Spooked - George

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Just because you make friends with the ghost in your apartment building, doesn’t mean all your neighbors will follow suit. Thank you, April and Joan, for sharing your story with Spooked!Produced by Greta Weber, original score by Richard Haig, 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.

Some dogs will go happy and content into a new home. No problem, they'll wag their tails, even go by a new name, but some. Some hounds, they will only accept one master. You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned. One summer, when I was just a kid, we don't just move to Kingston, Michigan, population 347 souls. No, no, no, no. We moved to a piece of land

Outside of Kingston, Michigan 88 acres of Michigan swamp And living out there In the woods, just our family It can be lonely But a few days in Wondering the streams by myself I see a boy

He's my age Turns out we're in the same grade His dad owns a farm With his name on a big sign And after chores every day We meet in the woods We invent games, make slingshots, swim in the pond, climb trees, tell stories about stuff that we're going to do someday.

And both of our favorite show, our favorite show on TV is a program called Grizzly Adams about a guy hiding out in the wilderness. And on Grizzly Adams one night, grizzly and his buddy in a coma, they're such good pals, such good friends, they engage in the ceremonial process of becoming Blood Brothers. They each take a knife. They cut a gash into their forearms until it runs red, and then they strap their arms to each other,

such that the blood of one flows into the other, and vice versa, forever. In the next day, we know what we have to do. We get his father's buck knife, make sure it is especially sharp. Go to the tallest tree in the woods, and there, there he sticks the knife into his arm or he tries to

because the knife is not as sharp as we'd hoped so he digs at his skin with the blade and finally he's able to draw out a few drops I too I find it difficult to plunge the knife into my wrist but stick the blade I do and looking each other in the eye

I hold out my arm and press my wound to his. We hold it there for 34 seconds, our blood forever running through the other. Blood brothers bound.

When school starts. It's a new school for me and I'm happy I already know someone, my blood brother. In the playground I see him. I say, hey, and I talk to him about who the teacher is and about my trapper keeper and when it's lunch time because I like to eat

lunch and does he like to eat lunch too? but he looks not at me but over my shoulder to where other boys are laughing he walks away from me toward them hey

says one of the other boys I didn't know you loved black people except isn't say black people red face points back at me.

I don't even know this kid. This kid? His eyes angry, his teeth, bad. I wonder... I wonder what part of me flows through his veins then. I wonder what part of him

flows through mine. My name's when Washington. Spook starts. Three kids. They needed a fresh start. Some are safe, some are comfortable. And Joan decided that her hometown in Colorado, host of family and the France, her hometown was that place. And she found the perfect home, a Victorian apartment complex, and the old part of town.

And I'm going to hand it over to Joan now, Spooked. I was just drawn to it from the first time I walked by. I just fell in love with the building. It just seemed to beckon to me. We were thrilled to move in there. I believe the first thing I ever put up on the wall was, Home is where the heart is. And we just embraced it.

We just really felt like we had a new start and that things were going to be better. And they were initially, they were very quiet and calm. There was a comfort in this home. So we never, never ended. anticipated anything turning on us. This is Joan's daughter, April. She was 10 at the time.

I was sitting in my bedroom closet, just playing with my Barbie dolls. I had my back leaned up against the wall, just relaxing and playing. And the closet door is open. To my right, across the bedroom, I have this little oval mirror, antique mirror hanging up and it's got this beautiful gold antique frame. And as I glance to the right and I look at this mirror, clear as I could see you or me or any other reflection in a mirror, I see this man's face that I've never seen before just staring back at me.

He's got this angry look on his face. His eyes are almost glowing red. He's got a brown beard and brown hair and a black top hat, almost Abraham Lincoln looking, his face took up the mirror. I jumped up from my closet in fear and ran out of my bedroom and into the living room and just sat there where my brothers were and tried to act like nothing had happened. I knew what I saw had to have been something supernatural. There was no explanation behind it.

I've never seen this person. There was nobody else in the apartment. I chose not to tell anyone at that moment or do anything about it. I didn't want to sound crazy to everyone. After that, I just continued on day to day, as though it hadn't really happened until I noticed that other things were starting to happen as well. Sometimes I would be in my room with the door closed and I could see a light flickering on and off in the next room that had nobody in it. Or seeing shadows out of the corner of your eye, seeing a person. and walk by in your peripheral vision.

April couldn't deny anymore that there was something or someone in the apartment with them. So she decided to finally tell her mom about the man she saw in the mirror. By then, Joan had already noticed that something was off. Feeling like I was being watched a lot, feeling like there was always somebody there with us, And it just, it seemed to escalate from there. My mom had told our downstairs neighbor about what was going on in our apartments. And she confirms with us that she has seen the same guy. He's dressed in a suit.

He had a long black cape and a top hat, brown hair. And we both had things that were moved, that we hadn't moved, things that disappeared, doors and cabinets that would close on their own, not that we had closed. One day, the downstairs neighbor came knocking on Joan's apartment. She looked shaken. And told me that she had put candles out

and was doing a romantic dinner for her boyfriend. And she said all of a sudden the candles flew off the table. And then she was saying that she had seen the lower part of a man walking across her ceiling, as though half of him was upstairs and half was downstairs. Just further confirmation that, oh, wow, we're not crazy. Other people are experiencing the same things as well. During the first few months of living in the apartment, April and Joan weren't actually that afraid of the ghost. It was just like living, living.

with somebody else that's playing little pranks on you or messing with your head just to let us know, hey, I'm here with you guys. It was just like having a roommate really that you can't see. We had a clown doll, a musical clown doll that sat on top of our refrigerator, and its head would spin when you would turn the little dial to play the music, and it would go off at random all hours of the day. But the activity wasn't always so playful. We used to hang out in April's room a lot, and we would just sit and talk. We're sitting there just chatting, having a good afternoon, watching, I believe it was a Chicago Bulls basketball game. And I had a couple of little decorations sitting on top of my TV.

One of the decorations on top of the TV happened to be a little bit. little pearlescent white vase that I had some black silk flowers in. And out of nowhere, for no explanation, we had no windows open, no doors, no drafts, but the vase projectile flies off of the TV about three feet right towards my mom. It never hit me, but it came soaring at me and I had to duck. It didn't break. It landed on her bed. It landed on her bed. but if I hadn't ducked my head, it would clearly have slammed into me. We just kind of sat there in shock. Just like, wow, I can't believe that just happened.

What in the world is going on? And after that, we just picked up the vase and put it back on the TV and continued on with our day with a little bit of shock at what we had just seen. Still, April and Joan were more intrigued than they were scared. I never really got a sense that he was a demon or anything along that line. My mom and I were just sitting in the apartment in the living room one day, and we're discussing the ghost and how we feel that he needs to have more of an identity.

Just like I had a name and she had a name and my brother had a name, he needed to have one too. So we're just bouncing different ideas of different names back and forth on each other. just nothing felt right or sounded right. And then suddenly my mom said, George. And I said, yes, that's perfect. George is a great name for him. You know how when you have a baby and you name them

and the name that you choose just seems to fit the personality you feel inside of you, and George was kind of like that. Maybe an hour goes by, and my brother comes home with his best friend. They were at the park across the street. playing basketball. We tell them at the time, we've named the ghost. And my brother and his friend kind of look at each other a little confused. And they say, okay. And we tell them, we've decided to name him George. At that point, my brother and his best friend's jaw dropped. They had a look of complete shock on their face. They proceed to tell us the story, how they were across the street playing basketball,

and they decided to make a fun little game of it. They decided as they're playing this game to start talking to the ghost and asking questions, kind of like a magic eight ball type thing where if they threw the basketball at the hoop and the ball went in and they made the basket, the answer must be yes. And that if they shoot and they miss

and the ball goes out, the answer must be a no. They start asking for a name and they name several names. and nobody can make a basket. They said the name George, and every time they said the name George, it was the only time they were able to get the ball to go in the hoop. So they came home, really excited to tell us

that they had named the ghost and that his name was George. It was a really exciting feeling having all four of us sitting in the living room, knowing that we had all just come up with the same name at the same time. The same day, the chances of that are too coincidental. We decided at that point that that must have been his name and that must have been his way to communicate to us and let us know who he was and that he was there. We had speculated a lot of different stories

as to what George's life would have been like and what his story was trying to connect to him and get to know him more. And one of the things that we had come up with and decided was that since he showed himself mostly to girls, especially me, he spent most of his time in my room or showing himself

to me versus other people was that perhaps he had a daughter, perhaps a young girl around my age that maybe he lost, tragically. If that was the case, that maybe that's why he spent so much of his time with me was just he felt more of a personal connection to me since I was a young girl.

Maybe as a fatherly figure, since I didn't have a father, he felt in a way he kind of needed to be there to keep me straight or just be a bigger person. part of my life. To me, he felt like a man from an earlier time that was very strict, but very loving of his family and his home, that he was protective of it.

April and Joan had actually gotten used to having George around, but their downstairs neighbor was much more freaked out. At some point, she decided enough was enough. and she wanted him out of the apartment. So she called in a priest and asked him to come in and cleanse the place and get rid of the spirit. After the priest had come to try and get George out of the apartments, he made it known that he wasn't very happy with us.

It seemed to anger him even more that we were trying to get him out of his own house. I think that he felt that it was his land and his home, and he was having to share it with him. us and now we were trying to get him to leave when by all rights it had been his for a hundred years or so and who were we to come in and try to make him leave. Things started to get more violent. He started throwing things at us more often. I had a wreath fly across the bathroom at me one night after a shower. He began pulling my hair in the bathroom in the mornings when I would be

getting ready for school or just for the day. Whenever I was standing in front of the bathroom sink, I could feel a tug on my hair by the nap of my neck on the right side, and it happens a few times a week, and it was a painful pull. It wasn't just like a little tug. It was like somebody was trying to yank a few hairs out of my head. It didn't feel comfortable there anymore. It didn't feel loving and welcoming.

You would almost cringe to walk in. to the apartment after things escalated. You know, it wasn't that home is where the heart is feeling anymore. That was all gone. This was about a year and a half or so after we had moved into the apartment. I'm standing in my bedroom sort of by the entryway, and my brother is sitting on my bed, and we're standing there talking, just being normal kids.

And out of nowhere, this immense pressure knocked me to the ground. As I'm laying there, I'm realizing that I can't breathe. I can't speak, and I'm starting to panic. My brother is sitting on my bed, and he's just watching me lay there, and he's laughing, and he's shaking his head, looking at me, just like, what are you doing? Get up. And I'm panicking. I'm laying there trying to tell him, like, call 911.

I'm dying. I'm laying there, and in my head, I'm just like, this is it. I'm going to die. And before I black out, out of nowhere, the pressure is just lifted away, and everything's fine. And I stand up, and I can breathe. And my brother's still sitting there looking at me laughing. And he's like, what were you doing just then? And I didn't even know how to respond.

I was like, I don't know what happened. I just got pushed to the ground, and I couldn't breathe. And I thought I was going to die. I wasn't sick, I wasn't hurt. I was perfectly fine just like I was before this happened. I didn't know how to process it. I was really just trying to make sense of what had happened and why and what was going on since it was something I had never experienced before.

So I was in a complete state of shock and confusion, really. We decided it was George just because there was no logical explanation. When Joan got home, April told her what happened. The first thing I felt was absolute anger that he would dare do that to my child. And then it went to fear of what else would he be willing to do and what are we dealing with here. I just didn't understand it. I didn't understand why I had gotten to that point. I just figured it was just because he was upset that we were trying to make him go and it was

us or him and he certainly wasn't going to go, so he was going to make sure we did. Going through that and having it changed from something that seemed so harmless and day-to-day to becoming something that had become violent, it became terrifying as a kid. It was no longer something where I wanted to be home alone if I would hear him in the other room when I was home alone, even if it was cold and snowing. I would run outside to sit outside and wait for my family to come home just to prevent having to be in the apartment where I could hear him moving around. After realizing that he was okay with hurting us and taking us to such a state of fear and panic to try and get us out of our house, discussing it with my mom what had happened, she had decided

that things had gone too far and it was time for us to move. We didn't want to live in day-to-day fear anymore. I just thought it was best that we get our things and move on. After that, we moved to a little house, a couple miles up the road where we only lived for about a year before we bought a house way on the other end of town. Fifteen years later, my mom came over. By this time, I'm an adult. I'm grown.

I'm married. I've got my own house and my own kids. And my mom came over. And we just started discussing George and our different experiences and how. we wish we would have had more closure and more answers as to what we had lived with and what was going on and why. Later that week, I went to work, and I worked in a pharmacy at the time, and a lady came up to the window and gave me her prescription. and I started reading the information off to make sure that it was accurate. And I kind of looked at it and I looked up at her and asked her what apartment she lived in

because it was the same address that we had lived in. Well, it was the same apartment. And I didn't want to lead her, but I just looked at her. and I said something to the effect of, do you ever have things happen there? And she said, oh my God, you too. And I knew at that moment that George had been active with her. And I said, yes.

And she said, doors slam all the time. She said things fly in there. and she said, we're really kind of frightened. It was her and her daughter that lived there. And I asked her if she would mind if we got a hold of a local paranormal group and if they would come into the apartment with us and kind of see what we could find out. And she was okay with that.

She said, I would like that because, yeah, I'm not. scared in there. And I told her, okay, I said, let me get a hold of them. Let's see what we can do. So I called them, and they were up for it. They said they had been trying to get into this building for years and have not been able to do that because there are a lot of stories floating around the town

about this particular building. They wanted me to go in the apartment with them since they said I was kind of a catalyst, Since I seemed to be sort of somebody that George, for whatever reason, was really drawn to, they wanted me to go in there with them and spend the night and see what we could come up with. And so I called her up and let her know that we would be setting up an appointment and coming over to spend the night and see what we could do there. Shortly after, she called me and she said, we can't do this.

My daughter is pregnant and going to have her baby anytime. And she said, I don't want the activities to escalate with the baby here. So we agreed that we would hold off until after the baby was born. And we waited and waited, and I never heard back from her. A few months later, Joan was reading a local newspaper. I was just kind of leafing through it. And in the obituaries was this woman's name. She had passed away.

We definitely questioned right away whether or not George had something to do with her passing. She wasn't very old. I would say maybe late 30s, early 40s. It was shocking to think that what he had done to me could have possibly been something that had been similar to something that he could have now done to somebody else, only maybe the somebody else wasn't as lucky as I was. Maybe it was kind of a power struggle. He wanted to make sure that that remained his home

and that nobody was going to try and get him out or mess with him, and that either way, he wanted to make sure he won, and that he got to stay there and not be disturbed. Big, big thanks to April and to Joan for sharing your story with the spout. We are so glad you got out of that house safely and away from George the Ghost. The original score for that piece was by Richard Hay. It was produced by Greta Weber. There's an ending spooked. Stories abound, and if you have one,

the story that needs telling, let us know spout at Snap Judgment. There's nothing better than the spook story from a spooked listener. And if you like your stories firmly planted on this side of the veil, under the bright light of the day, check out our amazing sister podcast, Snap Judgment, storytelling of the beat produced by the team that never, ever, steps on a crack. Except, of course, Mr. Mark Risztich, who only steps on cracks.

As Anna Sussman, our chief spookster is Eliza Smith, Chris Hambrick, Annie Nguyen, Warren Newsom, Neuson, Leon Morimoto, Renzel Goryl, Taylor de Cop, Marissa Dodge, Greta Weber, Leah Yates, Zoe Frignell, Jacob Winnick, Son of Khan, Tiffing Delisa, Ann Ford, and Fernando Hernandez. The spooked theme song. My name is from Washington. Now, people, you know, people, they do like to follow the crowd, and that's fine sometimes, I suppose. Except it can most certainly lead you astray, and just because everybody's doing it,

it's no reason of all to do it, listen to me well. Never, never, never, never, never, ever, never.