Spooked - Fright at the Museum

Episode Date: September 4, 2021

Jen is about to start an internship at a museum. But this isn’t a typical museum… It's built inside two old, historic mansions. By this time, the original owners of these two old homes are long gone -- or are they? Thank you, Jen, for sharing your story with the Spooked! Produced by Zoë Ferrigno, original score by Leon Morimoto 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.

When walls run wet and darkness falls, the wise will surely scatter. But when the brave leave from the path, the monsters all grow fatter. At long last, patience is rewarded, tis the season, you're listening to Spoot. Stay. I grew up, sitting next to my brother, in the church watching people be healed. We nodded together in faith. As a preacher, preached no disease and faced the power of our Almighty God. That sickness is just another name for Satan.

Come out, Satan. I command you in the name of the Almighty God to vacate this person, cancer. I cast you out in fact. I saw people begging a preacher to please, please place his hands upon the person. their forehead to please make the pain go away. They expected a miracle. A miracle. And later as a grown man, I stopped believing in miracles because instead I'm angry.

For the time wasted in the company of charlatans with men who twist God and faith and healing into fancy cars and gold jewelry. Liars telling lies. I share this with my brother and he agrees. We laugh at the foolishness of it. The stolen time. Later, he asked me if I have stolen from him. The millions of dollars and jewels we had buried together under the sea, I laugh again. But this time, he does not laugh.

Later, he grows angry. Ask where I've hidden his secret daughter rages to know how I'm. I sneak messages into his food. He tells me he knows that I edit his thoughts and promises revenge for my treachery. He calls me preacher. At first, I don't know the name of this malady devouring him. I beg him to remember, I am your brother.

I have nothing but love for you. He screams back in rage, thief. No medicine, no doctors, no therapy can cut through this darkness, and it's almost by accident. As he hurls abuse, that I retreat into the practice I had abandoned in my youth. I reach out with both of my hands and command healing into him. I pour every ounce of power I possess, every resource, every bit of me I channeled into him. He'll brother.

But the note of surprise in his voice of question. You didn't steal my heart. my millions, did you? I don't have a hidden daughter. Mind control. That ain't really even the thing, huh? No.

I'm crazy as hell, huh? And we laugh. We laugh together this time, and we talk. We talk like we could in the before, except I speak quickly as fast as I can because I'm scared. I love you, brother. I love you, man. And several minutes later,

just like I fear this window this brief glorious sliver of lucidity it slams shut I raised my hands to try again to infuse him with my newfound healing power but this is a one-time

single-use magic and as much as I mourn as much as I weep for what it cannot do I am forever grateful for what it did because amongst as many gifts was an acceptance of this darkness.

A certain knowledge that even as I seek understanding, this mystery will remain. That this path, this journey does not have a destination. I will never know where we're going. I can only recount where we've been. And where we've been, it astounds even me. You've asked. You've been patient.

And today Your faith is rewarded Spook Season 6 My name is gum Washington Healing It's the most powerful magic of all Just about to start an internship At a museum

It's called the Hoyt Institute Now The Hoyt is not your typical museum It's built inside two By this time The original owners Of these two old homes are of course Long gone

I'll let Jen take it from here. I was very excited because they had given me a tour of the two homes as part of my interview. And I was just so excited to get to work there. I thought it was so cool that my office was going to be in the maids quarters. So I just really thought it was going to be a fun place to work. During her first week on the job, Jen started to learn about the history of the two old mansions. Originally, they'd been the homes of a pair of very wealthy siblings. But even though they lived next door to each other, they weren't exactly close.

So it was very well known that the brother and the sister, May Emma and Alexander, did not get along. May Emma was more of a happy go lucky, go-as-I-may type person. Alexander, on the other hand, was very conservative. He cared a lot about appearances and what other people thought of him. him and his family. And he was terribly embarrassed by his sister. It was during the 1920s, prohibition was going on. She completely ignored the bans on alcohol.

She had what was considered wild raging parties at the time. I picture something out of the Great Gatsby. She was not married and had sleepovers with both men and women. So definitely on the edge for that time. period and it is well known that there was a lot of tension between the brother and the sister. After Mae Emma passed away, her brother had come in and sold all the furniture in the home, and it was very spiteful. He's completely undersold her possessions.

And then there was a secret compartment in the dining room that hid May Emma's fur collection and she collected fur coats. and that was one of her prize possessions. He took all of her fur coats out of the secret compartment and put them in the dining room and lit them on fire. When Alexander passed away himself, the mansions were turned into museums and a glass walkway was built between them. Most of the day-to-day operations took place in Mayama's house,

which was called Hoyt East. So my office was in the old maids quarters, which had its own separate set of stairs off the kitchen. And at the top of that set of stairs was this box that had bells that came down out of it. And each of the bells was labeled with a room. And throughout the house, you would see these little levers. And when one of those levers were pushed, the bell outside of the maid's bedroom would ring. So about my third or fourth day being in the office, I was sitting at my desk and I heard

and I turned around and I looked at it. It was the dining room bell that was going off. My first reaction was that it must be a guest in the museum that is, you know, pushing the lever that's on the wall. And I went downstairs and I looked in the dining room. room and there was no one in the dining room. There were no guests in the museum at the time. I figured, well, maybe the receptionist called me using the bell system just to be silly or, you know, to show me what the bell system was like.

And so I went to the front office. The receptionist told me, oh, don't worry about it. That happens all the time. And I said, well, what do you mean? and she said, oh, well, you know, everybody that works here has strange experiences. And again, I said, well, what do you mean? And she said, everybody has run-ins with some kind of ghost here. And so I took that information and just didn't know how to react and went back to my office and sat down and thinking to myself,

okay, I'm working in a haunted mansion. Shouldn't they have told me that during my interview? After working at the museum for a few weeks, I started to notice more and more activity. One day I was in my office. I was sitting at my desk and my back was to the door. And immediately on the other side of the door was the small hallway and the set of stairs that went down to the kitchen. And all of a sudden, I hear steps on the stairs. And I slowly turned around and...

There was nobody there. But I clearly heard very distinctive footsteps continuing up the steps. I kept watching and I heard, but no one appeared. No head showed up, no body showed up. It was just the sound of the footsteps on the stairs and no actual person. And the sound just eventually stopped. It was like someone came up to the top of the stairs and just we were looking at each other, but there was nobody there. And I wasn't scared.

I was a little more intrigued than anything else. Over time, Jen came to realize that everyone who worked at the Hoyt Institute felt the same way. These little encounters were just part of the job. So the museum staff would always get together. We would go into the kitchen and there was a big table in there. We would gather around the table and have lunch in there. And that's when a lot of stories were swapped of, oh, did you hear the music in the ballroom today?

Kind of a big band swinging type of music. And the sound of what sounded like people dancing, like a big party going on. No, I didn't hear that, but I heard footsteps on the stairs. The bell system went off again. To me, it makes sense that it was May Emma that was doing those things. I feel like she was just a real socialite and still wanted to be a socialite and have fun and play pranks and get people's attention and be the center of attention. And that personality is shining through in the things that happened after she passed away.

Now, on the other side, I did not spend much time in Hoyt West, which was Alexander's home. The stories that I was told during those lunches of people that spent much more time over there was that it was a little bit of a darker, more oppressive atmosphere over there. And that makes sense because his personality was like that. People that worked in Hoyt West would notice when they would come into Hoyt East, a very strong smell of smoke in the dining room. And they believed that it was reminiscent of when Alexander burned, May Emma's furs in the home.

One time I was alone in the kitchen for lunch, and, you know, I'm sitting there watching the microwave like we do. I felt like somebody was watching me, like somebody was in the doorway of the kitchen. Just it felt like somebody was there, and I turned around, and there was no one there. And then when I moved over to the sink to get some water, that's when I felt this intense cold spot. And again, it just felt like somebody was watching me over my shoulder. I felt unwelcome. It felt like I was in somebody's territory. Somebody was being territorial from the other side, and they did not like what I was doing. My heart started racing. I definitely felt like a heightened

sense of fight or flight. Like, I think I need to get out of here. Maybe there are There is somebody else here besides May Emma. Jen worked at the museum for a semester. During her time there, she organized a poetry competition for local kids. And then I put together this award ceremony, which was going to be held in Hoyt West, a.k.a. Alexander's house. It would be Jen's first real time working over there. I had everything lined up, everything done.

I had gone to the store and bought the, you know, cheese and the crackers and the juice. And it was great because these kids came all dressed up in their finest clothes to get to the award ceremony and they were so excited to be recognized for their creative writing. Just as the party was winding down, Jen's boss told her that she had to leave and she asked Jen to stay and lock up the museum on her own. So my boss leaves and I'm alone in the house. and I begin closing up chairs and winding up cords from the microphone.

And the last thing that I do is get ready to take care of the food. Jen grabbed a platter of cheese and crackers. She made her way into the butler's pantry and then threw a set of swinging double doors, into the kitchen. And then when I went to turn around because I had another platter to go get, the doors were swinging. The door swings fully open and there was a man in the butler's pantry. He was wearing a gray jacket with a tie and he had gray hair and he was pretty tall.

His face was filled with disdain. He definitely did not like me and I could feel it and I could see it in his face. I'm thinking that this is a man that got into that. house and has been hiding and he is laying in wait for me and he's going to hurt me. I was terrified. I was freezing cold. I was shaking. I felt like I wanted to scream, but it felt so tight. I couldn't scream. I was terrified. Because I was in such fear, I had an accident and it ran down my legs and into my shoes and it was a mess but it was the last thing on my mind because I was just so fearful that I was going to be attacked eventually the doors slow down and they stop and I couldn't see

what was on the other side of that door I was standing by the island counter and there was the knife that I had used earlier in the day to cut up the cheese was still there and I picked up the knife and I called out, I have a knife and I will defend myself. And I opened the door. I pushed open that door. And there was nobody there. And that's when I realized my brain started to process what I had seen. I realized the man wasn't totally there.

He was translucent. I work in a haunted museum. It's a ghost. Adrenaline is pumping through my body, and I'm thinking, I got to go, I got to go, I got to protect myself. But I didn't want to let my boss down, so I did what I was told, which was turning off lights as I was leaving the house. Even though I was terrified, I really wanted to make sure that I lived up to my obligations with this internship. I got to the door that went to the glass tunnel that went to, Hoyt East, I just started to run. And as I was going through the glass tunnel, I smelled the

very distinctive smell of smoke in the dining room. It didn't smell like a campfire. It smelled like burnt animal fur. That very heavy, stinky smell that just kind of sticks in your nostrils. And it added to my fear. And I just was desperate to get out at that point in time. Jen finally made it outside. She ran to her car. My hand is shaking as I'm putting the key into the ignition. And as I'm backing up out of the spot, I can see Hoyt West in my rearview mirror.

And there is a light on in the kitchen at Hoyt West. I know for a fact that I turned off that light. And I can see a shadow cross in front of the window. is just it's person going in front of the window. And I'm sure that that shadow that I saw was the man that I saw in the pantry. All Jen wanted was to be home, safe inside her apartment. When she got there, she ran up the stairs and burst through the door. And my roommates came out by their bedrooms and being like, what's wrong?

Because that wasn't my usual way to enter. And the concern on their face, because they said, I was just so pale. All the color had drained from my face. I had been wearing mascara and tears had made their way in black down my face. And it was very obvious that I had had an accident and wet myself. Jen's roommates helped her calm down and urged her to clean up and take a shower. I had the number from my boss on our refrigerator door.

And my one roommate said, I'll just call her and explain what happened. When Jen got out of the shower, her roommates told her that her boss wanted to talk to her. And so I called her back, and she 100% reassured me that there was no way that somebody could be in that house. It was not a real man. It was Alexander watching me. Not happy that I was in his house. She told me that she'd seen him too when she was alone in Hoyt West. My boss was telling me that it always seemed that people,

who worked more with Emma's side of the house, when they would enter into Alexander's home, he seemed to appear more frequently with that look of dislike, disgust, almost like, why are you here? You're associated with my sister, and my sister is a terrible person. It seems like that tension between the brother and the sister from life was continuing on past life. It might have been two days later. I went back to the museum to pick up my things and to have my final evaluation. My boss offered me a job. I thanked her profusely and told her how much I really had enjoyed working at the museum

and I needed to think about the position because it certainly was coming out of the blue. I had no inclination that that offer was going to come. Ultimately, I made the decision not to take the job. partially because of what happened in Hoyt West because I had never been so scared in my entire life. Big thanks to Jen for sharing her story of the spooked. Best Believe, Jen is a spooked listener, a spookster. You know we love hearing from our listeners. And if you have a story, drop us a line, spook at snapjudgment.org. The original score for that piece was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Zoe Ferigno.

Let the dark winds blow. We walk this path together. Spute Season 6, be afraid. If you have a story of your own battle against the darkest, I want to know about it, I do. Please, email us. It's spooked at Snapjudgment.org, because there is nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener.

Show the world that you walk this path with us. Get that spook t-shirt you've been dreaming of, snapjudgment.org. if you like your storytelling under the bright light of day it's the amazing the stupendant snap judgment podcast at storytelling with the beat

Spook was created by the team by behaving respectfully when visiting the museum everyone except for Mark Ristich he keeps telling everyone that he painted that Anna Sussman our chief spooker is Eliza Smith Chris Hambrick Annie Nguyen Nguyen Mouin Lauren Newsom

Leon Morymoto Renzo Gordio Tio de Katt Marissa Dodge, Zoyfordna, Tiffing Delisa, Ann Ford, and Doug Stewart. The spook bean song is by Pat McCready Miller. My name is going to Washington. If you hear a knock on the door, but the door is inside your house, never open it. Slowly.

Slowly, the situation can only be confronted in the daylight hours. In the meantime, could you just have a hard chair, a strong drink, and a sharp stick.