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August 17, 2025 50 mins
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Story one. I was about sixteen when this happened. A
few friends and I were having a sleep over at
Sarah's place. Her mom was into what she called the craft,
not like cheesy teenage magic spells, but full on altars, crystals,
strange incense smells that lingered for days, and books with
titles like The Keys to the Watchtowers. She was nice enough,

(00:22):
but the house always felt charged, not exactly haunted, just
like the air was heavy, like a storm was always
about to break. That night, someone brought up using the
wija board. We'd been watching horror movies and the craft
had just come out, so of course we were feeling dramatic.
Sarah said we could, but we had to do it
properly because her mom had rules. We rolled our eyes,

(00:45):
but she dragged out a compass, a candle, and a
metal pie tin. She set the board precisely south of
the candle, muttered something about guardians of the watchtower, and
told us to sit in a circle. It all felt
theatrical more than scary. At first. The planchet started moving
almost immediately, and I was convinced someone was pushing it.

(01:06):
It spelled out random stuff at first, but then it
began giving sharper responses. One of the girls asked if
something was in the room with us, and it slid
to yes. Someone laughed nervously, but the movement felt different,
fast and deliberate, like it had weight behind it. A
few questions later, it spelled out get out, and then
added you in a jerky, rushed motion. That was when

(01:31):
the air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
Before we could even joke about it, we heard a
scream upstairs, Sarah's mom. It wasn't like a horror movie scream.
It was more like someone had been startled in the
middle of a nightmare. Then came a crash outside, like
something heavy slamming into the house. Sarah bolted upstairs and
found her mom standing in the hallway, glassy eyed and swaying.

(01:54):
She looked half asleep, muttering nonsense under her breath. We'd
later find out she had something called focal see, but
at the time it felt like she was possessed. Her
older brother went outside to check the noise. He was
laughing at us for being scared, but when he came
back in his face was pale. He told us to
follow him. We stepped out into the cold night, and

(02:15):
there it was a broken headstone leaning against the garage wall.
A dent about four feet up marked the siding where
it had hit. We all swore we had never seen
it before. The thing looked ancient, worn smooth by decades
of rain. When we tried to move it, it wouldn't budge.
Somewhere between staring at the headstone and realizing we left

(02:37):
the board unattended, we noticed we'd stepped out of the circle.
Sarah's face went tight, like she knew that meant something bad.
She went to pick up the board, and before her
hands even touched it, the planchettes shot across the surface
and clattered against the wall. At the same time, the
candle went out with a soft hiss, sliding a couple
of feet in one direction, while the pie tine shot

(02:59):
the eye opposite way, like invisible hands had swatted them apart.
At that point, everyone was screaming. Sarah's mom came downstairs,
still in that eerie, half conscious state, but now moving
with purpose. She lit sage, waved crystals over the board,
muttered things none of us could make out, then snapped
the wige aboard in half.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
She dumped both.

Speaker 1 (03:21):
Halves the candle and the pie tin into a metal
burn barrel outside. She set it all on fire, chanting
under her breath. The flames hissed and cracked, but the
board burned quickly, curling into black ash. Before we went
to bed, she made each of us apologize to whatever
we disturbed. The rest of the night was restless. A
couple of us dozed off in the living room, the

(03:43):
TV flickering in the background, but every creek made my
stomach twist. Morning came and the whole thing felt like
a nightmare. Sarah's mom went out to look at the
garage damage, and that's when it got worse. The headstone
was gone, no drag marks, no pieces left be behind,
just the dent in the wall where it had hit.

(04:03):
Then Sarah went over to the burn barrel and screamed.
Sitting just beside it was a perfectly intact wija board,
the exact same make and design as the one we'd burned.
The only difference was the candle next to it, half melted,
sitting in the same pie tin with the words you
carved deep into its side. The ashes from the night

(04:24):
before were still in the barrel, but the board outside
looked untouched. As if it had never been near fire.
No one spoke much after that. Sarah's family moved not
long after. She never told us where. One of the
girls started having vivid nightmares about shadowy figures and woke
up with long scratches down her arms. She spent some

(04:44):
time in a psychiatric ward, and though she was released,
she was never the same. Another girl refused to sleep
without a Bible by her bed for years. As for me,
I've never touched a wija board again. I still think
about that headstone, sometimes, wondering if it was a prank
or some weird coincidence. But deep down I know whatever

(05:04):
we called that night didn't leave when the board burned.
Story two. This happened when I was twenty in twenty eighteen.
I was in college at the time, University of Iowa.
My roommate Mia was into all kinds of witchy stuff,
tarot cards, crystals, full moon rituals. I didn't really believe
in any of it, but I didn't judge her. Live

(05:25):
and let live. One Friday night, our friend Serena brought
over a ouija board, she said her cousin found in
the attic of a foreclosed house, old wooden not one
of those Parker Brothers things. This one had no branding,
just letters carved into the surface with dark red paint
that looked a little too much like dried blood.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
We were tipsy. It was like eleven thirty.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Nothing good happens when you start trying to talk to
spirits after dark with wine and bad intentions. We turned
off the lights and lit a couple candles. The only
other illumination was MIA's Himalayan salt lamp glowing in the corner.
The room had this pinkish hue that made it feel unreal,
like we were underwater. Serena asked the usual stuff. Is
there anyone here with us? What's your name? The planchet

(06:11):
didn't move it first, but then Mia started saying weird
things like how she suddenly had a metallic taste in
her mouth. I told her it was the wine. That's
when the planchet moved just an inch slowly toward Yes.
We all accused each other of pushing it, but nobody
admitted to it. We kept going, what's your name? Serena

(06:32):
asked again. The board spelled R E D R O M.
At first I thought it was some creepy red rum
type reference, but then the board spelled it again R
E D R O M. What's that supposed to mean?
Mia whispered. Serena looked disturbed. That's not a name, that's
a place. I tried to lighten the mood. Maybe it's

(06:55):
a bedroom someone painted too bright. The planchet jerked hard
to yees. We asked, where's the red room. It's spelled
b e h I N d YU. We all froze.
Mia was the one facing the closet. She turned slowly.
Her walking closet door was shut. Nothing special, but something

(07:16):
about the way the candle light flickered against it made
it look like the door had a pulse, like it
was breathing. I said, this is dumb. Someone's messing around.
That's when all the candles blew out, not flickered, blew
out all at once. No windows were open, the door
was shut. We all screamed. I scrambled to turn on

(07:36):
the light, but the switch did nothing, no power. Serena
tried her phone flashlight. It worked, but the camera app
randomly opened. She hadn't touched anything. The phone just opened
the camera and wouldn't close. She flipped it to the
front facing camera and froze. There's someone behind us, she whispered.

(07:57):
We all turned nothing was there, the dark, the Ouija board,
and the salt lamp still glowing. Except it wasn't pink anymore.
The salt lamp was glowing red, I mean blood red.
That's when Mia started crying, not like little sobs, like ugly,
full body sobs. She kept repeating, don't open the door,

(08:19):
don't open the red room. We hadn't said anything about
opening anything. Serena threw the board across the room hard.
The planchet snapped in half against the wall. Almost instantly,
the power came back, lights turned on, the salt lamp
flickered back to normal pink. Everything was just normal again

(08:39):
except Mia. She wouldn't go near her closet, not that night,
not ever again.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Really.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
She moved her bed into the living room for the
rest of the semester. We later found out something weird.
A girl who used to live in that apartment years earlier,
she died suicide, took pills in her closet. We found
her name online. The article said she had painted the
inside of the closet bright red that was never disclosed
in our lease. We asked maintenance if we could repaint,

(09:09):
they said. The closet had already been painted over twice
since then. Beige Mia eventually moved out, said she couldn't
sleep if she knew a door was behind her. I
still don't know if any of that was real. It
could have been a really elaborate prank or a shared
panic attack. But I remember the taste of metal in
the air, the red glow, the cold, the planchet breaking

(09:31):
in half, like someone had snapped it with two hands.
Maybe we imagined it, maybe we didn't. I just know
one thing, I'm never touching a wiji aboard again. Story three.
The first time I ever used a wijaboard, I was
seventeen and hanging out at my friend Kyla's place. Her
parents were out for the night, and she had found

(09:52):
an old board in the back of a closet in
their basement. She swore it had been there for years,
and she didn't even know whose it was, which should
have been a red flag, But of course, at seventeen,
anything mysterious just felt exciting. We set it up on
her bedroom floor with a couple of candles, because that's
what you're supposed to do, right It felt more like

(10:13):
setting the stage for a bad horror movie than anything serious.
We didn't know who to talk to, so I just
asked if there was anyone in the house with us.
The planchet slid slow but steady to yes. At first,
we accused each other of pushing it, but it kept moving.
I decided to ask for a name, and it spelled
out b E N. I didn't know anyone named Ben

(10:37):
who had passed away, and Kaylea swore she didn't either.
The session didn't get much further because the candles flickered
hard and went out almost at the same time, which
freaked us out enough to stop. We laughed it off later,
but I couldn't shake the weird, heavy feeling that had
settled over the room while we were playing. Over the
next week, small things started happening in Kayla's house. She

(10:59):
said her dog would stand at the top of the
basement stairs and growl, just staring into the dark. I
came over one afternoon and the air in the basement
hit me like walking into a freezer, even though it
was summer and the AC wasn't running down there. We
tried to blame it on poor insulation, but the cold
felt focused like it was coming from one corner. A

(11:20):
few nights later, we were watching TV in her living
room when I heard faint knocking from the basement. Cayla
paused the show, thinking maybe it was the pipes, but
the knocking came again, slower, this time, three distinct thuds.
She shouted down the stairs, asking if someone was there,
but of course no answer. She was about to go check,

(11:41):
but the dog bolted upstairs and hid under her bed.
That was enough to make her decide against it. The
weirdest part came a few days after that. We were
in the kitchen when I heard a man's voice, low
and muffled, coming from the basement. I couldn't make out
the words, but it sounded like he was calling for someone.
Kayla's face went pale. She'd heard it too. Her first

(12:03):
thought was that someone had actually broken in, so we
grabbed her dad's baseball bat and carefully went down together.
The basement was empty, no open windows, no unlocked doors,
no sign of anyone but that cold corner i'd felt earlier.
It was freezing again, and standing there made the hair
on my arms rise. We tried to rationalize it away,

(12:24):
maybe a neighbor's voice carrying strangely through the walls, maybe
the house settling. But that night I stayed over at
her place, and around three am, I woke up to
the sound of footsteps pacing just outside her bedroom door.
They were slow, deliberate, almost like someone was taking their time.
I froze listening. Kayla was still asleep, breathing evenly, and

(12:48):
I didn't want to wake her unless I had to.
After a minute or so, the footsteps stopped, but I
heard a whisper a man's voice again, this time right
at the crack of the door. I couldn't make out
what it said, but I knew it was the same
voice from the basement. The next morning, Kayla told me
she had woken up at some point in the night

(13:09):
feeling like someone was standing beside her bed watching. She
said she didn't open her eyes because she didn't want
to know if she was right. We never touched the
wig aboard again, and she eventually got rid of it,
tossed it in a dumpster behind the grocery store, like
that would somehow erase whatever we'd stirred up. But here's
the thing that still bothers me. A few months later,

(13:30):
Kayla's parents were doing some work on the basement and
found an old trunk tucked behind some insulation. Inside were
old clothes, letters, and a couple of photographs of a
man in military uniform from the nineteen forties. On the
back of one of the photos, in faded handwriting, was
the name Benjamin. Neither of us ever saw him, but
every now and then, when I think about that freezing corner,

(13:54):
in that low whisper at the door, I wonder if
ben ever actually left after that night. Story four. This
happened to me and my roommate when we were both
seniors at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. I just moved
in with Jess. She was this super chill anthropology major,
kind of a hippie, into taro and crystals, but not

(14:15):
in a cringy way. We got along great. One weekend
in October, her friend Danny came up from Phoenix. They
were catching up in the living room and I overheard
them talking about doing a wija board session that night.
I laughed and said, good luck getting the ghosts of
Flagstaff to come out in student housing. Jess grinned and said,

(14:35):
you in. I didn't believe in any of it, but
it was Friday night. We had wine and I had
nothing better to do, so I said, sure, why not.
Jess had this old wooden board, not a plastic one,
said she'd gotten it at a flea market in Sedona.
It looked handmade, no brand, no markings on the back.

(14:57):
The planchet was carved wood too, like someone had made
it in shop class decades ago. We set up on
the coffee table, turned off the overhead lights and lit
three candles. The whole mood was goofy. At first. Danny
asked if anyone was there. Nothing. Jess asked again. The
planchet wobbled but didn't move. I figured they were just

(15:18):
trying to psyche themselves up. Then it slid one letter,
just H. We paused. Jess said, let's keep going. The
board spelled out h E R E. I laughed nervously, Okay,
who's doing that? They both swore it wasn't them. We
all had our fingers on the planchet, and honestly, I

(15:39):
didn't feel any push or pull. Jess asked, who are you?
It spelled M I N. I pulled my fingers off. Jess,
that's enough, but she was focused Danny too. They asked
more questions, but the board stopped responding, just dead still.
After that one word, we forgot one thing though, didn't

(16:00):
say goodbye. Jess later told me that's a thing you're
supposed to do. You're supposed to end the session by
moving the planchette to goodbye or the spirit if you
believe in that stuff doesn't leave. I didn't care at
the time. I just figured the board was a toy
and the whole thing was a bunch of nonsense. That night, though,
things felt off. I went to bed around midnight. My

(16:23):
room was down the hall from the living room. Jess
and Danny were still out there talking. I closed my
door and turned on my fan like I always do
for white noise. Around three am, I woke up no sound.
The fan had stopped. I figured the power went out,
but my lamp worked. When I clicked it on. The
fan was still plugged in, not broken, just off. I

(16:46):
turned it back on and tried to sleep. That's when
I heard something moving in the hallway. Soft footsteps, not
heavy like bare feet on carpet. I assumed it was
Jess or Danny going to the bathroom, but the steps
stopped in front my door. Then I heard breathing, deep, raspy,
like someone with a bad cold, just standing on the

(17:06):
other side Jess. I called no answer. I got up
and opened the door. Nothing. The hallway was empty, Jess's
bedroom door was closed. Danny was sleeping on the couch,
snoring lightly. No one else. The next day, I didn't
say anything, didn't want to sound paranoid. But then Danny
asked at breakfast, did either of you walk around last night?

(17:29):
I could swear someone came into the kitchen. Jess and
I shook our heads. She looked a little uneasy. That evening,
I came back from class and found the planchette on
my bed. I swear to God I hadn't touched it.
We had left the board in the living room cupboard.
Jess said she hadn't taken it out. We put it
back locked the cupboard. But the next night it happened again,

(17:51):
planchette on my bed, the third night, on my pillow.
I didn't sleep. After that, we finally decided to do
a closing session. Jess lit candles. We pulled the board out,
and she apologized out loud, said we didn't mean to
disrespect whatever came through. She moved the Planchet herself to goodbye,

(18:11):
slowly and firmly. After that, it stopped. No more footsteps,
no more breathing. The fans stayed on, and the Planshet
never moved again. We never used that board again either.
Jess burned it in a fire pit after graduation. I
still don't know if they were messing with me, but
I don't think so. Danny lived three hours away and

(18:32):
Jess was just shaken after that. Skeptics say we imagined it,
maybe sleep paralysis, maybe we scared ourselves. But I still
remember that breathing close heavy. It wanted me to know
I wasn't alone. Story five. And I don't believe in ghosts.
I mean I didn't. I still don't technically, but something

(18:54):
happened when I was nineteen that I've never been able
to explain, and it had to do within Ouija board.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
This was in Newfoundland.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
My grandma had just passed and she left me her
house she raised me after my mom died. The house
was old, one of those salt weathered things with yellowing
wallpaper and baseboards that creaked when you so much as
breathed near them. It had a slant to it, like
the ground was slowly swallowing it on one side. I
moved in because I had nowhere else to go. Got

(19:22):
a job at a gas station, took night shifts. I
spent the days cleaning out her stuff and fixing what
I could afford to fix.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
One night, my friend Mikey came over.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
He was always into spooky stuff, had a big collection
of VHS horror movies all that. He saw the house
and was like, dude, this is one hundred percent haunted.
I laughed it off, but he showed up a few
nights later within ouija board. He found it value village.
I told him no, he kept pushing. I gave in.
I wish I hadn't. We set it up in the

(19:52):
living room, no candles, no incense, none of that dramatic crap,
just us and the board on the floor. It was
dead quiet outside, you know that kind of rural quiet
where the silence feels like pressure. We asked stupid questions,
is anyone here, what's your name? Typical stuff. Nothing happened

(20:12):
for a while. We were about to call it when
the planchet slid to yes. I asked Mike if he
was messing with me. He swore he wasn't. I didn't
believe him, but we kept going. The board said its
name was Iza or Isa or something. Mikey asked, did
you live in this house? Planchet moved again, slowly, deliberately.

(20:35):
Why e a saint? Then we asked how did you die?
Nothing for a while, then f first wrote. Mikey looked
at me. Was there ever a fire here? I shrugged,
not that I knew of. We asked more questions, how
old they were, what year they died? It answered nineteen

(20:55):
oh two and eight. Then the Planchet just stopped. Nothing else.
We laughed it off. I went to bed, and Mikey
left a crash at his girlfriend's. That should have been it,
except that night I woke up choking. The room was
thick with the smell of smoke, not cigarettes, burning wood,
charred paint. It was so strong it made my eyes water,

(21:18):
But there was no smoke, no fire. I checked the
whole house nothing. Every room was freezing cold, but the
air still smelled like burned matches. I didn't sleep the
rest of the night. The next day I called my aunt,
my grandma's sister. I asked her if there had ever
been a fire in the house. She hesitated, then she
told me something no one else had ever said. When

(21:40):
my grandma was little, one of her cousins died in
that house. There had been a stove fire in the
old kitchen that burned part of the floor. Her cousin
had been playing nearby and didn't make it out. They
sealed the old kitchen off decades ago, renovated around it.
I didn't even know there was a sealed room in
the house. Later that week, I pulled up the floorboards

(22:01):
in the hallway closet. There was a hatch underneath, nailed shut.
I pried it open, expecting maybe a crawl space. It
was a blackened room, charred beams, scorched tiles. I stood
there for a minute, just staring. Then I heard something
behind me, like tiny feet patting across the hallway floor.
I turned fast, but there was nothing there. I sealed

(22:24):
the room back up, nailed the hatch shut. Haven't touched
it since. Here's the thing. I never used the board again.
Mikey ended up throwing it out A year later. He
told me he sometimes hears scratching in his closet at night.
Thought it was mice, but they never found anything to
this day. Now and then maybe once every few months,

(22:46):
I wake up to the smell of smoke, just for
a second. No alarms, no fire, just the smell, like
something is reminding me it never really left. Maybe there's
a logical explanation, some kind of scent hallucinating or subconscious
memory tied to trauma. Perhaps I was just sleep deprived. Maybe,

(23:06):
but I've moved four times since then. Story six. I
used to nanny for a family in Poughkeepsie, New York,
back in twenty sixteen. The kids were great, two sisters,
Ellie ten and June six. Their parents were both professors,
always traveling for conferences, so I often stayed the weekend.

(23:26):
The house was old, three stories, with this creaky charm
you only find in towns like that. Wood floors that
echoed too loudly, a narrow staircase, the smell of old books,
the kind of place that feels like it remembers things.
One weekend in late October, the parents had to fly
to Chicago. I came over Friday night, helped the girls

(23:49):
with homework, and we made popcorn to watch Hocus Pocus.
Everything was normal, cozy even, but the next morning Ellie
asked me something strange. Have you ever played candle game,
she said, over cereal. I told her no. She grinned
and said, it's like Wija, but for kids. You use
a candle and ask yes or no questions, and if

(24:12):
the flame flickers, it means yes. If it goes still,
it means no. I raised an eyebrow. Where'd you learn that? TikTok?
She said, like it explained everything. I laughed it off.
Sounds like a good way to burn the house down.
That should have been the end of it, but of
course it wasn't. That night, after we did bedtime stories

(24:33):
and I turned off their lights, I went downstairs to
grade some of my own papers. I was finishing my
Masters at the time. Maybe an hour later, I heard
whispers upstairs, not unusual kids talk themselves to sleep. But
then I noticed a flickering light under the hallway wall,
like someone was walking around with a candle. I ran
up and the door to Ellie's room was half open.

(24:55):
Inside the girls were sitting cross legged on the floor
with a single white candle between them. June looked nervous.
Ellie was asking questions in a fake deep voice, like
she was performing a seance.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
Are you here?

Speaker 1 (25:07):
She asked? The flame flickered wildly. I scolded them immediately,
told them they could have started a fire, that it
wasn't safe. Ellie rolled her eyes, but June looked pale,
really pale. I noticed her hands were shaking. I took
the candle and blew it out. Enough ghost games, I said.
We all went to bed after that, or tried to.

(25:29):
That's when the weird stuff started. Around two am, I
woke up to a soft knocking on my bedroom door.
I thought one of the girls had a nightmare. I
got up, opened the door. No one there. The hallway
was dark, silent. I checked both girls. They were asleep.
I stood there for a minute, longer than I needed to,

(25:49):
just listening. I could swear I heard breathing, not theirs,
heavier rhythmic coming from behind the attic door. Now I've
been in that attic before. It's just storage, holiday stuff,
old furniture, boxes of books, no vents, no animals, nothing
that should be breathing. I told myself I was being

(26:11):
ridiculous and went back to bed. The next morning, June
refused to speak at all, just sat at the table,
wide eyed, fingers twitching. Ellie said she was just being dramatic,
but When I leaned in and asked what was wrong,
June whispered the candle lied. What do you mean, I asked.
She blinked and whispered again. It said yes, but it

(26:34):
didn't mean yes. That sentence still gives me chills. I
called their mom that afternoon, told her June seemed sick,
and asked if she could come home early.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
She agreed.

Speaker 1 (26:45):
That night, I slept with the door locked, but it
didn't matter. At exactly two eleven am, I woke up choking,
not metaphorically, gagging, gasping, like someone was pressing both hands
around my throat. The room smelled like smoke, but no
alarms were going off. My eyes were watering, and I
could feel the pressure on my neck. I reached for

(27:08):
the lamp, fumbled it on, and the second the light
hit the room, it stopped. I sat there for a
long time, coughing, shaking, and then I noticed it wax,
A single drip of white wax on the hardwood floor
by my door. No candle inside. I never lit one.

(27:29):
The next day, June finally spoke again. She asked me
if he was gone now. I wondered who she meant.
She pointed to the top of the stairs and said
the one who smiled when the candle answered. I told
the parents everything. When they returned, I felt crazy embarrassed,
but they didn't laugh. Her mom looked horrified. I used
to play something like that, she said slowly, when I

(27:52):
was little with a candle. We stopped after well after
I saw something smiling in my closet and added, I
never told Ellie about it. They got the house blessed
the following week. I stopped nannying. Not long after that,
finished my degree and moved to Boston. But sometimes when
I light a candle and the flame flickers too hard

(28:14):
for no reason, I get this feeling in my throat
like I can't breathe. It could be a game. Maybe
it was imagination, but June was right. The candle lied
story seven. I was nineteen when this happened. I just
moved out of my mom's place in Boise and into
a tiny apartment with my cousin Trevor. We were broke,

(28:34):
scraping by with part time jobs and microwave dinners, but
it felt like freedom. The apartment was furnished with hand
me downs, stuff we found off Craigslist, and this old
wija board I found in a locked trunk in the
storage unit we were renting. I'd gone there to drop
off some boxes and notice the trunk in the back corner.
It wasn't ours, but the manager said the last tenant

(28:55):
had died in a nursing home and the unit had
been defaulted on. They were supposed to clear it out
but hadn't yet, so I poked around. The trunk was heavy,
scratched up with brass latches and initials mL burned into
the side. I didn't think much of it until I
opened it. Inside there was just the board, looked like
it had been handmade. The letters carved into what looked

(29:17):
like real wood, darkened with age. The planchette was weird,
more like a solid black triangle than the usual heart shape.
No plastic, just heavy wood. Something about it felt off,
but I thought it'd be funny to bring home, so
I did. Trevor thought it was cool. He joked about
summoning Elvis or asking the ghost of our landlord why

(29:39):
the water heater sucked. A few nights later, we had
some friends over, just four of us board, playing cards
and drinking cheap beer. Around midnight, Trevor pulled out the
board let's summon something, he said. Half of us laughed,
the other half groaned. But we set it on the
coffee table anyway. Lights dimmed, candles lit because we were

(30:01):
dramatic like that. At first, it was the usual, is
anyone there?

Speaker 2 (30:06):
Nothing?

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Make yourself known? Still nothing. One of our friends, Mattie,
asked it to spell out her name if it was real.
The planchet moved slowly m A D D I E.
We all stared at each other. Okay, who did that?
I asked, laughing but uncomfortable. Everyone swore it wasn't them.

(30:29):
We did it again. Trevor asked it, how did you die?
The planchet moved faster this time, s H E p
U T M E I N T h E w.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
A l L.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
We all sort of looked around. Trevor laughed, said damn, okay,
this ghost has lore. But Mattie was pale. She said
that's not funny. Her voice had gone tight. I asked why.
She said, When I was a kid, my cousin died.
He went missing, and they found his body hidden behind
a dry wall panel in his mom's basement. We thought

(31:04):
she was messing with us, but the look on her
face said otherwise. Trevor tried brushing it off. Maybe your
cousin is saying hi, he joked. Then it spelled out ntim.
We stopped. Mattie stood up and said, I don't want
to do this anymore. We packed it up and didn't
talk about it for the rest of the night, but

(31:24):
the weirdness didn't stop. That same night, I had a
dream about the storage unit. Except in the dream, it
wasn't locked. It was wide open, and I was standing
inside it, surrounded by whispers. I couldn't understand something was
behind me. I could feel it breathing slow and damp
against my neck. I turned but there was nothing. Then

(31:46):
I saw the wijaboard on the floor. It started bleeding,
actual thick black liquid pouring out of the carved letters.
I woke up, drenched in sweat, gasping. I didn't tell
Trevor at first, but a few days later he brought
it up. Said he hadn't been sleeping, said he kept
waking up at exactly three h seven am to the

(32:07):
sound of knocking, three knocks, always from the closet. We
joked that it was just sleep paralysis or a dream,
but it kept happening. Then one night, I heard it too, knock, knock, knock.
We both just sat there in the dark, not saying anything.
The worst part came about a week later. Trevor had
gone to the laundromat. I was home alone playing Xbox

(32:28):
when the power flickered. Then it cut out entirely. I
figured it was the grid. Our apartment was old. But
then my TV turned back on, even though I hadn't
touched it. No lights, no hum from the fridge, just
the TV. And it wasn't on the menu or a
game screen. It was snow static, but there was a

(32:49):
sound behind it, like someone whispering. I leaned closer. It
was a voice repeating a name, not mine, Maddie's. I
unplugged the TV didn't touch the board again after that.
The next day, I took it back to the storage unit,
locked it in that same trunk, and told the manager

(33:09):
we didn't want to rent the unit anymore. I didn't
tell him what was inside. We moved out two months later.
I haven't spoken to Maddian years. Trevor moved to Arizona.
We don't bring it up, but sometimes late at night
I wake up to the sound of knocking. Three knocks,
always three I tell myself it's the pipes, the wind,
the neighbors. But every time I checked the closet, there's

(33:32):
nothing there.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
Story eight.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
I was nineteen when this happened freshman year at Eastern
Oregon University. My roommate Jake was a psych major who
was into weird crap, dream journals, lucid dreaming, that kind
of thing. One night, he came back from this occult
and consciousness meet up on campus and said, Bro, someone
gave me a legit wijaboard like Woodburned says it's from Romania.

(34:00):
I rolled my eyes like anyone with half a brain wood,
But Jake was persistent. He said we should try it
just once, just to see. I told him we're in
a dorm. You think some ghost is gonna squeeze past
the ra just to say hi. He waited a few days,
then brought it up again. But this time he wanted
to use the board in a place off campus, not
just anywhere. He said, the Mirror Room. Now, I'd heard

(34:23):
of the Mirror Room, an old photography building that hadn't
been used in years. The university kept it locked, but
the film students had a way in through a broken
window On the east side. The mirror room was supposed
to be some weird experimental studio, floor to ceiling, mirrors
on all four walls, no windows, just a single dangling
bulb in the center. Sounded like the kind of place

(34:45):
art students would trip on mushrooms and paint sad clowns.
In anyway, against my better judgment, I agreed. Jake brought
his friend Lacey, who was way too into crystals and
talked about energies like it was a real science. I
brought beer, because I figured if I was going to
be in a haunted art box with two weirdos, I
should at least be buzzed. We went at midnight, of

(35:07):
course we did. Climbing through the busted window was easy.
Inside the building was freezing, despite it being early fall.
The halls echoed in that eerie way where your own
footsteps sound like they're following you. The mirror room was
just like they said, four walls of glass, ceiling and
floor two. When you stood in the middle, your reflection

(35:28):
stretched out in all directions, up, down, infinite. It was
like standing in your own grave. Jake placed the wijaboard
dead center under the bulb. No candles. This time, just
the hum of the light overhead and the weird, hollow
echo of our own voices bouncing back at us. I
didn't want to sit in the circle. I stayed leaning

(35:48):
against the wall, arms crossed. Jake and Lacy put their
fingers on the plan shed and began, is there anyone here?

Speaker 2 (35:56):
Nothing? Would you like to speak with us? Nothing? Again?

Speaker 1 (36:01):
I was about to mock them when the light bulb
overhead flickered. Then the planchet moved. Yes, Jake smiled like
a kid who just got picked first in gym class.
Who are you, s la Ve? We all glanced at
each other. Were you kept here? Lacey asked why?

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Ees?

Speaker 1 (36:20):
I noticed something then in the mirrors behind Jake. The
reflections weren't right. They lagged just slightly, like an old
live stream with bad Wi FI. I tried to rationalize it.
Maybe the angles were weird, maybe I was tipsy. Jake asked,
are you trapped?

Speaker 2 (36:37):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Why th em? Who's them? Lacey whispered no response. The
light above us dimmed like someone slowly pinched the filament inside.
That's when I noticed Jake's reflection. It didn't blink when
he did. I stood straight up, Guys, this is messed up.
Jake laughed, you scared, but Lacey was laughing. She was

(37:01):
staring at her own reflection, frozen. It's not us, she said.
Look we turned, and I swear to God, I don't
care what anyone says. Our reflections weren't right anymore. They
weren't copying us. Jake raised his hand, his reflection stared
back at him blankly. Lacey stepped left, her mirror self

(37:21):
stood still. Then the bulb burst, total darkness. I stumbled
back and hit cold glass. My palms slapped the mirrored wall,
and I swear I felt fingers pressed back, cold, slow, deliberate.
Jake yelled, what the hell was that? Lacey screamed, don't
look at them. I squeezed my eyes shut. In the dark,

(37:43):
something was moving, slow footsteps, but not on the floor,
on the glass, like barefoot souls smearing against mirror walls.
I felt movement above me too, as if something were
crawling across the ceiling, dragging itself toward the light fixture.
Then there was breathing, not human, labored, angry. Jake was

(38:04):
muttering something. His voice cracked and terrified. Closed the session,
close it, say goodbye. They did nothing changed Eventually, Lacey
used her phone flashlight. The second she turned it on,
the reflections were back to normal, except for one in
the far corner. A fifth reflection a woman in a
tattered dress, face like cracked porcelain. Her mouth was open,

(38:28):
wide and unnatural, like she was mid scream, but no
sound came out. The phone light died gone. We ran, left,
the board, left everything. I cut my arm climbing out
the window. Didn't even feel it until we were halfway
across campus. None of us ever went back. Jake swore
it was some psychological breakdown, that the mirrors created a

(38:51):
feedback loop or something. Lacey dropped the class and got
into Raki healing instead. I tried pretending it never happened,
but sometimes t'mes late at night, I see something move
in the corner of my mirror and it doesn't blink.
Story nine. I've only used a wija board once in
my life, and that was enough. I don't talk about
it much, not because I'm scared too, but because it

(39:14):
sounds stupid when I say it out loud, like what
happened wasn't big and dramatic. No one got possessed or died,
but it was real and it never stopped bothering me.
This happened in Tempe, Arizona, in the summer of twenty twenty.
I had just moved into a rental with two guys
from my university, Ethan and Marco. We weren't best friends

(39:34):
or anything, just roommates. The place was this nineteen seventies
ranch style house with low ceilings, ugly brown carpet, and
a weird smell that never went away no matter how
much for breeze we sprayed. Rent was cheap, though, that
should have been the first red flag. One night, we
were bored and drinking and Marco pulled out in wija board.

(39:55):
He said he found in the hall closet wooden one heavy,
looked old, not like the plastic ones you see at Walmart.
It had William fold etched into the bottom like it
was some antique. Ethan and I were both like, no way,
we're not doing that, but you know how it is,
curiosity wins. We dimmed the lights, sat on the living

(40:17):
room floor and started messing with it. No candles or
anything fancy. We didn't take it seriously. That was probably
our mistake. Marco asked the usual stuff, Is there anyone here?
The plan sheet didn't move for like a full minute.
Then it started drifting, just slowly, like someone dragging it
with their fingertip. It spelled out h E L LO.

(40:40):
I said, who's doing that? Both of them swore it
wasn't them, but we were drinking, so who knows. Then
Ethan asked, what's your name? The board spelled out Dave. Okay,
Dave Marco said, grinning, where are you? The plan sheet
went still for a while. I thought it was over.
Then it jolted and spelled b E low. We laughed,

(41:04):
like below, was he under the floorboards or something? Ethan said,
that's creepy man like under us right now? The board
moved again, y e, s now Here's the thing. Our
house had a crawl space. I'd seen the hatch in
the hallway closet when I first moved in, but I
never bothered opening it. It was sealed shut with one

(41:25):
of those little turnlocks and covered with a piece of plywood.
Just thinking about that made me feel cold. We asked
more dumb questions. How old are you fourteen? When did
you die? One dash nine dash seven dash nine? Do
you want something?

Speaker 2 (41:39):
Y ees? What do you want?

Speaker 1 (41:41):
T come eup? That was when Ethan stood up and said,
all right, screw this. He walked away and turned the
lights back on. Marco was bummed, but I was secretly relieved.
We put the board away and didn't talk about it
after that. It felt like something we did just to
kill time. But that night I heard something. My room
was closest to the hallway closet with the crawl space.

(42:04):
Around two am, I was still awake scrolling my phone
when I heard a tap, tap tap coming from the
closet wall, not loud, like knuckles on drywall. I froze.
Then I told myself it was a mouse or the
ac ducks creaking. It's an old house, right, But the
tapping kept going, tap tap tap. I got out of bed,

(42:28):
opened the door, looked into the hallway. Nothing just dark.
But I swear to God, the air smelled different, like dirt,
like wet soil, sharp and metallic. I couldn't explain it.
Next morning, I asked the others if they heard anything.
Marco said no. Ethan looked at me for a second
and said, I had a dream someone was crawling under

(42:51):
my bed. Then he laughed it off. Over the next week,
weird things started happening. Nothing big, just subtle, small stuff
that you could blame on anything if you really wanted to.
Like the smell again, that earthy iron scent started popping
up randomly, sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes in the bathroom,
always faint, but always there. One morning, Marco said he

(43:15):
found dirt under the sink, like actual clumps of mud.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
We had no explanation for it.

Speaker 1 (43:20):
Then things started going missing, mostly small objects, my lighter,
Ethan's charger, Marco's keys, nothing valuable, but we'd find them
in weird places, like the attic, like inside a shoe.
One time I found my lost earpod under the hallway rug.
No clue how it got there. And then the scratching started.

(43:42):
It was subtle, like something brushing against wood. It always
came from the hallway. Sometimes it sounded like fingernails. Sometimes
it was more like something dragging along the baseboard. One night,
I couldn't take it anymore. I opened the closet and
yanked the plywood off the crawl space hatch. The lock
was already turned, like someone had been in there. I

(44:03):
stared into that black hole for a long time. I
didn't go down. I wasn't that brave, but I swear
when I stood over it, I felt something rush past
my legs. Not wind, not heat, just something. We never
used the board again. Marco said he lost it, but
I think he threw it out or burned it. After

(44:24):
that semester, I moved out. I couldn't stand the house anymore.
I don't know if it was real. I mean, it
could have been us freaking ourselves out right. Some of
it can probably be explained. Old pipes, bad wiring, rats
in the crawl space, all that. But the smell, the tapping,
the hatch being unlocked, the way things went missing, that

(44:46):
breathless feeling at night, like someone's watching from just beneath
the floor. I still don't sleep well. I have nightmares
sometimes of being under the house, trapped in the dirt,
looking up through the cracks in the floor, and something
up there is whispering My name. Story ten. I grew
up in a trailer park in upstate New York, one

(45:08):
of those tightly packed places where your neighbour's argument is
your entertainment. It was the summer I turned twenty, I
just finished a soul sucking retail job and was living
with my then girlfriend Denise in a borrowed single wide.
Her uncle wasn't using. We didn't have much, but we
had privacy, booze and no one to answer to.

Speaker 2 (45:27):
For a few months. That was enough.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
Denise was really into witchy stuff, Crystal's taro, incense, the works.
I never took it seriously, just let her do her thing.
One night, she came home from a thrift shop with
a worn out wooden box. Inside was an old school
wija board, the kind that looked like it came from
a seventies garage sale. You know, heavy board, faded lettering,

(45:51):
planchet with those little brass feet. The whole thing smelled
like dust and cloves. I got it for five bucks,
she said, grinning, Let's see if it works. I rolled
my eyes, but I was half drunken board, so I
went along with it. We set it up on our
tiny kitchen table, turned off the lights, and lit a candle.
Just one, this thick, ugly brown one, Denise said, was

(46:13):
for protection, though it looked more like a melted tree stump.
We didn't follow any rules, no salt circles, no saying goodbye.
Denise didn't even know what that part was supposed to mean.
We just jumped in is anyone here with us? She asked,
in this breathy theatrical voice. Nothing For like ten minutes, nothing.

(46:34):
The planchet didn't budge, not even a twitch. I was
about to make a joke about the ghost of failed
thrift store purchases, when suddenly, no joke. It moved slow
and deliberate. It slid over to yes. I immediately accused
her of pushing it. She swore on her life she didn't.
I didn't believe her, but I played along.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Who are you? She asked.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
The planchet moved again, faster this time it spelled out,
mr K, Do you know us?

Speaker 2 (47:05):
She asked? Yes.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
Denise laughed nervously. Are you good or bad? The planchette
pause then spelled stuck. What does that mean? I asked,
Like stuck here? It moved again, fast, around and around
the board, over and over, like it was panicking. Denise
pulled her hands away. I did too. We were both

(47:28):
freaked out. Then the candle, the one for protection, snuffed
out just like that, no wind, no sound, just flick dark.
We both sat there in the pitch black kitchen, dead quiet.
I could feel my pulse in my neck. Denise whispered,
did you blow it out, I said no. She lit

(47:51):
it again with a match. It sparked up, but the
flame was weird, flickering high and wild, almost sideways, like
it was burning against wind that wasn't there. I told
her we should stop. She agreed. We packed up the board,
put it back in the box, and stuffed it in
the hallway closet. But that night, the candle wouldn't go out.

(48:11):
I tried blowing on it. Nothing. Denise tried pinching the wick.
It flared back up like a torch. We poured water
on it. The flame hissed and died, But ten minutes later,
while we were in bed, it was lit again, sitting
there on the kitchen table, burning like it had never
gone out. No one else was in the trailer, no tricks.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
We checked the.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Door, locked, windows locked. It made no sense. I wanted
to toss it outside, but Denise said it was dangerous
to discard active tools without a ritual. I didn't believe
in that crap, but fine. We left it alone and
tried to sleep. At three eleven am, I woke up choking,

(48:56):
not like I was sick, like there was something thick
in the air smoke. I ran to the kitchen. The
candle was a column of flame, now almost a foot high,
licking at the ceiling. But there was no wax pooling,
no smoke detector going off, just fire sitting perfectly still.
I grabbed a towel and threw it over the candle.

(49:17):
It didn't help. The towel burned, but only the part
that touched the flame. The rest stayed untouched, not even warm.
That's when Denise started screaming from the bedroom. I ran back.
She was curled up in the corner, staring at the hallway.
She swore she saw someone standing there, just a silhouette,
not moving, not breathing. She blinked and it was gone.

(49:39):
We didn't sleep the rest of the night. In the morning,
the candle was out cold, the towel was still charred,
the floor beneath it covered in ash. We burned the
wige aboard in the fire pit that afternoon. Denise insisted
on reading some spell while it burned. I didn't argue
that candle. We buried it deep behind the trailer, in

(50:00):
a coffee can filled with salt and dirt. Maybe that
was overkill. Maybe we were just two sleep deprived idiots
freaking ourselves out. But here's the thing. I moved out.
Six months later, Denise stayed. She called me three weeks
after I left, in tears. Said the candle was back
on her shelf one morning, clean, new, no burn marks.

(50:21):
She moved in with her sister the next day
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