Spooked - Dead Battery - The Crossroads

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

Rameen knows Gettysburg — the battles, the history. But when he picks up a night shift on the ghost tour, everything goes haywire. A strange message crackles over the radio from an unknown frequency, filled with urgency and desperation that feel all too real. You’ve arrived at “The Crossroads." Be afraid...Thank you, Rameen, for sharing your story with Spooked! Rameen now works full-time as a guitar maker and musician in Nazareth, PA… and occasionally leads tours at the guitar factory. Produced by Casey Georgi, original score by Nicholas Marks, artwork by Teo Ducot. Happy October Spooksters!  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Who can steal the sunrise and wipe away your grin? Make you wish that you could scrub away your darker skin. The shadow man, the shadow mankind, the shadow man can, because he cheats out everyone and makes the world not good. You've almost arrived at the crossroads. Nextel, Mississippi. 1921, little Bobby was just eight years old when he discovered that sometimes

with the grown folk, if you're quiet, if you stay in a corner, if you look really close at the floor, or the wall, even your own shoes, they will talk like you're not even there. Invisible. In this evening, when his mama sinks her voice down low, that's when Bobby's hearing leans in.

Mama tells Hattie, don't you go out there. Not for love, not for money, not for nothing. Do go. Don't touch nothing to give you. Less than to exactly what you won't. Only thing he won't is whatever you can't give. Bobby's still invisible, still as a secret. Don't you go there, Hattie.

Hattie's face set in that look you get when you ain't going to cry no more because crying time is over. Howdy, you hear me? Bump the fork off the table and it tinkled on the floor. Mama's head snapped back. Invisible no more. But care your black behind outside, stop sneaking around. Yes, him. Bobby walks real slow toward the door still listening.

Gotta bring him something. Something nice. Make him think it's the most important thing you got. Bobby never asked for how to he didn't come around no more. For his 15th birthday, running back home from Mr. Cooper Field. There wasn't a cake. No wrapping paper. And just when the grin was leaving his face, he looked at his palette on the floor.

And right on top, still in the not-new Montgomery Ward box lay a wooden six-string guitar. Same one had been sitting in the display case at the Jones General Store for over two years now. Shops. He turned toward his mother to sheer smiling back at him. "'Don't be your ticket, Bobby. I know it. Every night he plucked and picked and strummed and slapped and knocked until one night. The G-string snap. He tied it back together as best he could till it broke again.

And again, he just started over. Learned to play with five strings. Then four. Finger sliding up and down till three strings wailed like six. Figured once harvest time come he could purchase more. Mama loved hearing him play. She'd stomp her feet, clap. her hands, that's your ticket.

He took sick. He played for her. Sometimes pressing wet tiles on her burning forehead. Sometimes strumming a song she might like. First she snapped her fingers to his time. Then she didn't. Two strings left. On the third night,

Bobby made himself look at her. Full on. Shrunken, tiny. Shivering underneath every blanket they own eyes, he shut, mumbling to someone he couldn't see. He couldn't figure another way. Boba kissed her on the forehead, set his jaw like had he done all those years back,

and took the only thing he owned, was out the clothes on his back. Guitar, fought with long hours under the Mississippi Sun. She said it was his ticket off the plantation because her dreams were always bigger than his. Amma's over. He stepped out into the night and pressed the door closed behind. His walk turned into a room. run can't be late. The way looked different at night.

Moonshadow swept the gravel road, past roll after row of devil's weed. He ran and ran and finally came to the place where his road intersected with the other. There he stood. Right in the middle. The center like he'd heard her tell person after person to never do.

Then he whispered the words. She told person after person to never say. Starlight shone bright enough to read by. No one for miles down either stretch of the road. Then Bobby spun round to see the Shadow Man walking torn up. Only thing kept him from screaming was his mission. Yes, sir, yes, sir. So my mom is sick.

Doctor of my hair some medicine for the making better. Keep his head down. Don't look in his eyes. Only take what you come for. I brought you my guitar and trades. It's a fine guitar. It's real fine. Real fine. Bobby lifted the instrument out of the cardboard box he still carried it in, held it out to the man. It just didn't springing as all. Thought maybe he might have some medicine and trade. Bobby felt the instrument lifted from his hands. Then the man, like he was testing the quality, like he was weighing the terms. He beat on the guitar like a drum. Started tuning it to a scale that Bobby. didn't know. Taping in strange

stretching notes. High, low, low, high, low, wails, screeches, grinds. I thought you might have some medicine. The man played wild, frenetic howling, shrieks. Bobby's guitar calling angels and demons and sorrow and pain and mercy and lashes

and cotton and chains and fire. The man stopped. He held the guitar out. Bobby snatched it back. It wasn't until he saw the man's eyes. Did the horror come. A million times she'd said it, don't touch nothing, he'd give you,

this is what you came for. The man smiled. No, sir, I come from medicine. The man turned away. I need medicine. For my mama. The road sat empty. Quiet except for the buzzer the crickets.

And they grew silent as well. He looked down and stumbled. stumbled back, six gleaming red strings shone fire from the guitar. And even as he wanted to throw it down, he held it close. Back down the road, passed the field to the shack where he left her shivering just a few hours before and terrified. He cracked open her door. Mama, but what did you do? He saw her both upright on the side of her bed desperate, searching for her.

His eyes, then horrified when she saw him clutching the guitar. He touched it, didn't he? He touched it. He couldn't even look at it yet. Take it back, boy. Take it back. He just strung it for him as all. He just gave me the strings. He don't give nothing, baby. He takes. He saw it in. Cheeks flushed, eyes bright.

That's what he called the guitar now. medicine. He knew the price. She did too. Smash it, baby. It's gonna kill you. Smash it. Because that would kill her. There in the dark, it called to him and he reed for it. And he played. As she wept his finger sliding up and down the blood red strings, it growled, low and hungry like a living thing. Breathing, laugh and spitting. Some of his life for hers, it tasted. like a pretty good deal.

Please, please smash it, baby. It will kill you. Even as he felt the darkness like a drug, he felt too, the thrill,

the magic, the herd, the brow, the wolf, and just dancing down the glimmer and strings is the season. Today, the very first step

of a spook journey like no other. The crossroads. Be careful of what you ask for because the crossroads start A story today come from Rameen. He's an apprentice violin maker

in a tiny Pennsylvania town. Now Rameen is working for free so he starts looking for a night gig, something to keep the lights on. And one day as he wanders around the nearby town of Gettysburg, he spots a sidewalk sign reading tour guides wanted.

Normal enough, but when he takes a closer look at the sign, he learns a company is actually looking for someone to lead ghost tours. Now, Ramin, he's not really in that kind of stuff, you know, the spirits, the hauntings, everything. But a job is a job, right? So he signs up to be a Gettysburg ghost tour guide. Spooked.

My first tour ever, I introduced myself as Ramin. And some snarky little eight-year-old boy looked at me and said, Ramin, that's not a civil war name. And everyone laughed. and I was a little bit embarrassed. On the one hand, I knew that he was right. And on the other hand, I felt kind of bad, actually. It was like, I can't be myself and give an authentic experience.

But if this eight-year-old is having his suspension of disbelief just because of my name, that's a problem. So from there on out, I decided that I would conduct these tours under my alter ego of Charles. I'd bring my violin along and I would play spooky songs as I was walking around town telling these ghost stories. I'm a terrible violin player, by the way, like really cat strangling bad. Tonight, my name is Charles. I'm dressed as a soldier from the 10th Virginia infantry, wearing gray wool clothing. My guests will be following my small candle that I have in my lantern.

We'll go up the hill past the National Cemetery, and we'll go up to the abandoned. in orphanage, where, after the war, children found only horrors at the hands of a terrible woman named Rosa Carmichael. She kept the children in the basement, in pits, in chains. Eventually, the townspew found out. She was run out of town, never to be heard from again. The guests, they are horrified. They're shaking their heads in sadness and disbelief. some of them who have children with them reach down and squeeze their kids' shoulders to comfort them, maybe to reassure themselves a little bit.

But it's a true story, and it's absolutely horrifying. But then at the end of the story, in order to make it paranormal, then I'm saying, and they say to this day, some of the children that met their end at this orphanage still haunt the grounds. They may tug on your dress.

You may hear, them pattering around across the street. And if you listen very carefully, you can still hear their chains jangling from the basement windows where they were kept under horrific conditions. And is this true? Like, no, I don't think it's true, but it ties the true history into the paranormal experience in such a way that I'm sort of covering my bases now. When I first found this opportunity to work as a tour guide, I was so excited to combine my interests in history and military history in particular

and to tell the guests the reality of life in the 1860s that, to me at least, are terrifying, even without a paranormal component. But these were not the stories that people expected. And then I kind of got a talking to. from my boss, who very gently told me that I need you to spook things up a little bit here, dumb down the history and amp up the paranormal.

I myself, I'm not a hardcore believer in the paranormal. I'm ambivalent, agnostic, but I recognize that this is the job, this is what people expect, and who am I to say, whether a paranormal experience that someone else, has is or isn't real. Now I incorporate some of the more terrifying paranormal stories that I've heard from other tour guides. Our next stop will be the old creek bed at Weinbrenner's run. This creek used to meander its way all the way around the battlefield, and at the time of the battle, it was the site of terrible horrors. The Battle of Gettysburg occurred between the 1st of July and the 3rd of July, 1863. And then on the 4th of July,

there was a torrential downpour. All of the creeks were swelled up. There was flooding throughout. And in this particular little area of Weinbrenner's run, the story goes that there was this wooden grate that had been placed there, right where the creek sort of meets the edge of the town, to catch tree limbs and other things

that would naturally fall into the creek or be swept up if the creek got really full. Unfortunately, there had been established during the battle a couple field hospitals on the banks of this creek. And so when the medical staff were doing amputations, they were piling up these limbs, they were working as quickly as they could to try to save lives. And the carnage was just sort of laying on the side of the creek.

In the aftermath of this rainstorm, hundreds of limbs and many dozens of bodies of men who had become wounded and had sought shelter in the creeks get swept up in the engorged creek until they encounter this wooden grate. You've got this dense mass of just horrible stuff that has blocked the flow of water going through the town. So at the end of the tour, this older gentleman comes up to me and he's got a beard and a hat and he has a walking stick with him.

And he says, look, look, I've captured something here. You need to take a look at this. I'm looking at this picture. And he says, you can see between the spokes of the cannon's wheel, there's a boot. And sure enough, I'm looking at this picture, and there's a knee height leather boot. And he says, I think this might be the boot of a cavalryman. and I smile and nod and I say, wow, that's really something. I've never seen anything like this before.

And meanwhile, out of the side of my peripheral vision, I'm looking at the footwear of everyone that is along on this tour. And of course, there's a woman wearing riding boots. And of course, these are her shoes in the picture. But I'm not going to burst his bubble. I encourage him to email it to the company email address. we'll take a look and maybe we'll add it to our own archives, and that seems to quite satisfy him. It is a normal afternoon at the Ghost Tour Company. It's too early to be taking guests out,

so I'm getting some hours in on desk duty, helping people with their reservations and advanced bookings, and my coworker, who is one of the paranormal investigators, comes up to me and says, hey, we are short-staffed for a ghost hunt later this week. Do you want to do it? and at this point I have never done a ghost hunt for a few reasons. Number one, it's really not my bag. Number two, the hours are rough. I'm not going to be done until four o'clock in the morning. My coworker says, look, the money's really good, and it turns out that the pay for conducting these ghost hunts is like four times as much money as I'm going to make from giving tours that night. So I'm convinced. All right, I agree to go on my first ever ghost hunt. hunt. This evening, there are three of us from the tour company that are in charge of the ghost

hunt and our guests who number about 10 are gathered around in the gravel parking lot of this building. And it is a hulking old mansion. We're all decked out with vests and ball caps and flashlights and this, you know, tactical equipment looking like a bunch of mall cops, but conducting a ghost hunt. And the people on the hunt love it. They are so into it. This house is a prime location for a paid ghost hunt. My two co-hosts are doing a great job of setting the scene. They are being cryptic about things that have happened in the house. and it turns out bad things did happen in this house. A young woman hanged herself in the attic of this house.

The home was used as a field hospital during the Civil War with limbs piling up to the windowsills that floorboards had to be replaced due to blood soaking them. We start distributing equipment and the first thing we have to do is conduct a demo to demonstrate to them. How do they use the equipment? We have EMF detectors. That stands for electromagnetic frequency. It basically looks like a gun. And you point it in the direction of where you think a spirit is.

Now, my coworker, who's a very industrious young guy, he's making these devices. He's going to Radio Shack. He's getting bits and bobs. He's buying paintball guns and taking them apart to create this really tactical looking device. And there's this other device we have called the Spirit Box. It's like a pocket radio. It's got an antenna and it doesn't have a microphone on it.

It's got a very primitive LCD screen. And essentially what the Spirit Box does is that it cycles through radio frequencies and you hear snippets of words where it might say, but every so often it's going to pick up a word or it's going to pick up a snippet of sound and that if you are an imaginative person you're going to hear what the spirit box is telling you and thus interact with a spirit. I believe that it is utter garbage. Frankly, I feel guilty. I feel like I'm participating in a scam. Not because I was worried about people finding. and ghosts, but because I was so certain that they were not going to and that I was selling them a false dream. My coworker, the same one who is making EMF detectors, is leading tonight's ghost hunting expedition.

He is like a drill sergeant of fear. He is completely deadpan, saying that the energies that inhabit this space are very unsettled and that bad things have happened in various areas of the house and we want you to go in there and see what you can feel. And then at the end of the tour, you can tell us where you found evidence and where you felt energies. And I'm just sort of taking it all in at this point, thinking that these are fools who are paying for the privilege of terrifying themselves in a building with no electricity, no running water, and God forbid, one of them has to go to the bathroom in the next four hours. Once we make our way through telling people the ground rules,

we basically cut them loose. And our job is not to helicopter over them so much, but to allow them to spend time within their groups and allow their group dynamic to play out, however it's supposed to play out. So the groups are out investigating, and there's a group cycling in and out of the attic where this death by hanging took place. Myself and the other two guides, we meet up outside. We're smoking some cigarettes.

We're chatting, and then every 15 minutes or so, we think, okay, it's time to go check on the groups, see how everybody's doing. So it's most of the way through the evening. It's probably 2.30, 3 o'clock in the morning at this point, and I'm doing my little walkthrough. I'm walking toward the parlor. This room has some windows and a radiator that is looking like it's got leprosy. Just paint falling off of this thing. Then I get summoned by one of the groups.

They say, hey, we're having trouble with our species. spirit box, it's telling us that the battery's dead. It's saying battery dead through the speaker. And this is unusual because there is a battery indicator on the box and I can see that the battery's full, but if they're telling me that the battery's dead, very well, I have a pocket full of AA batteries. So I go ahead, I pop the back off the spirit box, put some new batteries in there. I can see still that the battery indicator says that it's full and I hand it back to them and I turn to walk away. No sooner have I done so than they call me straight back and they say the batteries are dead again. And I just got this weird feeling.

I know that these batteries are not dead. I know they're good. And sure enough, the radio scanner, which is really all that this device is, says clear as day. Battery dead. The voice coming through the machine, it's a male voice. It's clear. It's strong.

It is not like the snippets of speech that sometimes we hear from this device as it's cycling through radio. frequencies, there's an urgency to the words. I am still highly skeptical about the prospects of speaking to a spirit through a broken radio. But I have a role to play, which is to help these guests get their money's worth. I don't know what has come over me exactly, but I get this feeling that I ought to see if the box is going to tell us anything else. So without thinking, I said, is there someone there? The box says in the same voice, yes. All of the people that I'm with, this group of three or four people, they're like giddy with excitement. The thought crosses my mind that maybe someone is listening and manipulating the local radio channels to try to fake this out.

And I realize that it's not possible through a device that I know full well has no microphone on it. So I go ahead and ask a follow-up question. Are you a soldier? And the box says, yes. I am feeling like my entire insides are made of ice. This voice, it sounds like it's... Coming from far away, it is really freaky. And at this point, my guests, they are discussing amongst themselves very excitedly

what types of follow-up questions they should ask. And one of them says, are you a Union soldier or a Confederate soldier? And the box says, this, of course, we interpreted to be a reference to the Union uniform, which is blue as opposed to a Confederate uniform. of gray. This carries on for a little while, and they're asking yes or no questions. Are you cavalry? No. Are you artillery? And the box says, yes, battery dead. Now, at this point, my stomach is down in my shoes. I have managed thus far to not allow myself to believe

in the legitimacy of any of this technology. And here I am. I'm supposed to be the one that is playing it cool. I am so shaken. I cannot stay inside the house. I need to get out. I make my way out of the mansion as quickly as I can, and I'm back out into the gravel parking area

where my coworkers are hanging around waiting for things to wrap up. There's only a couple minutes left before folks are going to be coming outside. And I tell them what has just happened. One of them says, are you okay? And I said, yeah, I don't know. I think so. They were pretty understanding about my being freaked out and not wanting to go back into the building. Neither of them are particularly shocked.

this was something that they expected almost. They said, yeah, well, that's what happens. My coworkers congratulate me on my first ghost hunt, a job well done, and I decided that I was never coming back to that spot ever again. Later on that week, it's a sunny day. I'm walking the battlefield. I wasn't working that night. This day, I just felt compelled to go walking.

And as I'm walking along the road near this house, I come across a memorial marker. It's a seven and a half foot tall granite monument with a cannon parked right in front of it. And I'm reading Rhode Island Light Artillery. Three killed, 12 wounded. Battery E. I just stand there speechless. So we're hearing battery dead, battery dead, and we were thinking, oh, okay, time to go grab some more AA batteries. But a battery is also a term that would refer to a group of guns, horses, carriages full of ammunition, all the men that were part of the battery.

And as I looked at this monument and read three kills. 12 wounded, thinking to myself, is it possible that I actually encountered one of the men who fought in this unit? Really, to me, brought the whole experience full circle. I'm upset. I feel as though we have disturbed a spirit. This is an entity, if you believe that, that is stuck in a moment.

of great distress and is trying to communicate a message of great urgency that there has been death in their military unit. Battery E. Dead. I continued working at the

tour company on a part-time basis for the next probably year. My attitude toward tours definitely changed. I think my storytelling became a lot more somber when I told people to pay attention to their surroundings. I really meant it. One of the things that I told my groups regularly was that the men who fought and died here were young men by and large.

That they had more life to live. They had more things to do. and now I wonder if the energy, that desire to stay, is something that sticks around in a place, and that just maybe if you go out looking for it, you might be able to interact with that energy. When Johnny comes marching home again, Hurrah, hurrah, when Johnny comes marching home again

Hurrah, hurrah, when Johnny comes marching home again, we'll give him a mighty welcome that we'll all go marching. For sharing your story, this spooked. Now, we're mean. He works full time currently as a guitar maker and musician in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. but occasionally, Rameen does lead tours at the guitar factory. That original score was by Nicholas Marks,

was produced by Casey Georgie. What you've just experienced is but the first foray through that liminal space that connects and bars the gate. Long has been known across time, across cultures that some entities routinely pass through the shadow side and this world. And on the next crossroads, we're chasing after creatures straight from native Blackfoot lore. And one young person who always wondered starts the question what he wished for.

On the next crossroads, you've never walked this way before. The crossroads is brought to you by the spook team who wherever they go, always sign up for the haunted house tours. Except for Mr. Mark Ristich, he just likes to pop out of close. Closets from people least expected. I'm as David Kim, Zoe Frignau, Eric Yanez, Teo DeCott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Elliot Lightfoot,

Sui Chu, Evan Stern, Yves Jeff Coat, Eishal Lopez, Jack Darrell, Doug Stewart, the spook theme song. He's by Pat Messini Miller. Transgressors, both here and in the shadow should know that no Snap Studios content may be used for

training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission. Take that, SkyNet. On team spooked, the union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers, are members of the National Association of Broadcast, Employees, and Technicians, Communications Works of America, AFL, CIL, Local 51. My name is Glenn Washington. And it's long been understood that what you put into something or someone is reflected in what comes out.

We treat children with love and kindness because we want to nurture the goodness that lies within. We first tend the flocks to harvest the wool. We paint the pictures to expand the beauty. We write the books to share the knowledge because care and intention are seeds. We know this.

Why then are we surprised? That when we drench a land with blood, that it bears a very strange fruit from the poplar trees. We call forth monsters and wonder why they answer. No.

We are holders of the sacred gift, the power of intention, the ability to construct our angels and our demons alike. There is no horror we cannot manifest. And no joy. We cannot sing to life. The shadow cannot move its own volition. We must light the pyre. We must sacrifice the lamb.

Look around. And no, they will unleash abominations in your name. They are doing so right now. Terrorists. So ask yourself, what will you unleash? What will you call forth? Always remember to never, never, never, never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never, ever. Never.