December 3, 2024 • 29 mins
As Theresà and Merlin continue to bond, we hear how Celene’s quiet babysitting gig spirals into terror when a child’s whispers reveal a menacing presence. Meanwhile, after years of praying, Kate finally gets an answer. Only it’s not what she was hoping for. Buckle up—curiosity has consequences!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
THERÉSA (00:20):
Yes, that's right, Merlin, good hoot! Welcome back everyone. It's
a busy day here at Haunting HQ. With the help
of a very high profile animal expert who shall not
be named rhymes with bleep Burbwin, I've started Merlin on
a strict clicker training program
a man man,
(00:41):
Yes, Len, fine. It was mandated after he attacked that
finance guy in Central Park. Merlin, down! Good boy. Luckily
they're doing incredible things with glass eyes these days. Also,
I'm about to meet with my new caseworker for the
first time. Some of you may remember, Sharon and I
had to part ways for personal reasons. She personally accused
(01:05):
me of verbal assault. Anywho, my new caseworker is some
guy named Lord Kingswell Herringbottom. He sounds stuffy, but no
one can be as bad as Sharon. All that matters
is that he gets me out of purgatory. Up or
down at this point, I don't even care. I've got
(01:25):
to run to my meeting, but I'm leaving you in
the very responsible hands of Celene, an experienced babysitter who
scored the ideal gig, the kind where you show up
for bedtime, raid the pantry and veg out to their
HBO subscription. Only we don't work in ideals here on Haunting,
so instead of a night of pop tarts and Sex
in the City, Celene's experience ended up being completely harrowing.
(01:49):
Take a listen.
STORY A (01:53):
The little girl was sitting next to me. We're watching TV,
and I will never forget this. She got up, turned
around really slowly, and she looked outside the window and
started screaming. So I got up and I turned around
and I saw this huge thing peering in. My name
(02:16):
is Celene. About ten years ago, the little girl I
was babysitting saw something in her closet. I started babysitting
just to make some extra money while I was in college.
I was babysitting through this app for a couple of years.
I would see about four to five families a week,
(02:37):
and I was babysitting this little girl for the very
first time. She was about three and a half turning four.
Her previous babysitter dropped out last minute, and I accepted
the job. The mom worked nights, so she needed someone later.
My boyfriend at the time picked me up and dropped
(02:58):
me off to the job. I got there at midnight,
right off the bat the house was freaky. It was
a little bit of an older house, overgrown garden, just
looked like a haunted house. She met me at the door,
gave me the instructions and said, my daughter's not sleeping
(03:21):
if you could just help her fall asleep. She showed
me in and then she left. I walked in. The
stairs were a little creaky. The lights didn't stay on.
They would flicker every now and then, so I was
(03:43):
already like, oh, that's weird.
The little girl was sitting in the middle of the
living room playing with her dolls. I tried playing with her.
She's a little quiet, playing in her own world. She
would give me like a doll to play with, but
not really talking too much. I tried to get her
(04:03):
to go in her room so we can maybe work
on trying to fall asleep. So I'm like, let's go
read a book. She just kept saying no, mm hmm,
and I'm like, come on, let's go. It's okay, I'll
go with you. We eventually do make it into her room.
She had a really cute room actually it was pink,
(04:25):
and she had a little canopy above her bed. She
had a little dollhouse to the side with her dolls.
As soon as we got into her room, she went
straight to her bed, laid down and was stiff, staring
at the corner, and said, I can't sleep. The baby's crying.
(04:47):
She was just laying there, not moving, pointing her finger,
telling me that a baby's crying. She just kept repeating,
the baby's crying. The baby's crying.
But she doesn't seem scared, just telling me this. We
were both looking up into the corner and nothing was there,
but she kept saying that there was a baby in
(05:07):
the corner. I'm not really thinking much of it at
this point. I just think she's a kid. She's saying
there's a baby. Maybe she's talking about her dolls. She
just keeps repeating it enough where I want to leave
the room and just start over in another room. So
I'm like, well, maybe she'll sleep in her mom's room.
I said, let's go to your mom's room. She got
(05:31):
up off of the bed and led me into her
mom's room. Her mom's room was just right across the
living room in the other room, and she stopped when
we got in there. It's almost like the closet catches
her eye out of her peripheral vision. She hesitated for
(05:51):
a moment, looks into the dark closet, points her finger
and says Tall man. Tall Man's in there.
The lights go out. It was just complete darkness. The
lights came back on. I picked her up, ran out
(06:14):
of the room as fast as I can and close
the door. I did not look into the closet. I
was terrified, goose bumps. I didn't see anything at this point,
just scared because this little girl is freaking me out.
We went to the living room and there is a
(06:36):
big couch, a TV in front of the couch, and
she has a bookshelf to the side of the couch.
So we both just sit down and turned the TV on.
I think the news was on that late. She grabbed
her dolls and we just sat on the couch. I'm
(06:57):
not relaxed, but she seems completely unbothered, still not saying
too much to me in her own world. We watched
TV for about an hour. She is still not tired.
She's awake. I was texting my boyfriend at the time,
saying something's not right. No text back. She's playing with
(07:23):
her dolls on the couch. She stops. I'll never forget this.
She gets up slowly from the couch, and she turns
around to the window behind us, almost like she's realizing something.
She pointed to the window and started yelling, hat Man,
(07:46):
hat Man, hat Man. So I got up and I
turned around, thinking it's a person. I don't know. But
when I saw the reflection of the TV, I saw
the little girl's shadow and my shadow, and next to
our shadows was this huge shadow figure. It looked like
(08:11):
this thing was wearing a wide brimmed hat, and it
had red eyes, almost like they're glowing. You had to
be at least seven eight feet doll just standing there.
It wasn't solid. I could see that it was translucent,
so I knew it wasn't a person, and it looks
(08:34):
like it's observing us. Once I saw it, it kind
of whooshed away. It's just gone. I'm shocked. I'm questioning
what I'm seeing right now. And then, all of the
power went out, the lights went out, the TV went out.
(08:54):
Fight or flight? I'm flight. I picked her up quickly
and ran into the kitchen with her. I felt safer
in the kitchen because there were no windows, no doors,
no closets. I'm asking her, what's hat man? She had
like a little snack bowl of cereal. She says nothing,
(09:17):
and she just was eating her cereal. That little girl
is unfazed. She did not even acknowledge that we saw anything.
We literally sat in the kitchen for that last hour.
At this point it's maybe three am, I was texting
my boyfriend, you need to come by the house. I
(09:40):
saw something. I at least wanted him to come by
the house so he could look around outside or see something.
Wait there until the mom got home, but I never
got a text back. I'm counting down the minutes until
four am hits when her mom comes home. I keep
(10:03):
peeking out the window. At four, mom pulled up. I
see that my boyfriend gets there. I said, Mom's here,
and I rushed to the door. Met her at the door.
I told her, yeah, she's not sleeping, and I ran
as fast as I could across the lawn.
I was just about to get into the car. The
(10:24):
mom had to come get me. I forgot to get paid.
I was so scared. I wanted to get out as
soon as possible, so she had to come hand me
the cash in the middle of the lawn. I said
thanks and I got in the car and I said
go go go. I reached out to her a couple
(10:50):
days later. I wanted to tell her what her daughter
was telling me. She never texted me back. About a
month later, I went past the house and it was
for sale, so I know that they left. I think
the mom probably was ignoring it for a while, and
then I think all these babysitters leaving and the things
(11:13):
her daughter is probably telling her, she wanted to move.
I did some digging. Apparently there had been some deaths,
specifically suicides in that house. I just always tended to
lean on the skeptic side. I would always be like,
(11:36):
it's not real or no such thing as ghosts. But
once you have an experience, that changes your outlook. I
am definitely a firm believer in the paranormal.
THERÉSA (11:57):
Sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm back. I'm back. I'm back, I'm back.
We went a little over our time. But wow, you guys,
Lord HerringBbottom, butterflies, Merlin, Merlin, No, oh great, he's shredding
Len's notes. He gets upset when I leave. Drop it,
drop it.
(12:17):
That's a good baby. We're gonna take an ad break while
Len cleans up all this paper.
As I was saying, you guys, I'm in love. It
(12:39):
was only a quick introductory meeting, but the second I
laid eyes on Lord Herringbottom, I felt alive again. There
was real chemistry. First of all, he's incredibly handsome. He
does dress like a wealthy medieval child. Well, I mean
he is a wealthy medieval child, but it doesn't bother me.
He has that swoopy hair like Leo in Titanic, and
his is so square. Well, his entire face is square.
(13:03):
Gone really from the typhoid, but by today's standards it's hot.
He's been dead a long time, but even when I
was alive, I always went for older guys, so this
kind of tracks. Not to mention, his fiefdom made a
killing in the spice trade. Plus we both love the
beach and reading.
LEN (13:22):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (13:23):
I read Len all the time. What can I say?
I love an old soul. He said, he's gonna review
my case and see what he can do to move
the needle on my afterlife situation. Except now I'm like,
do I even want to cross over? This is crazy,
you guys, I'm being insane. My heart is being so fast.
Well I guess not, but it would be if it could.
(13:44):
Get it together, Therésa. You're a catch! Lord Herringbottom should
be so lucky. I'm good. I'm good, I'm cool. I'm cool.
Our next story comes to us from Kate, whose supernatural
experience at a house in Oklahoma was the answer. Len
not necessary!
LEN (14:04):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (14:06):
whose supernatural experiences at a house in Oklahoma was the
answer to her prayers.
LEN (14:13):
[Laughs]
THERÉSA (14:13):
It's not funny. It's actually really disrespectful.
STORY B (14:17):
I'm Kate. Some prayers are best left unanswered. I was
four years old. We were living in the Bay Area.
My parents had been divorced for a couple years, and
my mom was dating her boyfriend Tom for about a
year and a half. They were actually newly engaged, and
(14:41):
he had a daughter the same age as me, Sarah.
It was a very typical night. We were just over
at their house having a family dinner. Me and Sarah
had gone to play outside after dinner and we were
playing Simon says, so I was copying every single thing
that she was doing. We can see into the kitchen
(15:03):
through the window and she sees her dad, Tom, just collapse,
I mean, just a full grown man, I think He
was like six three, falls straight to the ground. She screams, Daddy,
really loud and playing Simon says, I scream, daddy.
(15:24):
She takes off running into the house and I'm running
right behind her, and we open up the door, and
when we got to the kitchen, we saw her dad
laying on the hard linoleum floor and there was just
a big pool of blood around his head. He had
cracked his head open when he fell. It was very chaotic.
(15:48):
Sarah was hysterical. She was just kind of screaming and
crying and calling out his name. My mom was crouched
over him. She was screaming for nine one one, trying
to perform CPR. She went in the ambulance with him
to the hospital. At some point in the melee, the
(16:09):
neighbor came over and took all three of us girls,
so me, Sarah, and then my baby sister over to
her house. She was you know trying to do her best to
console us. We came home and my mom told me
that he had died.
(16:33):
It was definitely traumatizing. I remember feeling upset for my
mom and feeling, you know, scared for his daughter. I
had a lot of questions that grown ups probably did
not want to answer at the time. It was very
much like okay that happened, and so we're going to
move on. There wasn't as much conversation about like Hey,
really talk things through with your kids, you know, let
(16:55):
them really process that out. Death, sudden death brings so
much uncertainty, Like there are not a lot of answers.
I couldn't ask my mom. I didn't want to burden
anybody because I knew that it was a really awful
thing that happened, especially to my mom who had been
(17:16):
a single mom and was, you know, in this new
great relationship. She'd just lost so much. During her grieving process,
my mom actually had a place in her bedroom where
she had like an altar for him. She asked for
his presence to come and help her through this time.
(17:39):
When I was growing up, my mom was also big
into Al-Anon and alcoholics anonymous, which, like in the twelve step program,
there is a God, but it is kind of just
like a higher power, it's palatable so that anybody of
any religion can partake in those practices. Alongside that, my
mom went to a humanitarian, universalist church, not for any
(18:02):
religious reasons, more just for the community aspect of it.
And so I think that she just never really found
a home with any particular religion. So I had grown
up hearing about a higher power and kind of going
to church, but there was no Jesus so I did
not relate to any social norms around Christianity or even
(18:25):
Christmas or anything like that. But there definitely was like
an idea about God and praying. I was just so
curious about what the hell had just happened, and I
didn't have anyone to ask these questions to. So I
was like, you know what I heard about this God guy,
heard about this praying thing. I know someone who was dead,
so that dead person might know that God person, and
(18:46):
maybe between the three of us we could get some
understanding in my little tiny brain, and so I said
this little prayer in my head, like if you're real,
if this is real, can you just show him to
me one more time? Just show him to me one
more time? And that was it. I didn't really think
about what that would look like or how that would
(19:07):
actually make me feel. I would go to the bathroom
and I would just kind of say it. Sometimes I
would take it more seriously than other times. It was
almost like an intrusive thought more than it was a prayer.
I couldn't get it out of my head.
A lot of times the prayer would sound like I
would be talking to him directly, so I would say Tom, Tom, Tom,
(19:28):
if you're there, show me yourself, if this is real,
if you're really gone, if people could meet ghosts, if
I was kind of throwing all the different religious elements
stories that I'd ever heard. I was like, then just
be here, like show me you. And I wasn't asking
for a sign. I wasn't asking like show me a butterfly.
I was like, get down here. I said, this little
(19:52):
prayer I'll call it for years. I just wanted to
get some understanding.
So years later, me and my sister and my stepmom,
we were visiting my grandparents in Oklahoma. We were staying
at their house with my cousins. My grandparents lived in
(20:13):
a farmhouse. It was a very long house, all one story,
big family room, big kitchen, and lots of bedrooms. Me,
my stepmom, and my sister. We were staying in the
last bedroom on the right end of the house, and
all of the yard space was on the left. The
house was elevated and there was a drop off down
(20:35):
on that right side, so you couldn't walk around that
side of the house. We were there with all my cousins, swimming,
playing on the farm, riding horses, and going fishing, just
having a really nice summer. The last night we were
in Oklahoma, we were watching some scary movies with my cousins,
(20:57):
just having a good time having fun. But I definitely
went to bed that night just feeling maybe a little
bit ready to go home. It's getting late, so I
climb up to the top bunk. We were sharing a
bunk bed, so the bottom had like a queen size mattress.
My stepmom and my sister in the bottom bunk. We
turned out the lights and I slept actually really well
(21:21):
that night. I woke up in the morning everyone else
had already woken up. I was sleeping in and right
as I opened up my eyes, I looked at the
window and there was a man's figure looking at me.
He was very, very tall, and he didn't have a face.
(21:45):
It was just his silhouette, but it wasn't an outline
like he was dark. I hate to say I just knew,
but I did. It's Tom. He was so tall, he
was like six foot three, and he had a very
particular hairstyle. And his silhouette was in this window. He
(22:13):
didn't look like he was standing inside the house or
outside the house. He was just there at the window
looking in at me. But like I said before, that
whole right side of the house was on I don't
want to say a cliff, because that sounds very dramatic,
but there was a drop down. There's no way for
(22:34):
anyone to stand on the other side of the window.
I shot up in bed and I felt really scared,
but I also knew that I was responsible. I was terrified.
I felt like I had summoned something that I didn't
mean to what I had been asking for all these years.
(22:55):
There it was. And then I thought, this is scary.
I've bit off more than I can chew, and I
don't know what I've stepped into.
I said out loud, Hi, Tom, thank you so much.
I'm like climbing down the bunk bed ladder talking at
(23:16):
the silhouette in the window, and I think I said,
this is a little too scary for me right now
I got to go, and I ran out of the bedroom.
I did not look behind me when I left the room.
I knew that no one was following me out of there,
because nobody was in there. Just the way that his
(23:36):
shape took form, I knew that was not a person.
No body was in there. And then I was calm,
cool and collected poker face. Go outside, see my grandparents,
see my stepmom, my sister, just talking. I think I
had this sense like I don't want to be in trouble.
And I did get in trouble a lot, but I
(23:59):
did feel a heaviness. I remember just kind of walking
through the afternoon feeling like I wanted to tell my
stepmom right away, but I didn't really know what to say.
We were just kind of talking throughout the day, and
I ended up saying to her like I think I
saw a ghost in the room, and she was like,
I believe you. And then she told me that she'd
(24:23):
woken up around twilight and she just fixed the blanket
over her and my sister, and when she pulled the
blanket up, she saw a man standing at the bunk
bed looking up at me at the top bunk, and
so she just saw legs and she said that she'd
peeked out and looked in that he had been standing
there looking up at me. But of course, in the
(24:45):
moment she thought she was sleeping. I told her that
I had also seen a man at the window, and
I explained for everything that I had seen as well.
She was like, okay, we saw same thing. And I
was like, I've been asking to see him. Actually, I
(25:06):
summoned him. That was Tom. I've been praying to see
him for years. I never saw Tom again. This situation,
with him dying in front of me, with my mom
being so grief stricken, I clearly had a lot of
(25:30):
thoughts and feelings about it that I was keeping to myself.
And so to have my stepmom, who didn't know this man,
who didn't know that i'd been asking these questions, share
experience with me, I felt like I had tapped into
something way too big. I was like, I will never
ask for anything like that again. I don't want to
(25:50):
dabble in that. I don't want to see anything ever again.
I'm like, God, if there's a god, if there's a way,
keep it all from me. I don't know why certain
things happened to some people, and certain things don't. I
know I've heard about some people just having more of
a sensitivity to things. I don't know why he was
at my bedside. That is one of the questions that
(26:13):
I am okay with never knowing the answer to, and
so I've just like found comfort in the not knowing.
There have been times in my life where I have
gone to pray again and I've been like, I need
you to tell me what's going on with the situation
or what I need to do, and I'll like wake
(26:33):
up the next morning just boom answered Like. I've probably
only done that five times in my whole life because
it really freaks me out. I haven't even wanted to
like dive deeper into any of that. So I never
have seen a psychic. I've never seen a medium. I've
pretty much shut out anything paranormal that I can.
THERÉSA (27:00):
Be careful what you wish for, I guess. It's funny.
My mom had a lot of boyfriends and I was
always praying for the drop dead part. Actually one of
them did, Terry. He died when his body rejected the
hair plugs used in his eyebrow transplant. Looked great in
the open casket, though. Maybe I should look him up.
(27:25):
Well, that's our show. Good luck to all the babysitters
out there who don't know what they're getting themselves into.
And if you've ever been Haunted on the job. Email
us at HauntingThePodcast@gmail.com and you could share your story on
an upcoming episode. I'll keep you guys posted on how
things develop with Herringbottom. I'm gonna go read the Gutenberg
(27:45):
Bible so we have something to talk about my next
case management meeting. See yuh.
CREDITS (27:53):
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,
(28:13):
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, additional voice
(28:36):
acting by Kaitlin Goldin. Editing and sound designed by Matt
Delvecchio and mixed by Dave Saia. Operations and production support
by Kristin 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
(28:57):
Glass Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts,
Yes, that's right, Merlin, good hoot! Welcome back everyone. It's
a busy day here at Haunting HQ. With the help
of a very high profile animal expert who shall not
be named rhymes with bleep Burbwin, I've started Merlin on
a strict clicker training program
a man man,
(00:41):
Yes, Len, fine. It was mandated after he attacked that
finance guy in Central Park. Merlin, down! Good boy. Luckily
they're doing incredible things with glass eyes these days. Also,
I'm about to meet with my new caseworker for the
first time. Some of you may remember, Sharon and I
had to part ways for personal reasons. She personally accused
(01:05):
me of verbal assault. Anywho, my new caseworker is some
guy named Lord Kingswell Herringbottom. He sounds stuffy, but no
one can be as bad as Sharon. All that matters
is that he gets me out of purgatory. Up or
down at this point, I don't even care. I've got
(01:25):
to run to my meeting, but I'm leaving you in
the very responsible hands of Celene, an experienced babysitter who
scored the ideal gig, the kind where you show up
for bedtime, raid the pantry and veg out to their
HBO subscription. Only we don't work in ideals here on Haunting,
so instead of a night of pop tarts and Sex
in the City, Celene's experience ended up being completely harrowing.
(01:49):
Take a listen.
STORY A (01:53):
The little girl was sitting next to me. We're watching TV,
and I will never forget this. She got up, turned
around really slowly, and she looked outside the window and
started screaming. So I got up and I turned around
and I saw this huge thing peering in. My name
(02:16):
is Celene. About ten years ago, the little girl I
was babysitting saw something in her closet. I started babysitting
just to make some extra money while I was in college.
I was babysitting through this app for a couple of years.
I would see about four to five families a week,
(02:37):
and I was babysitting this little girl for the very
first time. She was about three and a half turning four.
Her previous babysitter dropped out last minute, and I accepted
the job. The mom worked nights, so she needed someone later.
My boyfriend at the time picked me up and dropped
(02:58):
me off to the job. I got there at midnight,
right off the bat the house was freaky. It was
a little bit of an older house, overgrown garden, just
looked like a haunted house. She met me at the door,
gave me the instructions and said, my daughter's not sleeping
(03:21):
if you could just help her fall asleep. She showed
me in and then she left. I walked in. The
stairs were a little creaky. The lights didn't stay on.
They would flicker every now and then, so I was
(03:43):
already like, oh, that's weird.
The little girl was sitting in the middle of the
living room playing with her dolls. I tried playing with her.
She's a little quiet, playing in her own world. She
would give me like a doll to play with, but
not really talking too much. I tried to get her
(04:03):
to go in her room so we can maybe work
on trying to fall asleep. So I'm like, let's go
read a book. She just kept saying no, mm hmm,
and I'm like, come on, let's go. It's okay, I'll
go with you. We eventually do make it into her room.
She had a really cute room actually it was pink,
(04:25):
and she had a little canopy above her bed. She
had a little dollhouse to the side with her dolls.
As soon as we got into her room, she went
straight to her bed, laid down and was stiff, staring
at the corner, and said, I can't sleep. The baby's crying.
(04:47):
She was just laying there, not moving, pointing her finger,
telling me that a baby's crying. She just kept repeating,
the baby's crying. The baby's crying.
But she doesn't seem scared, just telling me this. We
were both looking up into the corner and nothing was there,
but she kept saying that there was a baby in
(05:07):
the corner. I'm not really thinking much of it at
this point. I just think she's a kid. She's saying
there's a baby. Maybe she's talking about her dolls. She
just keeps repeating it enough where I want to leave
the room and just start over in another room. So
I'm like, well, maybe she'll sleep in her mom's room.
I said, let's go to your mom's room. She got
(05:31):
up off of the bed and led me into her
mom's room. Her mom's room was just right across the
living room in the other room, and she stopped when
we got in there. It's almost like the closet catches
her eye out of her peripheral vision. She hesitated for
(05:51):
a moment, looks into the dark closet, points her finger
and says Tall man. Tall Man's in there.
The lights go out. It was just complete darkness. The
lights came back on. I picked her up, ran out
(06:14):
of the room as fast as I can and close
the door. I did not look into the closet. I
was terrified, goose bumps. I didn't see anything at this point,
just scared because this little girl is freaking me out.
We went to the living room and there is a
(06:36):
big couch, a TV in front of the couch, and
she has a bookshelf to the side of the couch.
So we both just sit down and turned the TV on.
I think the news was on that late. She grabbed
her dolls and we just sat on the couch. I'm
(06:57):
not relaxed, but she seems completely unbothered, still not saying
too much to me in her own world. We watched
TV for about an hour. She is still not tired.
She's awake. I was texting my boyfriend at the time,
saying something's not right. No text back. She's playing with
(07:23):
her dolls on the couch. She stops. I'll never forget this.
She gets up slowly from the couch, and she turns
around to the window behind us, almost like she's realizing something.
She pointed to the window and started yelling, hat Man,
(07:46):
hat Man, hat Man. So I got up and I
turned around, thinking it's a person. I don't know. But
when I saw the reflection of the TV, I saw
the little girl's shadow and my shadow, and next to
our shadows was this huge shadow figure. It looked like
(08:11):
this thing was wearing a wide brimmed hat, and it
had red eyes, almost like they're glowing. You had to
be at least seven eight feet doll just standing there.
It wasn't solid. I could see that it was translucent,
so I knew it wasn't a person, and it looks
(08:34):
like it's observing us. Once I saw it, it kind
of whooshed away. It's just gone. I'm shocked. I'm questioning
what I'm seeing right now. And then, all of the
power went out, the lights went out, the TV went out.
(08:54):
Fight or flight? I'm flight. I picked her up quickly
and ran into the kitchen with her. I felt safer
in the kitchen because there were no windows, no doors,
no closets. I'm asking her, what's hat man? She had
like a little snack bowl of cereal. She says nothing,
(09:17):
and she just was eating her cereal. That little girl
is unfazed. She did not even acknowledge that we saw anything.
We literally sat in the kitchen for that last hour.
At this point it's maybe three am, I was texting
my boyfriend, you need to come by the house. I
(09:40):
saw something. I at least wanted him to come by
the house so he could look around outside or see something.
Wait there until the mom got home, but I never
got a text back. I'm counting down the minutes until
four am hits when her mom comes home. I keep
(10:03):
peeking out the window. At four, mom pulled up. I
see that my boyfriend gets there. I said, Mom's here,
and I rushed to the door. Met her at the door.
I told her, yeah, she's not sleeping, and I ran
as fast as I could across the lawn.
I was just about to get into the car. The
(10:24):
mom had to come get me. I forgot to get paid.
I was so scared. I wanted to get out as
soon as possible, so she had to come hand me
the cash in the middle of the lawn. I said
thanks and I got in the car and I said
go go go. I reached out to her a couple
(10:50):
days later. I wanted to tell her what her daughter
was telling me. She never texted me back. About a
month later, I went past the house and it was
for sale, so I know that they left. I think
the mom probably was ignoring it for a while, and
then I think all these babysitters leaving and the things
(11:13):
her daughter is probably telling her, she wanted to move.
I did some digging. Apparently there had been some deaths,
specifically suicides in that house. I just always tended to
lean on the skeptic side. I would always be like,
(11:36):
it's not real or no such thing as ghosts. But
once you have an experience, that changes your outlook. I
am definitely a firm believer in the paranormal.
THERÉSA (11:57):
Sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm back. I'm back. I'm back, I'm back.
We went a little over our time. But wow, you guys,
Lord HerringBbottom, butterflies, Merlin, Merlin, No, oh great, he's shredding
Len's notes. He gets upset when I leave. Drop it,
drop it.
(12:17):
That's a good baby. We're gonna take an ad break while
Len cleans up all this paper.
As I was saying, you guys, I'm in love. It
(12:39):
was only a quick introductory meeting, but the second I
laid eyes on Lord Herringbottom, I felt alive again. There
was real chemistry. First of all, he's incredibly handsome. He
does dress like a wealthy medieval child. Well, I mean
he is a wealthy medieval child, but it doesn't bother me.
He has that swoopy hair like Leo in Titanic, and
his is so square. Well, his entire face is square.
(13:03):
Gone really from the typhoid, but by today's standards it's hot.
He's been dead a long time, but even when I
was alive, I always went for older guys, so this
kind of tracks. Not to mention, his fiefdom made a
killing in the spice trade. Plus we both love the
beach and reading.
LEN (13:22):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (13:23):
I read Len all the time. What can I say?
I love an old soul. He said, he's gonna review
my case and see what he can do to move
the needle on my afterlife situation. Except now I'm like,
do I even want to cross over? This is crazy,
you guys, I'm being insane. My heart is being so fast.
Well I guess not, but it would be if it could.
(13:44):
Get it together, Therésa. You're a catch! Lord Herringbottom should
be so lucky. I'm good. I'm good, I'm cool. I'm cool.
Our next story comes to us from Kate, whose supernatural
experience at a house in Oklahoma was the answer. Len
not necessary!
LEN (14:04):
[MUMBLES]
THERÉSA (14:06):
whose supernatural experiences at a house in Oklahoma was the
answer to her prayers.
LEN (14:13):
[Laughs]
THERÉSA (14:13):
It's not funny. It's actually really disrespectful.
STORY B (14:17):
I'm Kate. Some prayers are best left unanswered. I was
four years old. We were living in the Bay Area.
My parents had been divorced for a couple years, and
my mom was dating her boyfriend Tom for about a
year and a half. They were actually newly engaged, and
(14:41):
he had a daughter the same age as me, Sarah.
It was a very typical night. We were just over
at their house having a family dinner. Me and Sarah
had gone to play outside after dinner and we were
playing Simon says, so I was copying every single thing
that she was doing. We can see into the kitchen
(15:03):
through the window and she sees her dad, Tom, just collapse,
I mean, just a full grown man, I think He
was like six three, falls straight to the ground. She screams, Daddy,
really loud and playing Simon says, I scream, daddy.
(15:24):
She takes off running into the house and I'm running
right behind her, and we open up the door, and
when we got to the kitchen, we saw her dad
laying on the hard linoleum floor and there was just
a big pool of blood around his head. He had
cracked his head open when he fell. It was very chaotic.
(15:48):
Sarah was hysterical. She was just kind of screaming and
crying and calling out his name. My mom was crouched
over him. She was screaming for nine one one, trying
to perform CPR. She went in the ambulance with him
to the hospital. At some point in the melee, the
(16:09):
neighbor came over and took all three of us girls,
so me, Sarah, and then my baby sister over to
her house. She was you know trying to do her best to
console us. We came home and my mom told me
that he had died.
(16:33):
It was definitely traumatizing. I remember feeling upset for my
mom and feeling, you know, scared for his daughter. I
had a lot of questions that grown ups probably did
not want to answer at the time. It was very
much like okay that happened, and so we're going to
move on. There wasn't as much conversation about like Hey,
really talk things through with your kids, you know, let
(16:55):
them really process that out. Death, sudden death brings so
much uncertainty, Like there are not a lot of answers.
I couldn't ask my mom. I didn't want to burden
anybody because I knew that it was a really awful
thing that happened, especially to my mom who had been
(17:16):
a single mom and was, you know, in this new
great relationship. She'd just lost so much. During her grieving process,
my mom actually had a place in her bedroom where
she had like an altar for him. She asked for
his presence to come and help her through this time.
(17:39):
When I was growing up, my mom was also big
into Al-Anon and alcoholics anonymous, which, like in the twelve step program,
there is a God, but it is kind of just
like a higher power, it's palatable so that anybody of
any religion can partake in those practices. Alongside that, my
mom went to a humanitarian, universalist church, not for any
(18:02):
religious reasons, more just for the community aspect of it.
And so I think that she just never really found
a home with any particular religion. So I had grown
up hearing about a higher power and kind of going
to church, but there was no Jesus so I did
not relate to any social norms around Christianity or even
(18:25):
Christmas or anything like that. But there definitely was like
an idea about God and praying. I was just so
curious about what the hell had just happened, and I
didn't have anyone to ask these questions to. So I
was like, you know what I heard about this God guy,
heard about this praying thing. I know someone who was dead,
so that dead person might know that God person, and
(18:46):
maybe between the three of us we could get some
understanding in my little tiny brain, and so I said
this little prayer in my head, like if you're real,
if this is real, can you just show him to
me one more time? Just show him to me one
more time? And that was it. I didn't really think
about what that would look like or how that would
(19:07):
actually make me feel. I would go to the bathroom
and I would just kind of say it. Sometimes I
would take it more seriously than other times. It was
almost like an intrusive thought more than it was a prayer.
I couldn't get it out of my head.
A lot of times the prayer would sound like I
would be talking to him directly, so I would say Tom, Tom, Tom,
(19:28):
if you're there, show me yourself, if this is real,
if you're really gone, if people could meet ghosts, if
I was kind of throwing all the different religious elements
stories that I'd ever heard. I was like, then just
be here, like show me you. And I wasn't asking
for a sign. I wasn't asking like show me a butterfly.
I was like, get down here. I said, this little
(19:52):
prayer I'll call it for years. I just wanted to
get some understanding.
So years later, me and my sister and my stepmom,
we were visiting my grandparents in Oklahoma. We were staying
at their house with my cousins. My grandparents lived in
(20:13):
a farmhouse. It was a very long house, all one story,
big family room, big kitchen, and lots of bedrooms. Me,
my stepmom, and my sister. We were staying in the
last bedroom on the right end of the house, and
all of the yard space was on the left. The
house was elevated and there was a drop off down
(20:35):
on that right side, so you couldn't walk around that
side of the house. We were there with all my cousins, swimming,
playing on the farm, riding horses, and going fishing, just
having a really nice summer. The last night we were
in Oklahoma, we were watching some scary movies with my cousins,
(20:57):
just having a good time having fun. But I definitely
went to bed that night just feeling maybe a little
bit ready to go home. It's getting late, so I
climb up to the top bunk. We were sharing a
bunk bed, so the bottom had like a queen size mattress.
My stepmom and my sister in the bottom bunk. We
turned out the lights and I slept actually really well
(21:21):
that night. I woke up in the morning everyone else
had already woken up. I was sleeping in and right
as I opened up my eyes, I looked at the
window and there was a man's figure looking at me.
He was very, very tall, and he didn't have a face.
(21:45):
It was just his silhouette, but it wasn't an outline
like he was dark. I hate to say I just knew,
but I did. It's Tom. He was so tall, he
was like six foot three, and he had a very
particular hairstyle. And his silhouette was in this window. He
(22:13):
didn't look like he was standing inside the house or
outside the house. He was just there at the window
looking in at me. But like I said before, that
whole right side of the house was on I don't
want to say a cliff, because that sounds very dramatic,
but there was a drop down. There's no way for
(22:34):
anyone to stand on the other side of the window.
I shot up in bed and I felt really scared,
but I also knew that I was responsible. I was terrified.
I felt like I had summoned something that I didn't
mean to what I had been asking for all these years.
(22:55):
There it was. And then I thought, this is scary.
I've bit off more than I can chew, and I
don't know what I've stepped into.
I said out loud, Hi, Tom, thank you so much.
I'm like climbing down the bunk bed ladder talking at
(23:16):
the silhouette in the window, and I think I said,
this is a little too scary for me right now
I got to go, and I ran out of the bedroom.
I did not look behind me when I left the room.
I knew that no one was following me out of there,
because nobody was in there. Just the way that his
(23:36):
shape took form, I knew that was not a person.
No body was in there. And then I was calm,
cool and collected poker face. Go outside, see my grandparents,
see my stepmom, my sister, just talking. I think I
had this sense like I don't want to be in trouble.
And I did get in trouble a lot, but I
(23:59):
did feel a heaviness. I remember just kind of walking
through the afternoon feeling like I wanted to tell my
stepmom right away, but I didn't really know what to say.
We were just kind of talking throughout the day, and
I ended up saying to her like I think I
saw a ghost in the room, and she was like,
I believe you. And then she told me that she'd
(24:23):
woken up around twilight and she just fixed the blanket
over her and my sister, and when she pulled the
blanket up, she saw a man standing at the bunk
bed looking up at me at the top bunk, and
so she just saw legs and she said that she'd
peeked out and looked in that he had been standing
there looking up at me. But of course, in the
(24:45):
moment she thought she was sleeping. I told her that
I had also seen a man at the window, and
I explained for everything that I had seen as well.
She was like, okay, we saw same thing. And I
was like, I've been asking to see him. Actually, I
(25:06):
summoned him. That was Tom. I've been praying to see
him for years. I never saw Tom again. This situation,
with him dying in front of me, with my mom
being so grief stricken, I clearly had a lot of
(25:30):
thoughts and feelings about it that I was keeping to myself.
And so to have my stepmom, who didn't know this man,
who didn't know that i'd been asking these questions, share
experience with me, I felt like I had tapped into
something way too big. I was like, I will never
ask for anything like that again. I don't want to
(25:50):
dabble in that. I don't want to see anything ever again.
I'm like, God, if there's a god, if there's a way,
keep it all from me. I don't know why certain
things happened to some people, and certain things don't. I
know I've heard about some people just having more of
a sensitivity to things. I don't know why he was
at my bedside. That is one of the questions that
(26:13):
I am okay with never knowing the answer to, and
so I've just like found comfort in the not knowing.
There have been times in my life where I have
gone to pray again and I've been like, I need
you to tell me what's going on with the situation
or what I need to do, and I'll like wake
(26:33):
up the next morning just boom answered Like. I've probably
only done that five times in my whole life because
it really freaks me out. I haven't even wanted to
like dive deeper into any of that. So I never
have seen a psychic. I've never seen a medium. I've
pretty much shut out anything paranormal that I can.
THERÉSA (27:00):
Be careful what you wish for, I guess. It's funny.
My mom had a lot of boyfriends and I was
always praying for the drop dead part. Actually one of
them did, Terry. He died when his body rejected the
hair plugs used in his eyebrow transplant. Looked great in
the open casket, though. Maybe I should look him up.
(27:25):
Well, that's our show. Good luck to all the babysitters
out there who don't know what they're getting themselves into.
And if you've ever been Haunted on the job. Email
us at HauntingThePodcast@gmail.com and you could share your story on
an upcoming episode. I'll keep you guys posted on how
things develop with Herringbottom. I'm gonna go read the Gutenberg
(27:45):
Bible so we have something to talk about my next
case management meeting. See yuh.
CREDITS (27:53):
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,
(28:13):
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, additional voice
(28:36):
acting by Kaitlin Goldin. Editing and sound designed by Matt
Delvecchio and mixed by Dave Saia. Operations and production support
by Kristin 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
(28:57):
Glass Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts,
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