Episode Transcript
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0:09
When someone tells you that
0:11
they have the dark magic power, you
0:14
tell them what the late Carl
0:16
Sagan said. Extraordinary
0:19
claims require extraordinary evidence.
0:23
You're listening to Spooked,
0:25
Stay True. This
0:36
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1:14
all states and situations. Hear
1:17
that? Pumpkin. That's
1:20
fall calling. And the pumpkin spice
1:22
latte is back at Starbucks. From that first
1:24
sweater to late autumn weather. It's
1:26
all a fall in just one sip. Order
1:29
ahead on the Starbucks app. When
1:42
someone tells you that they can communicate with
1:45
the other side, maybe
1:47
they can. Maybe.
2:00
abused the suckers. Don't
2:04
be a sucker see. It's
2:08
relatively easy to see
2:10
through this confusion. I
2:13
found in my experience that
2:15
if you know anything about
2:18
how this works that
2:20
you don't speak any kind of foggy language but
2:23
you don't misunderstand the symbols and
2:25
add a bunch of hokey's pokey's
2:27
nonsense no no no no
2:30
instead you speak
2:33
crisply and you say precisely
2:35
what it is you mean
2:37
because if you don't know
2:40
or if you only half know what
2:42
you're talking about hmm wow
2:49
that's when bad things start to
2:51
happen when
2:59
it was in Washington don't believe everything
3:01
you hear always
3:03
believe everything you say
3:07
smooth start Now
3:47
Now then, some say,
3:50
what is this thing you speak
3:52
of? The other side?
3:56
Beyond the veil? The shadowlands? This
3:58
is stuff in nonsense. It's
4:00
a fever to imagination, that's what you
4:03
got. Where is the proof? Well,
4:06
a few months back, we got an
4:08
email from a listener who gave us
4:11
what for them is the
4:13
ultimate proof that something,
4:15
something is out there. Here's
4:19
food producer, Eliza Smith.
4:25
A little while back, I got an
4:27
email from a listener named Bridget Mahoflek.
4:30
She told me that she had a ghost story. Well,
4:32
it wasn't really her ghost story. It
4:34
was a story that she had heard all the
4:37
time growing up because it happened to her dad
4:39
and her brother, Chris. And
4:42
before she reached out to our team, she wrote
4:44
to her brother to jog his memory.
4:48
Bridget sent me a email
4:51
and it said dad's story and
4:54
I clicked on it and I had ear buds in
4:57
and I thought that this was gonna be some
4:59
like, some like
5:02
fun, cool story about my dad's life
5:04
or something. And
5:06
I remember just
5:09
hearing my dad retell
5:12
this story that happened to us a long
5:15
time ago. I
5:19
had realized I hadn't told anybody that story in
5:22
probably over 20 years. So
5:26
I sat down with Bridget, Chris, her mom, Mary
5:28
and her dad, Brian. Now Brian has been painting
5:31
houses for years and back when
5:33
the kids still lived at home, he landed
5:35
a good gig with a sweet client on the
5:37
Ritzy side of town. I
5:47
worked for this client a couple of times. We painted the exterior
5:50
of our house the previous year. I
5:52
met the client's son, Eddie, when we
5:54
were painting the exterior of his parents'
5:57
house. You
6:00
know that we were kind of in
6:03
the same age bracket and
6:06
he was just a very outgoing guy and we
6:09
would be yes when he
6:12
would be home. Eddie
6:14
lived in a very affluent neighborhood. Everybody
6:18
had nice manicured lawns.
6:20
Everybody kept their houses
6:22
very tidy. Everybody
6:25
got their houses painted when the
6:27
paint started to peel. The
6:32
client is so happy with Brian's work, he asks
6:34
him to paint the inside of his house. So
6:42
we go in and set up everything, put
6:44
our tarps down, our paint, our
6:46
ladders. I
6:48
was there for five days, Monday through
6:51
Friday. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
6:53
Thursday were real
6:55
good. Friday
6:58
was a different story. Friday,
7:03
it was pretty warm out.
7:06
It's real muggy. And
7:09
I'm driving up to the house, I
7:12
punched in the garage code, and
7:14
I walked into the house and I noticed
7:17
that how cold it was. And
7:20
right away I got a chill right up my back. So
7:26
I went over to the thermostat
7:28
and the thermostat was
7:31
off. There was no
7:34
air conditioning going on. That
7:37
day all I wanted to do was get
7:39
finished and get
7:42
out of there and start another job Monday.
7:48
And I
7:51
went outside, smoked a cigarette, came
7:53
back in and just totally forgot about it.
8:00
and I was painting the ceiling
8:02
in the living room. That's when
8:04
I started to hear the footsteps. The
8:12
first footsteps sounded
8:15
like someone walking around upstairs.
8:19
I thought it was my mind playing tricks on me.
8:28
When I was finalizing the deal with
8:30
the owner of the house, he specifically
8:33
told me, me and my wife
8:35
are working and Eddie's at
8:37
school and nobody will be
8:39
home while you're here. The
8:45
first time I heard it, it sounded like
8:48
just one person. But
8:50
as I progressed with the paint
8:52
job, the footsteps started getting louder.
8:58
It sounded like there were two people up there. You
9:02
know when you get scared and you get to tinkle
9:04
up your back and your hair feels
9:06
like it's standing on edge? Well, that's where I was
9:08
at. And
9:14
I decided to take a break. I went outside, had
9:17
a cup of coffee, and I said,
9:19
oh, I got to get my head together here because I got to
9:21
get this job done. And
9:23
so I went back inside, started
9:25
painting again. And
9:30
there were the footsteps again. And
9:32
that's when I realized I
9:35
better call my wife to get my son out here
9:37
to help me. Me
9:46
and my friends were walking home and one of
9:48
my friends was like, yo, I think that's your
9:50
mom. And I remember
9:52
being like, what are you doing here? And
9:56
she was like, get in, got in the car.
10:01
And she told me that dad
10:03
had an emergency at a
10:06
paint job and that he needed my help. And
10:12
I'm looking at my
10:14
mom and I'm like, what kind of emergency
10:16
is a paint job emergency? I didn't understand
10:18
at all. And
10:21
I'd gotten there though, my dad was acting a
10:23
little strange. He
10:25
told me to paint the living room ceiling. And
10:28
he had never asked me to paint an entire ceiling by
10:31
myself at the time. And I
10:33
thought that that was weird. And he went into
10:35
the other room. And then
10:37
so I started painting. Starbucks
10:47
Iced Apple Crisp Oat Milk Shaken
10:49
Espresso. Made with
10:52
blonde espresso, creamy oat milk and spiced
10:54
apple flavors. It's a nice
10:56
crisp sip you can enjoy all autumn long. Order
10:58
ahead on the Starbucks app. So
11:07
I was painting the ceiling and I started
11:10
to hear people, from
11:14
what I heard it sounded more like people
11:16
were stomping upstairs. I
11:22
remember envisioning people like with giant clogs
11:24
on their feet, like jumping up and
11:26
down. Or there
11:29
was another contractor up there, like
11:32
hammering up drywall or replacing
11:36
floorboards or something. It
11:39
was that loud. And
11:45
I remember I had gotten to the point where I was
11:47
getting kind of annoyed. So
11:53
my dad always had a rule on his paint
11:55
jobs that we had to be almost
11:59
overly respected. of the customers.
12:01
Yes sir, no sir. After
12:04
a while, to be
12:06
honest, I was getting so annoyed, I was annoyed at
12:08
the whole situation. You know,
12:10
being a teenage punk kid, I was pissed
12:13
off. And
12:15
I almost on purpose said it loud enough
12:17
for the people upstairs to hear. And
12:20
I said, I'm gonna go up there. So
12:26
I did, I went upstairs, and I was like,
12:30
and I got up to the main
12:32
landing, and I looked and sure enough, there was nobody
12:34
there. When
12:43
I got up there and I saw there was nobody up there, my
12:45
anger dissipated and my emotions were
12:47
just almost
12:54
betrayed me. Like I
12:56
didn't know what to feel. I didn't
12:58
know what to think. I
13:08
was so 100% absolutely positive that
13:11
there were people up there doing something.
13:14
There wasn't a cat, there was no dog, and they're
13:16
sure as hell were no people up there. But
13:18
it definitely felt like the house was alive in a
13:21
way, as
13:31
silly as that might sound. Like
13:43
there was some kind of a
13:45
heartbeat to it or something. When
13:52
Christian was upstairs checking the upstairs out, I
13:55
was down in a utility room, and
13:58
just in that certain spot right there.
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