August 18, 2025 • 48 mins
Ghostbusters, What are Your Creepiest Experiences!?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Story number one. I arrived in the village on a gray,
shivering dawn, the air thin with altitude and anticipation. I
had come on the request of my mission, tasked with
confronting the rumors that churned through greasy local gossip, a
haunted spring, more precisely, an ancient stone well brooding at
the edge of pine woods above the houses. I had
(00:22):
heard stories before, odd lights, children's pranks, old men's tales
to frighten women. But I was used to skepticism, and
to people who, in their desperation, shaped the unknown into demons.
When the first child whispered, trembling that the well called
to her after dusk, her mother shut her mouth hard
and hustled her away. The other villagers grew suddenly busy
(00:46):
fixing eyes on stones and window sills rather than on me.
That morning, I hoped to relieve their fear, offer a blessing,
perhaps a little sensible reassurance. No one volunteered to join me. Instead,
they gathered half concealed behind the thorny hedges, their faces
pale eyes, following me down the narrow track to the well,
each step muffled by dead brown needles. At the crumbling mouth,
(01:10):
of the well. The world seemed to shrink. The wind stopped,
even the birds stilled. I opened my prayer book with
trembling hands. Not from fear, I told myself, but from
the cold. The stone of the rim was damp. Beneath
my palm and previous offerings coins cracked pottery. A few
ribbons lay scattered inside, their colors warped by time and moss.
(01:34):
I began to pray, my voice thin in the crisp,
bare It was then that I realized how unnaturally my
words echoed, too, sharp, ringing in metallic distortion, as if
through some hollow tube. Every syllable seemed to come back,
not quite as I had said it. The inflection twisted,
the tones subtly mocking. I swallowed against the chill, snaking
(01:56):
up my spine. Behind me, I heard rustling. I expected
perhaps one curious villager, but the place was empty. The
group that had followed me had vanished, leaving only the
scattered prints of their boots in the frostbitten grass. I
surmised they were simply scared. The temperature dropped as I
knelt lower than before, a sudden plunge that made my
(02:18):
breath smoke in the weak morning light. I felt absurdly exposed,
some primal sense crawling inside my chest as I drew
a small cross from my coat and attached it to
the battered bucket chain. The rope was already frayed, notebook
entries from previous travelers warning do not drink with each
half frozen finger. I eased the cross over the well's
(02:40):
lip and lowered it slowly. The squeal of the chain
slid into a vibration, a tremor in my bones, relentless
and growing. It seemed to seep into my knees, rattling
the prayer book from side to side. From below, a
growl bubbled up, not the growl of any animal I knew.
Deeper resonant vibrated the stones, as if something ancient was
(03:02):
twisting itself awake beneath the bedrock. My arms were shaking.
Without warning, the chain snapped in a flurry of motion.
Metal shards whirled up like sparks, clattering off rock and skin.
The buckets swung out empty, and the cross vanished beneath
the fractured surface, throwing up oily streaks on the water
that shimmered unnatural, like the residue of a fire. I
(03:26):
flinched back, sensation prickling across my throat, pressure hard and sudden,
like invisible hands tightening around my windpipe.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
My vision starbursted. I could not breathe.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Something I cannot explain how I knew did not want
me there. Sound warped behind the vibrations, louder now. A
voice rose, female, guttural but off, lacking any real humanness,
only warping around syllables in a way that pressed its
meaning inside my skull. The threat was palpable, a warning,
(04:01):
a curse, or perhaps only the echo of everything fearful
I'd ever been told about places like this. I wrenched
out a final chant, willing the words to shield me,
even as the world around the well seemed to contract, soundless, airless.
The tightness vanished as suddenly as it had come. The
water fell still beneath slick rainbow bands, rotten with some
(04:23):
persistent chemical stench of the cross. No trace remained. I
returned to the village, not trusting my voice or the
steadiness of my steps. My skin crawled with sweat, though
the air was freezing. I tried to carry on with
the work I'd come to do, refusing to speak of
what I'd felt or heard, I reasoned with myself. Perhaps
(04:44):
it was a gas pocket, ancient air shifting the stones,
the voice only whindwarped by the crumbling masonry. Perhaps my
own nerves had cracked in the pressure of expectation, generating visions.
But the feeling on my throat lingered raw and bruised,
as if marked from within. Three days later, a child
running errands for the parish burst in, clutching something in
(05:06):
trembling hands. She had found the cross, bone dry, not
a spot of rust, lying at the threshold of the church,
far from the well. Nobody had been seen there during
those nights. The key was always with me. The cross
was impossibly cold, as if it had been left outside
on a glacier. I tried to rationalize. Perhaps the cross
had been torn loose, flung clear, picked up by an
(05:29):
animal or a villager, and brought here, offered back as
a prank or a gesture of peace. But none claimed responsibility,
and the villagers returned to treating the well as forbidden,
their eyes lingering too long on it whenever a breeze
rattled the dead branches nearby. In the nights that followed,
I began to hear the echo of that guttural voice, again,
(05:50):
soft and mocking, repeating my whispered prayers in the dark.
Sometimes I would find myself startled awake, sure of cold
pressure wrapping around my neck, only to gasp at empty air.
While out walking at twilight, a time when the light
tilts and shadows run long, I would spot with hard
hammer certainty, the silhouette of a woman by the well's rim,
(06:13):
always just far enough to blur into the branches and mist.
If I tried to focus. She never moved, and I
never approached. I poured myself into work, avoided the well,
told no one what. I continued to feel a presence
lurking close whenever I prayed, a mocking echo in every
quiet room. Door hinges creaked at odd hours. Polished glass
(06:33):
sometimes grew greasy with rainbow streaks after rain. Vertigo hit me,
sometimes a sense of heavy water closing over my head,
even nowhere near the well. I have tried to believe
it was all nerves and suggestibility. Perhaps the villager's anxiety
infected me, Perhaps natural phenomena and coincidence. Sometimes lost in fatigue,
(06:55):
I almost managed to believe it truly was only that
but every now and then, when I close my eyes
in prayer, there remains the sharp echo of a voice
not my own, too cold, too close, too patient, and
the light tug at my throat, warning or waiting.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Just out of sight. Story number two.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
It was late spring when Joe and I took the
job at number fourteen, Charlotte Row. We had been running
our semi ironic ghost cleanup crew for about a year,
mostly dealing with drafty addicts, over excited tenants, and mild superstitions.
Joe liked to make a show of sage and prayers,
but if a pipe clanked or a window stuck, we
(07:37):
chalked it up to bad maintenance. But Charlotte Row was different.
The landlord, a pale, reedy man who never looked you
in the eyes, said his tenants couldn't sleep, had reported
doors shutting by themselves, sobbing behind walls, cold gusts, and
closed rooms. There was talk of visitors, a term people
use like they were trying not to be specific. We
(07:58):
went in on a Friday with our usual gear, voice recorders,
extra flashlights, fresh batteries. The brownstone itself was almost luxurious,
sunlight leaping off polished banisters, and gold frame mirrors, but
the place felt empty, as if the rooms themselves were
holding their breath. That night, around midnight, I felt cold
(08:19):
pockets in the upstairs hallway. The back of my neck prickled,
and every time I passed the full length hall mirror,
I imagined seeing someone step just off frame. The lights flickered,
sometimes just a bulb. The kitchen, the bathroom, the foyer
in turn, then all at once, plunging us into humming grayness.
Before snapping back that discomfort, I told myself could be
(08:41):
old wiring, maybe, But all our equipment failed. Camera batteries
drained in minutes, even the backup sets. I tested everything
at home, no issues. By two a m. We'd given
up on video, settling for a cheap audio recorder, which
pulsed its red light reassuringly. Next day I replayed the tapes,
(09:01):
half mocking my voice, ordinary catalog cold spots. Underneath, faint
but distinct, came a sort of whisper, a syllabic wet nonsense,
more breath than word. But every third or fourth snippet
it shaped itself into something like a warning. I understood nothing,
but felt as if a shadow passed over me. Each time,
(09:23):
it repeated a low, pleading shudder, digging at my bones.
Night two, I returned alone. Joe was running late, or claim,
so I mapped the house in salt and juniper, muttering
borrowed prayers. It felt silly. I watched as the rooms,
one by one settled into the hush of after midnight.
At two forty five sharp, every brass doorknob in the
(09:45):
house started rattling, one after another, then all at once,
a furious, unmistakable clatter against the silence, as if someone no,
as if many someone's were locked in every room, desperate
to get out. I pulse spiked. I crept toward the
back stairs. Found the front door wedge tight, unmoved even
(10:05):
when I shouldered against it. My phone began to ring,
buzzing in my palm so hard I dropped it. I
pressed answer on the other end, laughter, a child's shrill giggle,
flitting between static. It looped higher, pitched, until it broke
into something gurgling at the edges. My own reflection in
the foyer mirror looked pale and terrified, caught in a
(10:27):
shutter flash of panic. I called for Joe. The house
returned to silence, A deep unnatural cessation of sound, where
even the city's distant traffic seemed sucked away. My throat
ached from shouting. I combed the rooms, every window locked,
every closet empty. No sign of him at the entrance.
(10:48):
My foot squelched. There a pool of blood slicked across
the checkered tile, leading nowhere. Not a single footprint, no
drags or drops or stains moving away, just the pool,
viscous and smelling, sharp like rust and penny. Panic froze me.
My mind leapt from accident to prank to something incomprehensible.
(11:11):
I called once more. The house replied only with a
muted inward echo. I staggered to the door, finally prying
it open with a sort of brute frantic force usually
reserved for dreams. Cool night air struck my face as
I gasped on the stoop. Every pane of glass, every window,
even those on the upper floors, fogged over in an
(11:33):
instant through the haze. Handprints, bloomed smears, sets of fingers,
some large as mine, some so small i'd have thought
them left by a doll. All from the inside. No
human could have reached the third floor's tall windows. I
left everything behind our bags are screens, the foolish little
(11:54):
salt stubs. Fear had set in, metallic and deep. By sunrise,
I'd called the police. They found nothing. No blood, no gear,
no Joe. To everyone else, it was as if Joe
had never existed. His phone was disconnected, his apartment was
suddenly available, no records, no keys, nothing to show he'd
(12:16):
ever shared a desk or a laugh with me. Worked,
dried up. The landlord denied I'd ever been there, his
voice taut and irritated. The tenants moved out. Charlotte Rowe
changed owners repeatedly. Sometimes when I passed it, drapes would twitch.
Though I knew the place should be empty. I tried
for a while to convince myself of rational explanations. Carbon
(12:38):
monoxide in old building's toxins, bending my mind, a shared
delusion triggered by my own subconscious expectations, I told myself.
Perhaps I'd dreamed the blood, misplaced Joe's phone number, misunderstood
police indifference for bureaucracy. Maybe Joe got cold feet ran
(12:59):
started over. Maybe every window fogs when the outside air
is just the right temperature. Maybe the laughter on my
phone had been glitchy audio some radio interference, a neighbor's
child captured by mistake. I took a job in records management, clean,
well lit, always filled with people and documents and noise. Still,
(13:20):
sometimes deep in the night, my bedroom window clouds with vapor.
Twin handprints pressed on the inside.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Cold.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
I tell myself it's condensation from my breath, that I'll
scrub it away, But I've noticed the handprints never quite
fit mine. Somewhere in the blackout before waking, a child's
giggle skips across the static of my dreams, trailing words.
I almost understand. When I look in the mirror for
a split second, I see a shadow hovering outside my door.
(13:50):
Gone the moment I blink, I quit ghost hunting, swore
off any mention.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Of Charlotte Row.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Still, each time the glass fogs and those small handprints appear,
part of me wonders if the visitors even needed a reason,
or if, after all these years, I was the one
they wanted to take all along story number three. I
never wanted to remember this, but lately the memories slip
in more than ever, especially at night, and especially these
(14:17):
past few months. It's not quite fear that gnaws at me,
not quite dread. Either it's an itch. I can't locate.
Nothing in my life before that year could have prepared
me for what happened to Katie, or the way it
still hovers over me, as if waiting for something unfinished.
I used to work in the small church at the
edge of our village. We were a modest congregation, fifty
(14:39):
maybe sixty souls. On a crowded sunday. I tended the grounds,
polished the pews, sometimes help Father Francis with paperwork, but
mostly I enjoyed the quiet. I started spending more time
with Katie after her mother fell sick and couldn't get
around much. She was always cheerful growing up, giggling at nothing,
hair tangled with burrs and wild flowers from the fields
(15:01):
behind their house. After everything, I still see her face
clearly as it once was. The first strange thing happened
on an evening thick with the scent of rain. I
remember the heaviness in the air, how thunders shuddered underfoot,
but the rain held off. I'd stopped by Katie's after
my chores. I found her sitting on the porch, rocking
(15:21):
back and forth, not the gentle sway of boredom, but
a frenetic movement, as if her bones needed escape. Her
mouth was moving quick, guttural syllables that tumbled over each other,
angry and sharp. It sounded like a language, but not
one I'd heard. Sometimes a word hung in the air,
almost forming, then devolving into that same furious gibberish. Her
(15:45):
eyes usually hazel and bright or black, not in color,
but in the way the pupils seemed to suck in
the daylight, her stare cutting right through me. When I
called her name, she didn't even flinch, just kept churning
those sounds. Eventually I lipped away, convincing myself I'd caught
her rehearsing something, a school play, a prank, I tried
(16:06):
to rationalize it, a tantrum, a nervous tick. Maybe she
was mimicking a TV show, though her parents never let
much of that devil's work in the house. But the
memory clung to me, sharpened by how viscerally wrong that
moment had felt. A week later, we wandered the woods
past the pumpkin fields, the quiet broken only by the
(16:26):
buzzing heat in brittle laughter, she darted along the deer trails,
trailing ahead. When I rounded the next bend.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
She was gone.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
I called her name, feeling a slow drip of cold
sweat slide down my spine. My voice bounced off the trees,
swallowed by thick summer growth. It felt like she'd evaporated
into the green. That's when I saw the splash of
red on the moss, blood, a lot of it, fresh
and darkening in the mid morning sun, spattering leaves and rocks.
(16:56):
I moved closer and found Katie crouched beside a torn animal.
Later I thought it was a rabbit or maybe a fox,
but it barely looked like either. Flesh dangled from her mouth,
blood streaked her dress, lips, teeth, and cheeks. Her nails
dug deep into the meat, long, jagged, beastly. For a second,
she looked up at me, her eyes wild, distant, unseeing.
(17:20):
I froze my own body, refusing to believe the sight
in front of me. She bent over the carcass again,
and then before I could breathe out, she was gone.
I spun around. She was behind me, smiling, hands empty dressed,
clean hair tumbling with wild flowers twisted in. She spoke casually,
said she'd found fresh blooms, no blood, no claws, no corpse.
(17:45):
The rational part of me what was left searched for answers.
Maybe it was a hallucination, Maybe memory fumbled some details.
My stomach churned at the metallic stink, still clinging to
my clothes. A few weeks, twisted by her parents, stopped
coming to church. One evening, her mother arrived at the parish,
eyes swollen and red, clutching Father Francis's hand so hard
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her knuckles shone. I overheard scraps possessed. Her mother whispered,
pressing her rosary to her chest. I went with them,
unable to stay away, like some invisible hook in my
gut dragged me to witness what I already feared. Katie's
room felt wrong before the door even opened, colder than
the hallway, air thick with a rotten sweetness. She lay
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motionless on her bed, body twisted at impossible angles, head
pressed back in an unnatural arch, her eyes pinned the ceiling,
mouth moving with that same guttural verbiage, faster and harsher.
The ceiling fan above her spun lazily, casting fractured shadows,
and in the yellow light, her skin looked waxy veins
webbing her jaw and neck. I stood outside, peering through
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the warped glass of the window. Father Francis began the rites,
his voice low and steady, and verses trembling in the air.
The room seemed to pulse in time with his words,
each syllable, tightening the tension. Suddenly, Katie's body lurched upward
in a snapped convulsion. She floated, limbs splaying awkwardly, her
(19:15):
hair streaming up like underwater kelp. She spun, twisted by
some violent force, eyes still fixed but now bloodshot, mouth
gaping open in a scream. I could not hear through
the glass. The bed thudded as she dropped, Then silence
broken as Father Francis crashed to the floor, face pale,
rivers of red pooling under his nose. He tried to scream,
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his lips stretching wide, but no sound came out. After
that day, he never spoke again, living out his days
at his sister's home, body paralyzed, eyes haunted. No doctor,
no family member, nobody in the parish could offer a reason.
Katie by morning seemed herself again, at least that's what
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her parents claimed. I visited once she smiled spoke softly,
her hands folded in her lap, nails short and pink,
no trace of blood or violence, her eyes lingered on
mine for just a moment too long. I told myself
she had been sick, something neurological, or maybe unresolved trauma
made me recall things that didn't happen. Now years later,
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I work in town. Sometimes I'll pass someone speaking a
strange language on the bus, just a foreign tongue, but
my hackles rise. Sometimes I spot Katie across a shop,
laughing with a friend, and I remember the taste of
iron in the woods, or the way she spun boneless
in mid air. Nights come hardest when a heaviness clamps
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to my chest and I swear I hear claws scrape
at my door, or guttural words whisper behind my closed window.
No one else talks about it. Her parents avoid my
gaze at church. Some say Father Francis had a stroke,
say the mind invents horrors in the dark. But I've
never been sure that whatever entered Katie ever left. For
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all I know, it's watching me, waiting on the other
side of a smile, or in the shadows behind the
wildflowers where she once vanished. All I know for certain
is the feeling never left, the certainty that at any
moment she might turn and those black, endless eyes will
find mine again. Story number four. I've always considered myself
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a practical man, reasonably skeptical, the sort people ask for
help resetting their circuit breakers or picking out a reliable
used car, ideal in rare antiques by trade and habit,
which means I've handled my share of so called cursed
or haunted items. Most are little more than conversation starters
with a spicy providence, the kind people call me about
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when a floorboard creaks. For a while, my neighbors joked
that I could solve their ghost problems, and more as
a lark than conviction, I took up the job I
use to chalk up most stories to overactive imaginations.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
That was before the watch.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
I bought it on a gray Thursday at an estate
sale in the crumbling colonial on Ewing Street. A plain
wooden box, its velvet lining disintegrating, held a pocket watch
more ornate than any I'd seen in years, gold filigree
wrapped around the shell, numbers etched in black against opal,
a lid that clicks satisfyingly when closed. The seller said
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it belonged to Victor Clemens, a notorious gambler around the
turn of the last century, rumored to have cheated death
in a card game with stakes nobody would name. The
legend went that the watch was his edge. As long
as it kept ticking, he always knew when to fold
and when to push all in. I've never believed in luck,
let alone curses. Still, there was something strange about the
(22:50):
weight of it in my palm, heavier than I expected
for its size. I brought it home, set it on
my shelf with other oddities. The first few days passed
without a Then one evening, as I was cataloging Ledger entries,
I glanced at my kitchen clock eight thirty. I remember
pouring coffee, sorting receipts, and then abruptly, I was sitting
(23:13):
in my living room armchair. The mug was cold in
my hand, and the clock blinked eleven fifty six. My
memory felt patched up, as if I dozed off with
my eyes open. I blamed fatigue, but it kept happening, hours,
bleeding away every evening, as if leaking through a crack.
I would check emails at seven, and without warning, find
(23:35):
myself staring at a new page or across the room,
the clock far ahead. The sensation felt nothing like falling asleep.
My skin prickled with a low grade anxiety, like I'd
left more than just time behind, like something essential had
been leached. Things escalated in small, insidious increments. Some nights,
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while washing my face, I'd catch my reflection in the mirror,
my own features wan ensnared with confusion, and behind my
shoulder on the shelf, the pocket watch's face, its hands
spun backward, smooth and relentless. A trick of the light,
I reasoned, or perhaps just exhaustion messing with my perception.
(24:17):
I tried hiding the watch, then locking it in the attic,
but I'd still see it skittering in mirrors, glinting from
impossible angles. I started to wonder if I was blacking out.
I set up my phone to record video of myself
as I slept out of idle curiosity and growing dread.
Reviewing the footage one morning, I saw nothing unusual until
(24:37):
three four a m. Then, unmistakably, the watch on my
nightstand trembled, its lid snapping open and shut in a
silent frantic rhythm. Its spring was stiff as a bone hinge.
It should have stayed closed, even under duress. I watched
as the minutes ticked past. The lid stilled. The watch
returned to stillness. When I checked again a second time,
(25:00):
the video was gone, not moved to the trash, just erased,
even from the folder that logs deletions. I tried reasoning
with myself. Maybe corrupt data or a bad SD card.
Maybe stress and insomnia had caught up with me. I
confess it barely calmed the cold walled corridors of doubt.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
By then.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Even the sounds in my house grew strange. Late at night,
faint laughter drifted from behind closed doors, a low, throaty guffaw,
punctuated by the whisper and flutter of cards against the table.
It was unmistakable, the rhythmic riffle, too quick and cold
to be rats scratching in the wall. Sometimes, while taking
out the trash or walking to the kitchen, I'd feel
(25:43):
as if I'd waded into a fog of cigarette smoke,
acrid and sweet with the tang of cheap gin. Before
the sensation faded, my home took on a stale tense air,
the way it might feel waiting for a storm that
never breaks. A collector from upstate got w of the
watch and contacted me, offering more money than I'd ever
(26:03):
been offered for a single object. I shipped it with relief,
not even bothering to wrap it with care. I watched
the package leave in the courier's hands, But twenty four
hours later there it was back on my kitchen counter,
just as I had packed it, shipping label intact, box unopened,
no record of return, no note. Rationally, I thought maybe
(26:26):
there'd been an error at the post office. Less rationally,
I kept the kitchen light on all night. A week later,
the collector's wife called. Her voice was thin stretched across
interfering static, apologizing for disturbing me. Her husband hadn't returned
home since the day the watch arrived. She'd opened the
delivered box and found only the watch nestled inside, no letter,
(26:47):
no invoice, as if it had sent itself. I keep
the watch locked in an old strong box, now sealed
under two pad locks, and stuff deep within a steel
filing cabinet. Still things haven't returned to normal. My clocks
skip forward in leaps, or sometimes double an hour. My
phone alarm will blare for a full five minutes at seven,
(27:08):
then again at eight, with no missed calls or calendar
notifications to explain the glitch. The neighbor's dog whinds and
paws at my door some nights, while unseen, that old
laughter and the rattling shuffle echo from behind baseboards and
under floorboards. I run my hands over the strong box
some mornings, half expecting it to feel warm or cold,
(27:30):
or subtly humming, anything to reveal a secret mechanism or trick.
But it is always just smooth, cold steel. I have
no proof of anything except my own memory, unreliable as
that's become some nights, when the minutes blur past without
clear meaning, or when I see in the corner of
my mirror the faint opal face of the pocket watch glinting,
(27:54):
a faint suspicion worms through me. Perhaps it's all explainable sleepwalking, work, stress,
digital glitches. Perhaps the coincidence of the collector's disappearance and
the watch's return can be chalked up to a miserable
chain of accidents or a prank I don't yet understand.
(28:14):
But when the house falls quiet and I hear cards
shuffling and laughter close almost behind my teeth. I can't
shake the sense I've misplaced time, or bought a debt
I never meant to pay. There's no logic that sues it.
I lock the strong box anyway, and count my hours
as best I can. Story number five. Being called a
ghostbuster in my area was more of a neighborhood joke
(28:36):
than a job title, but it stuck. I had a
toolkit of common sense, electrical know how, and a stubborn streak.
Most complaints secretly turned out to be noisy pipes or
the wind whistling through the eaves. When the call came
in from a nurse about a haunted hospital, I assumed
it was another loose window sash, or mice in the walls,
(28:58):
maybe hospital memories warped by grief and exhaustion. It was
close to midnight when I reached the address she had given.
Tucked away behind rows of shuttered shops and overgrown weeds,
the building that loomed out of the darkness was far
from the busy little clinic i'd heard about. This place
was skeletal, a husk, windows mostly broken or boarded up.
(29:19):
The paint blistered from years of neglect. The sign out
front was partially eaten away, the name impossible to read
except for the faint blue of a cross. I second
guessed myself and checked the address, my phone's flashlight barely
holding at ten percent. No one answered when I tried
the nurse's number. For a moment, I surveyed the street quiet,
(29:41):
every house asleep or pretending to be, wondering whether to
just head home and write this off as a prank.
That's when I saw it. A pulse of cold blue
light on the hospital's top floor, not steady like proper electricity,
a slow, shivering flicker, as if someone was trying to
get my attention. The front entrance groaned open under the
(30:01):
pressure of my shoulder. Immediately, a wind rushed past me,
sharp and cold, slicing through my jacket, carrying a smell
that hit the back of my throat almost violently. It
was the stench of rot, like flesh left exposed too long,
sickly sweet, with an edge of ammonia, making my stomach
clench and my eyes water. Inside the building was a contradiction,
(30:23):
structurally intact, the marble floor, swept clean, walls sheeted in
faded cream paint, yet completely unlit. Despite the flicker glimpsed upstairs.
I tried the switches, hoping for even the sickly buzz
of dying fluorescence, but nothing. My footsteps echoed much too loudly,
as if the corridor ran much longer than it looked.
(30:45):
In the dead silence, I became aware of something else,
a sensation at the edge of consciousness, like someone barely
grazing the skin on my back. Each time I pivoted,
certain i'd catch a shadow, I saw nothing but the
faint bloom of my own breath. There were no running children,
no night nurse with creaking shoes, just the persistent presence,
(31:07):
not even footsteps, just a pressure, a whisper of fabric
against me, lingering as though some hand was drawing lazy
circles into my shoulder blades. Upstairs, I nearly tripped over
a small spill of syringes scattered on a step near
the landing, each one empty. My mind wandered junkies squatting,
(31:28):
not ghosts. The top floor stretched out into a long rectangle,
at the far end of which the flickering blue glow
seeped through the cracks of a partly open door. I
entered slowly, holding my flashlight like a weapon. The room
was colder than before, the smell stronger, mildew and old death,
instinctively repulsive. On the ground in the center of crack
(31:51):
linoleum was a chalk circle, messy and frantic. Inside were dolls,
rag dolls, plastic faces, mangled or slashed, pin cushioned with
gleaming sewing needles and rusted bent pins. The doll's limbs
were twisted at odd angles, and some of their button
eyes had been swapped for animal teeth, threaded on with
(32:11):
coarse black thread. Everything about the arrangement radiated anger, someone's obsession,
a ritual of resentment. The walls, too, were not spared,
sigils scratched over and over again, some in what looked
like red marker, some in a tarry substance. I forced
myself not to sniff more closely. Shapes I couldn't identify,
(32:33):
spiraled and looped, drawn so many times the paint beneath
had blistered. I swallowed against the lump of nausea, turning
to retreat, but as I stepped back, a sharp stab
of pain lanced into my forearm, then another in the thigh.
The sensation was unmistakable, an invisible needle jabbing through skin,
cruel and slow. I tore at my sleeve, certain i'd
(32:56):
find some spider or broken glass clinging to me, but
there was nothing. Still the pain came. Another jab at
the hip, the chest, in staccato rhythm, always where one
of those dolls bore a pin. It escalated fast, from
discomfort to agony. There was no blood, no rupture in
the skin, but the swelling, stinging ache was real enough
(33:18):
to buckle my knees. Panic or some primal animal urge
made me lunge for the hallway. I ran, heart thrumbing
so loudly I could barely hear my own feet on
the stairs. The touch chased me, an icy brush on
my neck, the feeling of being shadowed by dozens of
crawling fingers. I burst onto the street. The sudden absence
(33:39):
of the hospital's interior chill and reek hit me so
hard I bent over, gasping. Looking up, I scanned the
facade for any sign of the blue light, signs of habitation,
anything normal. The building didn't just look empty, it looked dead.
Every window blackened, the roof line crumpled like something old
(33:59):
and sick, trying to fold in on itself. There was
no sign anyone had been there for years. At home,
I undressed, still shaking, and finally saw the marks, not wounds,
dark patches the size of pinpricks, and some bigger, as
if capillaries had burst in little clusters all across my arms, legs,
even my side. Pressing on them brought back that sharp,
(34:21):
stinging pain, like needles hidden under the skin. Unable to sleep,
I called the nurse again, just to confirm, to find
some logical explanation, to at least find out if someone
had been using the old hospital. Her voice was calm, professional,
and utterly confused. No, she said she hadn't called. The
(34:43):
hospital I'd visited had closed three years earlier after an
electrical fire. She hadn't worked a shift there in months. Perhaps,
she suggested gently, someone else was pulling a trick, or
maybe I'd confuse the dates. After all, midnight blurs the mind.
Days later, the marks have faded, but sometimes at night
I feel a faint pin prick beneath my shoulder blade
(35:06):
and itch. Nothing satisfies I can rationalize, almost believe it
was all a side effect of exhaustion. Suggestion and coincidence.
Almost Yet, in certain silences, when the world lies hushed
and expectant, I remember those dolls faces, and the cold
that is not quite air, and the pain that came
from nowhere at all, And I wonder who called or
(35:29):
what story number six. I'd always considered myself a rational person,
A cliche, I know, but true. Our house on the
edge of town had never seemed haunting or gloomy. It
was just a modest place, with a yard that collected
leaves and a porch that creaked at the lightest step.
My wife's devotion to religious gatherings was her thing. I
(35:50):
kept my feet on the ground. We lived quietly, comfortably,
and for years that was enough. When my wife told
me she was pregnant, our world shifted. Aaron took on
a gentle excitement. She picked out pale yellow onesies and
tiny socks. I assembled the crib with the satisfaction of
a job well done. The nursery was decorated in pale blues,
(36:12):
with hand painted clouds on the ceiling. You'd step in
and feel softness in the air. Then the miscarriage silence
fell into the nursery, thick and unmoving. All plans were
gently folded away, closed in a drawer, the crib pushed
to one side, painted clouds suddenly meaningless. I repeated those
(36:33):
familiar phrases to my wife, trying to sound like I
believe them. Maybe something better was yet to come. A
few weeks later, it happened for the first time. The
night was sticky, with a late summer heat. I woke
to the faint thumping of wood. It took me a
moment to realize the sound was coming from the nursery.
I found my wife standing in the dark, gently banging
(36:55):
her forehead on the door, eyes closed, her face blank,
moonlight showed a thin line of drool at the corner
of her mouth. Soft, rhythmic, and completely unconscious. I guided
her to bed, and the next morning she laughed it off,
called at a one off sleepwalking incident, but I watched
her then, unsure. The same thing happened again the next
(37:17):
night and the next. Each time she'd drift to the
nursery door and rest her head against it, moving in
a slow back and forth, as if trying to open
something with her mind. Some nights I'd wake and hear
a song, a familiar lullaby, the one She used to
hum when we were excited about the baby, but when
I opened my eyes, the tune would stop midnoe, replaced
(37:39):
by an urging silence. One night, I caught her standing
over the crib, swaying, her voice barely above a hiss,
eyes not quite open, far away somewhere else. When she
noticed me, her face changed. I'd never known how much
menace could exist in a person's glance. Her eyes flashed,
her lips pulled back just a bit too tight. Then
(38:00):
she whispered with a strange urgency, insisting I keep quiet.
The baby was sleeping. She said it with conviction, a
hush in her voice that didn't match the emptiness of
the room. The air felt wrong, heavy with something I
couldn't name. There was no baby in that crib, just
a folded blanket in one of those tiny knitted caps.
(38:21):
It wasn't long before lines blurred. I'd catch her on
her knees on the nursery floor, animating toys, clapping, or
speaking to invisible company. Once she asked me, sharp concern
in her voice, if she was giving our child enough love,
enough care. Rational explanations never left my mind. Stress, hormonal swings, sorrow,
(38:44):
pushing her.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Into fugue states.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Still, some part of me recoiled every time the nursery
door squeaked open in the darkness, or the baby monitor,
quiet for months, crackled with short bursts of static late
in the night. The moment where I truly lost footing
in reality happen on an ordinary Wednesday. I was returning
from a late meeting when my phone lit up. It
was my wife, in a panic. Her speech clipped and frantic.
(39:09):
She said, our baby, our child, the one we lost,
was sick, too hot, not breathing right. She was rushing
to the hospital. I fumbled my keys and drove back,
heart thumping, reality bending uncomfortable shapes. I found her collapsed
on the living room floor, toys and blankets scattered around her.
(39:29):
The TV flickered blue, static, painting the room in sickly colors.
Her pulse was thin, her breathing shallow. When she finally
woke up, she gazed at me as though I were
the stranger in this scenario. She recovered slowly. Days passed
before I dared to mention any of it. She blinked,
confused when I asked about those lost nights. In desperate
(39:50):
phone call, she'd remembered nothing. She said, she felt a
general weariness, that's all. I watched her carefully, afraid that I,
too was unraveling a part of me. He tried to
catalog each anomaly, searching for grounding explanations, sleep disturbances, grief
manifesting as dissociation, maybe even something in the water, old
(40:11):
pipes running through the house, ancient insulation with who knows
what inside old houses, and old grief, I reasoned, sometimes
work together to make you see things that aren't there.
But the chill in the house didn't dissipate, even when
the windows were closed and the heater on a draft
trailed from the nursery. The air in that room always
felt denser, colder, charged with the static weight of anticipation. Sometimes,
(40:37):
before falling asleep, I'd see the folded baby clothes move
ever so slightly, or glimpse of faint handprint on the
nursery window, impossible to reach from inside. Our marriage staggered
forward on trembling legs. My wife's pregnancy this time was
routine and monitored, each visit to the doctor relieving and
terrifying in equal measure. I wanted to believe it would
(41:00):
be different now that grief was a thing that departed
in time, not a thing that haunted rooms or people.
I changed the house for good, packed belongings, and painted
over those clouds with a desperate hand. I told myself
it was all in the past, all explainable if you
had the patience for it. Old wood settling nightmares seeping
(41:22):
into waking life. Maybe I was seeing things because I
wanted to see them, because the silence of the nursery
was too much to bear. Yet memories do not fade
as paint does. Even now, in the early morning hours,
I sometimes wake to a distant, rhythmic banging, or I'll
hear the low, almost inaudible hum of a lullaby, sometimes
(41:43):
from another room, sometimes in my own mind. Only once
did I allow myself to check the new nursery, to
reassure myself it was just a house, just wind, just
the echo of footfalls in an empty hallway.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
All I know is that the.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Chill never left me, and neither did the impression that
something grief longing or something else can take residence in
a house and never quite leave Story number seven. For
the longest time, my life was routine, quiet, even dull.
I lived with my grandfather because my university was close
(42:19):
to his old, sprawling house at the edge of the city.
My parents liked knowing someone would cook for me, and
that I wouldn't waste away eating cup noodles. My grandfather
was always a silent man, the kind who used to
hum to his plants and could predict rain by the
smell in the air. I never thought of him as strange,
not until everything changed. I was engrossed in my science studies,
(42:41):
buried in logic and facts. So when my grandfather one
afternoon looked up from his crossword and asked if I
would prefer a peaceful death or a painful one, I froze.
He'd said it quietly, as though he was asking about
tea or coffee. For a few seconds, I wondered if
I'd misheard, but his bright, unblinking eyes told me otherwise.
(43:02):
I laughed awkwardly and left the room, dismissing it in
my head as a stray macab joke. After that, things
started happening, small things you'd never notice unless you looked
for them. I'd come home to the metallic scrape of
knives being sharpened, the shrill grind echoing in the silent kitchen,
though we hardly ever cooked together. Once I came back
(43:23):
from the library and found my grandfather in my bedroom,
his back to me, digging around in my drawers, holding
and then replacing trinkets, a pen, a key chain, without reaction.
He never mentioned it. Each time I asked what he
was doing, he'd smile that odd, lopsided smile and shuffle away.
(43:44):
I called my parents, told them what was happening. My
mother brushed it off old age, She said, does all
kinds of things to a person's mind. She reminded me
to be patient, that I should take care of him
for her sake. I wanted to believe her. Maybe he
was just lonely, maybe I was overreacting. But then came
(44:04):
the night I heard him leave the house. I was
up late studying, and the low whine of the back
door creaked through the thin walls. I looked outside and
saw my grandfather walking toward the blackness at the edge
of the backyard. Something heavy dangling from his hand. It
caught a sliver of moonlight. A kitchen knife, I realized,
but I couldn't be sure. He disappeared beyond the tree line,
(44:25):
and I hesitated at the door, telling myself he was
maybe going out to check on his roses or scare
off stray cats. I convinced myself he was fine and
went back to bed, though I hardly slept. The next morning,
I woke up to the sensation of being watched. My
sheets felt strangling. At the foot of my bed, motionless
stood my grandfather. His eyes glittered pupils pinpricks, and on
(44:49):
his lips sat a two wide smile, pale gums bared.
I jerked upright panics, screaming up my spine and pulled
a muscle in my neck. My grandfather didn't move. I
pretended to stretch to yawn, and he left his shoes,
making wet thumps on the hardwood floor. After that, sleeping
became a problem. I'd wake up convinced i'd heard footsteps
(45:13):
or whispering in the halls. Sometimes i'd swear the smell
of earth and crushed grass drifted through my window, even
if it hadn't rained for days. One night, while dozing uneasily,
something changed. I felt a cold breath skim my ear,
jolting me awake. My room was dark except for the
orange glow from the street lights in the corner, half lit.
(45:35):
A shape stood a man, my grandfather, or something that
wore his shape. He whispered the words indistinct, his voice
threadbare and urgent, tugging at my mind. Before I understood,
I was up and moving, pulled along behind him like
I was sleepwalking and couldn't stop myself. My feet were bare,
(45:56):
skin prickling on the cold tiles. The night outside was
hungry and vast. We went past the garden, through damp
grass to a part of the yard I never visited. There,
a fresh hole gaped in the earth, clotted with shadows.
A knife glinted beside it, along with a muddy shovel
and twisted bits of metal that might have been old
farming tools. My grandfather stood over the hole, hands shaking slightly,
(46:20):
his teeth bared in that rictus grin. Without thinking, I
moved closer, as though his instructions, silent, forceful, were winding
my body tighter and tighter. He began to mutter, rolling
syllables that stuck in my ears. The knife appeared in
his hand, his grip gnobby and bruised. I thought hazily
(46:40):
about the distinction between dreams and consciousness. How easily the
line blurs when you're afraid. My body stiffened, A scream
strangled in my throat. The knife hovered, and my skin
prickled with terror. So raw my vision fuzzed. Suddenly, my
phone began to ring. Vibrations shot through my thigh, breaking
the trance. The numbness shattered, and I remembered myself. I bolted,
(47:05):
brushing past the figure my grandfather, and stumbled inside, heartened
my ears, slamming and locking my bedroom door. Sleep never
came after that. I packed my bag as sunrise bled
through the sky and left the house without looking back,
the echoes of leaves crunching behind me, making my skin crawl.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
I didn't say goodbye.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
When I arrived at my parents' house, I told them
I missed them, that school was hard, never mentioning a
word about that night. Weeks passed. I blocked the memories,
reasoned it all away. Maybe stress had finally caught up,
maybe my grandfather was sicker than we knew. But then
the police visited my parents one Sunday with news my
grandfather was dead. They found him lying beside a freshly
(47:49):
dug hole in the backyard, eyes open, hands muddy, a
look of peace. Or resignation on his face. What unsettled
everyone was what they found in that hole. Aca of old,
yellowed human bones, arranged with a kind of twisted care
around rusty knives and garden tools. No one in the
family could explain it. The police said, maybe he'd dug
(48:10):
up an ancient burial site by accident, Maybe he didn't realize,
maybe his mind had been slipping. The logical explanations piled up,
held together by frayed string.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
I never went back to that house.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Even now, the smell of wet earth brings back the unease,
the sense of invisible eyes on me at night. Sometimes
I wonder if those bones were buried for a reason,
or if my grandfather had gone digging for peace and
found something else. I never told anyone why I really left.
Some stories are better left untold, folded away in the
dark corners of memory, where reason loses its grip, where
(48:46):
even a scientist can't be sure what's real.
Story number one. I arrived in the village on a gray,
shivering dawn, the air thin with altitude and anticipation. I
had come on the request of my mission, tasked with
confronting the rumors that churned through greasy local gossip, a
haunted spring, more precisely, an ancient stone well brooding at
the edge of pine woods above the houses. I had
(00:22):
heard stories before, odd lights, children's pranks, old men's tales
to frighten women. But I was used to skepticism, and
to people who, in their desperation, shaped the unknown into demons.
When the first child whispered, trembling that the well called
to her after dusk, her mother shut her mouth hard
and hustled her away. The other villagers grew suddenly busy
(00:46):
fixing eyes on stones and window sills rather than on me.
That morning, I hoped to relieve their fear, offer a blessing,
perhaps a little sensible reassurance. No one volunteered to join me. Instead,
they gathered half concealed behind the thorny hedges, their faces
pale eyes, following me down the narrow track to the well,
each step muffled by dead brown needles. At the crumbling mouth,
(01:10):
of the well. The world seemed to shrink. The wind stopped,
even the birds stilled. I opened my prayer book with
trembling hands. Not from fear, I told myself, but from
the cold. The stone of the rim was damp. Beneath
my palm and previous offerings coins cracked pottery. A few
ribbons lay scattered inside, their colors warped by time and moss.
(01:34):
I began to pray, my voice thin in the crisp,
bare It was then that I realized how unnaturally my
words echoed, too, sharp, ringing in metallic distortion, as if
through some hollow tube. Every syllable seemed to come back,
not quite as I had said it. The inflection twisted,
the tones subtly mocking. I swallowed against the chill, snaking
(01:56):
up my spine. Behind me, I heard rustling. I expected
perhaps one curious villager, but the place was empty. The
group that had followed me had vanished, leaving only the
scattered prints of their boots in the frostbitten grass. I
surmised they were simply scared. The temperature dropped as I
knelt lower than before, a sudden plunge that made my
(02:18):
breath smoke in the weak morning light. I felt absurdly exposed,
some primal sense crawling inside my chest as I drew
a small cross from my coat and attached it to
the battered bucket chain. The rope was already frayed, notebook
entries from previous travelers warning do not drink with each
half frozen finger. I eased the cross over the well's
(02:40):
lip and lowered it slowly. The squeal of the chain
slid into a vibration, a tremor in my bones, relentless
and growing. It seemed to seep into my knees, rattling
the prayer book from side to side. From below, a
growl bubbled up, not the growl of any animal I knew.
Deeper resonant vibrated the stones, as if something ancient was
(03:02):
twisting itself awake beneath the bedrock. My arms were shaking.
Without warning, the chain snapped in a flurry of motion.
Metal shards whirled up like sparks, clattering off rock and skin.
The buckets swung out empty, and the cross vanished beneath
the fractured surface, throwing up oily streaks on the water
that shimmered unnatural, like the residue of a fire. I
(03:26):
flinched back, sensation prickling across my throat, pressure hard and sudden,
like invisible hands tightening around my windpipe.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
My vision starbursted. I could not breathe.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
Something I cannot explain how I knew did not want
me there. Sound warped behind the vibrations, louder now. A
voice rose, female, guttural but off, lacking any real humanness,
only warping around syllables in a way that pressed its
meaning inside my skull. The threat was palpable, a warning,
(04:01):
a curse, or perhaps only the echo of everything fearful
I'd ever been told about places like this. I wrenched
out a final chant, willing the words to shield me,
even as the world around the well seemed to contract, soundless, airless.
The tightness vanished as suddenly as it had come. The
water fell still beneath slick rainbow bands, rotten with some
(04:23):
persistent chemical stench of the cross. No trace remained. I
returned to the village, not trusting my voice or the
steadiness of my steps. My skin crawled with sweat, though
the air was freezing. I tried to carry on with
the work I'd come to do, refusing to speak of
what I'd felt or heard, I reasoned with myself. Perhaps
(04:44):
it was a gas pocket, ancient air shifting the stones,
the voice only whindwarped by the crumbling masonry. Perhaps my
own nerves had cracked in the pressure of expectation, generating visions.
But the feeling on my throat lingered raw and bruised,
as if marked from within. Three days later, a child
running errands for the parish burst in, clutching something in
(05:06):
trembling hands. She had found the cross, bone dry, not
a spot of rust, lying at the threshold of the church,
far from the well. Nobody had been seen there during
those nights. The key was always with me. The cross
was impossibly cold, as if it had been left outside
on a glacier. I tried to rationalize. Perhaps the cross
had been torn loose, flung clear, picked up by an
(05:29):
animal or a villager, and brought here, offered back as
a prank or a gesture of peace. But none claimed responsibility,
and the villagers returned to treating the well as forbidden,
their eyes lingering too long on it whenever a breeze
rattled the dead branches nearby. In the nights that followed,
I began to hear the echo of that guttural voice, again,
(05:50):
soft and mocking, repeating my whispered prayers in the dark.
Sometimes I would find myself startled awake, sure of cold
pressure wrapping around my neck, only to gasp at empty air.
While out walking at twilight, a time when the light
tilts and shadows run long, I would spot with hard
hammer certainty, the silhouette of a woman by the well's rim,
(06:13):
always just far enough to blur into the branches and mist.
If I tried to focus. She never moved, and I
never approached. I poured myself into work, avoided the well,
told no one what. I continued to feel a presence
lurking close whenever I prayed, a mocking echo in every
quiet room. Door hinges creaked at odd hours. Polished glass
(06:33):
sometimes grew greasy with rainbow streaks after rain. Vertigo hit me,
sometimes a sense of heavy water closing over my head,
even nowhere near the well. I have tried to believe
it was all nerves and suggestibility. Perhaps the villager's anxiety
infected me, Perhaps natural phenomena and coincidence. Sometimes lost in fatigue,
(06:55):
I almost managed to believe it truly was only that
but every now and then, when I close my eyes
in prayer, there remains the sharp echo of a voice
not my own, too cold, too close, too patient, and
the light tug at my throat, warning or waiting.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Just out of sight. Story number two.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
It was late spring when Joe and I took the
job at number fourteen, Charlotte Row. We had been running
our semi ironic ghost cleanup crew for about a year,
mostly dealing with drafty addicts, over excited tenants, and mild superstitions.
Joe liked to make a show of sage and prayers,
but if a pipe clanked or a window stuck, we
(07:37):
chalked it up to bad maintenance. But Charlotte Row was different.
The landlord, a pale, reedy man who never looked you
in the eyes, said his tenants couldn't sleep, had reported
doors shutting by themselves, sobbing behind walls, cold gusts, and
closed rooms. There was talk of visitors, a term people
use like they were trying not to be specific. We
(07:58):
went in on a Friday with our usual gear, voice recorders,
extra flashlights, fresh batteries. The brownstone itself was almost luxurious,
sunlight leaping off polished banisters, and gold frame mirrors, but
the place felt empty, as if the rooms themselves were
holding their breath. That night, around midnight, I felt cold
(08:19):
pockets in the upstairs hallway. The back of my neck prickled,
and every time I passed the full length hall mirror,
I imagined seeing someone step just off frame. The lights flickered,
sometimes just a bulb. The kitchen, the bathroom, the foyer
in turn, then all at once, plunging us into humming grayness.
Before snapping back that discomfort, I told myself could be
(08:41):
old wiring, maybe, But all our equipment failed. Camera batteries
drained in minutes, even the backup sets. I tested everything
at home, no issues. By two a m. We'd given
up on video, settling for a cheap audio recorder, which
pulsed its red light reassuringly. Next day I replayed the tapes,
(09:01):
half mocking my voice, ordinary catalog cold spots. Underneath, faint
but distinct, came a sort of whisper, a syllabic wet nonsense,
more breath than word. But every third or fourth snippet
it shaped itself into something like a warning. I understood nothing,
but felt as if a shadow passed over me. Each time,
(09:23):
it repeated a low, pleading shudder, digging at my bones.
Night two, I returned alone. Joe was running late, or claim,
so I mapped the house in salt and juniper, muttering
borrowed prayers. It felt silly. I watched as the rooms,
one by one settled into the hush of after midnight.
At two forty five sharp, every brass doorknob in the
(09:45):
house started rattling, one after another, then all at once,
a furious, unmistakable clatter against the silence, as if someone no,
as if many someone's were locked in every room, desperate
to get out. I pulse spiked. I crept toward the
back stairs. Found the front door wedge tight, unmoved even
(10:05):
when I shouldered against it. My phone began to ring,
buzzing in my palm so hard I dropped it. I
pressed answer on the other end, laughter, a child's shrill giggle,
flitting between static. It looped higher, pitched, until it broke
into something gurgling at the edges. My own reflection in
the foyer mirror looked pale and terrified, caught in a
(10:27):
shutter flash of panic. I called for Joe. The house
returned to silence, A deep unnatural cessation of sound, where
even the city's distant traffic seemed sucked away. My throat
ached from shouting. I combed the rooms, every window locked,
every closet empty. No sign of him at the entrance.
(10:48):
My foot squelched. There a pool of blood slicked across
the checkered tile, leading nowhere. Not a single footprint, no
drags or drops or stains moving away, just the pool,
viscous and smelling, sharp like rust and penny. Panic froze me.
My mind leapt from accident to prank to something incomprehensible.
(11:11):
I called once more. The house replied only with a
muted inward echo. I staggered to the door, finally prying
it open with a sort of brute frantic force usually
reserved for dreams. Cool night air struck my face as
I gasped on the stoop. Every pane of glass, every window,
even those on the upper floors, fogged over in an
(11:33):
instant through the haze. Handprints, bloomed smears, sets of fingers,
some large as mine, some so small i'd have thought
them left by a doll. All from the inside. No
human could have reached the third floor's tall windows. I
left everything behind our bags are screens, the foolish little
(11:54):
salt stubs. Fear had set in, metallic and deep. By sunrise,
I'd called the police. They found nothing. No blood, no gear,
no Joe. To everyone else, it was as if Joe
had never existed. His phone was disconnected, his apartment was
suddenly available, no records, no keys, nothing to show he'd
(12:16):
ever shared a desk or a laugh with me. Worked,
dried up. The landlord denied I'd ever been there, his
voice taut and irritated. The tenants moved out. Charlotte Rowe
changed owners repeatedly. Sometimes when I passed it, drapes would twitch.
Though I knew the place should be empty. I tried
for a while to convince myself of rational explanations. Carbon
(12:38):
monoxide in old building's toxins, bending my mind, a shared
delusion triggered by my own subconscious expectations, I told myself.
Perhaps I'd dreamed the blood, misplaced Joe's phone number, misunderstood
police indifference for bureaucracy. Maybe Joe got cold feet ran
(12:59):
started over. Maybe every window fogs when the outside air
is just the right temperature. Maybe the laughter on my
phone had been glitchy audio some radio interference, a neighbor's
child captured by mistake. I took a job in records management, clean,
well lit, always filled with people and documents and noise. Still,
(13:20):
sometimes deep in the night, my bedroom window clouds with vapor.
Twin handprints pressed on the inside.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Cold.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
I tell myself it's condensation from my breath, that I'll
scrub it away, But I've noticed the handprints never quite
fit mine. Somewhere in the blackout before waking, a child's
giggle skips across the static of my dreams, trailing words.
I almost understand. When I look in the mirror for
a split second, I see a shadow hovering outside my door.
(13:50):
Gone the moment I blink, I quit ghost hunting, swore
off any mention.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Of Charlotte Row.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Still, each time the glass fogs and those small handprints appear,
part of me wonders if the visitors even needed a reason,
or if, after all these years, I was the one
they wanted to take all along story number three. I
never wanted to remember this, but lately the memories slip
in more than ever, especially at night, and especially these
(14:17):
past few months. It's not quite fear that gnaws at me,
not quite dread. Either it's an itch. I can't locate.
Nothing in my life before that year could have prepared
me for what happened to Katie, or the way it
still hovers over me, as if waiting for something unfinished.
I used to work in the small church at the
edge of our village. We were a modest congregation, fifty
(14:39):
maybe sixty souls. On a crowded sunday. I tended the grounds,
polished the pews, sometimes help Father Francis with paperwork, but
mostly I enjoyed the quiet. I started spending more time
with Katie after her mother fell sick and couldn't get
around much. She was always cheerful growing up, giggling at nothing,
hair tangled with burrs and wild flowers from the fields
(15:01):
behind their house. After everything, I still see her face
clearly as it once was. The first strange thing happened
on an evening thick with the scent of rain. I
remember the heaviness in the air, how thunders shuddered underfoot,
but the rain held off. I'd stopped by Katie's after
my chores. I found her sitting on the porch, rocking
(15:21):
back and forth, not the gentle sway of boredom, but
a frenetic movement, as if her bones needed escape. Her
mouth was moving quick, guttural syllables that tumbled over each other,
angry and sharp. It sounded like a language, but not
one I'd heard. Sometimes a word hung in the air,
almost forming, then devolving into that same furious gibberish. Her
(15:45):
eyes usually hazel and bright or black, not in color,
but in the way the pupils seemed to suck in
the daylight, her stare cutting right through me. When I
called her name, she didn't even flinch, just kept churning
those sounds. Eventually I lipped away, convincing myself I'd caught
her rehearsing something, a school play, a prank, I tried
(16:06):
to rationalize it, a tantrum, a nervous tick. Maybe she
was mimicking a TV show, though her parents never let
much of that devil's work in the house. But the
memory clung to me, sharpened by how viscerally wrong that
moment had felt. A week later, we wandered the woods
past the pumpkin fields, the quiet broken only by the
(16:26):
buzzing heat in brittle laughter, she darted along the deer trails,
trailing ahead. When I rounded the next bend.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
She was gone.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
I called her name, feeling a slow drip of cold
sweat slide down my spine. My voice bounced off the trees,
swallowed by thick summer growth. It felt like she'd evaporated
into the green. That's when I saw the splash of
red on the moss, blood, a lot of it, fresh
and darkening in the mid morning sun, spattering leaves and rocks.
(16:56):
I moved closer and found Katie crouched beside a torn animal.
Later I thought it was a rabbit or maybe a fox,
but it barely looked like either. Flesh dangled from her mouth,
blood streaked her dress, lips, teeth, and cheeks. Her nails
dug deep into the meat, long, jagged, beastly. For a second,
she looked up at me, her eyes wild, distant, unseeing.
(17:20):
I froze my own body, refusing to believe the sight
in front of me. She bent over the carcass again,
and then before I could breathe out, she was gone.
I spun around. She was behind me, smiling, hands empty dressed,
clean hair tumbling with wild flowers twisted in. She spoke casually,
said she'd found fresh blooms, no blood, no claws, no corpse.
(17:45):
The rational part of me what was left searched for answers.
Maybe it was a hallucination, Maybe memory fumbled some details.
My stomach churned at the metallic stink, still clinging to
my clothes. A few weeks, twisted by her parents, stopped
coming to church. One evening, her mother arrived at the parish,
eyes swollen and red, clutching Father Francis's hand so hard
(18:08):
her knuckles shone. I overheard scraps possessed. Her mother whispered,
pressing her rosary to her chest. I went with them,
unable to stay away, like some invisible hook in my
gut dragged me to witness what I already feared. Katie's
room felt wrong before the door even opened, colder than
the hallway, air thick with a rotten sweetness. She lay
(18:30):
motionless on her bed, body twisted at impossible angles, head
pressed back in an unnatural arch, her eyes pinned the ceiling,
mouth moving with that same guttural verbiage, faster and harsher.
The ceiling fan above her spun lazily, casting fractured shadows,
and in the yellow light, her skin looked waxy veins
webbing her jaw and neck. I stood outside, peering through
(18:54):
the warped glass of the window. Father Francis began the rites,
his voice low and steady, and verses trembling in the air.
The room seemed to pulse in time with his words,
each syllable, tightening the tension. Suddenly, Katie's body lurched upward
in a snapped convulsion. She floated, limbs splaying awkwardly, her
(19:15):
hair streaming up like underwater kelp. She spun, twisted by
some violent force, eyes still fixed but now bloodshot, mouth
gaping open in a scream. I could not hear through
the glass. The bed thudded as she dropped, Then silence
broken as Father Francis crashed to the floor, face pale,
rivers of red pooling under his nose. He tried to scream,
(19:39):
his lips stretching wide, but no sound came out. After
that day, he never spoke again, living out his days
at his sister's home, body paralyzed, eyes haunted. No doctor,
no family member, nobody in the parish could offer a reason.
Katie by morning seemed herself again, at least that's what
(19:59):
her parents claimed. I visited once she smiled spoke softly,
her hands folded in her lap, nails short and pink,
no trace of blood or violence, her eyes lingered on
mine for just a moment too long. I told myself
she had been sick, something neurological, or maybe unresolved trauma
made me recall things that didn't happen. Now years later,
(20:22):
I work in town. Sometimes I'll pass someone speaking a
strange language on the bus, just a foreign tongue, but
my hackles rise. Sometimes I spot Katie across a shop,
laughing with a friend, and I remember the taste of
iron in the woods, or the way she spun boneless
in mid air. Nights come hardest when a heaviness clamps
(20:45):
to my chest and I swear I hear claws scrape
at my door, or guttural words whisper behind my closed window.
No one else talks about it. Her parents avoid my
gaze at church. Some say Father Francis had a stroke,
say the mind invents horrors in the dark. But I've
never been sure that whatever entered Katie ever left. For
(21:06):
all I know, it's watching me, waiting on the other
side of a smile, or in the shadows behind the
wildflowers where she once vanished. All I know for certain
is the feeling never left, the certainty that at any
moment she might turn and those black, endless eyes will
find mine again. Story number four. I've always considered myself
(21:27):
a practical man, reasonably skeptical, the sort people ask for
help resetting their circuit breakers or picking out a reliable
used car, ideal in rare antiques by trade and habit,
which means I've handled my share of so called cursed
or haunted items. Most are little more than conversation starters
with a spicy providence, the kind people call me about
(21:50):
when a floorboard creaks. For a while, my neighbors joked
that I could solve their ghost problems, and more as
a lark than conviction, I took up the job I
use to chalk up most stories to overactive imaginations.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
That was before the watch.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
I bought it on a gray Thursday at an estate
sale in the crumbling colonial on Ewing Street. A plain
wooden box, its velvet lining disintegrating, held a pocket watch
more ornate than any I'd seen in years, gold filigree
wrapped around the shell, numbers etched in black against opal,
a lid that clicks satisfyingly when closed. The seller said
(22:27):
it belonged to Victor Clemens, a notorious gambler around the
turn of the last century, rumored to have cheated death
in a card game with stakes nobody would name. The
legend went that the watch was his edge. As long
as it kept ticking, he always knew when to fold
and when to push all in. I've never believed in luck,
let alone curses. Still, there was something strange about the
(22:50):
weight of it in my palm, heavier than I expected
for its size. I brought it home, set it on
my shelf with other oddities. The first few days passed
without a Then one evening, as I was cataloging Ledger entries,
I glanced at my kitchen clock eight thirty. I remember
pouring coffee, sorting receipts, and then abruptly, I was sitting
(23:13):
in my living room armchair. The mug was cold in
my hand, and the clock blinked eleven fifty six. My
memory felt patched up, as if I dozed off with
my eyes open. I blamed fatigue, but it kept happening, hours,
bleeding away every evening, as if leaking through a crack.
I would check emails at seven, and without warning, find
(23:35):
myself staring at a new page or across the room,
the clock far ahead. The sensation felt nothing like falling asleep.
My skin prickled with a low grade anxiety, like I'd
left more than just time behind, like something essential had
been leached. Things escalated in small, insidious increments. Some nights,
(23:56):
while washing my face, I'd catch my reflection in the mirror,
my own features wan ensnared with confusion, and behind my
shoulder on the shelf, the pocket watch's face, its hands
spun backward, smooth and relentless. A trick of the light,
I reasoned, or perhaps just exhaustion messing with my perception.
(24:17):
I tried hiding the watch, then locking it in the attic,
but I'd still see it skittering in mirrors, glinting from
impossible angles. I started to wonder if I was blacking out.
I set up my phone to record video of myself
as I slept out of idle curiosity and growing dread.
Reviewing the footage one morning, I saw nothing unusual until
(24:37):
three four a m. Then, unmistakably, the watch on my
nightstand trembled, its lid snapping open and shut in a
silent frantic rhythm. Its spring was stiff as a bone hinge.
It should have stayed closed, even under duress. I watched
as the minutes ticked past. The lid stilled. The watch
returned to stillness. When I checked again a second time,
(25:00):
the video was gone, not moved to the trash, just erased,
even from the folder that logs deletions. I tried reasoning
with myself. Maybe corrupt data or a bad SD card.
Maybe stress and insomnia had caught up with me. I
confess it barely calmed the cold walled corridors of doubt.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
By then.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Even the sounds in my house grew strange. Late at night,
faint laughter drifted from behind closed doors, a low, throaty guffaw,
punctuated by the whisper and flutter of cards against the table.
It was unmistakable, the rhythmic riffle, too quick and cold
to be rats scratching in the wall. Sometimes, while taking
out the trash or walking to the kitchen, I'd feel
(25:43):
as if I'd waded into a fog of cigarette smoke,
acrid and sweet with the tang of cheap gin. Before
the sensation faded, my home took on a stale tense air,
the way it might feel waiting for a storm that
never breaks. A collector from upstate got w of the
watch and contacted me, offering more money than I'd ever
(26:03):
been offered for a single object. I shipped it with relief,
not even bothering to wrap it with care. I watched
the package leave in the courier's hands, But twenty four
hours later there it was back on my kitchen counter,
just as I had packed it, shipping label intact, box unopened,
no record of return, no note. Rationally, I thought maybe
(26:26):
there'd been an error at the post office. Less rationally,
I kept the kitchen light on all night. A week later,
the collector's wife called. Her voice was thin stretched across
interfering static, apologizing for disturbing me. Her husband hadn't returned
home since the day the watch arrived. She'd opened the
delivered box and found only the watch nestled inside, no letter,
(26:47):
no invoice, as if it had sent itself. I keep
the watch locked in an old strong box, now sealed
under two pad locks, and stuff deep within a steel
filing cabinet. Still things haven't returned to normal. My clocks
skip forward in leaps, or sometimes double an hour. My
phone alarm will blare for a full five minutes at seven,
(27:08):
then again at eight, with no missed calls or calendar
notifications to explain the glitch. The neighbor's dog whinds and
paws at my door some nights, while unseen, that old
laughter and the rattling shuffle echo from behind baseboards and
under floorboards. I run my hands over the strong box
some mornings, half expecting it to feel warm or cold,
(27:30):
or subtly humming, anything to reveal a secret mechanism or trick.
But it is always just smooth, cold steel. I have
no proof of anything except my own memory, unreliable as
that's become some nights, when the minutes blur past without
clear meaning, or when I see in the corner of
my mirror the faint opal face of the pocket watch glinting,
(27:54):
a faint suspicion worms through me. Perhaps it's all explainable sleepwalking, work, stress,
digital glitches. Perhaps the coincidence of the collector's disappearance and
the watch's return can be chalked up to a miserable
chain of accidents or a prank I don't yet understand.
(28:14):
But when the house falls quiet and I hear cards
shuffling and laughter close almost behind my teeth. I can't
shake the sense I've misplaced time, or bought a debt
I never meant to pay. There's no logic that sues it.
I lock the strong box anyway, and count my hours
as best I can. Story number five. Being called a
ghostbuster in my area was more of a neighborhood joke
(28:36):
than a job title, but it stuck. I had a
toolkit of common sense, electrical know how, and a stubborn streak.
Most complaints secretly turned out to be noisy pipes or
the wind whistling through the eaves. When the call came
in from a nurse about a haunted hospital, I assumed
it was another loose window sash, or mice in the walls,
(28:58):
maybe hospital memories warped by grief and exhaustion. It was
close to midnight when I reached the address she had given.
Tucked away behind rows of shuttered shops and overgrown weeds,
the building that loomed out of the darkness was far
from the busy little clinic i'd heard about. This place
was skeletal, a husk, windows mostly broken or boarded up.
(29:19):
The paint blistered from years of neglect. The sign out
front was partially eaten away, the name impossible to read
except for the faint blue of a cross. I second
guessed myself and checked the address, my phone's flashlight barely
holding at ten percent. No one answered when I tried
the nurse's number. For a moment, I surveyed the street quiet,
(29:41):
every house asleep or pretending to be, wondering whether to
just head home and write this off as a prank.
That's when I saw it. A pulse of cold blue
light on the hospital's top floor, not steady like proper electricity,
a slow, shivering flicker, as if someone was trying to
get my attention. The front entrance groaned open under the
(30:01):
pressure of my shoulder. Immediately, a wind rushed past me,
sharp and cold, slicing through my jacket, carrying a smell
that hit the back of my throat almost violently. It
was the stench of rot, like flesh left exposed too long,
sickly sweet, with an edge of ammonia, making my stomach
clench and my eyes water. Inside the building was a contradiction,
(30:23):
structurally intact, the marble floor, swept clean, walls sheeted in
faded cream paint, yet completely unlit. Despite the flicker glimpsed upstairs.
I tried the switches, hoping for even the sickly buzz
of dying fluorescence, but nothing. My footsteps echoed much too loudly,
as if the corridor ran much longer than it looked.
(30:45):
In the dead silence, I became aware of something else,
a sensation at the edge of consciousness, like someone barely
grazing the skin on my back. Each time I pivoted,
certain i'd catch a shadow, I saw nothing but the
faint bloom of my own breath. There were no running children,
no night nurse with creaking shoes, just the persistent presence,
(31:07):
not even footsteps, just a pressure, a whisper of fabric
against me, lingering as though some hand was drawing lazy
circles into my shoulder blades. Upstairs, I nearly tripped over
a small spill of syringes scattered on a step near
the landing, each one empty. My mind wandered junkies squatting,
(31:28):
not ghosts. The top floor stretched out into a long rectangle,
at the far end of which the flickering blue glow
seeped through the cracks of a partly open door. I
entered slowly, holding my flashlight like a weapon. The room
was colder than before, the smell stronger, mildew and old death,
instinctively repulsive. On the ground in the center of crack
(31:51):
linoleum was a chalk circle, messy and frantic. Inside were dolls,
rag dolls, plastic faces, mangled or slashed, pin cushioned with
gleaming sewing needles and rusted bent pins. The doll's limbs
were twisted at odd angles, and some of their button
eyes had been swapped for animal teeth, threaded on with
(32:11):
coarse black thread. Everything about the arrangement radiated anger, someone's obsession,
a ritual of resentment. The walls, too, were not spared,
sigils scratched over and over again, some in what looked
like red marker, some in a tarry substance. I forced
myself not to sniff more closely. Shapes I couldn't identify,
(32:33):
spiraled and looped, drawn so many times the paint beneath
had blistered. I swallowed against the lump of nausea, turning
to retreat, but as I stepped back, a sharp stab
of pain lanced into my forearm, then another in the thigh.
The sensation was unmistakable, an invisible needle jabbing through skin,
cruel and slow. I tore at my sleeve, certain i'd
(32:56):
find some spider or broken glass clinging to me, but
there was nothing. Still the pain came. Another jab at
the hip, the chest, in staccato rhythm, always where one
of those dolls bore a pin. It escalated fast, from
discomfort to agony. There was no blood, no rupture in
the skin, but the swelling, stinging ache was real enough
(33:18):
to buckle my knees. Panic or some primal animal urge
made me lunge for the hallway. I ran, heart thrumbing
so loudly I could barely hear my own feet on
the stairs. The touch chased me, an icy brush on
my neck, the feeling of being shadowed by dozens of
crawling fingers. I burst onto the street. The sudden absence
(33:39):
of the hospital's interior chill and reek hit me so
hard I bent over, gasping. Looking up, I scanned the
facade for any sign of the blue light, signs of habitation,
anything normal. The building didn't just look empty, it looked dead.
Every window blackened, the roof line crumpled like something old
(33:59):
and sick, trying to fold in on itself. There was
no sign anyone had been there for years. At home,
I undressed, still shaking, and finally saw the marks, not wounds,
dark patches the size of pinpricks, and some bigger, as
if capillaries had burst in little clusters all across my arms, legs,
even my side. Pressing on them brought back that sharp,
(34:21):
stinging pain, like needles hidden under the skin. Unable to sleep,
I called the nurse again, just to confirm, to find
some logical explanation, to at least find out if someone
had been using the old hospital. Her voice was calm, professional,
and utterly confused. No, she said she hadn't called. The
(34:43):
hospital I'd visited had closed three years earlier after an
electrical fire. She hadn't worked a shift there in months. Perhaps,
she suggested gently, someone else was pulling a trick, or
maybe I'd confuse the dates. After all, midnight blurs the mind.
Days later, the marks have faded, but sometimes at night
I feel a faint pin prick beneath my shoulder blade
(35:06):
and itch. Nothing satisfies I can rationalize, almost believe it
was all a side effect of exhaustion. Suggestion and coincidence.
Almost Yet, in certain silences, when the world lies hushed
and expectant, I remember those dolls faces, and the cold
that is not quite air, and the pain that came
from nowhere at all, And I wonder who called or
(35:29):
what story number six. I'd always considered myself a rational person,
A cliche, I know, but true. Our house on the
edge of town had never seemed haunting or gloomy. It
was just a modest place, with a yard that collected
leaves and a porch that creaked at the lightest step.
My wife's devotion to religious gatherings was her thing. I
(35:50):
kept my feet on the ground. We lived quietly, comfortably,
and for years that was enough. When my wife told
me she was pregnant, our world shifted. Aaron took on
a gentle excitement. She picked out pale yellow onesies and
tiny socks. I assembled the crib with the satisfaction of
a job well done. The nursery was decorated in pale blues,
(36:12):
with hand painted clouds on the ceiling. You'd step in
and feel softness in the air. Then the miscarriage silence
fell into the nursery, thick and unmoving. All plans were
gently folded away, closed in a drawer, the crib pushed
to one side, painted clouds suddenly meaningless. I repeated those
(36:33):
familiar phrases to my wife, trying to sound like I
believe them. Maybe something better was yet to come. A
few weeks later, it happened for the first time. The
night was sticky, with a late summer heat. I woke
to the faint thumping of wood. It took me a
moment to realize the sound was coming from the nursery.
I found my wife standing in the dark, gently banging
(36:55):
her forehead on the door, eyes closed, her face blank,
moonlight showed a thin line of drool at the corner
of her mouth. Soft, rhythmic, and completely unconscious. I guided
her to bed, and the next morning she laughed it off,
called at a one off sleepwalking incident, but I watched
her then, unsure. The same thing happened again the next
(37:17):
night and the next. Each time she'd drift to the
nursery door and rest her head against it, moving in
a slow back and forth, as if trying to open
something with her mind. Some nights I'd wake and hear
a song, a familiar lullaby, the one She used to
hum when we were excited about the baby, but when
I opened my eyes, the tune would stop midnoe, replaced
(37:39):
by an urging silence. One night, I caught her standing
over the crib, swaying, her voice barely above a hiss,
eyes not quite open, far away somewhere else. When she
noticed me, her face changed. I'd never known how much
menace could exist in a person's glance. Her eyes flashed,
her lips pulled back just a bit too tight. Then
(38:00):
she whispered with a strange urgency, insisting I keep quiet.
The baby was sleeping. She said it with conviction, a
hush in her voice that didn't match the emptiness of
the room. The air felt wrong, heavy with something I
couldn't name. There was no baby in that crib, just
a folded blanket in one of those tiny knitted caps.
(38:21):
It wasn't long before lines blurred. I'd catch her on
her knees on the nursery floor, animating toys, clapping, or
speaking to invisible company. Once she asked me, sharp concern
in her voice, if she was giving our child enough love,
enough care. Rational explanations never left my mind. Stress, hormonal swings, sorrow,
(38:44):
pushing her.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Into fugue states.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Still, some part of me recoiled every time the nursery
door squeaked open in the darkness, or the baby monitor,
quiet for months, crackled with short bursts of static late
in the night. The moment where I truly lost footing
in reality happen on an ordinary Wednesday. I was returning
from a late meeting when my phone lit up. It
was my wife, in a panic. Her speech clipped and frantic.
(39:09):
She said, our baby, our child, the one we lost,
was sick, too hot, not breathing right. She was rushing
to the hospital. I fumbled my keys and drove back,
heart thumping, reality bending uncomfortable shapes. I found her collapsed
on the living room floor, toys and blankets scattered around her.
(39:29):
The TV flickered blue, static, painting the room in sickly colors.
Her pulse was thin, her breathing shallow. When she finally
woke up, she gazed at me as though I were
the stranger in this scenario. She recovered slowly. Days passed
before I dared to mention any of it. She blinked,
confused when I asked about those lost nights. In desperate
(39:50):
phone call, she'd remembered nothing. She said, she felt a
general weariness, that's all. I watched her carefully, afraid that I,
too was unraveling a part of me. He tried to
catalog each anomaly, searching for grounding explanations, sleep disturbances, grief
manifesting as dissociation, maybe even something in the water, old
(40:11):
pipes running through the house, ancient insulation with who knows
what inside old houses, and old grief, I reasoned, sometimes
work together to make you see things that aren't there.
But the chill in the house didn't dissipate, even when
the windows were closed and the heater on a draft
trailed from the nursery. The air in that room always
felt denser, colder, charged with the static weight of anticipation. Sometimes,
(40:37):
before falling asleep, I'd see the folded baby clothes move
ever so slightly, or glimpse of faint handprint on the
nursery window, impossible to reach from inside. Our marriage staggered
forward on trembling legs. My wife's pregnancy this time was
routine and monitored, each visit to the doctor relieving and
terrifying in equal measure. I wanted to believe it would
(41:00):
be different now that grief was a thing that departed
in time, not a thing that haunted rooms or people.
I changed the house for good, packed belongings, and painted
over those clouds with a desperate hand. I told myself
it was all in the past, all explainable if you
had the patience for it. Old wood settling nightmares seeping
(41:22):
into waking life. Maybe I was seeing things because I
wanted to see them, because the silence of the nursery
was too much to bear. Yet memories do not fade
as paint does. Even now, in the early morning hours,
I sometimes wake to a distant, rhythmic banging, or I'll
hear the low, almost inaudible hum of a lullaby, sometimes
(41:43):
from another room, sometimes in my own mind. Only once
did I allow myself to check the new nursery, to
reassure myself it was just a house, just wind, just
the echo of footfalls in an empty hallway.
Speaker 2 (41:57):
All I know is that the.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
Chill never left me, and neither did the impression that
something grief longing or something else can take residence in
a house and never quite leave Story number seven. For
the longest time, my life was routine, quiet, even dull.
I lived with my grandfather because my university was close
(42:19):
to his old, sprawling house at the edge of the city.
My parents liked knowing someone would cook for me, and
that I wouldn't waste away eating cup noodles. My grandfather
was always a silent man, the kind who used to
hum to his plants and could predict rain by the
smell in the air. I never thought of him as strange,
not until everything changed. I was engrossed in my science studies,
(42:41):
buried in logic and facts. So when my grandfather one
afternoon looked up from his crossword and asked if I
would prefer a peaceful death or a painful one, I froze.
He'd said it quietly, as though he was asking about
tea or coffee. For a few seconds, I wondered if
I'd misheard, but his bright, unblinking eyes told me otherwise.
(43:02):
I laughed awkwardly and left the room, dismissing it in
my head as a stray macab joke. After that, things
started happening, small things you'd never notice unless you looked
for them. I'd come home to the metallic scrape of
knives being sharpened, the shrill grind echoing in the silent kitchen,
though we hardly ever cooked together. Once I came back
(43:23):
from the library and found my grandfather in my bedroom,
his back to me, digging around in my drawers, holding
and then replacing trinkets, a pen, a key chain, without reaction.
He never mentioned it. Each time I asked what he
was doing, he'd smile that odd, lopsided smile and shuffle away.
(43:44):
I called my parents, told them what was happening. My
mother brushed it off old age, She said, does all
kinds of things to a person's mind. She reminded me
to be patient, that I should take care of him
for her sake. I wanted to believe her. Maybe he
was just lonely, maybe I was overreacting. But then came
(44:04):
the night I heard him leave the house. I was
up late studying, and the low whine of the back
door creaked through the thin walls. I looked outside and
saw my grandfather walking toward the blackness at the edge
of the backyard. Something heavy dangling from his hand. It
caught a sliver of moonlight. A kitchen knife, I realized,
but I couldn't be sure. He disappeared beyond the tree line,
(44:25):
and I hesitated at the door, telling myself he was
maybe going out to check on his roses or scare
off stray cats. I convinced myself he was fine and
went back to bed, though I hardly slept. The next morning,
I woke up to the sensation of being watched. My
sheets felt strangling. At the foot of my bed, motionless
stood my grandfather. His eyes glittered pupils pinpricks, and on
(44:49):
his lips sat a two wide smile, pale gums bared.
I jerked upright panics, screaming up my spine and pulled
a muscle in my neck. My grandfather didn't move. I
pretended to stretch to yawn, and he left his shoes,
making wet thumps on the hardwood floor. After that, sleeping
became a problem. I'd wake up convinced i'd heard footsteps
(45:13):
or whispering in the halls. Sometimes i'd swear the smell
of earth and crushed grass drifted through my window, even
if it hadn't rained for days. One night, while dozing uneasily,
something changed. I felt a cold breath skim my ear,
jolting me awake. My room was dark except for the
orange glow from the street lights in the corner, half lit.
(45:35):
A shape stood a man, my grandfather, or something that
wore his shape. He whispered the words indistinct, his voice
threadbare and urgent, tugging at my mind. Before I understood,
I was up and moving, pulled along behind him like
I was sleepwalking and couldn't stop myself. My feet were bare,
(45:56):
skin prickling on the cold tiles. The night outside was
hungry and vast. We went past the garden, through damp
grass to a part of the yard I never visited. There,
a fresh hole gaped in the earth, clotted with shadows.
A knife glinted beside it, along with a muddy shovel
and twisted bits of metal that might have been old
farming tools. My grandfather stood over the hole, hands shaking slightly,
(46:20):
his teeth bared in that rictus grin. Without thinking, I
moved closer, as though his instructions, silent, forceful, were winding
my body tighter and tighter. He began to mutter, rolling
syllables that stuck in my ears. The knife appeared in
his hand, his grip gnobby and bruised. I thought hazily
(46:40):
about the distinction between dreams and consciousness. How easily the
line blurs when you're afraid. My body stiffened, A scream
strangled in my throat. The knife hovered, and my skin
prickled with terror. So raw my vision fuzzed. Suddenly, my
phone began to ring. Vibrations shot through my thigh, breaking
the trance. The numbness shattered, and I remembered myself. I bolted,
(47:05):
brushing past the figure my grandfather, and stumbled inside, heartened
my ears, slamming and locking my bedroom door. Sleep never
came after that. I packed my bag as sunrise bled
through the sky and left the house without looking back,
the echoes of leaves crunching behind me, making my skin crawl.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
I didn't say goodbye.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
When I arrived at my parents' house, I told them
I missed them, that school was hard, never mentioning a
word about that night. Weeks passed. I blocked the memories,
reasoned it all away. Maybe stress had finally caught up,
maybe my grandfather was sicker than we knew. But then
the police visited my parents one Sunday with news my
grandfather was dead. They found him lying beside a freshly
(47:49):
dug hole in the backyard, eyes open, hands muddy, a
look of peace. Or resignation on his face. What unsettled
everyone was what they found in that hole. Aca of old,
yellowed human bones, arranged with a kind of twisted care
around rusty knives and garden tools. No one in the
family could explain it. The police said, maybe he'd dug
(48:10):
up an ancient burial site by accident, Maybe he didn't realize,
maybe his mind had been slipping. The logical explanations piled up,
held together by frayed string.
Speaker 2 (48:21):
I never went back to that house.
Speaker 1 (48:23):
Even now, the smell of wet earth brings back the unease,
the sense of invisible eyes on me at night. Sometimes
I wonder if those bones were buried for a reason,
or if my grandfather had gone digging for peace and
found something else. I never told anyone why I really left.
Some stories are better left untold, folded away in the
dark corners of memory, where reason loses its grip, where
(48:46):
even a scientist can't be sure what's real.
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