Guardians of the Night: Resilience Amidst Chaos

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
About twenty years ago now, my wife and I decided
that we need more room for our family, so we
picked out a house for sale that was within our
budget and then went through the process of purchasing it
and moving in. Now to us, the house was perfect
for ourselves and our two kids, named Lily and Max.
They loved their new bedrooms. They loved the back yard

(00:35):
and its outdoor pool, and it was actually western facing
two so we could sit out there and enjoy the
sunset every night. And the neighborhood was quiet with friendly
people who waved if they passed while I was mowing
the front lawn, and it felt like our own little
slice of paradise, a place where nothing bad could really happen.
We were happy, and I thought that we'd found our

(00:56):
forever home. Now. Weeks and weeks went by and everything
stayed great. The kids played in the yard while my
wife got accustomed to the new kitchen, and I was
as happy as all heck. With the size of the
new garage, we felt very safe, like pretty much nothing
could touch us. But one night everything changed. It was

(01:16):
late and the house was dark, the kids were asleep,
Emma was in bed reading and I was about to
lock the front doors when I heard a loud noise outside.
It was sort of a soft thud, like something heavy
hitting the door. I kept on listening for a minute
or two, and then when I didn't hear anything else,
I told myself it was nothing, maybe just a car's

(01:38):
trunk slamming in the distance. I went over to the
back of the house to lock the back doors, and
that's when I heard the footsteps. They were heavy and
they were only getting louder. But before I could move,
the door in front of me crash is open. After
being thrown back, I saw the men rush in. They
were wearing black, with their faces hidden behind masks. They

(02:00):
carried flashlights and bags, and one even had some type
of blunt object like a crowbar. And my legs felt weak,
but I couldn't run. I had to protect my family,
and the second they saw me, they rushed forward. There
were four of them, tall, very well built. He pushed
me into the living room as my wife stood at

(02:21):
the top of the stairs, looking pale and frightened. Lily
and Max woke up and ran to join her. And
I wanted to tell them to run to hide, but
my voice couldn't work. It was like a dream. The
men ordered my wife and kids downstairs too, and they
shoved us onto the couch. They then stood over us
with those flashlights that were bright, blinding us, which I

(02:42):
guess was kind of part of their plan. Finally, one
of them stepped closer. He was the tallest, and his
mask was black with holes for his eyes and mouth,
and he leaned down so close that I could smell
his stinking breath. He didn't speak, but his eyes were
burned into mine. Another man, shorter, with a red mass,

(03:03):
started pacing back and forth. He kicked over some lamp
and it shattered on the floor. The sound started to
make Lily cry, and Emma pulled her closer. The tall
one grabbed my shirt and pulled me to my feet.
His flashlight was shining in my face, and I squinted,
trying to see the others circled us, that were like
wolves circling prey. The men wanted something, something specific, but

(03:27):
I didn't have much, only enough to start our new life.
But that didn't seem to deter them. They carried on searching,
tearing through drawers and shelves, throwing books and dishes to
the floor. One of them with a kind of greenish mask.
Found a picture of us at the beach. He stared
at it and then at me. His head was tilted

(03:47):
like he was confused. The tall one grabbed my arm again,
harder this time. He shook me and I stumbled. Emma
screamed and Max clung to her, his face buried in
her side. I wanted to fight, to push them away,
but there were too many and they were too strong.
The tall one dragged me to the kitchen. He threw

(04:08):
me against the counter, and pain shot through my ribs
as I slammed into it. The others brought Emma and
the kids, forcing them to sit on the floor. Liuis
was sobbing now, and Max's eyes were huge, like he
didn't understand what was happening. I didn't either, but I
had to try and stay strong for them, no matter
how hard that was. The men started ripping open cabinets,

(04:31):
pulling out pots and pants. They weren't looking for food
or money. They were looking for something else, something we
didn't have, but they seemed damn sure that it was there.
I remember how the short one in the greenish mass
suddenly stopped and pulled one of our kitchen knives from
the block that held it. Emma gasped and I felt sick.

(04:53):
The knife was long and sharp, and as he held
it close to her face, my hands shook and my
legs were feeling like jelly. The tall one grabbed me again,
his fingers digging into my arm. He leaned close, and
his mask was brushing my cheek, and I could hear
his breathing, very fast and heavy. They wanted something that

(05:14):
was hidden, but they didn't say what, and I didn't
know what they meant. We had no gold, no jewels,
no valuable secrets hidden anywhere. That was a brand new home,
our new start. All the money we had in the
world was in its foundations, not in the walls or
the closets. I tried to think, to remember if we
found anything strange in that house, but nothing could come

(05:36):
to mind, just boxes and paint cans and old furniture
from the last owners. I told the man that much,
but they didn't believe a word of what I'd said.
The one with a knife stepped closer to Emma, and
my world started to go dark. I couldn't breathe. I
couldn't let them hurt her or the kids. The man
in The green mask stopped again. He was looking at

(05:59):
the picture, then at us. He grabbed the tall one's
arm and pointed at me. They stepped back, their heads
close together. I couldn't hear them, but they were arguing
in whispers before one of them suddenly said, shut this up,
it's not here. The tall one shook his head, but
the green masked man kept pointing. He picked up another picture,

(06:21):
one of us moving in and stared at it. His
shoulders were slumped, and he dropped the picture. The others froze,
watching the two guys argue. Then suddenly they backed away.
The tall one let go of me and I fell
to my knees. The man with a knife lowered it,
stepping back. They looked at each other and then at us,

(06:42):
and then without a word, they turned and walked out,
no faster than they'd come in. The house was silent
except for my daughter's sobs and my heavy breathing. Emma
crawled over to me and we held the kids tight.
My hands were shaking as I checked them for cuts
and bruises, and everyone was okay. We were just terrified.

(07:02):
I called the police. They came pretty quickly. Their lights
were flashing through the windows as we went out to
meet them. They searched the house, in the yard and
the street outside. They found footprints in the mud, but
that was pretty much it. These men were gone. The
police asked questions, wrote things down, and promised to look
for them. But from what I told them, and I

(07:24):
agreed with this, they said it was a mistake that
the men thought we were some one else, maybe the
last owners, maybe someone with some valuables hidden somewhere, but
they didn't know who. The police never found the men.
No one was arrested, and we fixed the broken lamp
and cleaned up the mess. The house didn't feel like
paradise any more. Emma stopped humming all cheerfully in the kitchen,

(07:47):
and the kids didn't really want to play outside anymore.
We locked the doors, checked the windows, and slept with
the lights on, and I started keeping a gun in
the bedside drawer just in case. The neighborhood stayed very
quiet and nobody else was hurt. But I really couldn't
shake the fear watching out the windows and the doors
in that dark driveway out front. I wanted to protect

(08:07):
my family, to make our home safe again. In all
the ways I had failed the first time, but deep
down I knew that it would never feel the same.
Paradise was gone, and all we had left were the
memories and that endless fear. My name's Adam and I'm

(08:33):
from Leeds here in the UK, And a few years
ago myself and my parents and my sister moved into
a new house not too far from our old one.
It was a semi detached place in a quiet street
with the neat front gardens and old fashioned street lamps.
We had nice neighbors too, at least on one side anyway,
who called over to introduce themselves with some cake and

(08:55):
a cup of tea. But those were the neighbors and
the houses surrounding us. The ones in the house attached
to ours was very, very different. They didn't smile, they
didn't wave, and they'd either ignore us if they saw
us in the street, or stare from their windows if
they got the chance. With these very cold, unfriendly stairs,

(09:16):
Mum said to ignore them. Dad said that some people
were just kind of like that, So rather than do
anything silly to try and make them like us, we
did our best to just ignore it and settle in
and not let it bother us. Despite all that, the
first couple of weeks were as normal as we could expect.
I went to the same school, got used to playing
football in the new garden, and helped Mum and Dad

(09:38):
unpack boxes of garden furniture. Friends and family stopped over
to check out the new house, and while they were
mostly interested in the new place, they'd sometimes ask about
the neighbors and what they were like. Mum used to
say that they were quiet. Dad used to say that
he'd met nicer people, and my parents never said anything
overly bad about them, but people got the message they

(09:59):
weren't the friendliest of neighbors, and that was that. I
sometimes used to wonder aloud why they were so unfriendly
with us, but I never got an answer. Mum said
that we should just leave them alone, and hopefully they
just carry on leaving us alone too, But as it
turned out, just living next door to them was a liability.

(10:20):
One night, I was up in my room playing a
bit of FIFA when I heard these noises outside. It
sounded like car doors, slamming footsteps on the path outside,
and low voices. It sounded extremely suspicious, so I got
up and peeked out my window to see what was
going on in the driveway of the house next door.
I saw shadows moving in the dark. I couldn't see faces,

(10:43):
just sort of hooded shapes moving around. Then seconds later,
the shapes piled into a car and sped off. I
told myself it was nothing, that maybe the neighbors just
had some late visitors, and then I went back to
playing video games before leaving my window open, something I
look back on as a kind of like fate at

(11:05):
this point. I say that because maybe only a minute
or two later, I started smelling something burning, and then
I heard the shouts outside. I ran to the window
and saw flames all over the front door of our
attached neighbor, not just inside, either outside too, with these

(11:25):
bright orange and yellow flames making their driveway glow as
smoke climbed into the air. I grabbed my phone and
called nine niney nine. Then when Dad heard me asking
for the fire brigade, he came running to see what
was happening. He took one look at the flames and
then shouted us to get out of the house. All

(11:45):
of us ran outside right away, grabbing only what was essential,
before standing on the pavement in our socks or bare feet.
It seemed like the whole neighborhood was gathered out there
by then, watching from their driveways or the street outside
their homes. Apparently the neighbors that had been targeted weren't home.
We knew because their car was gone, but just the

(12:07):
thought of them being targeted like that was still deeply
shocking to us. A few minutes later, the fire engines arrived,
and men in heavy gear jumped out before hosing down
the flames. Everyone cheered when the fireman finally put out
the fire, but the neighbor's house was still a mess.
The firemen checked our house too, to make sure that

(12:28):
there was no danger or risk or anything. They said
the fire hadn't spread to our side, but the smell
of smoke still clung to everything and made it so
we couldn't just kind of carry on and try to forget.
We went back inside, but I couldn't get to sleep
for ages, thanks to the adrenaline in that grim, burned smell.
The next day, some police stopped by to ask questions

(12:51):
and take statements. I don't think they've even finished before
word got around to us the fire wasn't some accident.
It was a deliberate attack, just like we'd suspected, And
that was the first time that I heard the word arson,
and it wouldn't be the last. The only questions left
were things like who would do something like that and

(13:11):
for what reason? And then we heard about the other fire.
Just a few nights before ours, a house on the
other side of the city had burned in an almost
identical arson attack, and it didn't take long before the
police started to think that the two fires were somehow connected.
Everyone reckoned that it must have been some kind of retaliation,

(13:32):
and the fact that neighbors weren't home at the time
made us think they probably knew that it was coming
and probably knew who did it too. It probably explained
why they were so stand offish with us too. If
they had those kinds of beefs going with people, it
was probably just their default setting to be wary and
cautious of strangers. Maybe they knew they were putting ourselves

(13:53):
at risk just by living next door to them, and
didn't want to get close because they knew that it
had further put us in harm's way. And the neighborhood
was quiet for a while after that. As the one
who saw the fire start. I couldn't help but feel
jumpy at times. Every noise made me think of footsteps
or car doors. Mum and Dad tried to act normal,

(14:15):
but I saw them watching the street too, especially when
the moving trucks showed up and started helping the neighbors
move out. In the weeks, after nothing else happened, there
were no more fires, no more strange noises, and slowly
but surely, the neighborhood got back to normal as kids
felt safe enough to play on the street again. The
neighbor's house stayed empty for a while, with a first

(14:37):
sail sign out in the front, and it stayed like
that for ages. As the grass grew tall in their garden.
They were gone, but their house was a reminder, a dark,
broken thing next to ours that took years before the
estate agents found a buyer. I've never forgotten what happened
and how that night could have been much much different,
should that fire have spread any quicker. Many many years

(15:10):
ago now, when our son was barely out of diapers,
me and my kids, Mom moved into a real nice
duplex out in the suburbs. It was on a quiet
street and the neighbors were quite friendly and some even
actually came over to help us unpack. Now, the guy
in the home next door didn't show up, but when
we heard that he was some elderly widower who didn't

(15:32):
get around so easily anymore, we obviously gave him an
instant pass. Now our son, Luke, loved the big back
yard and pool that we now had. He loved his
new bedroom too, But what he didn't love was the
big old closet with its sliding wooden doors. He seemed
almost cautious of it right away, but then a few

(15:52):
nights after we settled in, Luke started acting very strange
about his new closet. At first, he said that he
wanted to keep it over open so he could see
that there were no monsters in there. But then later
he said that he wanted to sleep with it clothes
because someone was inside the closet and they would watch
him whenever we left him alone. I thought that it

(16:12):
was just the new house making him nervous, and that
his big old imagination was just getting the better of him,
and so that night, to help him feel safe, I
started what became a regular bedtime routine. Every night, I
checked his closet for monsters. I opened the doors, rustled
his clothes a little, and showed him how aside from
them it was completely empty. I then shut the closet,

(16:35):
tuck him into bed, and then maybe sit in the
chair and read him a bedtime story until he fell asleep.
It worked for him, and he slept like the dead
from then on. But for me, that feeling of unease
never entirely went away. Something about Luke's fear stuck in
my mind. How sort of primal and authentic it actually seemed.

(16:56):
His mom said it was probably nothing, just a father
were too much about his over imaginative sun. But still
I kept checking the closet every night during our little routine,
which I increasingly realized wasn't for him any more. It
was for me. No. A little time went by, maybe
two or three months, and I decided to give Luke's
room a deep clean. The house was old, the kind

(17:19):
of place where dust settled just about everywhere, So I
vacuumed the carpet, wiped all the windows down, and cleaned
under his bed too. And then once I was done,
I moved to the closet. As I swept the floor,
I noticed something against the back wall. It was a
little pile of saw dust, maybe an inch or two tall,
piled near the back wall. Since I didn't remember seeing

(17:41):
saw dust when we moved in, I pushed Luke's clothes
aside and looked closer, and then, in that dim light,
I saw it clear as day, a small hole in
the wall near the floor, about the size of a coin.
There wasn't any light coming through at the time, but
it was there all right. I remember my heart rate

(18:02):
going into overdrive as these dual feelings of disgust and
anger rose up inside me. The hole looked like it
went straight through, so I grabbed a flashlight and shined
it inside, and that's how I figured out that there
was some kind of cover on the other side, something
to hide it when it wasn't in use. But I
knew someone could see through it if they removed the cover.

(18:26):
The wall was shared with the neighbor's house, that elderly
widower who lived on the other side of that duplex.
I thought about them moving away the paper or card
or whatever it was, and watching my boy as he slept,
and my hands shook as I thought about that my
son hadn't been imagining things, someone really had been watching him,

(18:46):
and so I sat back, staring at that hole. My
head was pounding as a thousand different thoughts raced around
in my mind all at once. We never saw that
widower much. He was mostly just sort of shadows moving
behind curtains, but the thought of him watching my son
made me feel sick to my stomach, but not just sick,
angry too. I wanted to scream, to run next door

(19:09):
and demand answers before taking some well deserved retribution, but
I stopped myself. I knew how it would end if
I confronted him. I wouldn't stay calm, and I'd end
up in jail for suore. I could feel the anger building,
the kind that didn't stop, I'd hurt someone or worse,
for Luke's sake, I couldn't let that happen. I decided

(19:31):
that I didn't want that guy to know that I
knew if that made any sense. I wanted to try
and actually catch him doing something, maybe on camera, so
I had actual evidence of the crime. I went to
the garage, found some wood filler and a putty knife,
and then worked fast to fill it in and cover
it over. I then checked the wall for other holes,
and when I didn't find any I moved Luke's clothes

(19:53):
back and swept away the sawdust. The closet looked normal again,
but I didn't feel any better. What kind of person
and droz a hole to watch a child? And how
the hell was I going to catch him in the act.
My hands clenched into angry fists every time I thought
about it, and I only stopped feeling murderously angry after
I spoke to Luke's mom about it, and that night

(20:13):
I checked his closet like I always did. My son
didn't know about the hole, and there was no way
in hell that I was about to tell him on
an account of not wanting to scare him, So I
tucked him in, turned off the light, and watched him
fall asleep as usual. But unlike him, I couldn't relax.
Even though the hole was gone. I kept imagining the
widower's eyes on the other side of the wall. I imagined

(20:35):
him kneeling down and moving away the cover and cursing
as he realized someone had gotten wise to his plan.
A part of me thought that I'd have him backing
off for a while, but I also knew that if
he did at once, he was probably going to do
it again. I started checking the closet more during the
day too. I'd slid the doors open and stare at
the wall, waiting for something to happen or to hear

(20:57):
something moving on the other side. But I never saw
or heard anything, and the stress of it started to
effect my sleep. I started locking the windows and back
door every night, and something I never did before. I
told myself it was to keep my son safe, but
the truth is I was scared too. Luke's mom felt
the same way. She was furious, but she also knew

(21:18):
that it was better not to escalate, as any sort
of confrontation might go very wrong and very fast. If
this guy was willing to drill a hole in the
wall to spy on our kid, what else was he
willing to do. I never felt the same in that
house afterwards, and I never felt the same about that
supposedly sweet old widower either. I wanted to catch him
doing something anything to prove what I knew. I paid

(21:40):
to have some security cameras installed, which were super expensive
compared to those ringed doorbells you can buy these days,
and I thought that it'd be worth the investment. But
the guy next door never did anything on any cameras.
His house stayed dark with his curtains always closed. I
thought about calling the police, purely just to warn them
that I thought neighbor was a creep, but not only

(22:02):
had I removed what little evidence I had, I also
wasn't sure how to phrase things to avoid sounding like
some paranoid a hole bullying his elderly neighbor. I felt
like an idiot, and I still do actually, but I
kept quiet. I started sleeping with a baseball bat next
to my bed, and I told myself it was just
for home defense, but deep down I knew I was

(22:24):
ready to use it for home offense if I heard
someone in Luke's room, If I even so much as
heard someone creeping around outside, I wouldn't hesitate. I even
got it excited about the idea of catching the guy,
excited about the idea of smashing his head in. And
that scared me almost as much as the hole. And
after a couple of minutes went by and still nothing

(22:44):
had happened, I started to relax a little. There had
been no new holes, no strange noises. Luke Hannon talked
about being watched in the while, and the only disturbed
sleeps we got were when we'd had an unrelated nightmare.
The routine definitely helped a lot, that continual process of
checking the closet before tucking him in, but I never
stopped checking that wall. I'd run my hand over the

(23:06):
spot where the hole was, making sure it was still sealed,
but it always was. And then one day I saw
a truck outside the widower's house. No good bye, no explanation,
and the house stayed empty. And it took a while,
but we actually heard that he'd passed away. And as
horrible as it is to say, I actually felt relief.

(23:28):
The hole was gone, and so was the Sikka who
put it in there. But the fact that it even
happened in the first place, that there's people out there
who'd think to do something like that, that's something I'll
never be able to come to terms with. A few

(23:51):
years ago now, my wife and I welcomed our first
child into the world. We were living in a one
bedroom apartment at the time, and while that was certainly
okay for a young, childless couple, we knew that we'd
need more room to start a family. We started looking
online and eventually found a suitable property in a pretty
prominent part of our home city, but for reasons of

(24:12):
our own personal security, that place will remain nameless for
the rest of this story. Homes in this particular bit
of the city were built by Celtic migrant workers almost
a hundred years ago now and are known as being sturdy, reliable,
and affordable places to live. As you can imagine, they
were incredibly popular with just about every other wannabe renter,

(24:35):
so when me and my wife saw one of the
houses there was available, we jumped at the chance to
book a viewing and put a deposit down. About six
weeks later we were moved in and it felt every
bit the milestone that we thought it would. Our neighbors
were warm and welcoming, and apart from the occasional bus
load of tourists, the area itself was actually nice and quiet.

(24:58):
But then the landlords proposed a rent hike. We were
still very fresh when we got the news, so at
first we had no idea how to really approach it.
But then, right as we were approaching full on panic,
we got the news that a renter's unions was undertaking
a little investigation on our behalf, and we had to
wait a few weeks to get the news, but when

(25:19):
we did, we were over the moon. The landlords were
backing down on the rent hike and we were only
going to be looking at a three percent annual raise
instead of a whopping twelve percent. Neither me nor my
wife had any inkling of what the Renter's Union had discovered,
and we assumed they'd found some kind of bye law
that prevented the landlords from such a steep hike. But

(25:41):
nothing could have prepared us for the truth, nothing at all.
The news about the rent hike was a stressful time
for us, so I wasn't surprised when I started having
these weird, recurring dreams. I just never expected them to
be so vivid. The dreams would always start with me
returning home from an errand, such as a food shopping

(26:02):
or a hair cut, and I turned onto our street
to find our house unlike I remembered it. All the
other houses were the same, regular red brick with copper
brown trim, whereas ours was just jet black all over
the roof, the brick, the doors, even the windows appeared
to have been painted the deepest shade of coal dust

(26:23):
black I'd ever seen. I'd approached the house with the
neighbors watching me from their windows and open doors. But
as soon as I unlocked the front door and walked
inside my home, the dream would end and I'd wake up.
I told my wife about the dreams and the things
that I saw in them, but she agreed it was
probably the stress of the move playing on my mind. Now.

(26:44):
I tried eating better, getting more exercise, and even stopped
drinking alcohol altogether, but the dreams still wouldn't go away.
They just visited me less frequently. They weren't exactly a
hindrance at all. I could still go by my business
as usual, but seeing as I'd never have any kind
of reoccurring dreams before, it was definitely something that played

(27:05):
on my mind a fair bit and made me wonder
if I should just go and see my gp about
it now. Part of the reason that I reckoned that
I could carry on as normal was because I worked
from home. I was head of a customer service department
for a major electronics chain over here in the UK,
so ninety percent of my job involved working from my
home computer to take calls and resolve tickets, and this

(27:28):
suited me down to the ground, as not only could
I put in long hours with relative comfort, but it
meant that I could look after our baby daughter while
my wife was at work as a nurse. She also
worked very long hours, you see, and very hard too,
I might add, So it meant a lot to her
that I could stay home with our daughter and make
sure that she was well looked after. And so one

(27:49):
day I'm working downstairs in the living room and my
daughter is watching cartoons. I made myself a cup of
iced coffee and then set it down on the coffee
table in the middle of the room. But then the
next thing I know, my daughter kicks her legs while
bursting out laughing, and she boots one of the table
legs and the coffee goes spilling all over the floor.
It was a full cup, one of those big plastic

(28:11):
coffee shop cups too, so almost a full pint of
ice coffee was spilling all over the hardwood floor. I
rushed to get some paper towels in the anti stained spray,
not wanting to lose any money by avoiding our deposit.
But then when I got back, I noticed something strange
about the spillage. It was sort of forming a puddle.

(28:34):
The puddle was a rough circle forming in the center
of the floor, and every time I'd take a wipe
at it, the liquid would take the shape of that
same rough circle again. I quickly realized there was a
very subtle dip in the floorboards, one that must have
been hidden with the rug that we'd moved when we
decided to redecorate the room a little, and not wanting
to end up getting charged for it, we reported the

(28:55):
discovery to the landlords immediately. They send someone over right away,
just a general handyman I think it was, and after
a quick inspection of the floor, they told us that
we need some serious work done to prevent the floor
from rotting away completely. Using one of those tiny tube cameras,
the kind that you feed into small places, the inspectors

(29:17):
were able to determine that a series of short wooden
supports had rotted away underneath the floor. These had been
attached to the homes foundations, but only in one section,
which appeared sunken, kind of like a well. And in short,
we could get a hotel around the corner for about
a week, and after maybe three or four days of
work and a subsequent inspection, we'd be able to return

(29:38):
our baby daughter to a safe, clean, stable home. But
unfortunately that's not quite exactly how things went down. We
did as instructed and booked ourselves into a small hotel
for a week, a very bare bones placed just a
couple of miles away from our new house. Then, about
three days into our week long stay, we got a

(29:59):
call from one of our neighbors saying the police were
outside of her house. Not just any police either, they
were in a forensics van wearing those all white coveralls.
I drove over as soon as the wife got home
from the gym, because obviously I neededn't know what was
happening in our new house. But when I got there,
the police turned me away at the door. They'd take

(30:22):
my phone number and they'd be in touch once they
knew what the situation was, but for the time being,
we were in the dark and I had to stay away.
It took a week before the landlords called us to
let us know that the work was completed. When they did,
I demanded a personal inspection before moved back in, and
the woman who called agreed to share everything she knew

(30:44):
when I met her at the house. When I arrived,
a brand new matching floor had been installed and everything
looked just as I remembered it. I obviously didn't test
the new floor by pouring a drink over it, but
I was assured that the foundations had been renovated and
that the issue was now resolved. It was then that
I asked what caused the police to come round, because

(31:06):
if it was serious enough to involve the law, it
was serious enough that we needed to know about it too,
And that's when the woman sat me down over a
cup of tea and laid it all out for me.
First thing, they were offering a rent freeze for three
years if we promised not to talk about this until
after we'd moved out, and since we've been moved out

(31:26):
of that house for a number of years now, I'm
obviously free to talk about it now. The second thing
was that the woman had sworn statements from not one,
but two council approved structural engineers, both of whom were
happy to attest to our home safety and security. So
if we did choose to move back in, we could
sleep soundly knowing that there were no structural issues. Those

(31:49):
were all well and good, But what I wanted more
than anything to know was to find out what was
under our floor. Then, after signing my half of a
thirty six month rental agree, she spilled the beans quite spectacularly.
Almost a hundred years ago, when the streets and the
houses were still brand new, a family had welcomed a

(32:11):
child into the world. But this child was not one
they had expected. I can't remember exactly what the poor
child's condition was. I'm not even sure the authorities had
it entirely sussed out, either, but it was clear that
whatever it was, it was as debilitating as it was severe.
She couldn't walk like other children, she couldn't talk like

(32:32):
other children, and by every estimation, she didn't act like
other children either. Then as a result, she never made
it into double digit ages. It's also clear that whatever
happened to the poor girl, her parents couldn't find it
in themselves to take her to the local cemetery. Maybe
it was just too expensive to hire an undertaker or whatever.

(32:53):
Maybe they had a hand in her death. Either way,
they evidently decided the best place for their dearly departed
daughter was under the house they built with their own hands.
Since there was no one left alive to question and
no one left alive to charge, the police simply moved
the girl's remained some place that they could properly dispose
of her. After that, they closed their investigation and allowed

(33:17):
the renovations to recommence. Then, after a week or so later,
there I was sitting in that exact same space, talking
myself back into moving back in. There was just enough
time for us to back out if we really wanted to.
My wife still had to sign her part of the
forum as the second adult occupant, but even once I

(33:38):
had explained the whole situation to her, she's thought the
same thing I did. It was too late to start
the whole process of moving again. Doing at one time
had been exhausting, so facing it all over again was
just kind of unthinkable, even if that did mean staying
in the house where the hundred year old corpse of
a severely disabled girl had been recently found. Once my

(34:00):
wife had signed her half of the paperwork, we moved
back in the next day, and over the next couple
of weeks, I stopped having those weird dreams where I'd
find our house had turned that sort of inky shade
of black. The scariest part of the recurring dream was this,
I'm a grounded scientific guy, but I don't have a
hard time explaining the dream for the renovations when there

(34:21):
was an illegal burial site under our house. Who knows
what kind of mold or spores or decay could have
been drifting up from that sepulcher underneath our feet, affecting
my mental state or that of my loved ones. I
had dreams, similar dreams, but they were never quite the same.
I'd turn onto our street after running whatever eron I'd

(34:42):
been on, only to find our house looking the exact
same as all the others. No one would be watching
from their windows, no one would be peeking out from
around their doors. I'd just walk inside as per usual,
and then wake up feeling refreshed and clear headed. And
things carried on like that for you years, as if
nothing had ever happened. And then one day Amy and

(35:03):
my wife decided that we wanted a little more room,
and we moved into a three bedroom house a couple
of miles away from the first. My daughter still doesn't
know what they found or why we had to move
out of that new house for a week, and I'm
not sure she remembers any of it to begin with.
Maybe I'll tell her one day, or maybe I'll show
her the video you end up putting this story in.
If you do end up using this, hopefully it'll make

(35:26):
it an easier thing to handle. But I think the
word hopefully is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
My name is Terry and this is a story from
back when me and my family moved into our first
real home together. So back in nineteen ninety four, my

(35:49):
wife and I and our two kids moved into a
big house down in the quiet Texas town. The house
was very old, but very beautiful, with huge bay windows
in a massive backyard, and the yard was maybe half
the size of a football field, and it was filled
with thick grass and old trees. But while my wife, Angie,
and I told ourselves we'd explore every inch of it

(36:10):
before we moved in, we had much more pressing issues
at hand, and so the whole thing got put on
the back burner until much later on. We'd loved the
open space, and as long as we did the occasional
snake check to make sure that there were no rattlers around,
the back yard seemed like the perfect place for our
two kids to play, and that house felt like a

(36:31):
fresh start, a place to make memories, and for the
first few weeks. Nothing could have been better. But then
my two kids found something that changed everything for us.
Sarah Jane was ten and Jack was eight, so they
were just as excited about that back yard as we were.
Once we made sure that there were no unexpected hazards

(36:53):
and we'd given most of the lawn a little trim,
the kids were free to chase each other around all
over the place. But then one afternoon they came running
inside looking very excited. Then when their mom asked them
what was going on, they explained how they thought that
they had actually found buried treasure in the back yard.
I followed them outside, curious and not worried at all,

(37:16):
and they led me to a spot near the back
of the yard where we'd had a gardener trim back
the bushes, and there, half buried in the ground was
a heavy metal door. They looked old and rusted at
the edges, with a thick lock holding it firmly shut.
And I hadn't noticed it before. Angie and I must
have missed it, and the landscaper must have thought that

(37:38):
we knew about it already. Now the kids begged to
open it, but I told them to stay back. Jack
said that it was buried treasure left there by a pirate,
and I told him, whatever it was, it was probably
not any kind of treasure. Pirates keep their treasure in
bank accounts these days, not undergrounded chess. And the door
looked heavy, but after clipping off the lock with a

(38:00):
pair of bolt cutters, I managed to pull it open,
which revealed a dark staircase which led down under the ground,
and the air smelled damp, cold and rotten, no place
for any kid to be. So, after making them promise
not to go down without my permission, I grabbed a
flashlight from the house and shone it down into that hole.

(38:21):
And the steps were concrete, and while they looked pretty worn,
they appeared very sturdy for their age. I told the
kids to wait where they were, and I assured them
that I'd share anything I'd found, and then went down alone.
Now just seconds later, my flashlight was lighting up a
small room at the bottom. But it wasn't just a room.

(38:43):
It looked more like a bunker. It was small, just
a single room with concrete walls and a low ceiling.
A metal cot sat in one corner with a thin,
stained mattress lying on it, and then there was a
rusty sink bolted on the wall, and a toilet attached
to the same wall close by. The fixtures looked very old,

(39:05):
just like everything else. But when I walked up to
the sink and turned one of the faucet knobs, water
came out, water that was both clear and cold. I
figured the place had been abandoned long ago, that maybe
it was some Cold War relic that had thankfully never
had to serve its purpose. But I was wrong. Someone

(39:26):
must have been living down there, and pretty recently too.
A single light bulb hung from the ceiling, flickering when
I pulled its chain, and that's when I saw the
scratches on the walls, deep and uneven, like someone had
clawed at them with nothing but their finger nails. Suddenly
freaked out by what I'd seen, I climbed back out

(39:48):
and closed the door behind me. The kids were waiting,
very wide eyed and excited to hear what I had
to say, and so you can imagine their disappointment when
I told them that the bunker was entirely off limits,
and they tried to argue with me at first, and
I had to scare them a little to make sure
that they listened by claiming that there might be monsters

(40:09):
or even mean wild animals living down there, and that
didn't feel great having to spook my own kids, But
as any parent will tell you, you sometimes got to
lay down the law if you want to keep your
kids actually safe. And that night, my wife and I
talked about what I'd found, and we agreed that not
only should we stop the kids from ever seeing what
was down in that bunker, but that we better call

(40:30):
the cops to let them know what we'd found. The
bunker was very unsettling to me. You see, to me,
it wasn't just some normal place for storms or maybe
even bombs. It might have been built for that, and
it might have also served that purpose at one time,
but when I saw it, it was almost like a
makeshift prison cell. The scratches, the cot the working plumbing,

(40:54):
I felt like they told a story that I didn't
want to know. They felt like a secret that we
didn't want to be a part of. We didn't want
that secret in our new home. Two sheriff's deputies stopped
by the next day after we called. They followed me
to that bunker and I showed them the metal door
in the room below. One of them wrote down some
notes while the other asked a bunch of questions, and

(41:15):
they checked the sink in the toilet, noting that the
water was still working, and agreed that that was probably
not a great sign. They also found a small chain
bolted to the floor near the cot, something that I
hadn't seen during my first visit down there. It looked
kind of rusted, but it was still very strong, and
my skin wanted to crawl off my bones when I

(41:35):
saw that. Stating the obvious, one of the deputies said
the bunker was likely used to hold someone, and probably
against their will. They didn't say much else, but their
faces were obviously very pale as they said this, And
they told us that we weren't in any trouble, that
we'd done the right thing in reaching out to them,

(41:56):
but for the time being, we were to keep that
bunker locked. They would investigate and let us know if
they did find anything. And that same day I drove
over to the home depot in town by a brand
new padlock and re locked the door to that bunker.
I told our kids, obviously, to stay away from it.
They nodded, but I saw this very deep curiosity in
Jack's eyes like it was another conspiracy to keep him

(42:19):
away from the treasure that we'd found down there. And
it may me glad that I bought that padlock. It
was the only thing stopping him from going down there
and seeing all the stuff for himself. And at that age,
seeing dark stuff like that can have a terrible effect
on a child's mind. The house felt different because the
yard didn't feel safe anymore, and I tried to forget

(42:40):
it and move on, but every time I was out
there in the yard, my mind went to that bunker
and all those scratches on the wall, who had been
kept down there for how long? And most importantly why.
The cops called us back a few days later, but
they didn't have the answers we needed. They said they
found no records of the bunker anywhere in any file
or documents related to the property, and ELM's previous owners

(43:03):
also claimed no knowledge of it. They were all the
way up in Oklahoma and had never visited the property.
And then the folks who likely had it built were
dead and they were basically no one to talk to
or questioned that had any solid answers for them, And
as a result, the Sheriff's department couldn't say who built
it or when, and they also found no evidence of

(43:23):
a crime, so even if there were folks around to arrest,
there was really nothing to charge them with. They told
us to keep it locked for safety reasons, and that
naturally we had the right to concrete it over if
we wanted to, maybe to grow a lawn over it,
anything we wanted, And I remember thanking them for the time,
but also thinking that it was all just kind of pointless.

(43:44):
That bunker stayed sealed, like a very dark secret that
we kept buried in our backyard. I checked the padlock
every week, making sure that it was staying, and I
didn't want anyone or anything getting in there, least of
all one of our kids. And years had passed by
and the kids started to grow up and the bunker
stayed off limits, but I knew that they probably still
thought about it, especially our son. Sometimes I saw him

(44:09):
glance at the bushes that we grew in the backyard,
right over where the door was hidden. He didn't talk
about it often, but it was always there, almost like
a black mark that we couldn't never wash clean. Angie
and I tried to make life as normal as possible
for Jack and Sarah Jane. We had backyard barbecues, played
some football, and succeeded in filling in the house with

(44:30):
joy and laughter and some happy memories. But that bunker
was always in the back of our minds, and how
could it not be when it was just right under
our feet. And as the years passed, Sarah Jane and
Jack moved out. Sarah Jane went to college while Jack
got a job in another city, and the house felt
empty without them, but I was glad that they were

(44:50):
finally away from that thing. Angie and I stayed there,
but the house felt a bit too big now, and
anytime I was out in the backyard, I just avoided
that corner where the bushes hid the door or One
night I woke up at maybe one a m. To
take a bathroom trip. I figured that i'd heard it
when washing my hands, but when I turned off the faucet,

(45:10):
I heard it this slow scraping sound like meatow on stone,
and was coming from the backyard. I quickly made my
way downstairs, grabbed my pistol with a little flashlight attachment
that I had bought specifically for home defence, and then
went out in the backyard. It was cold and almost
pitch black out there, but after walking across the lawn,

(45:32):
I pushed through the bushes near the back and checked
the lock on the bunker door. The padlock was still there,
but the dirt around the door looked disturbed, like someone
had been digging. I told myself it was probably just
an animal, maybe a raccoon, but I couldn't convince myself
and the pardon me thought that maybe was Jack, but
that seemed insane. Another part of me thought that it

(45:55):
was whoever had owned the house before, maybe even the
person who had been kept down there. Hey, friends, thanks
for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted of
all future narrations. I release new videos on very Monday
and Thursday at nine p m. Eastern Time, and there

(46:16):
are super fun live streams every Sunday and Wednesday night.
If you get a story, be sure to submit them
over at my email Let's Read Submissions at gmail dot
com and you might even hear your story featured on
the next video. And if you want to support me
even more, grab early access to all future narrations and
bonus content over on Patreon or click that big joint

(46:36):
button to hear about the extra perks from members of
the channel, and check out the Let's Free podcast where
you can hear all of these stories and big compilations,
located anywhere you listen to podcasts. I also have a
true crime channel called Saturn Soul. All links in the
description below. Thanks so much, friends, and remember your gray
matter is turning blue.