Spooked - Creature Feature II

Episode Date: October 27, 2023

When a creature shows itself, wonder fills you, terror compels you, but which will you follow? Two friends in the countryside, and two men at sea are put to the test by mysterious beings. STORIES Silver Man When Martin and Louise visit an abandoned house, something is waiting for them–but not on the grounds. Thanks, Martin, for sharing the mystery with us. Original score by Clay Xavier, produced by Anne Ford Somethin’ Fishy As a fisherman, Clyde spends most of his time on the water. He’s seen all kinds of creatures out there… whales, squid, sharks. But when it comes to the ocean, there’s always a bigger fish. Thank you, Clyde, for sharing your story with us. We hope you never see that thing again… But if you do, you know who to call. Original score by Seth Marceau, produced by Zoë Ferrigno Artwork by Teo Ducot Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

London Bridge is falling down, falling down, and I have found, whenever that guy jacks around, lots of things start falling down. Crazy. Listen to spooked. Stay. It's strange that we put a new telescope in the sky, the pinnacle of modern science, constructed to take pictures of very instant after creation. And so far. instead of answers, all we get back are questions.

Mysteries. We build an atom smasher, 100 meters underground, to uncover secrets at the subatomic level. And what it does is hint that there is something both smaller than we can detect, but also something bigger. Operating at the same time.

this age of science and we know nothing. Except that we know nothing. Not exactly Martin's cup of tea. Martin is an interior designer. Likes things a certain way, likes to mind his business and when he can. Martin likes to escape the hustle and bustle of London and get out into the country.

Not looking for any trouble, but trouble. About 23 or four years ago, a colleague and I were on a site visit down in the English countryside. Louise and I had worked together for about eight years and liked each other a great deal. We'd driven down in the morning to have a look at the factory and workshop. It was a beautiful English summer day. Very little traffic. And I had a convertible car so we could see very clearly everything. Hedge rows, rolling field, birds singing in the trees.

And it's a lovely, lovely, lovely place. We happened to finish earlier than scheduled. We decided we'd head home. But on the way, I realised we were very close to this rather beautiful, derelict country mansion. an abandoned house in the middle of the countryside. In England, the whole countryside is littered with grandhouses which get handed down through the gentry. Quite often the estate would just become too much to run

and the families would abandon their houses. Louie's, she said, I've never heard of this place, never knew it was here. Let's go and have a look at it. From the highway to the house is a private quarter of a mile driveway. Very overgrown with potholes and puddles. On the right-hand side was a meadow with a picket fence. On the left, it sloped very gently down to this tree line. And then ahead of us was the house.

Some of it had been either demolished or, had collapsed, but the larger chunk of it was still standing. There was one other car in the car park. We parked the car and walked towards the house. And as we were doing so, an elderly couple came hurrying past us in the opposite direction, back towards their car. When you're in such a remote place in England, you normally put your head up and say, oh, good morning or good after

or hello isn't it a lovely day. They didn't. They had their heads to the ground and they were holding onto each other and moving very, very rapidly. I just thought it was a bit odd. We've continued towards the house. We stepped on to the formal terraces that wrapped around the house

which were now crumbling with weeds and grasses growing through. My colleague had her back to me and was looking out into the grounds. And she suddenly says to me, look at that, what on earth is that? I imagined it was going to be a horse or something moving in the grass. I turned around. I said, oh my God, what is that? We were looking across the lawns and above that tree line was a silver-suited figure wearing a black visor over the face

literally hovering emotionless in the air it looked like a space suit that sort of insulated leathery material my eyes was staring and hair was standing up on my neck we just couldn't understand what we were looking at

my brain instantly said alien but why at 2.30 in the afternoon would there be an alien hovering above some trees. It's obviously a human being with some kind of experimental suit. But how can it be up there?

Part of me thought, I wonder if there is something to do with military program or training. And then you start thinking, hang on a minute, if that was a human being, surely there would be a noise. Like a jet propulsion

noise, but it was absolutely silent. There was not a sound other than the birds and the wind blowing in the grass. And you start thinking, okay, this is not something normal. I felt very uncomfortable. It just seemed so unreal. And then its arms began to move. bending at the elbows, and the head was moving left to right.

I remember holding on to my colleague and saying, I really don't like this. And when this figure began moving towards us through the air, we went, oh my God, I definitely felt it was watching us. It realized we had seen it. That's when I panicked. I said to her, I really don't like this. We need to go, we need to go.

We moved and we kept looking over our shoulder at it. And the figure had stopped. It was no longer progressing towards us. So we stopped. And then it rotated. So it was facing to the left. It then began to descend. down into the trees.

At which point my colleague suddenly took off towards the trees running into this long grass. She said, we've got to see it. I want to know what it is. I need to know what it is. And I thought, oh my God, oh my God. A, I can't leave without her. B, I can't let her go.

I felt if I'd let her run we could have been involved in something far bigger than we should have I ran after her and I grabbed her I said stop stop stop stop you must stop I was wild-eyed and white as a sheet once Louise had seen that I was fearful she said okay okay let's let's go let's go we jumped into the car

and as quickly as we could drove towards the highway which was a quarter of a mile had to drive quite slowly because of the potholes in the road the figure suddenly popped up about 30 feet above us above the conversable still standing in a standing pose whatever it was

had obviously followed the tree line on the other side, side, out of side. And it passed over us in enough detail that we could see the wrinkles in its suit. They had gloves. You could almost see the tread on the soles of the boot. Absolutely silent. No noise whatsoever. We reached the highway and this figure passed over the main highway.

and started moving away from us. It dropped down into the distant pastures and we lost it. We couldn't get out of there fast enough. We drove to the nearest small town and reported it in the police station. We felt, well, even if they think we're nuts, we should tell them.

They said, well, how do you know it was a person? It was obviously a balloon and you're mistaken. Well, it wasn't a balloon. I know the difference between a balloon and a person. Balloons don't move their heads. Balloons don't bend their arms. They said, thank you very much. We'll make a report and let you know if anybody else reports anything similar.

Now I think back and think, I must have been crazy. Why didn't I run with her? Why didn't we go to the tree line? Who knows what we would have seen? You just don't know. You just don't know. What an incredible experience that would have been. For sharing the mystery with us,

the original score for that story was by Clay Xavier was produced. Our next storyteller, Clyde. Clyde is an expert in all things nautical. He spent his entire life on the ocean and Clyde. Clyde has seen some things. My name's Clyde Toppe. I'm a fisherman. Born and raised right here in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands on a small island called Water Island.

It's about two miles long, half a mile wide. Has 100 people on it year-round, at least when I was growing up. Beautiful white sandy beaches, crystal clear blue water. Not much on it. No grocery stores. No street lights. Got two stop signs on the island. And that's about it.

Everyone pretty much drives around on a golf cart. It's a beautiful place to live. I love calling this place home. The first time I went fishing was probably when I was like three years old on the deep water dock right down in front of my house where I grew up in. Mom and Pops would take me on the dock, fish right off the dock there and got my first boat when I was eight years old. A small little thunder duck with a four horsepower on the back of eight foot little fiberglass skiff. I actually named it Stinger and we painted it yellow and black. I used to hang out with my buddies.

We used to go fishing all over. Every chance we had, we were out on the water, fishing inside the lagoon, fishing on all the rocks along the island, around the place. That's what I do for a living still. I do fishing charters down here in St. Thomas, and in the summertime, I travel up to Nantucket. Basically every day of my life, I'm on the water.

That's me. That's where I want to be out on the ocean. It was back in 2014. My friend Mike, he met me after I finished work at 5 o'clock. He met me down in the marina. We stocked the boat with a little six-pack of Heineken on some ice. Got the fishing gear. Some hooks, some small little sinkers and lead.

And then our handlines. We call it handline because you're fishing with the line right out of your fingertips, right in your hand. So you feel any little tug or nibble on the end of your hook. So we left from the marina right at sunset. so the sky then was like gold lit up. And from there we rolled out to the fishing spot to go catch some Yellowtail Snapper. Cruising out the channel, we're going over some waves,

you know, there's spray coming off the side of the boat, and we're just kind of talking to ourselves, hoping that the fishing's going to be great, you know, kind of amping ourselves up for a good night of fishing. We just wanted to go out and catch a few fish to put in the fridge, have some fresh fish for the week coming up. We got out there was just about dusk. Everything was starting to go from that sunset colors

where the darkness would start to fill in. So it was beautiful out. So we anchored up the boat. We're about, I'd say, just over three quarters of a mile right off the shore. It was nice, calm. You didn't have a lot of chop on the top of the water, so you were able to see through the surface a little bit.

From there, we started making a little bit. chum and started fishing. There wasn't even much of a moon that night. We had the small little light inside the boat, but other than that, it was a dark night. We were fishing for about, I'd say, hour and a half, two hours. We were catching a few fish.

It wasn't the best, but we were catching fish. We stuck it out until about 8.8.30, I would say, where the fish just stopped biting. So usually that means there's, like, sharks or barracuda swimming in the chum line. I'm like, we're just wasting time. We're wasting fish basically. Let's wrap it up.

Let's go home. I got my line into the boat. He started reeling his in. And as he's reeling it in, something grabbed onto his line and started taking line out. He's like, oh, I got one. I got the big one. We got him.

It starts flying out of his hand, and you hear in the line skipping, like flicking out of his fingertips, basically. He can't stop it. It starts burning through. his skin into his fingers and he just loses the whole line at that point the line's being pulled right off of the yo-yo the baller and nothing starts skipping and jumping on the floor of the boat making all kind of ruckus before it finally caught on the edge and just launched overboard

and went splash into the water he told me straight out he's like clide we got to get that handline back i want it like i need it it actually had sentimental value to him because his dad before he passed the way, he gave him a bunch of fishing gear and that was one of the things he gave him was a blue yo-yo handline. And I felt for him, man. I'm like, don't worry, we're going to get it. We'll make sure before we go home tonight, we will find that handline. So I haul up the anchor, I turn on the flashlight. I was scanning with the flashlight from left to right, searching for the handline, you know. And it wasn't even about five minutes after we had lost it. I found it. It was floating right on the top of the water. It's dark and it's a dark blue handline too so seeing not floating on the top of the

water it was it was exciting. I'm like there it is bro let's grab it and bring it up. He grabbed the handline. The fish was still on the other end whatever it was so he's working it for a little while and after a couple minutes of him working the fish it just broke off. It snapped. We were pretty disappointed, you know, we didn't get the fish on the other end. I still have the flashlight on, and I'm scanning from left to right, hoping we'll see what's on the other end of the line, and then they just make out this silhouette, this shadow on top of the water. The length overall was probably six to seven feet long.

I thought it was a shark at first, and then I saw the tail. I had my flashlight shining right on, so I could make it out clear as day. It was right under the surface of the water. The tail was going up and down, not side to side like a shark's would be. It looks like a porpoise tail. Nice and smooth. It was gray like a porpoise's skin.

But then as I came across its back, its back was smooth, and there was no fin on the back. That cancels out being a porpoise or a shark. You know, we're on the ocean. and you never know what you're going to see there. So I'm like, maybe it's something else. From there, I scanned across its back to its upper body. It was a complete different color. It's milky, tanish green.

And I'm like, now this is a little different. I've never seen anything with that color in the water. So I'm just thinking, what the hell is that to myself? So I just keep going up a little bit. And there it is. I could make out clear as day, a human upper body, two arms, a neck with a head sitting on its shoulders, like looking right at me. With two big bug eyes, like the size of softballs, and they were glowing. Kind of like a jacolon and wood at night.

This glowing red amber color. I was numb. I was in, like, shock. I was speechless. I've seen a lot of creatures on the ocean at night. I've seen big sharks, I've seen whales, dolphins, porpoise, squid. I've seen all of it. But when I saw this creature in the flashlight, the two big eyes,

I got scared. I'm not going to lie. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I'm looking eye-to-eye with this thing. I'm seeing it clear as day. It was so wild. And then one quick motion, one kick of the tail. And it cuts straight for the side of the boat now and comes right.

for me. On the port side of the boat, the worst thing that was crossing my mind was the fact that it maybe could reach out the water, grab me, pull me in. So I took a step in towards the middle of the boat and I'm like, Michael, what the hell is that? He was freaking out as well. He's like, what is that? I'm shining the light on it the whole time. Its head had these two creases down like each side. The center had a ridge and on each side had two creases to help it cut through the water and it had two arms one on each side tucked against the side of its body as it went underneath the side of the boat it went right underneath where I was standing up and I was expecting it to come right out the other side so I'm already looking over there but it never did and we're like

dude let's just get out of here we're talking a little bit the whole time he's trying to say oh could have been a big squid I'm like dude no way that is definitely not a squid it's not a shark It's not a manatee. It's no creature I've ever seen in the ocean at night. So we dropped Mike on the dock in the marina, and at this point I'm alone on the boat, making my way back to the sailboat, which I live on. As I was starting to throttle up to go home,

I was definitely freaked out, looking in the water when the boat slowed down, wondering if this thing could still be around the boat, looking at me. I got on board. I closed the door behind me. I laid there in bed just thinking to myself, what did I actually see this night exercising all the options of the real animals that swim around in the ocean?

What was it that would describe it best? But there was just no other option. I can't debunk it myself. What I saw that night was clearly half human, half porpoise. That's it. A mermaid. The pirates used to pass through here all the time, and I would always look at the old maps and stuff like that.

And you would always see they'd have like sea creatures drawn on them and mystical creatures. For instance, there's a spot on the west end of St. Thomas here called Mermaid's Chair. And story goes it that the siren would sit on the rocks and call the ships to shore and wreck them on the shore. But this mermaid I saw looked nothing like the ones they had drawn up looking all pretty like a beautiful lady. It was scary looking.

I think it was looking for an easy, meal. I think it maybe took what was on the other side of that line. It's something still to this day I can't make sense of. Every time I'm out on the water, I wonder if I'm going to see something like it, if I'll see it again, or what else is out there? What could be in the ocean, you know? They know more about outer space than they do our own ocean. So it always has you question what else can you see out there. Thank you, Clyde, for sharing your story with us. We hope. hope you never see that thing again, but if you do, you know who to call. That piece that was scored by Seth Marceau is produced by Zoe Fridno. Now then, lots of people.

We grow up with imaginary friends, but then some folk, they keep those friends well beyond childhood. And those imaginary friends sometimes start to behave in ways that are not imaginary at all. If you have such a friend, or if you know someone who does, I really would love to hear all about it, spooked

at snapjudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener. And if you need more spooked, be afraid. Each and every week, you can listen anywhere on every platform,

initiate someone you know into this world, by sending them a story from this world. It's the only way this works. If you like your storytelling, that can walk under the bright light of day, embrace our sister podcast, Snap, Judgment, storytelling with a beat. Snap on podcast platforms everywhere.

It's brought to you by the team that knows their way around the ocean. Except, of course, from Mark Ristich, Mark Rish thinks that fish just, catch themselves. There's Davy Kim, Zoe Frigno, Ann Ford, Eric Yannies,

Teo DeKott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Creaky, Elizabeth Z. Pardue, Adi Yamatu, and Lulu Tamima.

The spook theme song is by Pat Massidi Miller. My name is Lynn Washington. Exactly what we fills in the gaps with pretty pictures. with smooth over edges. Maybe. Because we're afraid to lean into what's really there.

Like, we're all playing a big game of pretend, but it's the gaps, the shadows, the mystery that once seen make us realize what we're here for in the first place. See, more step.