop. I
(13:35):
was fully conscious and cognizant for these experiences. I one hundred percent
believe that I was being visited by something. Something residual
was sticking to me. I was scared to go to
sleep because in those moments, I was the most terrified
(13:58):
that I had ever been. And to this day, it's
still the scariest thing I've ever experienced. Over the years,
I graduated college, I got married. During that time, a
lot of one-off, strange experiences happened. I would be in
(14:22):
places that I didn't know had history. I would feel things,
I would be able to tell someone something about the
place I'm in, just a historical fact, something of that nature.
One time I was on a historical tour western North Carolina.
(14:46):
We're walking through this big mansion and there's this big
empty tile room that used to be a pool that's
been drained. I'm in there and I start freaking out
out and I have to step out because I'm hearing things.
I could hear splashing and screaming. It sounded like if
(15:13):
you've ever been to an apartment pool on a summer day.
The kids are playing and they're horsing around, they're laughing.
Some of them sound like they're a little unhappy. But
there's no water in the pool. There's no one there,
there's nothing there. That's when I stepped outside. I went
(15:39):
up to one of the people who worked there later
and I said, someone died in that pool. And they
said no, And I said, no, someone died in that pool.
So one of the guides talked to another guide and
turns out a young boy had drowned in that pool.
(16:02):
There's absolutely no way I would have known that. I
a few times heard things that weren't there. I saw
things that weren't there. Or at least they couldn't be explained.
I know, right now it all sounds like I'm talking
about mental illness, But I saw psychologists neurologists, and they
(16:27):
were like, nope, we've got no explanation for you. You
aren't experiencing any other symptoms of any known mental illness.
All these little one off experiences and strange things came
to a head in the summer of 2019. My ex-wife
(16:53):
was pregnant with our first child. She was a high
school drama teacher. I decided, okay, well I'll go with
her up to the school and I will help her
just organize her office for the upcoming school year. I
went in there, the AC's out turned on a bunch
(17:16):
of fans. I decided I was going to alphabetize all
the plays on the shelves that were just strewn about
from last school year. There were a lot. And as
I'm doing it, I start hearing this creak, crack, click
(17:38):
coming from out on the stage. Her office is on
the side of the stage. There's two dressing rooms in
the back of the stage and then her office, so
it's backstage along with everything else. I step onto the
stage and there's nothing out there. I'm thinking, okay, I'm
(18:05):
hearing things. You know, I'm in here by myself. The
AC is probably just kicking on and off. It's fine,
So I go back into the office. I heard a
loud crack, go outside, nothing there, go back in, loud crack,
(18:33):
step onto the stage. Nothing.
The auditorium's dark, and I am just standing there on
this stage looking out, unable to see the seats. I realized,
as I was thinking about it, it can't be the
AC cutting on and off because the AC is broken.
(18:55):
Got a little spooked and I decided I was going
to go back into the office so I step back
in and I'm alphabetizing plays, and I had a large
stack that was ready to go on the shelf. So
I grabbed this stack and I turned to place it
on the shelf. And when I do, no more than
(19:17):
twelve inches from my face, there's the face of a woman.
I go flying backwards into the table. Plays go everywhere.
I'm just laying on the ground at this point, I
look up and there's this woman, probably in her late twenties.
(19:42):
She has long brown hair, She's wearing a brown dress.
She's seen better days. She looked ragged. She didn't look angry,
she didn't look happy. She just kind of stared at me,
almost quizzically. She was there for maybe five seconds, and
(20:06):
then she was gone. I'm freaked out, and I decide
I'm leaving for the day. Two and a half months later,
my daughter's born. That is when everything stops. I had
never envisioned myself being a dad growing up. We went
(20:30):
through the pregnancy and I was stressed and scared. Rowan
was born and all of that fear went away. I
wasn't worried about whether or not I was going to
be a good dad, because if you truly love it.
You're going to be good at it.
(20:50):
I had been having that auditory sleep paralysis experience twice
a week for years. After she was born, I slept
through the night every night. A few years before Rowan
(21:11):
was born, I lost my father suddenly. He passed away
in his sleep. We were close, we were friends. He
was the funny guy at every party. I was an
only child and my parents always wanted another child. He
(21:33):
did communicate growing up. He was always little bummed he
never got the chance to have a little girl. He
told me for years that one day he was going
to have a granddaughter and he was going to love
on her, and I wasn't going to be able to
stop him from giving her all the candy and toys
and everything that she ever wanted. Unfortunately, he never got
(21:56):
a chance to meet her.
Rowan was born. Knowing that she never got to meet
her grandfather, or her Papu as he would have wanted
to be called. It's Greek for grandfather. A few months
after my dad died, I had a dream. I was
(22:20):
sitting in a restaurant in a booth with my back
to the door. I heard Hey, pal. That's what my
dad always called me growing up. I turned around and
I remember saying you can't be here, you're dead, and say, yeah,
I am dead. Let's talk. I knew it was a dream,
(22:41):
but we talked and it gave me closure, and he
told me at the end, I've got your back, like
I'm gonna look out for you and your family. After
Rowan was born, I thought to myself, all this stopped.
Maybe now that I have a family, he really does
(23:03):
have my back.
Weird little things would happen. She would always just kind
of look off into the corner and smile. I would
see her on the baby monitor six seven in the morning.
She's standing in her crib, jumping up and down, and
she is laughing, I mean hysterically, like she has seen
(23:26):
the funniest thing she has ever seen in her life.
She's two at this point she's laughing, and I walk in.
I say, hey, what's so funny. She points at the
corner and she says, Paoo, Pa-poo, funny man. There was
no way she would have known that he wanted to
(23:48):
be called Papu. He always loved to make kids laugh.
That was his thing. He would do anything, He would
make a fool of himself to make a kid laugh
and so for her to be standing there laughing her
ass off, it gave me the feeling that he's got
(24:09):
my back. Seeing all of that and seeing her reaction,
and knowing my dad, I one hundred percent believe that
he is there, she is seeing him, and he's got us.
THERÉSA (24:27):
This had a way happier ending than I was expecting.
I was sure he was done for when we got
to the part about the lady in the Bookshelf, I
thought the scariest thing about high school theater was realizing
your drama teacher peaked as an understudy in an off-off-Broadway
production of Our Town. Papu to the rescue, I guess.
Let's take another quick break and we'll be right back
(24:54):
And we're back. Merlin has finally settled a bit. Right
now he's trying to preen Len. It's actually kind of sweet.
I had hoped my conduit to the physical realm would
be a little sexier with a smaller eye-to-skull ratio, but
Merlin is really starting to grow on me. I like
how his ear tuffs are purely aesthetic. And he can
(25:15):
turn his head almost fully around like that girl in
The Exorcist. Who's a spooky boy? Mamma's apex predator. Well,
Len's got hurps to clean up and I need to
figure out how to leash an owl. But we'll see
you all next time for more Haunting. And remember, if
(25:38):
you have a spooky story to share, email us at
HauntingThePodcast@gmail.com and you could be featured on an upcoming episode.
Bye for now.
CREDITS (25:50):
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 Podcasts. Haunting is created and executive produced by Nancy Glass,
(26:11):
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
(26:33):
sound design 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 Mibe Music. Special thanks
to Speakeasy Sound Studios in Burbank, California. For more shows
from iHeart Podcast and Glass Podcast, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(26:54):
Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
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