Full Body Chills - Babbage Lane

Episode Date: November 1, 2019

I went into the house on Babbage Lane. The one they say is haunted. I haven't been the same since I came out.Babbage Lanewritten by: Minnie Schedeen & Ashley FlowersYou can read the original story at FullBodyChillsPodcast.comThis episode is brought to you by Simplisafe, to learn more check out simplisafe.com/fbc Looking for more chills? Follow Full Body Chills on Instagram @fullbodychillspod. Full Body Chills is an audiochuck production. Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

Hi listeners, I'm Ashley Flowers, and today I want to tell you a story about the time I went into the house on Babbage Lane. So gather around and listen close. People always told me that my smile was the first thing that entered a room. But I'm not smiling now. In fact, I'm terrified now. I can hear Wood Creek above me and a distinct rusty hinge on a window somewhere else in the house. This metal scraping metal sound making itself known. It is there in this house full of ruins. Something is moving. But 15 minutes, that's all I need to last. 15 more minutes. I start to hop from foot to foot as if that somehow will calm the fireworks display that's coursing up and down my body from the tips of my fingers to the bottoms of my feet, making me feel like the actual human

embodiment of what people would call a live wire. If such a thing meant that you were also jacked up so high on adrenaline, it felt like your ears were about to explode. Oh, and don't forget that itching, creeping feeling that makes every single hair on your body stand on end. That feeling that tells you something most definitely is here with me. But there's nothing here. I don't believe in ghosts. Even though I don't believe in ghosts in this moment, I start to think about the old wives tales my mom used to tell me about ghosts haunting this place. She said they could attach themselves to the mortal world with a human body.

That way they can escape the prison of wherever they've been forced to haunt. I kind of shudder at the thought. So far, I've just sequestered myself to the foyer of this big grand house on Babbage Lane. And so far, I've handled the first five minutes in the middle of the first four landing pretty well considering everything. Granted, I've shut my eyes for most of it

and that's sort of worked. I try not to think about the broken French doors that lead off to the blackness to my left, or what made them broken. I try not to think about the overturned, moldy, faded sofa through the archway to my right, or who flipped it over. Instead, for part of those five minutes, I tried to think about what the house on Babbage Lane used to look like, before it was shuttered and left to rot. I start to think of the family that lived here too, before I was born and even before my mother and her mother before her. There was a family of four, a mother, father, and two daughters. I've asked my mother about this house on Babbage Lane so many times before, but my mom would always

just shudder and say, best not to think about it. People do crazy things for love. And if I pressed her further, my mom would reply, it's a bad house, a very bad, evil house. I couldn't get a lot from her, but I've heard bits and pieces of the local lore that surrounds the house, of course. I'm not deaf. I've lived on this small town island my entire life, after all. And not much happens that doesn't reach the ears of every single islander at one point or another. I've basically lived my whole life knowing that secrets won't ever stay secrets in this town for long. What I've pieced together of this story is this. The mother and father lived in the house with their two grown daughters. The eldest of the two had gotten engaged to be married,

but to a man who her sister was in love with. On the night of the wedding, while the new husband and wife lay together in bed fast asleep, the younger sister came into the room and brutally stabbed both of them to death. She drug her sister's body into the closet, changed into her wedding dress, and then laid next to the corpse of the groom, where she cut her own throat with her left hand while clutching onto his with her right. The parents, having lost both children in a single night were overcome with grief and shame and the rumor is that they ended up leaving town. Now the house changed hands a couple of times in the last century or so but it was always said to be haunted. Women who occupied it said they were tormented by a woman in a wedding dress.

This tale has all the right hallmarks of a horror story if you believe in those things, which, to be very clear, I didn't. But as I replay the story I've heard so many times over and over in my head, I even start to feel the prickles of fear on my skin. I remind myself why I'm here. And his name was Zach. Zach was outside right now waiting with all the others who dared me to go in. But it could have just been him who dared me to do it for all I care. It was Zach and Zach alone that I think about every night. Zach,

who I hoped would both worry about me while I was in here and then be proud of me when I came out victorious after the 20 minutes was up. Me and Zach have been dating for a few weeks now, and I wanted more than anything to impress him. My mom warned me that anybody I might like at this age wasn't worth my time of day. She said, save your thoughts about marriage until you're older and can decide things for yourself. But I can't help it. He is so strong and smart and perfect. Like, why wouldn't I want to marry Zach? I was getting a little lost in my own thoughts when right then I caught a glimpse of the kitchen directly in front of me down a hallway. I could even see the white tile glinting in the moonlight. But wait, that didn't, that didn't seem right. I rubbed my

eyes and then looked again, expecting to see the floor to be dusty gray or brown, covered in decades of dust and dirt. But when I moved my hands from my eyes again, nothing had changed. The tile on the floor was white, like bone white, as if it had been freshly scrubbed. But that didn't make any sense. It shouldn't be white. I felt a chill go all the way down my spine and I tried to shake it off, to tell myself I was crazy for letting the ghost stories get to me. Because they were just stories after all, told to keep kids out of abandoned buildings that had the potential to harm them. And not harm them with vengeful spirits, but with shards of glass and rusty nails, broken floorboards that fell straight through to the basement. You could cut your arm or get tetanus and quite literally break a leg in this house. Ghost stories were just old wives' tales meant to protect children from those harsher, more violent realities.

And I was too old to believe in old wives' tales now. After all, how the hell was I going to impress Zach if I was too scared to last 20 minutes in here? So I take my first step in five minutes toward those gleaming white kitchen tiles and eventually reach the countertop. And it turns out my vision hadn't been failing me. The countertops, just like the tiles, were sparkling. But I couldn't figure out how or why. No one has been seen going into this house for over 40 years.

Unless I call out into the darkness. Hello? The very act of acknowledging that someone might be in here gave me goosebumps. I sometimes had heard stories of teenagers eloping to the island, hoping to escape their parents and hide out in one of the houses here whose occupants had left as soon as the summer air turned slightly crisp with fall. But the lovers were always caught, sooner or later.

Someone would see them stowaway on the ferry without a ticket, and their general naivete would get the best of them. I wondered if someone was stupid enough to try and make the Babbage house their couple's hideaway. But then I remember that any thought of romance would go straight out the window at the first sight of this discarded, deteriorating interior. I glanced at my watch then. Eight minutes still to go. God, this was feeling like an eternity. Did you hear that? It sounds like it's coming from behind me.

Every filament in my body is screaming out, no, don't turn, don't turn around, don't turn around. Please don't turn around. But I can't help it. I turn and there, standing in the pale light of the moon, is a woman dressed only in a white nightgown stained with crimson blood on her chest. I'm too terrified to even scream. Where every nerve ending was on fire before, now I feel frozen, locked in a state of terror. She doesn't notice me at first. She just continues to hum and mop and hum this sad little song. It sounded kind of like a nursery rhyme, and she moves in rhythm with her mop. But then finally, she sees me. The ghostly figure holds up a finger to her lips. I just nod. I didn't know what else to do. She continues to mop back and forth, back and forth, humming the whole time. And I can't even

believe what's happening in this moment. Here I was being silent in front of a real live ghost and I didn't even believe in ghosts but here she was real as day. The long ruby colored blood trailing down the white lace bodice on her nightgown just as I was trying to back away slowly quietly. The ghost snaps her head and looks at me then, and she hisses viciously in my direction, like a black cat that I frightened. Turn it off! And I fumble with my phone quickly, trying desperately to silence the clatter. I mute it finally, but not quick enough. Suddenly, I hear footsteps bounding across the upstairs floor, two by two. No, wait, four by four? I can't tell. It's a lot of footsteps, and it sounds like they're running. The ghost looks at me again. Oh, now you've done it. I apologize over and over. I'm so sorry,

and I'm equal parts sorry, terrified, and also completely baffled that I'm apologizing to a ghost. The steps continue to traipse across the upstairs, almost as if they're running, and soon I hear them on the landing. The woman starts to wail now, rolling her head back and forth around her neck. She's coming. You can't let her find you. She won't let you be happy. She didn't want me to be happy. Go, go! I begin to shake now, my body feeling a whole new course of action and emotion I've never felt before. Absolute terror. I try desperately to open the door to my left, the one that was leading out to the garden, but my hand is shaking like crazy, and it's completely and utterly locked. The ghost behind me continues to wail, and I know there's no consoling her now. I know that I have no choice but to continue the way I came, and thus continue back down towards the hallway. But just as I think I'm about to get to the main entrance, my foot breaks through the wooden

floorboards. Suddenly, I'm falling as my feet plunge all the way through the floorboard, the wooden splinters cascading around me, and I tumble into inky blackness. Luckily, I land on a soft cushion and think for one second that I'm back in my bed and this is all just a terrible nightmare that I can easily wake up from. It certainly feels like a nightmare. But then I get my bearings and realize that I'm not waking up and that I can't see my hand in front of my face, let alone wherever I've landed. Luckily, I still

have my phone in my back pocket and I use the flashlight on it to light my surroundings. I seem to be in a basement and I've landed on an old dingy bed covered in some kind of sickly brown stain. I reel back when I realize that it must be dried blood, decades old, left to turn from a deep red to this dark rust color that I'm laying on now. Once again, a shiver runs down my spine. I hear footsteps reach the foyer above me and a sudden cackle and shriek from two people who I knew were not my ghost, not the one in the nightgown. I hear them all advancing towards the kitchen. They're yelling at each other or something. And the girl in the nightgown, I can hear her. She's still wailing, but it's something that I don't understand. But she sounds so miserable and her misery is almost palpable and infectious. I can almost feel her. I know in that moment that I need to figure out a way to get out of here. I shine my light to the bottom of a set of stairs that I have to go back up toward where the sounds are coming from.

But also it's the only way I know how to get out of this hellhole. One by one, I take the stairs, being careful not to let the floorboards creak below my weight, despite how old they are. Somehow I make it to the top and the door has been ripped off his hinges luckily so I squeeze right through. I can still hear people talking in the kitchen but they're arguing to themselves crying and wailing and complaining to each other. I start running now and I'm halfway down the hall and almost to the front door when a new ghost appears in front of me. She's wearing a wedding dress stained in the front with blood that is still dripping from her neck as though it were cut just moments ago.

She reached her arms out toward me and grabbed me by the throat. Her hands didn't land. They passed through me, but when they did, I felt this clenching feeling in my chest. It was tight and painful like what I think a heart attack must feel like. Terrified, I just start running right through her towards the door. When I finally burst through the front door, breathless and panting in front of Zach and my friends, I don't know what to say. They all asked me what happened, but I just shook my head and told them I wanted to get out

of there as quickly as possible. Weeks later, I almost convinced myself that it was all a dream, that it never happened, and my fear and imagination made it all up from the folklore that I'd heard growing up. But then, something happened. I was with Zach after school one day. We were walking to our buses and holding hands when I got that horrible clenching feeling in my chest again. With the pain also came this wave of anger. All of a sudden, I hated Zach for not loving me. I recoiled my hand and ran onto my bus. And as it drove away, I watched his confused face through the window. And to be fair, I was confused too. Why had I done that? Why had I even felt that? I know Zach likes me. He was holding my hand. It was such a stupid feeling,

but it wasn't totally gone. And the longer the bus drove, the more feelings, sickly feelings that I got about Zach. It felt like anger and jealousy and hurt, like all of it wrapped into one. That first night, I wanted to just sleep it off. Something was going on, but I was just tired or stressed or whatever. But that night, I had a dream. When I opened my eyes, I was back in the Babbage Lane house, laying flat on the stained mattress in the basement. I looked over to my right, and I see her. The same ghost in the wedding dress who grabbed me before I left the house. I know I shouldn't be, but I'm just calm. Nothing like I actually

was that day in the house. I'm acutely aware in this moment that it's a dream, but dream or not, I still lose my breath just a little when her head starts to turn slowly to the side, her neck barely attached and blood still flowing from her wound. She looked me dead in the eyes as she propped herself up on one elbow to face me. A few seconds go by in silence, but they feel like hours. And then she finally speaks. You shouldn't have come to our home. You know, I knew girls like you. You're just like my sister. Beautiful, smart.

The whole world just falls down at your feet. You work for nothing and people just love you. Men throw themselves at you. Men like Zach. Boys like Zach. But you don't get to be happy. Girls like you haven't earned happy. You came into my home and I'm with you forever now. And you will never be happy. Every time a man touches you, I'll make sure you recoil. Any man who shows affection to you, I'll make sure you despise. You know, you're the first person who came close enough for me to touch. All these years I've been in that house, living in my own pain, pissed off at the world. But now, because of you, I don't have to stay in that house anymore. I can go out there.

Anywhere out there I want. Well, you know, with your help, of course. Just then, I was able to croak out a question. What do you want? I want to kill anyone who falls in love with you. Then she leaned in closer and whispered, and eventually, I want to kill you. Just then I sprung from my bed, soaked in my own sweat.

The sun was beating into my room, and I tried to remind myself, it's just a dream. It's just a dream. I tried to shower and shake it off, but I couldn't. It was too vivid. When I got to school and saw Zach, part of me wanted to tell him about my crazy dream, to run to him for a hug and for comfort.

But when I saw him, something stopped me. And I know saying this out loud is going to sound insane, but I swear I heard a whisper in my ear. Kill him. Maybe I'm losing my mind. Maybe I'm still dreaming. But maybe it's that, just like that house on Babbage Lane, I'm haunted now too. This episode was written by Mini Shadeen and me. I also produced and performed this episode with production assistance from David Flowers. Our theme was created by Justin Daniel. If you'd like to go back and read the story, you can find a copy on our website, fullbodychillspodcast.com. And we have one more story for you tomorrow, and it's a personal favorite. So make sure to come back on November 1st to listen to our last episode this season. Full Body Chills is an AudioChuck production.

So what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?