Spooked - I Think We're Alone Now

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Usually ghosts linger to deliver a message, to let us know what happened to them, why they need to stay behind. But what if the ghost stays behind to let us know something about ourselves? Thank you, Naynay, for sharing your story with the Spooked! If you know somebody who doesn’t feel like they fit in, maybe you feel that way yourself, be sure to check out the It Gets Better Project. Produced by Annie Nguyen, 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.

Jack Jack ran to a cave. Who's there? Jack called inside. I'm seeing. Inside called back to Jack. You know Jack did not survive. You listen to Spooked. Stay tuned.

Okay, so I can't lie. I can't lie early, early on. I don't exactly know what to do with people. other people and I suppose I don't know folk kids on the playground or whatever I suppose they're sending signals to me

hints on what to say to do to where everyone seems to know that language but I live in my head in those brief periods of time

when life pulls me out of my own mind life life just leaves me standing there bewildered, confused, tongue-tied, uncertain as to why these kids are looking at me and what they expect me to do and for what reason is everyone screaming

and why is the ball rolling toward me kick? In case I'm super stuck. I have a social brain trust to whom I can turn to for answers. My brothers. They speak this hidden people communication system with great fluency. One.

One's a natural hustler. Mowing lawn, shoveling snow, whatever. He always, but always has money in his pocket, knows exactly when to walk away, and he knows when to run. The other brother, he loves the ladies, and that love turns into an art.

So I talked to them both as a child, as a teen, nothing dull. To help get me out of my head, one, he's Mr. Practical, man. First you buy the property, then you buy the ride. Never the other way. To the other, at the bar, tell him,

I don't know if she likes me. Negro, she likes you. How you know? She won't even look at me. Listen to me. Walk over to that end of the bar and watch how her knees, her body, always point toward whatever you are in the room.

Now walk back. No way! All right then. Good luck. So of course, as a grown man, I have them both on speed dial. I can hear what they're going to say even before I call them.

What they are going to say, but I laugh. I argue, I push back. Nah, fools, this time, y'all's listening to me. I'm the older brother. Both of them hollowing together. Don't pull that right nonsense. All of us giggling at each other. I hear them.

I hear them. I swear to God, I hear them. But though both of their numbers are still at the top of my speed dial, I never press the call button. I never ring to say hello because I've held my sister close and wept until I could no longer stand at both of the memorial services. But still, still we have. They have long conversations into the night, advice, threats, reminiscences.

Then they walk away. One with his arm around the other's shoulder, where are going? See you on the flip side. They say, well, right, then. I'll be here. My name is from Washington, I understand. It's not just little kids who talk to their imaginary friends, or even their fallen brothers.

Spook starts. Until the day, he's sitting at his desk in class and his career day. His teacher is leading the kids in a discussion about their futures. Spooked. Today at class, they made us all get up and tell everybody what we wanted to be when we grow up. When I got up there, I said that I wanted to be a mother. They started laughing so loud. And they were repeating,

You'll never be a mother. You can't be a mother. And I didn't understand. Because at home, I was being a mother. I'm taking care of my little sister. I'm the one feeding her when my mother can't, and she's having to make all the dinner for the rest of everybody else. So I don't understand what they mean by I can't be a mother. And my brothers really love going out into other fields and doing the farming bit, which I I'm really not interested in it. My brothers are helping my father on the farm, building fence. I'm hanging out in the sandbox, and I'm creating roadways and homes and little communities. In the distance, but not too far away from me. I see a little girl.

Her hair is about shoulder length, but I can tell that she's not just a regular. child, which she's wearing is very outdated. Something that I would have seen in one of my books like the box card children. I see the little girl walk behind this well. It kind of looks like a volcano. At the very top of this mound of earth is a giant hole that's been covered by a heavy piece of cement. And so after some time passes,

she doesn't walk back out from the other side. And I leave the gated fence, and I run around towards the well, and she's not there. My parents remind us repetitively that they did not want us playing up on top of the well. They don't want us to take other kids. Just in case something were to go wrong and we were to fall inside the well, I guess very dangerous. It's very deep. Yet, it's so inviting.

But it's a place I'm not supposed to play, so I do it a lot in secret. My mother's run down to the fields to give my father some lunch. So I get to stay at home for like the 10 minutes that she's gone. And I run upstairs as fast as I can because I'm so excited to get into her drawers and play dress-up. I love these peach pair of bloomers. And as I put these peach pair of bloomers on, I recognize outside that there's a little girl playing jacks on top of the well. I don't really see her face.

I can tell she's wearing a dress. And her feet, they're crisscrossed. And I like the game jacks. I get back into my regular clothes, run downstairs as fast as I can, run outside, and there's nobody there at the well. Huh, I wonder if it's that same little girl that I keep seeing. I don't feel threatened at all by this little girl. It's more our own little secret way of saying hello. It's nighttime, and I still like to sleep in my parents' room sometimes.

And this evening, I was laying there, and my mom and dad were both sleeping. I could tell they were sleeping, yet I could hear somebody singing. I feel drawn to get up and go towards the window. And when I get over by the window, the well seems to have a little bluish light. I see a woman, and she's singing, looking off out into the distance, and she's beautiful. Her hair, there's a gentle curl to it. She has milky skin. She's wearing long, flowy garment.

I rub my eyes with the palms of my hands to see if I'm really seeing what I'm seeing. And the sky is really clear. And I see this little girl at her feet. And it's the little girl that I've seen many a times before. I feel very relaxed. and I feel at peace. I'm able to close my eyes, and I'm able to rest and listen to her voice.

And as I do, I must fall asleep because I wake up at the foot of the bed. She made her appearances when I needed her, when my mother was asleep, and I was having a hard time sleeping. I'm laying in bed. I look around the room. It's dark.

There is the nightlight. My brothers are to the right and to the left of me. All of a sudden, at the foot of the bed, I see a woman glide by. I've seen her before. She's the same woman that was singing from the well. And she's got that same blue light about her. I'm holding my breath because I don't want her to know that I

know that she's in the room and that I'm awake. From the opposite side where I saw her walking, she walks across again. So I pretend like I'm asleep. And as I have my eyes closed, I can hear her singing. And she seems like she's just standing in the same space. And her soft voice hushes me back to sleep.

The woman who owned the land and let us live on there and farm the land has passed away. And our house put up for sale. My parents are away looking for a home in York, Nebraska. My siblings are at friends. Instead of me being home alone, I'm with a babysitter. I'm a Capricorn. I was always wanting to be older when I was younger. So it was very important to me to be able to have this time alone with Bridget because it made me feel like an adult.

I'm nine years old. My babysitter is 15. She wasn't able to drive on her own yet. We were planning later on that evening to do facials and hair. And I was all about doing some hair. and getting some makeup on and doing some facials. We had K-G-O-R on 99.9 on the radio, and it played all the popular songs.

The beating of our hearts, the only sound. I think you're alone now, alone now. I love that song so much. My babysitter is sitting across from me on the counter having her two. I set my bowl of chili down because I'd finished it, and I decided to open up to Bridget and let her know that Lord was just being a terror in school. And she had had this game where everybody could play together as long as they had a purse. When I brought my purse to school, they had decided that it was no longer time to play with purses, and they excluded me again. So I felt really shitty about being excluded.

She sits up on the kitchen counter and she looks at me and she says, you don't have to worry about any of those girls. Once you're in high school, things will be different. You don't have to worry about staying here in this town either. You've got a lot that you can do. And she starts to head over towards the table to sit with me when the music turns off. And so we look at each other,

and I think that's strange. So she leaves, and she goes, and turns the music back on. She goes to say something to me when the music turns back off. Bridget goes, it must be a fuse or something, and the radio turns back on. Then the radio turns off.

We're just still. Everything is still. It says if the pause button has been hit. It feels as if there is another presence in the house. And then we hear the footsteps of somebody in the house going up the staircasing, shutting a door, opening the door. and we hear footsteps again come down the stairs. She's the first one to become unfrozen and responds by grabbing the cordless phone

and grabbing my hand. And she takes me into the bathroom and shuts the door. She calls her father and I'm sitting there looking at her. Bridget hangs up the phone and she looks at me. me. And she says to me, I have to go get our shoes and we have to get out of here. We need to run and we need to climb a tree and we need to keep a nigh on the house until dad can come and get us. Oh my God, my shoes are under the stairs. So we wait until we hear the sounds of the footsteps going up the stairs and the door shut and Bridget takes off running as fast as she possibly can.

She goes and she grabs those shoes and she gets back and I see her face as she's running. I run with her and we run out the back door. And once we're outside, we put our shoes on and then we run for the trees. I just keep thinking you can go faster, you can go faster, you can go faster. don't look behind you, don't look behind you. Remember what your dad said when you're in a race. Don't look behind, it's going to slow you down. And I just kept running until we got to the tree,

and we climbed that tree so fast. And up in the tree, and I am keeping an eye on the house. I keep my eyes on the doors. I keep my eyes on the windows. And then I see that my sister's room, the nursery, has four windows, and I can tell that there's movement, that there's somebody in that room.

I can see their shadow moving. I'm able to make out a head, shoulders, an arms, a thick body. I say to Bridget, do you also see this? She replies back to me, yes. She tells me, just keep watching, making sure that nobody comes out of the house because it's obvious that somebody is in there,

We know now that we are not alone. In the distance, I see two vehicles approaching. Bridget's father arrives in the family van. I see two police cars coming up the driveway. As we jump out of the trees and we run into the van and we start to give hugs to Bridget's brothers and sisters, I feel really great until I know. notice that Bridget's father has a gun and that the police also have guns and that they're headed into the house. Seeing those guns changes the whole situation and it makes it more real and that we're

not the only ones to be afraid. So they come back outside and they ask Bridget and I to come inside with them. They have us walk upstairs, and they want to ask us some questions. And I'm curious of what these questions would be until I see us all standing in front of the door that enters into my sister's room. And they open the door. My sister's mattress is placed up against the door. door. And they ask us if we did this. And we both said no. They knock down the

mattress and they all enter into the room. I can hear them moving around and one officer comes out and asks for us to come back into the room. On the floor, there are all of our children's books have been taken off of the shelf and placed in the middle of the room creating a spiral with the books. The baby blankets have also been taken out and they have been also folded and they've also been stacked so then it's creating a spiral. My stomach felt so sick. I felt Sick. Then the police come over and they're like, we've got one more thing that we need to ask you. They walked us to the back door. And the back door was wide open. The house felt really different. It felt cold. It felt empty. I feel like the back door being left open was a message.

That motherly spirit that brought me comfort through those many years of being there was gone it was time for us to move I felt like

I was not going to see these entities anymore or whatever was home was not home anymore and that they left because we were leaving and they must have known that whoever had purchased the land and whoever was coming in was not there for intention of having family and having security and safety, which is what we made there.

And it's very obvious you go back and the house is not loved. The house does not have love. The land does not have love. And so once that energy is gone, our energy is gone, then their energy is gone. Thank you, Neney for sharing your story to spook folks. If you know someone who doesn't feel like they fit in, and maybe you feel that way yourself, be sure to check out the It Gets Better Project. The original score for that story was by Richard Haig.

It was produced by Annie Nguyen. There is no beginning, no this. There is also no end. It's never really over. End of the summer, just in time for the haunted season, stories to keep you up all night. Your stories. Let us know your stories.

Spooked at snapjudgment.org. And remember, namely, they won't know unless you make them know. So make them know. If you like your storytelling in the bright light of day, subscribe to the amazing Snap Judgment podcast. It might change your life. Spook was brought to you by the team

that always throws coins into the fountain. Except, of course, for Mark Ristey, who always sneaks around late night to take those coins out of the fountain. Watch out. There's an assessment. Our chief spookster is Eliza Smith. Chris Hamburg. Annie Nguyen to win.

Ron Nusson. Morimoto. Renzo Goreal, Taileda Katta, Marissa Dodge. Alia Yates. Zoe Ferrigna. Greta Webber. Jacob Winnic. Seneca.

Tiffing Delisa. Anne Ford and Fernando Hernandez. The spook Beam Saw is by Pat Massini Miller. My name is the Marquisie Miller. Washington and sometimes just for fun at night. I picked up one of those strange phone calls from Tim Buck to. Who is? I listen.

But no matter what they say, no matter how much they beg, I'm sorry, sir, I'm sorry, ma'am. But not ever, never, never, never, ever, never.