Otherworld - Episode 96: The Hidden Staircase

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

After the death of her grandmother, Brittany and their family move into a historic colonial home for a fresh start. Excitement turns to dread when mysterious footsteps from the attic become a nightly occurrence, eventually leading to a chilling encounter in their bedroom. As the supernatural events escalate, Britney's family finds themselves entangled in a haunting that threatens their newfound peace and the safety of their newborn brother. Check out our Merch Follow us on: Instagram, TikTok, Twitter For business inquiries contact: [e-mail] If you have experienced something paranormal or unexplained, email us your story at [e-mail] To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This story comes from a woman named Brittany. Brittany had a pretty unstable childhood. She was raised by a single mom along with her siblings, and things were pretty difficult for them. That seemed to change, however, when her mom began dating a man who ended up moving them into this big, old house. Brittany always had a feeling that this house had some secrets, and she was eventually proven right about that as time went on. This is such a great story.

I don't want to spoil too much here in the intro. It's a really great classic haunted house type situation, but with a lot of unique and highly specific details. This is episode 96. The title is The Hidden Staircase. and you're listening to Otherworld. Hello? Is this Bobby?

Yes, it is. At its core, the science, you can't argue. I'm worried about all the science. Open the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. I'm going to die. It's like, wrong.

Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute. So my name's Brittany. I am 35 years old. And the story of What happened to me when I was young happened when I was about nine years old. I was living at my grandmother's house and we were all packed up in there. And I always knew we were poor just from not having, you know, just getting everything we needed, but nothing more.

But honestly, I was happy. I loved my grandmother. my grandmother and me had a deep soul connection, which I know is weird, but everyone in my family felt that way too, that for whatever reason, my grandma and I, we were almost soulmates. And she used to tell me, you know, Brittany, you're different. And just don't forget that because something's different about you. But when my grandmother passed, everything changed. My mom had just met my stepdad, who was a well-off guy.

And I remember when he first came into the picture, he told me, let's go to Toys R Us. You can pick whatever you want. And I didn't trust him. And I remember having my arms crossed and just staring at him. Like, I didn't believe him. and then we get to the toy store and I pick out my toy and I'm just like looking at him like, there's no way. And he got it for me and I was just like, oh my gosh, this is crazy.

This is, I've never had anything like this happened to me. I only got gifts during like high holidays and things like that. So my stepdad knew how traumatic my grandmother's death was and that we couldn't continue to live in that house because she passed away in the house. She was epileptic and had an epileptic seizure when we were all out of the house and passed away. And I really blame myself because

because of the fact that my grandma and I had a really deep soul connection, I always knew before she had a seizure. Always. I always knew. My mom said I would just stop and I've been like, I got to check on Graham, and I would run up the steps, and she'd be having a seizure. I always knew it was just some innate thing.

So when she passed, obviously, that was really hard because it was the one time I wasn't there, because I was at my dad's house. So my stepdad knew, okay, we got to get everyone out of this house. We need a new scenery. And I remember my mom picking me up from my dad's house. and she drove us to see the new house. So we go there and we pull up and my jaw hit the floor. I could not believe what I was looking at. It was this huge Dutch colonial home that my stepdad was renting to buy from his good friend.

And it was built in, I think they said, in the 1930s or 40s. And I had never lived in old architecture or anything like that. So we go in the house and there's stone inside the house. There's a beautiful sunroom. You just walked in and you felt a deep connection to the house. Like, oh, my God, I've never seen a house like this. This is unreal. I can't believe this is going to be ours.

And I remember thinking, since it's an old house, there has to be hidden staircase or hidden passageways. So I remember knocking on the walls. I remember that specifically knocking on the walls, convinced that a wall would open or something like you see in movies where a bookshelf opens up. We're doing a walk through the house. It looks amazing. And then my mom introduces me to my bedroom. And we go in the bedroom and it already has a built-in vanity. It's gorgeous.

It's huge. I could not believe that it was my bedroom, my own bedroom that I didn't have to share with one of my brothers. And I remember opening the closet and looking to the left and seeing a staircase inside the closet. And when you go up that staircase, there's just a square, like, cut out in the wall. And if you push that, then you're in the attic. And my mind was blown because I was like just moments before convinced that there was a secret passageway and like knocking on walls. And then there so happens to be one and it's in my bedroom.

I do remember then that although I thought it was cool, I didn't want to go into the attic. I was kind of like, I'm good on going in the attic. But my mom did say, oh, it's so cool. This house was owned by a doctor and filled by a doctor, and he held his practice here, and he carved his name and year up in the attic wall, and just, you know, giving me fun little facts about the house. And I did. I loved it.

I thought it was great. But I know I never wanted to go in the attic. I was good on that. So all is well for a while. You know, we move in, we get settled in. And the first night that anything ever happened in the house, it was probably two weeks into living in the home when I would be going to sleep I would hear what sounded like pacing footsteps up in the attic.

And I thought it was strange, but I tried even as a like nine or 10 year old to convince myself that, you know, you never lived in an old house. This is probably just sounds of an old house and you're not used to it. So I kind of wrote it off and I was sleeping fine. and I would hear it every night after that, but it kind of unfazed me. I just at that point thought it has to be the house. The house is just making a noise that sounds like that.

So I was good for probably another week. And I remember the initial night that it really went down and I knew that something was wrong with this house was the night that I heard those people, pacing footsteps like normal, but this time was different because this time the footsteps started going down the steps in my closet in that secret passageway. And it was very slow. It was like one step at a time. And I remember looking at my closet door and I remember thinking, no, there's no way. There's no way. This has got to be explained. Maybe it's this, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. But I remember

having my blanket up to my mouth and just staring bug-eyed at the closet, trying to convince myself that nothing weird was about to happen. The footsteps stopped right inside my closet door, and then that door slowly creaked open. And when that happened, I don't even think my feet touched the ground. I literally bolted out of the room. I woke my mom and stepdad up, screaming, crying, upset, saying there's someone in my room, there's someone in my room. So they checked and they said, Brittany, you know, it's an old house. It probably was just sounds of the house settling, you know, and I said, well, I'm sleeping in my brother's room. I'm not going back in that room. And they were like, okay, go ahead. Go for it. So after a while,

I was just sleeping in my brother's room almost every night because I did not trust my room. But after a while, me being the older sister, my stepdad started getting angry with me saying that, you know, you're the older sister. You're going to scare your brothers. You can't keep sleeping in the room. You need to sleep in your own room. You need to leave by example. So I started sleeping back in my room. And like clockwork, every single night, I would hear the footsteps in the attic first, down the steps in my staircase. And then luckily the door didn't keep opening every time, but then it would go into immediately the footsteps pacing in my bedroom. Like it was no, there was nothing else it was.

If you closed your eyes, you would think someone was standing there walking back and forth by your bed. Like it was clear as day. And I remember just sitting there every time petrified, hyperventilating. Sometimes he, because I theorized that it was the doctor that built a house, he would sit on my bed. My mom said that I would wake her up having uncontrollable convulsion. I remember those convulsions. It was so weird because I literally had no control of my body.

I remember my body just convulsing nonstop. And I would wake her up screaming and scared. And she told me that I would tell her that when I woke her up with my convulsions, that I always said that he sat on my bed or he tugged my foot. Now, I didn't specifically remember this. All I remember is the convulsions, but speaking with my mom, she told me that I was shaking because of that. During this time, my mom is, she's noticing, she's thinking it's weird too. My mom is a very intuitive person herself.

We are part indigenous. We are just very intuitive people, runs in the family. So luckily my mom, even though she didn't want to straight up say, oh my God, like this is scary because she didn't want to add fuel to my fire of being petrified already, she would just listen and she would give me that look like she knew and that something was weird and something was off. And she started picking up on that too because there was no reason that I was so petrified. that my body was convulsing, and I would have to lay on the bathroom floor until I fell asleep. And for a while, I just slept in the bathroom. I did that a lot, too, because I couldn't take it. And then after a while, especially after the convulsions and me telling my mom that he kept sitting on my bed, or he kept pulling my feet, or he's shaking my bed again, my mom just said,

well, why don't you go in your room one day and ask him to stop coming downstairs? To ask him to stay out of your room, maybe he's the doctor that built the house. So maybe he has enough love for this house that he'll respect that boundary. And so I did. It was obviously during the day because I was not about to do that at nighttime. And I just said, hey, I don't think that you mean any harm when you come down. into my room. I think that you might just be really curious, but I really need you to stay upstairs. It petrifies me. I can't sleep. I haven't slept in a really long time. I was depleted at that point.

And sure enough, I heard him pace upstairs, but I stopped hearing him come downstairs. So that was really a huge relief. And I remember feeling like very validated and kind of like I was given my voice back. Like I had control in that situation again because I felt so out of control. But yeah, it was a really awesome experience to think, oh my gosh, that worked. And also, I'm not crazy. Also, this is actually happening to me. and I'm not crazy.

Because during this time, I genuinely, especially without the support of my stepfather and constantly getting in trouble with sleeping in my brother's room or sleeping in the bathroom, I genuinely thought something was wrong with me because my mom was keeping her feelings to herself. And I felt like this was only happening to me. And I didn't know why. And even though I was a kid, I felt like, well, am I crazy? just was such a mind-blowing experience because no one else talked about it. I had no one to talk to about it without getting in trouble. And I remember my stepdad kind of taking offense to it

a little bit because it was like one of those like, I got this house for us and you're too afraid to be in it. And so it put a big strain on my, like me mentally and even my family and my dynamic. But anyways, since it worked and he started staying upstairs, it was awesome. And things chilled out for a very, very small period of time, because during this time, my mom was pregnant with my youngest brother. So my mom had Ryan, my youngest brother, and the house slowly treaped into having a very malevolent side to it. And it started off with little things. You could just feel the difference between the spirit that would come down into my room and pace. It was a completely different

energy than this other spirit that was starting to show face once my youngest brother was born. You felt it in the pit of your stomach. It made you sick. You felt terrified. It was different. And I knew it wasn't the same spirit that was in my attic. I knew that because I still heard him pacing around upstairs every night and staying up there. But I think initially we had rescued a cat named Cookie and it started off with her. I remember her happened multiple times that she would scream bloody murder as if someone was like physically harming her. she would scream bloody murder I would go down to

thinking she was caught in something and then she would bolt pass me up the steps and I thought that's so weird and she was fine like she wasn't screaming anymore and when she did that we had this radio

in our dining room and it turned on now it was just static noise but it turned on so I ran up the steps I was like nope I'm good. And I go on my room. I bring my cat. We're good. And for a while, it was just more a vibe and a feeling. And then probably a little bit after that my, I woke up and my bedroom wall had a large hole with a brown stain around it. Like it wasn't something that happened in a slow progression. It literally woke up and that was there. We had all the professionals come.

We had a roofer, a plumber, someone who plastered the wall. They looked on the outside of the house, the inside of the house, because initially we were thinking, oh, maybe it's a leak. There was no leak. And they had no clue why. There was no lead. They plastered it up, though, and they're like, it shouldn't happen again. We don't know why.

Some fluke. It should definitely never happen again. and it could not have been any more than a week that that whole reaffformed. Once again, overnight woke up and it was just there. And I remember thinking, that is so scary. That's wrong. There's something wrong. That's not normal. I know I was no plaster expert, but there was something really wrong with that

because it didn't even happen in over time. It was overnight. And that was also when my mom said she knew something was wrong with the house, but at this point she's still holding it together. She just had a newborn. We're not wanting to admit that there's something wrong with this house either because we went from poor to this beautiful home. It was like our dreams came true. And then it was getting ripped from us because we were, especially me, was petrified in the house.

and it was mainly just happening to me. All right, we have to take a break, but we'll be right back with the rest of the story. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and it's a powerful reminder that whatever you're going through right now, you don't have to navigate it alone.

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of their 30,000 plus licensed therapists, and you could switch therapists at any time if it isn't the right fit. You don't have to do this journey alone, find support, and have someone with you in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash otherworld. That's betterhelp.com slash otherworld. So it kind of creeped into things started happening with my baby brother. I remember we would always lay him in the middle of a California king-sized bed, pillows surrounding him. He was no more than a month at that. And any time that we would do that, we would hear a thud

because normally we were like in the kitchen and we would hear him crying. And we would go up there and he would be on the floor. floor. But not next to the bed. It was like a good distance from the bed. And we kept being like, how the heck is he doing this? Like he doesn't even know how to roll yet. And I mean, it was just such a massive bed. And it also always happened like right after we left and put him down. It's not like an hour went by. So maybe he was able to slowly roll off the bed. No, it, it was like we would put him up there. would come downstairs, five minutes, boom, he's crying. I think we only tried it like two or three times because after the last time, it was kind of like, no, you know, he's, we don't want to

endanger him. But the last time it happened, my mom went to the store real quick, and it happened, and I ran up the steps, because at this point, I don't know what told me what it was. I just knew that it was some nasty evil woman. I don't know. It was just my intuition that put that in my head. And I remember being angry and I was fed up. And I ran up there and I picked my brother up. And I was holding him and I was just screaming, leave my brother alone. Leave my brother alone. And when I did that, I felt extreme heat. And it was as if the room was going like one, won,

like my mom's described it really well. She said it was like standing next to a really loud speaker that had loud music coming out of it

but you couldn't hear the music. So it was that vibration and I just knew she was angry. Like she got mad that I called her out and that I told her that she needed to leave him alone

and I knew what what the hell she was trying to do. Like I see you now. I see what you're doing here. You're nasty. He's a baby. And after that happened, then it really ignited. I think when that happened and I kind of let her know, like, I know what you're doing, who you are, and it's not cute. You're not doing this anymore. That she then really started retaliating. Once she started retaliating against me, even more so than what she was already, One night it was storming. I remember that specifically. I was in my room. And at this point, I had a method of how I slept. I was so petrified and so sleep deprived that the way I would sleep was I would put a pillow over my head and then I would put a blanket over that and I would leave just this little peephole that I could breathe out of.

And I had been sleeping like that for a while. After everything that was happening, that was the only way I could sleep because I thought that maybe I could make the spirits think I was asleep and they wouldn't bother me or they wouldn't be able to tell that I knew they were there. So after I scream at her, I go to bed and I did my normal routine, pillow on my head, blanket over that little peephole. It was storming. And I remember talking to myself. I remember saying. I remember saying, burning it's storming, don't get scared. It's going to sound weird out there. Nothing's going to happen. Nothing's going to happen. Don't worry about it. And I start to fall asleep.

And right when I started falling asleep and kind of talking myself off the ledge of being scared and expecting something to happen, I felt a drop in my stomach. and I felt very thick energy in my room. And I knew I knew she was there. And I remember just telling myself, pretend you're asleep, pretend you're asleep, pretend you're asleep. And when I was saying that and trying to play sleep, it was as if someone literally came up to that hole

and chattered their teeth in an inhumanly fast pace like the like that but like extremely fast and it was right at the hole it wasn't like somewhere in my room it was at that hole and I remember jumping up running to my door screaming bloody murder my mom couldn't open the door I couldn't open the door and then finally for whatever reason my mom was able to open the door and I was just distraught screaming, telling her she came up to that hole. She came up to my bed. And I mean, I just, I still get scared talking about that because you hear a lot of different stories with people who experience hauntings, but I feel like that is such a creepy experience that someone went up to that hole.

She knew what I was doing. She knew I was awake. She wanted to petrify me. And she went up to that hole and chattered her teeth in a non-human fast pace by that hole to scare the living daylight out of me. And it worked, you know, like, kudos to you. It worked. And I, from there, I was like, Mom, there is something wrong with this house that is not normal. Like, she's trying to hurt Ryan and my mom, you know, just tried to soften the blow, keep me relaxed. She gave me the look in her eyes as if, yes, I know, but can't say it. And then I went to my dad's house to stay for a week. And at this point, we were doing joint custody. So I went to my dad's. Simultaneously, my dad's house was not haunted, but during this time when we were living in the haunted house, when I would go to

my dad's house, which was a perfectly normal home, never had issues with it before, I would feel someone shake my bed. And it only happened at my dad's house while we were living in the haunted home. So I thought that that was really telling. My mom kind of made me realize that yesterday. Anyways, while I was at my dad's, my mom said that she one night woke up

because she heard a very, very faint whimper, like a very soft faint whimper. And so she looked over and she noticed that my brother was hanging by his head. Like his head were stuck in between the bars of his crib and his body is hanging down. And she looked, freaked out because, and he was choking. So he couldn't scream bloody murder because he was choking by those bars. So all he could do was make those very slight wimperes. And thank God, you know, that woke her up.

And she got him and she was hysterical. And she looked at the crib and it was like the bottom of the crib completely collapsed. And he wasn't even at the bottom of the crib. He was at the top of the crib. But it completely collapsed in such a way that it made his body slide down and slide through the bars. And his head was stuck in between the bars. And my mom said that her and my sister. stepdad looked at that crib up and down because at first my mom thought, oh my God, did I put the crib

together wrong? Was this my fault? She was really scared that it was her fault. Her and my stepdad looked at it up and down and there was no, there was just, it was weird. I don't know cribs very well, but my mom said that it was just unexplainable, and she knew then there is someone trying to kill Ryan. She just knew. And I remember when my mom picked me up from my dad's house, that was kind of her first time of like truly admitting about the malevolent spirit.

She picked me up and she was crying. And she said, Brittany, something tried to kill Ryan. Something tried to kill Ryan. And she told me what happened. and I just remember being so livid, like so livid that she tried to do that. We also could tell over time that Ryan, my baby brother, was special too and had to have been intuitive like me

because we both just attracted, you know, we were getting, everything was happening mainly to him and me, and I think it was because we were open to it. And I think that's why she and the male spirit was attracted to us. Over time, I started getting together that this evil woman that was trying to harm Ryan, for some reason, I just felt like she was very jealous. And I just felt like she must have lost a child somehow. And that was her way of coping was to try and harm a newborn to be on her side of the fence type thing.

That was just the vibe I got. But luckily, after that happened, the owners of the house kind of went to my stepdad and were like, hey, we need to, are you going to buy the house or not? because we need to know. And I think that's when my stepdad was kind of admitted, like, no, we can't. Like my wife and my stepdaughter are petrified. And I think he knew that what, that whole crib thing that happened,

that something was very wrong with that. My mom said when this was another time that happened when I was at my dad's visiting my dad's, that apparently some guy tried to break into our next door neighbor's house and because of that

when he ran away he tried to get in our homes and he like ran through our yard so the police come and you know my mom has to be a part of the condo because it affected both of our houses my neighbor said to my mom

there's always something wrong with your house there's always something that happens And my mom was like, what do you mean? And he said, well, do you know why the previous owners moved out? And she said no. And the neighbor said that something happened to the wife of the previous owner. It's the middle of the day.

They don't know what happened to her. But something happened to her that petrified her enough that she packed up everything and her kids or what she could and her kids. they ran into the car and they sped off and left. And then that's when the husband started clearing out the house as much as possible and trying to just get it either on the market or rent-to-buy as soon as possible. I think he did the rent-to-buy first because he just went and go ahead and start renting it off the bat until he figured out if he wanted to sell it or what.

But the neighbor told my mom that. And my mom, that was kind of another thing that clicked with her. like, okay, there is something weird with this house. And apparently the wife never came back, never stepped foot in that house again, even to move different things out or collect her personal items. She never went into the house again. So we move out and I remember I kind of kept that to myself for a long time. We never spoke of it again. And I didn't stop sleeping with the pillow over my head, with a blanket on top of that, leaving a keyhole for me to sleep out of or breathe out of. I didn't stop doing that until I was about like 21, 22.

Like I was, I had so much literal PTSD from that house that it took me a long time to even sleep like a normal person with their head out of the pillow and blanket. But when my was probably a teenager, I remember finally realizing like, Everything that happened at that house was wrong. Like, I want to talk to mom about this again. Because you got to remember, while it was actually happening, she's not talking too much about it. She gives me the look like, yes, there's something wrong. But we're not talking to each other about what our intuition is telling us or this.

We're just saying, oh, this happened. Oh, this happened. So I decided to come to her and be like, Mom. How did you feel about the house? And she said, oh my gosh, that house was so haunted. And I said, why didn't you, why didn't you talk to me about it? Like, I was, I've never been more scared in my entire life. I felt so alone when this happened.

And I thought, you all thought I was crazy. And my mom was just like, no, it was haunted, but you were so petrified that I was afraid that if I admitted to you that I felt it too that you would be even more scared. And she was like, but yeah, that house was so haunted. And at first she said, yeah, remember the doctor in your room that always pace? And I was like, yes, we knew that because we did talk about that. But we never discussed what the malevolent spirit was. And before I could say anything to my mom, my mom said, and then there was that evil

nasty woman that was trying to kill Ryan. And when she said that, my heart sank because I always knew it was some evil, nasty woman that was specifically targeting Ryan and then me too, but mainly Ryan. And she just said the same thing. Like, I think she must have lost a baby or something. And she's resentful of it. And she got triggered into manifesting when Ryan was born. having a newborn in the house and we just came together and finally put all our cards on the table and talked about all of the experiences. And she also helped me remember some things because I was so traumatized that some of it, I did definitely kind of repress because it was too traumatic. Yeah, that's pretty much what happened. And my life was forever changed after that. I, you know,

went pretty dormant for a little bit, and then I just realized that, you know, weird things kind of happened to me always. They've always happened to me. Nothing compares to that home, but I definitely attract certain energies, and I realized that after that house, and that house made me realize that as scary as it was, there was a reason why I was getting the brunt of everything. And I think it's just because I attracted that. And I also quickly learned that I needed to start kind of trying to protect myself and, you know, just try and spare myself from ever experiencing that type of fear again. Okay. Thank you so much to Brittany for sharing her story. The entire thing was so unnerving, but the details of that whole.

whole appearing in the wall is so distressing to me. I think because it's the type of thing I would irrationally be afraid of as a kid, like the type of thing that would keep me up at night, the thing I would like imagine while I'm falling asleep, finding some sort of secret room hidden in my walls. But of course, that would just be an irrational fear. I couldn't imagine having that actually happened to me. Thank you once again to Brittany for telling us this story. This has been episode 96. The title is The Hidden Staircase, and you've been listening to Otherworld. Otherworld is executive produced and hosted by myself, Jack Wagner.

Our theme song is by Cobra Man. The soundtrack of this episode is by Juice Jackal and North Americans. This episode was edited by Haley Pearson and engineered by Theo Schaefer. Our artwork is by Cold Sack Studios. Our associate producer is Nikki Haid Delgado. Please show us your support by subscribing, leaving a hundredweight. five-star review and telling your friends about Otherworld. If you want to hear bonus episodes, you can become a patron at patreon.com slash Otherworld. Our social media is at Otherworld Pod.

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