Spooked - Knock Knock

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

In a boarding house in Chicago, a young girl puts her questions to the universe and the answers are returned in coded messages from the other side.BIG thanks to Connie Shirakawa for sharing her story with us. Connie is a storyteller in Chicago. You can catch some of her performances on her website. https://www.connieshirakawa.com/Produced by Anne Ford, 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.

A tisket, a task, and I grabbed it and slapped it and wagged it. Then I had to lock it in the cab, and I asked it. Where you hide up on some secret show and laugh it? Didn't it say? You know, I'll never tell you, though. To spooked, say. See the shining sea bidding. And maybe because of this, this vastness,

we'd like to imagine that we can pick up and move from place to place and just start over. Brand new, leaving our old life behind. No harm, no foul. Maybe we can leave everything behind. Then again, maybe not. Luke starts. We're both born in California when President Roosevelt put all the Japanese Americans into a concentration camp behind barbed wire.

My dad spied my mother in the camp. She was quite a femme fatal in her day. picky and reserved in aloof. He chased my mother around, and of course she couldn't run very far. He asked her to marry him. She didn't want to marry this guy. She was a graduate of the University of Southern California.

She considered herself an intellectual. She wasn't sure he graduated from high school. When they were released, they weren't allowed to go back to the West Coast. because even though the world was over, it was considered a sensitive military site because it was on the coast. They were told to live in Chicago.

My dad finally talked her into getting married in Chicago. She didn't have what they call practical life skills. She didn't know how to clean. She didn't know how to cook. Whereas my father, he was very dynamic and he was streetwise because his family had a restaurant She said to me once, I knew I wouldn't starve if I married your father.

They were put in charge of a boarding house in a three-story row house on Winchester Street. And it was sort of a halfway house. Men who were coming out of the concentration camp stayed there. There used to be five men sleeping on the floor in one apartment. I had the run of the house. I was like Eloise at the Plaza Hotel. I was about six years old. And I had a little key.

I could run up and down the stairs and check out what the other people were doing. If nobody was in the boarding house, I could have the apartment on the top floor, in the back by the alley. I just kept my things there, slept on those couch that flipped over. When my grandmother came to visit, she was appalled. But I loved it. I could play and do what I wanted. I loved getting up in the morning. play on the street.

What I liked was playing with the boys because some of the girls I didn't like in the neighborhood. They did things that were odd to me, wearing dresses, and I just had this jumpsuit that I wore every day. And I really didn't know how other people lived. I remember going to someone's house one day, and they had matched bedspreads and curtains and towels

that said his and hers on. I said, how odd! Because my blanket was an Army-issue blanket. That was this old scratchy, khaki-colored thing. And we had Army issue, forks and knives that said U.S. on it. My parents, they would occasionally talk about the camp. I was a big e-dropper. I could sit on the stairs in the house and listen.

While the men were playing cards, once my dad said, when the feds had inspectors that were coming, then we got good food so that the inspectors would be. see that we were being well treated. But if the inspectors went around, the sons of bitches sold rotten meat and charged double the price.

I didn't know what that meant. One day I was about 7 and 8. I was upset because I thought I hadn't done well on the test that I took to get into the good school. My mother wanted me to have perfect

grades. I was laying in my bed and My bed was next to the wall, next to the north wall of the row house. There were no paintings on the wall. The wall was solid brick, and it was plastered, very sturdy. For no particular reason, I just hit it. I instantly heard a knock back. I thought maybe someone else was there on the other side of the wall, in the house next door.

I just thought it was a game. I thought it was fun. I was giggling. I was just so excited that there was a knock. I kept trying it. I kept trying it. It was only in that one place. Eventually, it was like a language that you're learning.

I learned that one knock was yes and two knock was no. I said, did I pass the test? And I got the one knock back. And I was smiling. I was happy. A couple weeks later, I found out that I passed the test. because I went to the new school. And then I'd knock all the time.

I just started asking questions. Well, I win the gumball machine at Mary's Candy Store. If I don't go to the dentist when my teeth fall up, later on, I asked Frank and Rose who live next door, who lives on the other side on the second floor in the back by the alley. and they said, no one. That was a story to him. Then I knew it was something else,

but I didn't know what yet, except that was mine and would answer what I needed to know. I called it the knock-knock ghost. It was kind of like a reassuring friend that would soothe me and tell me what I wanted to know. First, I have to call the ghost.

We have a signal. If I get the signal back, it knocks twice back. Then I know it's going to be. give me an answer. And then I ask, whatever I want to ask. I didn't ask frivolous questions. I did it only when I was in distress

because I was looking for an answer that nobody else could give me. Will these pimples go away? When will I get to buy an Italian lemonade with my own money? Well, they're all frivolous questions, but not to me. One time, I'd gone with someone in my class named Richard,

and he didn't like what I was wearing that day, and I was upset. I was still just a little kid, but I liked playing with the boys. So I said, does he really like me? And I knocked on the wall. I got one knock back. At school the next day, I found out that he did still like me, but I was mad at him, so I wouldn't talk to him anymore. It didn't always answer back.

I don't know why. Maybe it just didn't want to answer that question. I never told anyone about it. I thought that in the telling, it wouldn't help me anymore because I had betrayed it and it would disappear. And I needed it to be there for important things. And I wanted always to answer me when I called. Every Saturday I went to my piano lesson downtown.

And I would get the money for the bus. But if I walked, then I could buy a treat at the Fannie Mae Candy Factory. So I usually walked, and I could walk through all the alleys on the west side until I got to the loop. One day, I was walking to my piano lesson. I found this Ouija board. It was in the garbage. Somebody had thrown it out.

But it didn't have the thing that you were supposed to rub on top of the board, but I thought I could find something that would work. I didn't associate the ghost with the Ouija board. It was a game, it was in a box. I just wanted to see if it worked or not. But my mother was horrified. She said, no, you're not bringing that in the house. I don't want anything like that here.

I said, why not? And she told me about when they were in camp. When people in town were hired to build the barracks for the concentration camp, they built everything too small because they heard the people were tiny. The beds were too short and the sinks were too low. Some of the people in the camp

were farmers. They were used to hard work and they found themselves with nothing to do. So they made things and they had made this table. A table that would fit their bodies that was high enough.

My mother said we pulled the table over. There was one bare light bulb. And we touch hands with each other and ask questions. How many days before they will let us out of here? Are my neighbors taking care of my house? Will my husband go to prison because he refused to serve in the army? And the table would sway back and forth and tilt slightly

and the leg would hit the floor once for yes, and twice for no. I was totally stunned. It was the same signal. That's when I realized it must be the same ghost because of the knocks, because the table knock on the floor, and because there was no other physical manifestation of the ghost except for the knock.

I thought, I wonder if that ghost came with them when they came from the camp and lives in the house because that's for all the people from the camp had come. My mother didn't want me to, to bring the Ouija board in the house. She was afraid of it. She had seen these things happen in the camp,

and she just wanted to put all that behind her. But the ghost was already in the house. And now the ghost was mine. Now it would answer my questions. One day, when I was 12, I was sitting on my porch, and my dad was going to work. And he drove away.

and he turned around and came back to the house. And he climbed the stairs as if we were going back in the house. But he patted me on the head and turned around and got back in the car. And went to the bar across from where he worked to have coffee with the other guys. And he had a heart attack, massive heart attack. My mother answered the phone. I heard it on the phone. I was sobbing.

I was banging on the wall. hurting my hand, hurting my knuckles. I thought, well, maybe he isn't dead. Dead. Maybe he was on an assignment. Maybe the government made him look like he had died. He was still alive, and he'd come back to us when he was done. I decided to knock on the wall, and he asked to see if he was really dead.

A few seconds later, the Knock Knock Ghost answered me. He was dead. coming back. The world was a different place after that. My father was the one who went to work every morning. He was the one who took care of any trouble. The world revolved about him. I was the oldest child. My mother wasn't capable of handling the house by herself. I would have to step up and fill in the part that he left. I was in charge. We didn't have any money. So the roof, foot start leaking. I saw people in the neighborhood fix their roofs. So I took our wagon, I went to Sears, I got two big buckets of tar, I hauled them up the ladder to the roof,

and I poured them on top of the roof, and spread it around with an old broom, and it was fixed. After my father died, I did knock on the wall again. I was in charge of the house, and I didn't have time to knock on the wall anymore. In my 20s, the city tore down the block, the entire block, and everyone had to move out. We moved to the north side into an apartment building. I was sitting watching television in our new place, and I saw the side of the building where I had lived on the 10 o'clock news.

And there was my wall, the wall that I knocked on all those years, The newscaster said that the records have been trying to bring down this wall all week. The wall would not fall. I thought about the times that I had slept next to that wall and was so close to the knock-knock ghost. There were other walls that were just as thick. But it was that wall where the knock-knit ghost was that didn't come down. Eventually, I guess they did get it down.

They had a hard time. Imagine that the knock-knock ghost, it's homeless. Every couple years, I knock just a seat, just a check if the ghost will answer me. And never answered. Today, we are in bad times. And there are all kinds of reasons that we need the knock-knock ghosts to be there to answer our questions. Will we go to war with Russia? When will there be a cure?

for the coronavirus. How many people have to die before it's over? Recently, I was sleeping. It was early in the morning, and I heard this knock, and it woke me up. It wasn't that it was loud. It was that I knew that knock. It was so clear, just like the old days.

So I sat up, and I came out into the heart. Always. And then it knocked a second time. Hello? I came downstairs and I heard it again. I hadn't asked a question. But I sure. It's my ghost.

Big thanks to Connie Shirakawa for sharing her story. Connie is a storyteller in Chicago and catch some of her performances at Connie Shirikawa.com. That story was scored by Doug Stewart, was produced by Anne Ford and answers to find healing, to find power. But I keep hearing rumors and rumors of rumors of people looking for the thing that is not supposed to really exist.

The thing that serious folk dismiss as superstitious, as nonsense, as fairy tales, people on a journey in search of real magic. However they define it, the power to move things with their mind, ambulance that grant certain abilities, forces that can attract and forces that repel. Make no mistake. More than we can ever imagine lies hiding in plain sight

if you know of anyone who has searched for magic. I'm talking real magic, not magic tricks, searching for it and finding it, actually touch the inexplicable. If you know this person, or if you think you are this person. I need to hear all about it. Please, please, please, please, please, please.

Let me know. Spooked at snapjudgment.org because there is nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener. Spooked at snapjudgment.org. If you want to let the dark side know who they're messing with, clad yourself in spook gear, the t-shirt, stuff available right now at snapjudgment.org. And remember, if you like your storytelling under the bright light of day, get the amazing, stupendous, sister podcast, snap judgment, it's storytelling. The B-Fook was created by the team that knows how to take a joke.

Except, of course, Mark Ristage, please make no further mentions of a jack-in-the-box when you're in his presence, the fellowship of sages that make it all happen. Davey Kim, Chris Hanrick, Lauren. Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Teo Decott, Marissa Dodge, Zoe Ferrigno, Ann Ford, Greta Weber, Eric Yannes, Cessi Paioli, Cody Hargo,

Lola Abrera, Doug Stewart, Miles Lassie, Yari Bundy, the spook theme song is by Pat Massini Miller. My name is from Washington. And you'll hear people say that the universe is so vast that we are destined to remain

ignorant of her ways. And this much is correct. It's also true that we don't have to know everything in order to know some things. See, some things have been passed down. Some things are still remembered. Some things it would be wise not to forget. First among these rules to live by. Write this down.

Never. Ever. Never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, ever. Ever. Ever. Ever.