Spooked - Ghostlighted

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Ellie’s mom doesn’t believe her when she says the house is haunted. But when a shadow man appears in Ellie’s closet doorway one night, Ellie wonders: who can she turn to?Thank you, Ellie, for sharing your story with us here at Spooked.Produced by Greta Weber, original score by Richard Haig, artwork by Sanaa Khan Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with goodness and mercy shall follow me. You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned. Sometimes, something would pull me awake in the dead of night, something I could feel sitting on the edge of my bed

someone who refused to turn their face toward me. Entire being frozen. I'm able to do more than blink my eyes at the terror, never seen the face that held me prisoner of my limbs, immobile. Fresh tears streaming down paralyzed cheeks condemned to wait through this night of cold silence until finally released by the morning. I asked my mother,

about the monster at the foot of my bed, what should I do? When I'm unable even to scream, she bends down on her knees together. We pray. We pray the Lord will save me from the shadow and bless me with the grace to beat back that power. Later, when I'm older, no longer a child,

I learn about sleep paralysis, how millions of people find themselves frozen. jolted away from slumber in the nighttime that it is in fact a medical condition I tell this to my mother one sunny afternoon over eggs and french toast she smiles glances back over at me

you don't really believe that do you of course I believe it she looks at me serious now serious takes a sip of her tea If you saw the face at the end of the bed, you'd know better. My name is from Washington. You only know what you know.

Spook starts. We began. When Ellie was a little kid, she'd lie in bed and listen to the house settle. Start drifting off the sleep, then she'd hear it. The closet door opening and closing, opening and closing. Then the footsteps. I and her brother, they were already asleep. She knew this.

So she pulled the covers up over her head And hope that whatever it was Making those noises That it would stop So it's springtime on a weekend And I'm sitting in my room The sun is pouring into my window And it feels really nice

And I can hear birds chirping outside My brother is outside Playing with his new friends And my mom is in her her room sleeping. And I'm doing my paint by number. It's of a cat. And I'm really intensely focused on this. There was a sliding closet door in my room. And every now and then it would sound like something is on the inside just going, bang, that keeps waking me up in the middle of the night. And so my closet is behind me at this point. And I hear of the same bang, but this time it's different because I hear the closet

door slide open. And I was shocked. What do I do? What opened that door? And so I turned around. And lo and behold, there's my closet door open. And I hear coming. And I hear coming. Coming from my left side, a girl, a little girl, and she says, Do you want to play a trick? I freeze. Every hair on my body is standing up. I did not just hear that. What's going on?

I'm stuck to the ground. I can't move. I'm moving my eyes around, but I can't see anybody in my room. And so I just, I bolt right to my mom's room. and I burst in there and I'm shaking her like, wake up, wake up, wake up. Mom, there's a girl in my room. She's asking me to play tricks, but she's telling me, no, it's just your brother. Like, leave me alone. I'm sleeping.

And I'm telling her, no, no, my brother's outside playing. I'm scared, like out of my mind at this point. Somebody just talked to me, actually talked to me, and a door just opened. but she's telling me that it's not real. And I'm trying to decide, do I go outside? Do I stay in my mom's room? What do I do? And ultimately, I just decided to run. I ran right out of the house,

slam the door behind me, and I run into the backyard, and I'm starting to scream from my brother, Travis, Travis, there's somebody in the house. There's a girl. She's asking me to play tricks, and he's telling me, no, no, that can't be, that can't happen. there's no one there, you're just making it up. It was like, you know what, it doesn't matter anyway. I have a surprise for you.

And there's this girl's hand, like, waving out. And Travis goes, this is Sarah. The first thing I noticed was that she was really, really pretty. Like, in school, she would have been one of those, like, popular girls. And so at first I was really scared, like, she's not going to want to be friends with me because this is the type of girl that makes fun of me at school. I'm an anxious type of person. I don't really have a lot of friends,

but she was really, really nice. She was quiet at first. When we were first getting to know each other, we were all playing in the trees and playing in the grass, and it really helped me because I was able to get my mind off of what just happened in the house. There was still that lingering. like, hey, something really weird just happened.

But Travis kept brushing it off and telling me, like, just leave it alone. You know, nothing's there. So I was able to kind of ignore it and just hang out with Sarah and her brother and my brother at that point. It's a hot and humid summer day. And so Sarah and her brother and my brother and I decided to play over at my house. my mom is at work and we're getting kind of bored after playing video games. Sarah says, why don't we play hide and go seek downstairs in the basement and make it hide and go seek in the dark?

And my brother and I were like, no, no, no, we're not allowed to go down there. And plus, it's just like a big empty basement. There's nowhere to hide. And she says, well, that's why the dark matters because you can hide anywhere. in the dark. And we're all playing for a while and it's fun and, you know, our nerves are a little bit amplified because it's in the dark and you can kind of like scare each other as you're finding each other like, boom, found you. It's one of my turns at this point, so I'm counting. I don't know how long I counted for, but I heard everybody scatter in all their directions and

I'm kind of like listening where are they going because I want to try and find them. and as I'm counting I hear this like giggle and I say you're going to have to hide better than that because I'm going to be able to find you so I stopped counting and I reach out to where I heard that giggle but there's nothing there and so as I'm standing there I hear this noise it's just something fell on the ground

and it sounded like it came from that area where there was boxes in the corner of that room. So I make my way over to where those boxes would be and I reach out, but there's nothing there. There's just boxes and wall. But I can still hear whatever that noise is coming from the ground, so I'm like, ha ha, you know, very funny. But no one's saying anything, like no one's responding.

and I can still hear this noise, so that's it. I flicked on the light. And what fell out of the boxes is this small rubber children's playing ball. And it was rolling back and forth, just in the middle of the room, as if there was two people, like kicking it back and forth, but there's nobody standing there. And I don't really know what to think.

Like, what am I seeing? And my reaction is to just cry. Like, I just started crying. And so that alerts my brother to come in and see what the heck is going on. And then Sarah and her brother came into the room and they're seeing it. And Sarah just immediately starts bawling her eyes out and she's running up the stairs. I'm frozen in place. and my brother's telling me, come on, we gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta get out of here.

But I can't move. I'm just paralyzed watching this ball move between two invisible nothings. It just felt so wrong. Like, this should not be happening. And I don't know what's doing it, but Travis finally convinces me to run up these stairs and we get upstairs, close the door. I look over and Sarah is like completely hysterical and like right at that moment my mom comes into the house and she sees Sarah crying and there I am tears on my face and she asked me what on earth is going on and so I explained and like everybody's trying to jump in and explain what everybody just saw in the basement but she

looked at me and she said, stop trying to scare your friends. You're making this up. And I was like, I'm not making this up. And I looked at Sarah and I'm trying to like, come on, stick up for me. You saw this too. And I'm looking at everybody else. Tell her what you saw. But they weren't saying anything. Like they were looking at my mom. Like she was some kind of savior that was going to save the day and tell them that it was all made up. And she did. She told them it's all made up. you know, she's just trying to scare you. You know, I'm sorry that this is happening. I started getting mad at her.

I don't know why she keeps trying to convince me that these things aren't happening. And I feel like something's really trying to tell me, I'm here and I want your attention. I know that something's there, but no one is listening to me. I didn't know what it was that we were dealing with because nothing felt like violent, it just felt playful, but almost like it could be dangerous, only because the more I ignored these things, the angrier it got.

It's the evening of my 11th birthday, and my friend Sarah was able to convince a few of our kind of mutual friends to come over to my house because I was having a sleepover. We were all in the living room and we're all like watching a movie Our sleeping bags are spread out And there's snacks and bowls I can see that Sarah's getting really Uneasy She's just kind of getting antsy

Sitting on the couch And she looks like she has something on her mind And She decided she doesn't want to stay over She wanted to go back to her house and my mom had said, you know, okay, well, if you want, you can go back. And so that kind of piqued the interest of the other girls at my party. Like, what's wrong, Sarah? Why are you going home?

And so Sarah broadcasted to everybody that my house is haunted and she doesn't want to stay. And my mom was there. She was standing in the dining room, which overlooks the living room, and she was listening to this, and I looked over at my mom, and she tells me, like, this is what you get. When you make up stories to scare your friends, you're going to lose your friends. They're not going to want to stay over at your house. They're not going to want to play with you.

One by one, each girl was like, I want to go home, I want to go home. And so my mom agreed to take them all back to their houses, and, you know, that turned into a really, sad and lonely night. And my mom basically just blaming me for it, telling me that, well, if you wouldn't make stuff up, you would still have friends, essentially, that was just a huge blow. I was just sad because I really am alone in experiencing this. I'm sad because my best friend who's been there for everything. I can tell her anything. She's suddenly really distant and doesn't really want to hang out as often as we used to definitely doesn't sleep over anymore. So it's just me in my house

again where I'm alone. Five months later, my mom is throwing this Valentine's themed party. and my brother and I are in the living room while everybody's doing their thing, partying, I guess. It was around 9 p.m. or something like that, and she had come and told us that we have to go up to bed. So I make my way upstairs, and I purposefully left my door open, waiting for her to come upstairs. and tuck me in because she told me that she would be up shortly after to come say goodnight. So I'm sitting there in my bed and I'm waiting and I'm waiting for her to come up and the music's going and I can hear people talking. And I look over and I see this shadow in front of the linen closet. There's light coming from downstairs and I'm thinking maybe there's somebody standing like in the stairway.

and it's casting a shadow onto the linen closet. And it was tall, so it definitely wasn't my mom. Maybe it was my mom's boyfriend who's coming upstairs to make sure that we're actually in bed. So I call out, like, Graham, and there was no reply, and I can still hear everyone downstairs. And so looking at the shape of this figure, that's when I realize it's not actually a shadow because I cannot see the linen closet behind it.

It's just a solid black figure and I cannot see any features. I can only see the outline of what looks like a really tall man hunched over looking into my room right at me. I'm staring at it, trying to figure out, like, rubbing my eyes. What is this? Is it going to go away? Is it a shadow? I'm calling out the names of all the men that I know at that party, but no one's responding, and this thing is just standing there. And it's not going away. And so I pull my covers over my head, and I'm just, I keep peeking out and seeing if it's gone,

but it's still standing there, and I pull the covers over my head. My heart rate's getting fast. my breathing's getting weird and I peek out and now the position of it is changed. Now it's profile view and it's got its arms outstretched in front of it. This thing is massive. There's no way that this is fitting in my house. This is why it's hunched over and it's so tall. Its arms are long and the fingers are long and it's not human. and it's staring at me

and I can feel it staring at me and it won't go away. I pull my covers over my head and I scream out, just go away and I look out of my covers and it's gone. It's just completely gone.

There's nothing there. The linen closet's there. And I book it. I'm down the stairs. I'm crying. Where's my mom? Where's my mom? My mom's boyfriend's like,

what's going on? and I'm trying to explain what I just saw, and he's trying to calm me down. My mom was outside on the balcony, and she comes in, and she's like, why are you crying? What's going on? And I'm sitting there explaining, Mom, Mom, Mom, I saw this thing. There was something upstairs staring at me. It was huge. It was tall.

It was reaching out, and she just, her demeanor changed. She went from, you know, being alarmed to being calm. And she got down to my level and she said, okay, you know, just go upstairs to my bedroom. I'll be up there in a minute. And she comes up and she tells me, I believe you. Don't worry, like, we're gonna get this figured out.

I feel like my mom finally actually believes me and I don't know what it was. was that I said that night that made her believe me, but finally, she's not telling me I'm a liar, she's not telling me that I'm making it up, she's finally telling me that she's going to get this thing out of my house. But that was not what she meant at all. So very shortly after that night, she started setting up all of these doctor's appointments for me to get test. for whatever she thought it was, I was getting blood tests done, physicals done. I know that there was sleep studies, there was ECGs, there was like these just different tests

where they just put all of these things all over my body to monitor me while they're asking me questions. I was seeing a psychiatrist and would ask me questions about what I would. seeing and if I could describe it. My mom, she thought I was delusional. When she told me that she believed me, she believed that I was seeing these things, but she also believed it was all in my head. That was really heartbreaking because I had this fleeting moment where, oh my gosh, my mom finally believes me maybe these things are going to stop now because when you're a kid your parents are your saviors

your parents are going to do everything they can to protect you or at least that's what you believe when you're a kid I believed that if my mom just believed me she could make it stop somehow I figured it was only a matter of time until these things would stop happening but no she thought I was sick I was upstairs in my room It's nighttime. I was drifting off to sleep and I was starting to feel slight vibrations, just enough that I don't know if it's actually happening or not.

And so I squint one eye and I hold my breath to try and see if my bed is actually vibrating or not. and that's when I realized that my bed is actually moving and I pull my covers off and in that moment before I could even step out of my bed my whole bed just starts to shake violently like there's somebody underneath of it kicking and punching it like it's actually being lifted off of the box spring and I'm bouncing around

and I just jump up out of bed and I run down the stairs. And as I'm running down the stairs, I hear my brother scream like this blood-curdling, loud scream. I've never heard him scream like this. And I'm running downstairs, and as I get to the bottom of the stairs, I see my mom pulling at the door, screaming, what's wrong, Travis, what's wrong? I could see my mom was putting her whole body weight into opening this door. And it didn't have a lock. He's just screaming and screaming and saying, stop it, stop, stop, go away, stop. And then finally the door burst open. And my mom runs downstairs so fast. And then they're down there for a second and they come back up. And my brother

is shaking like a leaf. Like he saw something really scary. And my mom is like, what's going on, Travis? What's going on? And that's when my brother said, I was, laying in my bed, trying to fall asleep, and the light on the landing turned off. And I heard giggling. And so I thought it was Ellie. And I told her, stop that. Turn the light back on and go back upstairs. Go to bed. But it wouldn't turn on. So I got up and I turned the light back on. And I got back into bed. and when I got back into bed, the light turned off again, and then I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. And as it got further down the stairs,

it started getting louder and faster until I heard her come running up beside my bed, and she just stood there and was breathing heavily right beside me, and she wouldn't go away. And then she started shaking my bed. She started moving my bed and shaking it all around, and I was screaming at her to stop, trying to push her away, but she wouldn't stop,

and I was screaming, but she wouldn't go away. And my mom looked at me and was like, it couldn't have been Ellie, because she was just upstairs in her own room. And that's when I looked at my mom and I said, Mom, the same thing was just happening to me in my bed. And then she just got this look on her face. She didn't even need to say it. I knew that she finally believed me.

She looked at me and she said, you're not lying, are you? And I said, no, I'm not lying. I've never have been lying. And I actually live in a haunted house. There's no way that people cannot believe me now. And so I just felt like relieved, happy, like in a really weird way. I'm sorry, you know, Travis. I'm not happy that it happened to you, but, you know, I am happy that. it happened to him because, you know, now my mom knows, like, it is not just me.

And my brother also knows that it's not just me. So she looked at my brother and I, and she said, you know, I'm going to get on this, I'm going to fix this. I'm going to do what I need to do to get this thing out of our house. she had a medium come to our house and the woman came in. She asked me, you know, what's been going on? Where did this thing happen? Where did this thing happen? What did this thing that happened?

She wanted to walk the whole house, like room by room by room and try and figure it out. So she went down to the main floor first. and went upstairs to where my room would be, and she stopped right in front of the linen closet, and she was like, have you ever noticed a temperature difference here in this closet? And that is actually something that we noticed. That closet was always like 10 degrees colder than the rest of the house, and we didn't know why. We thought maybe it was just like drafty or something like that, but it was always so cold. just in that closet area.

And we said, yeah, we've noticed. And she said, this is a portal or opening or door for inhuman entities and demons. It just happens to be where I saw that big, tall, spooky man thing, whatever it was. She didn't even need to look at the rest of the upstairs. and she didn't even want to go in the basement. She was like, nope, whatever, it doesn't want me here. She's like, it's only going to become worse for you if I explore more. So we went to the dining room and sat down.

She looked at me and she told me, you have three entities in your house. You have a demon. And she explained that the demon is the thing that that I saw in front of my closet. You have a childlike playful entity. It's the childlike spirit that giggles around the house. And also it's the footsteps that I can hear running around the house sometimes.

And you have a poltergeist. And she explained that it's the poltergeist that moves things around the house and that was making our beds go crazy. It was... interesting to have names for what they were, but I mean, it didn't really make it any less scary. It's just like, maybe you're sick and you don't know why you're sick. You go to the doctor and you find out you have this illness. I mean, there's an explanation, but it doesn't exactly make it better. So the medium person gave us a list of things we need to go and buy,

and we went to this store. It sells like crystals and sage and all these different types of candles. And my mom bought so many things. Like finally, my nuts, my nuts. Oh my God. My mom went nuts, finally believing me. My mom went nuts buying all of these things.

Like, okay. Yeah, take your time. Yeah. We're in the home stretch. Yeah. Okay, so she got like these white candles. She got these smudge sticks like sage. She bought a whole bunch of like blessed salt.

She gave us like these little papers that had these like things like basically like prayers that were supposed to say like every day. She would just go through the house saying these prayers or chance or whatever. As soon as she started believing me, it's like it's all she could think about. She became obsessed with it. She didn't call me a liar anymore. I think she started paying more attention to the things that would go on around the house, but from whatever she was doing with all of these cleansing things, whatever it was really quieted down.

So is it the house itself that was haunted? I don't know. But I do wonder now, as an adult, like, sometimes I think about going back there and just knocking on the door and being like, hey, I'm just checking to see if your house is haunted because I lived here when I was a kid and it was. What would that do? Would they even answer the door? Would they shut the door in my face? Because I'm so curious. I really want to know, did it stop?

Did it continue? Are there other families that are going through the same thing? I don't know. Thank you, Ellie, for sharing your story up to Spook. We appreciated the original score for that piece was by Richard Hay. It comes to us and was produced by our own spook correspondent, Greta Weber. So it's that time. You understand it instinctively that there are some answers that perhaps we shouldn't know,

some knowledge that we are simply not prepared to understand some secrets, but always, always there are then some people intent on touching forces far beyond their control and these are real stories from real people who can scarcely believe it happen to themselves and feel like your storytelling in the bright light of day check out our amazing podcast, snap judgment,

and storytelling with the beat and please, please, no. Spooked is brought to by the team understand full well to leave locked closets locked each and every one of them they know this except for perhaps Mr. Mark Ristich Anna Sussman, our chief spookster is Eliza Smith

Chris Hambrick Annie Nguyen Nguyen Nguyen Nguyenne, Laurenneauleau-Moto Renzo Gourielderi, Jacob Winnick Taylor-Tekathekhan, Tithing Deliza, Ann Ford Fernando Hernandez, the spook theme song is by Pat Maccini Miller My name is from Washington And you know You only hear these noises, you only

see these apparitions because somebody someone wants something, what do they want? It could be any number of things. You have to know when to say yes and when to say no. My advice, though. Whatever they say they want? Never, ever, ever. Never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, ever,

turn out.