Spooked - Hands Without A Face

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

Everyone in Diane’s house has a different bedtime. When someone sits on the edge of her bed, waking her up, she’s not shocked. Until she looks to see who it is, and no one’s there. Thank you, Diane, Brian, Xavier, Charlie, and Bennett for sharing your story with us here at Spooked. Produced by Annie Nguyen, original score by Doug Stuart, 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.

Hush, hush. Keep it down now. Because voices carry. Spook the weights. Stay tuned. This sense. This sense is feeling. As a child, I thought everybody had it from time to time.

Then later I thought, maybe I'm crazy. Later still, I learned that some people feel it. And other people don't feel it. it. They don't feel it anymore. Or they are able to turn it off. I am not able. But I've since discovered that it's not just me

that feels that dark stare. It's not just me who knows that empty rooms are never truly empty. Finally, I found a tribe of people who know who know what being watched and that, that fork in the road, finding you, that has made

all the difference. Spook starts. They live with the three young boys. A happy, loving family. Got my new house. Everything is great. Wonderful as it should be. One night, just as everyone's getting sleepy, just as things are winding down.

Well, I'm going to hand it over to Diane. So Brian and I are watching TV in the living room. It's getting late. And he wants to finish the show. I decided to just go to bed on my own. I went to bed, lay down. and fell asleep pretty quickly. I was pretty tired. And I'm not sure how long I've been asleep,

but I get the sensation of the mattress being pushed down and of Brian climbing into bed next to me. And because I'm a light sleeper, that motion wakes me up. Start to roll over and turn towards Brian and open my eyes, but I'm shocked to see that there's no one there. Not Brian, not one of the boys, nobody. Diane brushes it off, rolls over, and falls back to sleep. She doesn't even mention it to Brian in the morning.

But still, at bedtime, she can't get it out of her head. I'm a little tense, I'm a little wound up. But, you know, a girl's got to sleep. So I go to bed, fall asleep. And again, I feel the sensation of the mattress being pushed down. The first time that it happened, I discounted it. But after the second, third, fourth, fifth time, I started to get, you know, a little less skeptical.

I'm super in tune at this point with what's going on. And I could feel the weight of a body, of someone coming into bed and laying down next to me. I could feel the depression next to me. You know, this is someone who weighs more than me, or is bigger than me. They're taking up more space than me. I could feel the bed being pushed down. So I open my eyes, turn to my right. I hold my breath. I look. It's not Brian. There's no one there. I pull the covers over my head and I just repeat the Lord's prayer over and over again until I fall

asleep. Okay, so maybe it's not in my head. Maybe this is actually something. But I, I mean, How do you say that without thinking that you're going to sound crazy? I can't tell my kids they're younger. I don't want to scare them. I don't want to tell my husband because even as I'm saying it or experiencing it, I'm thinking of reasons for why this can't be the case, why it has to be in my head. Diane holds on to this weight for a while.

She continues to experience this kind of like a bad dream over and over and over until one night something shifts. So I work as a contractor. And that means that you're at the beck and call of your sponsors, whoever you're working with. This night I'm working, it's one of my later nights. So I'm sitting in my office. Everyone else in the house has been asleep for hours. I work with the lights off at night.

I don't know why it's a little bit more sort of comforting to me. So literally the only light in my own. office is just the glow of my computer screen. I'm typing away at this proposal. And I get to the point where the words are on the page are just sort of swimming in front of my eyes. And I realize that I'm not good to anyone at this point. I need to just sort of, you know, call it a night, head to bed. And I fall asleep like almost as soon as my head hits the pillow. So I'm in a very deep sleep and I'm, I wake up to the sensation of Brian massaging my shoulder. And it feels so good that I let him do this for a few minutes.

I'm taking full advantage of it. And after a few minutes, I start to feel a little bit guilty. So I open my eyes and I start to turn towards Brian, towards my right, to tell him that he can, you know, thank you, but you can stop now. And I mean, I, my heart just started racing. There's no one. There, and my heart just drops, and I just feel so scared. This was someone, something, trying to interact with me.

Climb out of bed as fast as I can, and I start running through the house to find Brian. So I checked the living room. Is he sleeping on the sofa? No. Down the stairs to the basement. And he's in the futon, yes. And I woke him up. And I said, Brian, oh my God, you don't understand.

I felt someone rubbing my shoulder, and I thought it was you, and there's no one there, and I don't know what the heck is going on. And so his response was, you know, it's all right. I'm sure it was nothing. I know you've been working hard. You know, just go back to sleep. It's fine. It was nothing.

And I said, you know, whatever. It wasn't nothing. It was something. But I'm sleeping down here with you. As uncomfortable as that futon was, I said that the rest of the rest of you. I said the rest of the night and the light of days sort of brings a little bit more clarity. But I did call him at work to tell him about the things that had happened prior to that point, about feeling someone consistently climbing into the bed with me.

Because the massage was sort of the thing that broke the dam for me, which made me realize that I had to share this with him. But at that point, like it broke the dam. So I told him about everything that had happened to that point. And, you know, being the logical person that he is, he was trying to explain it away for me. And I kind of felt like a little bit hurt, you know, like, well, why don't you believe me? But if the roles were reversed, if I'm being honest with myself, I wouldn't have believed him either.

But he was a skeptic, as I would expect, you know, almost any reasonable person to be. Or at the very least, like two engineers, yes, we're going to be skeptical. So what I started doing was logging. I mean, I'm such a nerd. I started like sort of logging this. And so if something happened that night, I would just put like a little X or like a little circle in the corner of the page. Nothing more than just to acknowledge that it happened. And at least that I know there's a record of my descent into insanity.

I don't know. I started logging it down. So after a few weeks past, Diane continues to mark X's and O's in the corner of her notebook every time that thing comes to visit. But then one day when she's at work, she gets a call from Brian. And there wasn't even like a hello, how are you good morning. His first words to me were, I believe you. I didn't even know what he was talking about. Like, you believe me.

What do you believe me about? I believe you now. It absolutely happened to me. Now, I didn't get the nice massage, but I certainly felt something pushing down in the bed behind me. So Brian's lying wide awake in bed when he notices something off. I feel this pushing. behind me, behind my back in the bed on the mattress, so much so that I sort of fall back into it. I kind of move out of the way a little bit and turn around so that I can get out of Diane's

way because I feel her coming into the bed so she can go to sleep. You know, when I turn around and there's nothing there, I just immediately tensed up and I just got out of bed and left the room. Didn't want to have anything to do with it. Maybe I was a little selfish. Like, okay, good, finally. Finally, like, it's happening to someone else. It's not just me.

You know, now we can be sort of like side by side on this. Brian and Diane make a pact to not tell the kids anything that's going on. And they do, like, a pretty decent job with it. Until one night, Diane puts all three boys to bed. So, you know, our children are young. It takes a little while to put them to bed. It's super annoying when they keep popping out of bed all the time. And they were pulling the nonsense that they normally pull, you know, getting up to get water and can I get one more hug and I need to go to the bathroom.

And at this point, Brian and I are both just over it. We're ready for them to go to bed. We want to enjoy some quiet time to ourselves. Brian and I are in bed. The lights are on. I'm reading. He's doing something other on his phone. And all of a sudden, I hear clear as day, footsteps,

running from the basement door towards the end of the hallway towards my younger son's room. I turned around and I said to Brian, you'd go yell at them. You used to go to bed. I'm done. So he gets up. He goes to their room. As he's opening the door to our bedroom, I can see from where I am in the bed that my oldest son had opened his door and he's sticking his head out. Well, so I was just like in my bed, like sitting, watching stuff on my phone and I hear like these like footsteps outside of my door. I think he thought he assumed as well that his brothers were running around. So I was just sitting in my bed waiting for this to play out.

I don't get to be the bad guy. Brian is sort of doing the heavy lifting. He comes back into our bedroom and he says, Diane, they're asleep. It's like, no way, that's impossible. They must have been faking. He said, no way. He's like, you know, I went in. They are dead asleep.

They're not moving. It's not them. And we just sort of looked at each other. were like, okay, what are we supposed to do with this? You know, it was where the footsteps were running. They were running into a wall. There was no place to go. Charlie was my breaking point because up to this point, everything was mostly sent around me. As I'm recounting it now, I can like feel myself sort of like shaking because it was the first thing that made me think like maybe we don't have a friendly ghost. Maybe there's something else going on here.

So Charlie is seven, and every day he wakes up at 6 a.m. to make his own lunch. When I went in the kitchen, I got my lunch from on top of the refrigerator, and I started making a sandwich. I had put some bread in the toaster, and then I took some cheese out of the refrigerator and ham. I was making a ham and cheese sandwich, and when I turned around to get the lettuce from the refrigerator, I saw a guy just walked past the door. He was walking from my mom's office to the dining room, so I thought he was maybe doing something in my mom's office. It was just creepy because he didn't look at me.

He just walked forward without, like... It was kind of... I was kind of surprised at it, because I didn't really know what was happening at that time. I just turned around and got the lettuce, and I just saw him there. Charlie stands there staring off. At the same time, Brian walks in and gives his son a kiss. Good morning. So said good morning. And I was putting my

stuff together as well for my lunch. And I just hear him say, hey, dad, who was that? And I looked around and I said, who was who? Dad, I saw someone walk past the door. I'm looking through the house to see if I can see anybody. If anybody's in here, but I don't see anybody. So I come back into the kitchen. And then he asked me like, what did he look like? And I said he had no head. He had gray sweatshirt on and gray jogging pants. Hold on. What do you mean he didn't have a face? Like, what did he look like? He just had gray pants, but he didn't have a head, a face. I don't know what to tell him. And he was just kind of surprised. He was just kind of like creeped out. I was probably more nervous.

than he was. But I just told him, don't worry about it. Just finish your lunch up, go back to bed, wait for your mom to get up, and gave me a kiss and went off to work. This was the first time that I actually thought I need to do something. But I'm not used to dealing with this. I'm not about to call a priest to do like an exorcism or anything because I don't feel like, I don't know what it is. But I do have a cousin who is a little. little bit more open to things. But I called her and I told her like, hey, you know, I need to talk to you. I don't know what to do. And I explained to her sort of the recent developments. And she said to me, you know, I'm clearly like I'm not an expert. I'm just someone who is just sort of like open to this

kind of stuff. But your children are getting involved now. So you need to sort of send this out. And I asked her, what do I do? I don't understand what I'm supposed to do. She said, you know, I would just try being like very firm. It doesn't sound like it's a malignant entity. Maybe this is like a reasonable thing, person, whatever it is. You need to just be firm and say like, you know, this is our house now. We're taking care of it. You need to move.

You need to pass on. You need to leave. And I just sort of laughed and almost put it in the back of my head. I'm just like, yeah. Like who's going to listen to someone just saying, you need to go. You need to bounce. But then all of a sudden, after finally showing itself, it seemed like the spirit went quiet. And then a few weeks after the Charlie incident in the kitchen, I was asleep in my bed.

Sons Bryan, he's down in the basement, sleeping for whatever reason, and I feel someone climbing into bed with me. You know, the mattress being pushed down, the weight of someone climbing into the bed. I turn around, I open my eyes, nothing. is there. But this time, I was just done. And so I booked it. I ran out of the room and I went into the kitchen. I turned the lights on. And I was just, I was done. I was over what was happening. It wasn't fun stories to tell. It wasn't anything that I want to deal with anymore. I wanted to leave my family alone. I wanted to go away. I wanted to stop. I felt silly, but I stood in the kitchen and I said, you know, I don't know who you are.

I don't know what you are, but you need to go. Like, this is my family's house. We're taking care of it. You can relax. You can pass on. You can move on. You can go where you need to go, but you need to leave. I don't care where you go, but you need to go.

Go into the attic. I don't care. Just go. And I turned off lights and I ran back to bed. And that was it. And believe it or not, that was actually it. That was it. I didn't feel anyone climbing into bed.

bed with me. We didn't hear anyone running down the hallway. And I couldn't believe that it was, I'm like, wow, was it really that easy? Was that all it took? I would have done this months ago, if that's all it took. But when I think about it now, I honestly, God, think that it was the gentleman who owned the house before us, because he took care of the house sort of to the best of his ability. He was, his wife had long since past. His children were grown. They didn't live here. It was just him by himself and you know he was getting taken advantage of we heard that there was like a some people who would come and tell you you need x y z work done and they would put stuff in the chimney and then tell that's why his chimney wasn't working and they would take it out and like scare him

at night it was really weird but i i feel like he cared about the house and so i i think it was him but i feel like that's why it was focused sort of like on the house on the master bedroom he was sort of living here like it was still his place. I had put this to bed for myself. No one's bothering me. Everything is good. Nothing is happening. And, you know, when I got the call saying that, you know,

Spooked was interested in hearing our story and sharing it with their listeners, I mentioned it to my kids. I'm like, hey, guys, this is kind of fun. You know, remember when all this was happening? You know, mommy that are going to talk about it. And we're going to talk about what happened. But my kids said, what are you talking about? It didn't stop.

I'm like, yes, it did. And they're like, mommy, this is two, my youngest and my oldest both said, we hear someone walking around in the attic at night all the time. I didn't know what to say. And I, you know, and I was like, no, no, no. It's all in your head. Don't worry about it, guys. It's nothing.

Because that's all I know how to do. to, that's all I know how to make them feel better is be like, it's nothing. I sleep with earplugs. I have a memory full of mattress now. So I have more, I have plenty earplugs that they can share. They all have memory full mattresses. We're set. Like let Eugene, do we need to do in the attic? We don't need that space. The house is big enough. He can have the attic. Let us have the other two floors and we'll be square. Big thanks, Diane, to Brian and your three wonderful boys, Xavier, Charlie, and Bennett. Thank you so much for for sharing your story with us.

You got to know that Diane, Diane is a spooked listener. She reached out to us to share her story. We love it. When you share your stories with us, we want to hear from you. Write us with an email, your terrifying tale.

Send it to Spooked at snapjudgment.org. The original score for that story was by Doug Stewart. It was produced by Annie Nguyen. Now to get the inside on our underground layer, follow Spooked on Instagram at Spook. And remember, if you also like storytelling without the fear factor, get the amazing, stupendous and incredible snap judgment podcast and storytelling with the beat. Spook was created of a team that always remembers to tip their glass of wine to the ancestors who have gone before. Everyone follows this basic ritual, except for, of course, Mr. Mark Ristich, he guzzles his wine from the bottle, spirits be damned.

In assessment, our chief spookster is Eliza Smith. Chris Hamburg, Annie Nguyen Nguyen Nusel. Leon Morimoto, Renzo Gorial, Jacob Winnick, Tailed Decat, Merceda, Adelaide, Aaliyah, Leahy Yates, Zoy Friigno, Greta Weber, Son of Khan, Tiffing Delisa, Ann Ford, and Fernando Hernandez. The spook theme song is by Pat La Cine Miller. My name is Glen Washington now.

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. You may find yourself in another part of the world. You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. Find yourself in a beautiful house. You may ask yourself self. Here, listen. Ask yourself whatever you want to ask yourself, but never, ever, never, ever, never, never, ever. Turn out.