She Fulfilled Her Promise To Return As a Ghost – And Did So In a Completely Different State

When the Kubis family moved into their Milwaukee home in 1913, they didn't know the previous owner had made a deathbed promise to return—and she was a woman of her word.

Episode 10 of 12 in the #12NightmaresOfXmas series!

In this episode: “Mrs Pickman’s Ghost”, “Haunts of Hartland”, “The Things We Do For Love”, “The Christmas Rosebush”, “Please Help”, “Footprints In The Snow”, “The Chicken Ghost”

SOURCES AND ESSENTIAL WEB LINKS…
All stories in this episode are from the book, “The Spirits of Christmas: The Dark Side of the Holidays” by Sylvia Shults: https://amzn.to/3uT2vMA
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"I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness." — John 12:46
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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Merry Christmas and welcome to Weird Darkness. Here you'll find
stories of the paranormal, supernatural, mysterious, macomb, unsolved and unexplained.
If you're new here, be sure to subscribe to the
podcast on Apple or Android so you don't miss future episodes.
This is a special twelve Nightmares of Christmas episode, and

(00:23):
each day from December thirteenth through December twenty fourth, I'm
posting a new episode of Weird Darkness featuring material from
the new book The Spirits of Christmas, The Dark Side
of the Holidays by Sylvia Schultz. So be sure to
come back every day between now and the twenty fourth,
and be sure to catch up with all the episodes
you've missed up until this point. For more holiday horrors, now,

(00:47):
bult your doors, lock your windows, turn off your lights,
put another log onto the fire, and come with me
into the Weird Darkness. Max Cubas lay awake in bed

(01:14):
that early December night in nineteen thirteen. There was a
real Wisconsin blizzard howling around the house, the winds piling
the snow into deep drifts. But something else was keeping
him from sleep. A faint scratching sound coming from somewhere
in the house. He wasn't on the second floor, where

(01:35):
the family slept. It seemed to be coming from the
first floor. Sounded like someone walking around in slippered feet,
pacing the night away in the darkness. Max couldn't stand
it any longer. He got out of bed, carefully not
to wake his wife, Julia. He tiptoed quietly across the room.

(01:56):
He held his breath as he reached for the doorknob.
He didn't want the squeak of the opening door to
wake Julia or the two girls, Helen and Armila, who
slept peacefully in the bedroom across the hall. The moment
his hand touched the doorknob, a terrible pounding on the
front door echoed through the house. Julia sat bolt upright

(02:17):
with a yelp, and the girls called out from their room.
Max thought briefly about going to answer the door, but
before he could take a step outside the bedroom, the
front door crashed open, and heavy footsteps tramped through the
front hallway into the kitchen. Julia and the girls joined
Max as he stood in the upstairs hallway, trying to

(02:39):
summon the courage to peer over the banister. Who's there?
Max demanded, as his wife and daughters huddled close to him.
I'm going to see what's going on, Max muttered. Julia
and the girls followed him closely as he cautiously went
to the stairs, flipped on the light, and went down
to the first floor. They searched the entire house but

(03:01):
found no one. As the month wore on, the winter
grew fiercer. One night, some time later, Julia slipped out
of bed before dawn to add more wood to the
bedroom stoves. She was halfway across the room when a
misty figure materialized next to the stove. The figure coalesced

(03:22):
into the apparition of an elderly woman who held her
hands out to the stove as if trying to warm them.
The ghost vanished moments later. The Cubist family decided to
investigate the history of their home. Perhaps a former resident
had returned home. The old lady at the wood stove,

(03:43):
and the nocturnal prowler might possibly be the same spirit.
Max and Julia learned from their neighbors that their house
had been the lifelong home of an old woman named
missus Alex Pickman. She had loved her Milwaukee home and
had always told her how to up and relatives that
she fully intended to return there as a ghost. She

(04:05):
had recently died and was buried in Omaha, Nebraska. Apparently
she hadn't forgotten her promise to haunt her former home.
During the next few weeks, Missus Pickman continued to visit
her old house, always between midnight and one am. The
front door would slam open, as if to announce the

(04:26):
spook's arrival. Then footsteps would pace the house as Missus
Pickman made her nightly rounds. The family also heard the
ghost wheezing alarmingly, as though Missus Pickman was trying to
catch her breath. The neighbors nodded knowingly. In life, Missus
Pickman had an asthmatic condition. One night, though the ghost

(04:48):
changed its habits. The Cubas girls, Helen and Armila, were
fast asleep at midnight. Suddenly they were jolted awake by
the thud of a body hitting their bed, followed by
the commotion of someone invisible scrambling to get under the covers.
The girls fled from the room, screaming bloody murder. Their

(05:08):
resident old lady ghost was behaving like a rowdy eight
year old and a sleepover. The Cubas family had had
quite enough. The very next morning, Max told Julia and
the girls to pack their bags. They moved all their
belongings out of the house that day, well almost all
of them. In their hurry to get out of the

(05:30):
haunted house, the family left behind the clock that sat
on the mantel. Julia Cubas remembered it the next day
and went back for it in the daylight. When she
picked it up, she found that it had stopped at midnight.

(06:03):
There is a lot of strangeness tucked away in the
wild corners of New England. One of these places is
the ravine between Garvin and Heartland Hills in Vermont. These
back roads are haunted by a commune of hippie ghosts.
In nineteen seventy one, so the story goes, five young

(06:24):
men and two women rented a house nearby for Christmas break.
They were wealthy college students from out of state, and
they told people they were going to go skiing at Woodstock.
According to the locals, they were really there to smoke pot,
a lot of pot. Whatever the reason, they were there
on vacation. But tragedy struck when the house caught fire.

(06:49):
No one knows how the blaze began, but it took
near moments for the flames to indulf the place. The
seven students inside were too dazed to react, much less
to escape. All of them were killed in the fire.
Even today, locals driving the back roads around that land
reports seeing ghostly, long haired figures along the side of

(07:12):
the road. One witness, a mister Sawyer, was a bit
detailed in telling of his experience. He says he saw
a ghostly figure running down the road holding a flaming
chair in his arms, eternally trying to escape his fiery fate.

(07:45):
The city of New Orleans is crawling with ghosts at
every time of the year. Nose specters represent the same
vivid cross section of humanity that throngs the streets of
this vibrant city in life. There is a house on
the seven hundred block of Royal Street that features a
roof top ghost, a phantom that is, shall we say,

(08:09):
not safe for work. The spirit is that of a young,
pretty slave girl who fell hopelessly in love with a
creole man. The young man was handsome, but he apparently
had a vicious streak. He promised to marry the young
slave if she proved her devotion to him by spending
the night on the roof of his house stark naked.

(08:33):
The girl was so besotted that one night soon after
she actually did as he demanded. She stripped off all
her clothes and lay down to spend the night. Unfortunately,
she was too impatiently love struck to wait for warm weather.
It was a cold December night when she lay down.

(08:55):
She never got up. Her would be husband found her
on his rooftop the next morning, frozen to death. Neighbors
say that when December nights turn especially chilly, the young
slave girl comes back, still trying to prove her undying
love for her intended She still wanders the rooftop of

(09:18):
that house, her lithe nude form backlit against the starry sky.

(09:46):
In West Virginia, many years ago, there lived a family
by the name of Alts. They weren't a large family.
In fact, there were only the three of them, mister
and missus Jim Altz, and their Anna. They were a happy,
prosperous family with but one blot on their blessed lives.

(10:07):
Anna Alts was quite sickly and no doctor could explain
her illness. One night in early December, Anna suddenly got
up from her bed. Her parents were astounded. Anna had
been bedridden for most of her young life. Dreamily, as
if in a trance, Anna threw back the covers, went

(10:29):
to the door and walked outside. Her parents followed, her
mother wringing her hands with worry. Was Anna sleepwalking? Would
it be wrong, even dangerous to wake her? Anna wandered
through the yard, her bare feet leaving small prints in
a newly fallen snow. She came to a rose bush

(10:51):
she had often gazed at through her bedroom window. Anna's
strange journey out to the garden sapped what little strength
she had. She sank to the frozen ground, her hand
outstretched to the rose bush. Her mother and father rushed
to her side, but it was too late. Anna was dead.

(11:13):
Her parents were heartbroken at the loss of their only child,
but they soon had a strange consolation. The rose bush
began to bloom shortly after Anna's death. It continued to
bloom all year round, even into the winter months, even
when the rose bush was covered in snow. Beautiful red

(11:35):
roses dotted the bush. Several years later, Jim Altz and
his wife moved to a new house. They dug up
the rose bush and took it with them as a
reminder of their lost Anna. They replanted the rose bush
in the yard of the new house, but to their sorrow,
it didn't bloom. That spring. Summer too, came in with

(11:58):
plentiful sunshine and rain, but still the rose bush didn't bloom.
The Alts feared the rose bush had died. In early
December of that year, on the anniversary of Anna's death,
a light snow fell. The next morning, Missus Alts looked
out the window and shrieked. Anna's rose bush was gone.

(12:23):
Mister and Missus Alts rushed outside to see what had happened.
The rose bush had indeed disappeared in small footprints in
the dusting of new snow, led away from the spot
where it had stood. The greeting parents followed the footprints.
They had to know who would dig up their daughter's
beloved rose bush. They traced the footprints all the way

(12:47):
to their end and stopped gazing at the scene in wonder.
The footprints led straight to the cemetery and stopped at
Anna's grave site. There on the daughter's grave stood the
rose bush. It was covered with beautiful red roses, in

(13:09):
full bloom. Many years ago, doctor Anderson was awakened by
a frantic pounding on his front door. He dressed quickly

(13:32):
and hurried down to answer it. The moon shone brightly
on the white snow and on the young girl standing
on the doctor's front porch. The doctor wondered briefly why
she was out so late. It was past midnight, and
the girl couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen
years old. He didn't recognize her. She was dressed in

(13:53):
a blue coat, and her shaking hands were thrust into
a white muff. Please help me, the girl begged, through
chattering teeth. It's my mother. She's very sick and I'm
afraid she'll die. The girl explained that she and her
mother had recently moved in to the Old Hostler Place
about three miles away. Her father was dead and it

(14:16):
was just the two of them. Now I think she's
got pneumonia, the girl said, please, you've got to come
see her. At the dreaded word pneumonia, the doctor gave
a short, sharp nod. Of course, i'll come. I'll be
just a moment. The girl turned and darted away, heading
for the old Hostler Place. The doctor shrugged into his

(14:39):
good sheepskin coat, grabbed his bag, and went to the
barn to saddle his horse. As the horse trotted down
the road, the doctor mused at the bravery of the
young girl who had ventured out after midnight in the
bitter cold to seek your help. He was sorry she'd
run off before he could invite her in to warm
up just a bit. The ride didn't take long, but

(15:03):
doctor Anderson was still chilled to the bone when he
came in sight of the Hostler farmhouse. He swung down,
tied his horse to the gate post, and hurried up
the walk. No one answered his knock, so he eased
the door open and came in. The woman lay huddled
in a bed, wheezing and shivering. The doctor turned up

(15:24):
the oil lamp and set to work. If he could
break the fever, the woman might live. He trickled medicine
down the woman's throat, then poked the fire to life
so he could heat water for hot holtices. He worked
for a couple of hours, and soon the woman stirred
back to lucidity. How did you know it come, she asked,

(15:45):
as she accepted a cup of something hot and steaming
from the doctor. Your daughter came to my house to
fetch me. She was very brave to come out on
foot on such a bitter night. The woman's face pealed
even further. My daughter died of pneumonia three years ago.
But who could it have been. If it wasn't your daughter,

(16:06):
how would she know you were ill? I tell you
there was a young girl, about thirteen years old who
showed up on my porch. She was wearing a blue
coat and a white muff. My daughter had a blue
coat and a white muff. The woman whispered, they're hanging
in the closet over there. Doctor Anderson strode to the
closet and yanked open the door. There, hanging right in

(16:29):
plain view, wore a blue coat and white muff. With
trembling hands, he reached out and tucked a finger inside
the muff. The fur inside the white muff was damp
with perspiration. It was a cold winter afternoon early in

(16:59):
the last century. A mother huddled in her cabin on
the west fork of the Little Pigeon River in Tennessee.
She held two of her children in a tight embrace,
but one was missing. Her two year old son had
wandered away from the cabin earlier that day. Since then,
the temperature had been falling steadily, along with a heavy snow.

(17:23):
A neighbor came in, stamping the snow from his boots
to grab a few moments warmth by the fire. The
mother looked up, hope dawning briefly in her eyes, then
looked back down, defeated at the shake of the neighbor's head.
She was grateful, of course, that all the men folk
were out looking for her precious lost little One. Word

(17:44):
had been passed from cabin to homestead, from house to church,
and soon the entire community was out looking. Her own
husband was off in Europe in the trenches fighting the Germans.
All she could do was pray that one of the
neighbors would find her little boy, and soon doctor Thomas

(18:05):
appeared at the door of the cabin. He dressed warmly
for the trudge through the woods. He'd come thinking to
help the young mother. One look at her stricken face, though,
and he realized that he could best help not by
doctoring her, but by finding her missing son. Pulling his
heavy overcoat closed, he headed out into the snow storm

(18:28):
with the other searchers. Doctor Thomas struck off in a
random direction, hooping. He was looking at grounds that hadn't
already been covered with the snow falling so thickly the
footprints of the searching men were soon being covered over.
Doctor Thomas held his lantern high in the gathering dusk

(18:48):
as he scanned the area. The shadows of the evening
crowded close under the pines. As the last light of
day slipped away. The doctor stopped for a moment, listening
to the silence of the woods. Somewhere he knew men
were searching for the little boy with dogs, but he

(19:09):
hadn't yet heard the deep bay of a hound on
a scent. All around him, the snow fell in a
silent hush. The branches of the pines swayed with the wind,
even as laden with snow as they were. As night fell,
the snow storm grew worse. Doctor Thomas trudged along the

(19:30):
dwindling path in the woods, stopping every so often to
look closely at any fallen log that might shelter a
shivering little boy. His toes were beginning to go numb,
even with the three pairs of thick woolen socks he wore,
but he kept wandering the woods, his lantern held high
in search of any sign of the boy. If he

(19:51):
was cold, the toddler would be even worse off. Doctor
Thomas stopped and turned in a slow circle. He couldn't
give up pulp, not while the boy was still out there,
lost in the storm. He held his lantern high, and
there on the ground was one footprint. Doctor Thomas bent

(20:12):
closer to study it. It wasn't the track of a
deer or a dog. It was the footprint of a child,
a child who was barefoot. The doctor's heart leapt, and
adrenaline spun in his cold fingers and toes, warming them briefly. Finally,
here was some sign of the boy. The doctor looked

(20:33):
around carefully for more footprints. There there was another one,
and a third. The bare footprints were just visible in
the hard packed old snow, and as the doctor watched
more appeared, the feathery new snow blowing off the old prince. Carefully.
The doctor followed the prince. As soon as he passed

(20:54):
the last one, the next one appeared, leading him further
into the woods. The doctor no longer cursed the biting wind,
because oddly enough, the wind seemed to be blowing the
fresh snow off of the prince, revealing the path the
barefoot toddler had taken through the woods. Doctor Thomas followed
the footprints as they led him to a patch of evergreens.

(21:16):
The doctor lifted a low hanging branch and gasped. There.
Curled up on a soft bed of fallen pine needles
was the young boy. But the doctor had come too late.
The boy's skin was waxy white, and his little chest
didn't rise and fall with a peaceful, sleeping breath. The

(21:38):
boy had frozen to death in the storm. Doctor Thomas
stifled a low moan and gathered the child up in
his arms. He unbuttoned his coat and his woolen shirt
and cradled the boy to his chest. The boy had
died in the freezing cold. Although it was too late,
the doctor could at least keep him warm for the

(22:00):
walk home. He re buttoned his coat and headed back
to the cabin. As the doctor approached the cabin, the
young mother came out to meet him. Seeing her there
silhouetted against the yellow glow of the lit cabin behind her,
Doctor Thomas felt his spirits sink. How could he break

(22:20):
this woman's heart? The mother caught sight of the doctor
with his sad burden and ran to him. Doctor Thomas
reached the open cabin door just as the woman came out,
crying joyful tears at the return of her baby. The
doctor unbuttoned his coat and opened his shirt. I'm so sorry.

(22:43):
At least I found him, and to his shock, the
little boy blinked sleepy brown eyes at him. The child
turned his head, hearing his mother's cry of joy Mama stunned.
Doctor Thomas handed the toddler to his mother, who cuddled
him fiercely. She looked up, tears of gratitude standing in

(23:04):
her eyes. Thank you, doctor, Thank you so much, you
saved my little boy. Please come inside and get warm.
The doctor followed her into the cabin. His analytical mind
fumbled for an explanation. The boy must have been chilled
to the point where his vitals had slowed, putting him
into a state of suspended animation. The walk back, cuddled

(23:27):
against the doctor's warm chest and wrapped in the heavy overcoat,
must have warmed the child slowly enough for him to
recover with no harm done. The gentle warming had brought
the child back to life as surely as a violet
blooms in the spring. Vaguely, he became aware that the
boy's mother was still talking. I'm so grateful to you

(23:48):
for finding him. She kissed the toddler, who sighed sleepily
in her arms. Doctor Thomas roused himself from his thoughts. Yes,
I've followed his footprints in this I'm amazed he was
able to wander so far with bare feet. Bare feet,
the mother said, puzzled, but he's wearing shoes. Frowning, Doctor

(24:12):
Thomas lifted one of the boy's feet. Sure enough, the
boy was wearing sturdy brokens. I have to tie his
shoes on tightly with double knots so he won't kick
them off, the mother explained. Here has some coffee, it'll
warm you ride up. Good job, a neighbor said, putting
a tin cup into the doctor's hand. Doctor Thomas accepted

(24:34):
the congratulations and heartfelt thanks of his neighbors. The little
boy was safe, that was all that mattered. But the
doctor's scientific mind wouldn't rest until he figured out the
answer to the mystery. Several nights later, he woke from
a sound sleep, sitting bolt upright in bed, wheeling from

(24:55):
a thunderclap of realization the wind hadn't blown the fresh
snow off the child's old prince. The bare footprints had
been appearing in the snow step by step as he'd
been following them. He hadn't been tracking a living child.
He'd been following an invisible child, a ghost or an angel.

(25:32):
One night in December nineteen forty three, a British airman
stationed in London was out for a stroll. He was
crossing Pond Square in Highgate when he heard a stream
sound for the mid twentieth century, the sound of carriage
wheels on cobblestone. Then he heard an even more incongruous
sound for a chili December night in the middle of London,

(25:55):
the loud screech of a chicken. The airman looked around confusion.
He couldn't see a carriage, but he did see a
chicken running in disoriented circles and squawking with fright and
probably also with cold, because this chicken had already been plucked.
The airman took a few steps toward the bird, hoping

(26:17):
to help the poor shivering creature, but as he got closer,
the chicken vanished. This chicken ghost has been seen in
Highgate for over three hundred years. That's a perfectly good
reason to haunt Pond Square, and its story affects us
even today. You see, that was the world's first frozen chicken,

(26:39):
and it led to a revolution in food preservation. The
story goes that in April sixteen twenty six, Sir Francis
Bacon was riding in a carriage through London with his friend,
doctor Witherbone, a physician to James the First. The sight
of the snow covered ground led to a discussion of
the possible use of snow to preserve food. Looking out

(27:03):
at the rolling wheels and the path left behind the carriage,
Bacon pointed out to Witherbone that the wheels were packed
with chunks of snow, and the grass revealed by the
passing of the wheels looked fresh and green, even in
late winter. Bacon's friend belittled his theory. Irritated enough to

(27:24):
want to prove his point immediately, Bacon ordered the carriage
to stop. He trotted to the nearest house and bought
one of the household's chickens. He wrung the hen's neck,
plucked it, cleaned it, and stuffed the carcass with snow.
Then he packed more snow around the prepared bird. Bacon's

(27:44):
experiment worked, and a new era in commercial food preservation
was born. Unfortunately, Bacon's impetuous adventure in the snow led
to his contracting pneumonia. He faded quickly and died on
a ninth, sixteen twenty six. Soon after Sir Francis death,

(28:05):
visitors to Pont Square began to hear the squawking of
a chicken about to be butchered, but no chicken was
in sight. Then the audible became visible. People would see
a plucked chicken running in confused circles before vanishing through
a brick wall. The airmen's experience in nineteen forty three

(28:27):
was just one in a series of naked chicken sidings
down through the years. If you enjoyed this episode, consider

(28:47):
sharing it with others and help build the Weird Darkness
community by converting your friends and family into weirdos as well.
This special episode is part of my twelve Nightmares of
Christmas series collect aborration with paranormal blogger and author Sylvia Schultz.
The stories I used in this episode are from her
book The Spirits of Christmas, The Dark Side of the Holidays,

(29:10):
and you can find a link to that book in
the show notes. Do you have a dark tale to tell?
Share your story at Weird Darkness dot com and I
might use it in a future episode. Music in this
episode is provided by Midnight Syndicate. You can find a
link to purchase and download this dark, creepy Christmas music
before Christmas arrives so you can have it to listen to.

(29:33):
You can find that link in the show notes. I'm
your creator and host, Darren Marler. Merry Christmas and thanks
for joining me in the Weird Darkness