Spooked - Lost In Time

Episode Date: September 8, 2017

Stories:  "Time Warp Saloon" -  The neon sign blinks at the roadhouse bar. The jukebox plays an old tune as the bartender shouts,  "Last Call." Just one more. Why not? What could it hurt? This story came to Spooked from Jim Harold’s Campfire Podcast, hosted by Jim Harold, check it out at JimHarold.com. "Love Letters" - Mark Spencer lived in the haunted house with the ghost of Ladell--and we are eternally grateful that he stuck around long enough to bring us his story. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There are good reasons in some places that the signs warn to stay on the path, to beware, or simply danger. Wow. Today in Spooed, from Snap Judgment, we ignore the warnings. We jump the fence. We peek through the keyhole and open up the dark closet. Spooked. Real stories be afraid. And all new spook begins in just a moment.

Stay true. From the creators with Snap Judgment, welcome to spooked. Real stories from real people crashing against the inexplicable. My name is Ben Washington. There are several types of mysteries. Things that don't fit into our little preconceived boxes.

Deja vu. ESP. Spectral travel. The phenomena T.I. encounters in this next story. I don't know what exactly to call it. But please make sure that it never happens. Northwest Wisconsin is the epitome of the Northwoods.

It's a place with tiny communities and people living far apart from one another. And my family had been coming to this area since the early 1930s, and we would spend our summers up out of the city in the Northwoods. But when you went out of just your... local community, you were a stranger and you were a stranger like a stranger, I don't know how to, what's the best way to describe it? It's a very, it's hard to get reactions out of people in this place. They're friendly enough, but you don't really get close unless you're almost a local. And we are still considered outsiders.

On this one night, about 20 years ago, my friend and I were coming back from a bar in Ashland, Wisconsin, and we were driving really late at night, and it was starless, and it was pitch black. You couldn't see past the headlights on the road, and even with the bright lights, it was like the forest on each side was just swallowed in darkness. So after driving for probably 35,

45, 40 minutes, it became very apparent that we needed a rest stop. And there was nothing. There were no roadside parks. There are no little towns. My friend Bob, who was driving, said, well, we could just pull off to the side. Now, I walk with a cane, and that's not really an option for me. I don't have outdoor plumbing. And I told him, no way. I can't do that. I just said, please, just drive fast and we'll find something that's open. And then when we turned down onto the new highway, we came up over a hill and there we could see this red, bright, illuminated neon light on the side of the road. And that was the roadhouse saloon. And it had the beer lights in the windows, cars in the parking lot. Now, mind you, this is like almost three o'clock in the morning. And

And my friend Bob said, oh, this is great. All the locals are talking about this place because they've recently had an artist from Disney Studios paint one of the big walls in a mural. And as we opened the door, there was this big dance floor that had one of those horseshoe-shaped bars. And on the far wall was this mural. And it was an old west scene.

I scanned the room. And there weren't a lot of people there. there were like three ladies sitting to my right with cocktails in front of them. There were a couple of guys playing pool off to my left, and there was a bartender standing there, this young man leaning on the bar and just smiling at us. And everybody was looking at us like they were expecting us. And it was, that was something that was very unlike any other bar I've walked into up north. Usually when you walk in, people turn away.

So after I came out of the bathroom, Bob handed me a beer, and we decided to go look more closely at the mural on the far wall. As we did that, another young man went to the jukebox, and that's where I noticed that the jukebox was one of the old Wurlitzer jukeboxes that has the 45 vinyl records in it. And it was a beaut. It did not look like it was worn. And he put a coin in the jukebox, and the record went down. and it started playing. Let's twist again like we did last summer by Chubby Checker. And he comes walking up to me and says,

you want to dance, and he's got a beer in his hand. And he's kind of teetering a little bit. And I had the perfect excuse I just pointed to my cane and said, sorry, I can't dance. And we went over to the mural. And it was a saloon scene. And on one side of it, there were those swinging saloon doors. There were women sitting at a bar, and there were gamblers sitting at a gambling table.

And it was really unusual. It seemed like it had perspective, but it was really unusual, garish perspective. The colors were very harsh. It was almost like floorlit, so it was like almost tunnel-like, but not quite. But then I noticed Bob turned to his right and look behind me, and then back at the painting, and I said, what? And he said, look at those guys at the pool table. And I turned, and I still hadn't heard pool balls.

And they were just standing at the pool table, and I looked at them. And then I turned, and I looked back at the gentleman sitting around playing cards in the painting. And it appeared to be those gentlemen, the facial features. It was them. And Bob said, let's see if anybody else is here is in the painting. So we looked at the bartender, and then we turned and looked at the painting, and near the door, there was a cowboy gunslinger with a cowboy head on with the exact same build and features as the bartender. So then this became like a game, and we went face on the painting to face in the bar. And the three ladies that were still sitting at the bar, the real bar where we were, one was up standing by a piano singing,

The gentleman who kept putting the money in the jukebox was playing the piano. And every single person in that bar was in that painting. And there was nobody else in that painting. It was the exact number as people in the bar without us. And once again, the young gentleman put another coin in the jukebox and played Let's Twist again like we did last summer. And then we tried to rationalize it. and said that, you know, clearly these people are regulars.

So this artist probably came and put these people who are here in the painting. That would be something really cool to do. So we first asked the bartender is that you in the picture. And the friendliness didn't really evaporate, but it was like the communication was gone. He looked at us and didn't respond verbally, but continued smiling and sort of shrug-nodied. as if he did not understand the words that we said. And then I looked at the ladies and said, are you in these paintings up there?

And they just looked at me without changing expression at all. And the only people who took a drink of their drink that we saw was Bob and myself. Nobody started playing pool while we were standing there. Nobody did anything except pretty much watch us. And even though from the very beginning, the situation was extremely odd, that started to get a little creepy. And I said, let's just go. And Bob said, come on, one more, and I'm really susceptible to that kind of thing.

And he said, just one more. Let's spend a little more time checking out the mural. And so I reluctantly agreed. And we ordered two more. And it was at that point that you could hear the money in the machine. and the drop of the record. And once again, it was the same song. It was, let's twist again like we did last summer.

And, you know, when someone plays a song two times in a row, it could be their favorite song. But a third time, that made the hair on my neck stand up. And as we'd walk back to the mural across that dance floor, everyone in the place was watching us. And they were watching us so intently that my heart was beating a little high. harder than it was before.

And halfway towards it, I stopped and said, wait, what's that? And Bob looked, and he said, he just said, I don't know. The mural looked exactly the same, except there in the doorway. Just outside of this painted saloon were two shadowy figures

that were gray one of a man, one of a woman. And I said, I didn't see that before. I knew I hadn't seen that before. And he said, let's get closer. And as we got closer, I saw that those figures resembled Bob and myself. And when I looked down underneath the swinging door,

I noticed that the woman was walking with a cane. And my heart jumped into my throat. and I grabbed Bob and I said, oh my God, look in the doorway. And it looked as though those two figures were being filled in. And Bob dropped the bottles on the bar, grab my arm, and we just high-tailed it for the door. And as we came across the dance floor, everyone stood up and turned to us, and the guy that had been playing the record started walking towards us,

and we just burst through the door with the music still playing. with the lights still blazing in the windows, and as soon as that door shut, the music instantly stopped, and the lights in the window went out. It was silent and black, as if anything inside no longer existed. And Bob turned on the car lights,

and I noticed there were no cars in the parking lot, and you could see the windows that were darkened. There was nothing inside. And we got in that car and just sped out of that parking lot, throwing up, the gravel got on the highway and silent and just like shaking, trying to catch our breath and 10 miles down the road. We just looked at each other and said, what the fuck was that? We started asking each other, did this really happen?

Because if it was just me, if it was just me, I would have dismissed it and said, nope, that didn't happen and just gone on with it. But I wasn't alone. There were two of us who experienced the exact same thing. And so the next morning at breakfast, we were telling my sisters what it happened. So they said, let's go back there and check it out and see what it is. So then a few days later we went and it was just, you know, it was 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock at night. As we pulled into the parking lot, I got that sinking feeling like I wasn't sure. I wanted to. to go in there, but I knew that we were going in there. And we walk in, the place is pretty full.

People are having food there and drinks. And I looked around to see if any of the people I had seen a week ago were in there. And I didn't recognize any of the faces. But when I looked up at the mural, they were all still there. The gunslinger, the card players, the barmaids, but there was no one. In that doorway, it was empty. And as I looked around, I noticed the jukebox was no longer the Wurlitzer. So I looked for Chubby Checker on there, and it wasn't even on there.

But the bartender was this young woman, and I asked her where the other bartender was. And she said, what other bartender? And I said, Saturday night, we were here, and there was a different bartender here. And she said, no. It was really late. like probably three o'clock in the morning, she says, my dad owns this place and he and I are the only ones who tend to bar here. And we closed at midnight.

The Roadhouse Saloon is still there, but it's changed. Now it's part of a little mini up north strip mall that includes an all-night gas station and gift shops. But the mural's still there, and there's still nobody in the doorway. And none of those people that were there that night are there. Now then, everyone needs a little help. Everyone. What if the person asking for assistance hasn't been seen in 40 years?

Right after this short break, Spooot. The creator of Snap Judgment, welcome back to Spoot. Now, in the stories I used to hear around the campfire when I was a kid, ghost came back from the dead only if they had some serious and unfinished business. If you saw one, that was a bad sign, Jack. You're supposed to run away screaming, be outy. Lisa, that's what I would do. But fortunately, the folk in our next story, they're a better class of people.

Spencer, and I'm the dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Arkansas and Monticello. When Mark and his wife Rebecca first moved to the small town of Monticello, they instantly fell in love. We saw a somewhat dilapidated but fascinating and beautiful old Victorian mansion with tourists and spires and a huge portico. It was almost a beautiful ruin. They knew they had to have that house. A month later, Mark finally got a call from the homeowner who agreed to give them a tour of the inside. But the evening before, Mark and his wife decided to drive by the house.

Their three kids were with them. We stopped in the street to sit and gaze at it, as we often did. The older boy said, who's that lady in the window? And he pointed over to the second story South Tour window. I saw a lady sitting there in the window. It looked like she was sitting at maybe a small table or desk, reading a book or writing a ladder. And my wife said, oh, that must be the owner.

We drive away. The next evening, my wife and I go to the house, and we get to meet the owner. A very, very charming, older lady. And she showed us around the house. And then she took us upstairs to the second floor, and she opened the door to the master bedroom. And the master bedroom was full of boxes and furniture, and we couldn't even get into the room. And I realized that this was the room with the window in which we had seen the woman the night before. And I said to the owner, oh, but we saw you in the window last night.

And she said, oh, no, as you can see, you can't even get to the window. And I haven't been in this room in months. And my wife even said something about, well, no, we all saw you. And that's when the owner said, have people in town been telling you that the house is haunted? And I said, yeah, I've heard those stories, you know. I'm not taken in by such silliness. And she says, well, it is. You know, so many people had told us so many stories about the ghost in the house.

They said the house was haunted by a ghost named Liddell Allen, a woman who in real life killed herself in the master bedroom back in 1948. The big question, the mystery, was why did she do it? Nobody knew. At the time of her, her suicide, everybody was shocked and nobody understood it. It was a mystery from the start. and over the years, it remained a mystery. My wife and I just liked the house because it was unique and beautiful,

and we thought it would be fantastic to fix it up and live there. And to mark surprise, the woman told them the house was theirs. She also said that she had this strange feeling that we were meant to have the house. The day that we moved into the house, I was carrying boxes, and my little boy who was five at the time was standing there by the side staircase. And I remember being struck that he was standing very still and he looked kind of pale, and I thought that maybe he wasn't feeling well. I say over my shoulder, well, how do you like your new house?

And he doesn't answer me. And I say, well, dear, you like your new house? And he doesn't say anything. And then once I get the boxes situated, I turn, and he's not there. He was just gone. A little while later, I found him upstairs in his room watching a Star Wars movie, and I said, well, I didn't he say anything earlier when I asked you how you like the house. And he said, what are you talking about that?

So I've been downstairs since we had lunch. That was like hours ago. Didn't give it a whole lot of thought. But then there were related incidents within the next couple of days. Like the time Jacob, the youngest boy, got mad at his older brother Joshua for coming into his room, and whispering his name in his ear over and over again. Jacob, Jacob. When Mark confronted Joshua, he said,

Dad, I have no idea what you're talking about. It's like, okay, what's going on? This is really weird. And I'm thinking, okay, well, we're exhausted from moving or something. But as Mark and his family settled in those first few weeks, the house's notorious reputation was impossible to ignore. We were bombarded with, request from paranormal investigators.

And we said no. We said, no, we don't want to get involved in that. So I'm not, you know, really taking any of this very seriously. However, one afternoon I was in the attic, and I was actually hanging out the attic window painting. I was perched during the ledge outside the window risking my life in the name of historical and architectural preservation. I finally got to the point where I felt like I had done enough for the day, and I pulled myself into the attic.

And I turned, and I noticed that my shadow was cast all the way across the attic to the opposite corner. And I thought, well, that's interesting. You know, I can see my shadow all the way over there on the South Turrit room. I was in the north end of the attic. It just seemed odd that my shadow would be cast in that manner. and then I moved, but my shadow didn't move. So when Mark got contacted again by a group of ghost hunters from Louisiana, he could no longer resist.

And these ghost hunters seem different. They seem like reasonable people. They don't use psychics. They try to debunk things. They try to come up with explanations for what people interpret as paranormal activity. So the ghost hunters came. They set up recording equipment throughout the 6,500, square foot house to see if they could capture any paranormal sounds. And after a long,

uneventful night, they took off the following morning. They came back a few weeks later for their reveal. And the lead investigators set with me and my wife at our dining room table. And he said, Mark, do you want to ask me the question that homeowners always want to ask? And I said, well, yeah, what is that? And he said, well, they always want to ask, is my house haunted? And I said, okay, is my house haunted? And he said, said, yes, definitely. The investigator said his team had gathered over 40 audio recordings of sounds that they identified as paranormal, what they call electronic voice phenomenon or EVPs. Then the investigator proceeded to play them for Mark from his laptop.

You hear it's a woman's voice, and she says, I just lied. And then immediately after that, she says, It was justified. It was justified. Sitting there thinking, well, this is really creepy. Who are these voices? And the lead investigator said, well, that's not one of the investigators. Well, I had chills run down my spine.

The investigators said that most of the recordings picked up the voice of a woman. Mark immediately thought of Liddell Allen, the woman who killed herself in the house all those years. ago. And so not long after that reveal session, I took a $10 digital audio recorder, battery operated, up to the attic one evening by myself. I decided I was going to have my own EVP session. And I'm sitting in an old couch up there, and I asked Liddell, why are you here? Probably not more than 10 minutes go by, and I'm already starting to get bored. And so I, I've, I've, I've, Playback what I've recorded, and I hear my voice, of course.

And then I hear very distinctly a woman's voice. And she says, I like it here. And the voice, it was like she was sitting next to me on that old couch. That was the evening when I realized for certain that we weren't alone. Because I knew I hadn't fake that EVP. I couldn't explain that. Okay, there was a ghost in my house. and she just talked to me.

Saturday morning in August of 2009, I wake up and I immediately felt a compulsion to go to the attic. It was like a voice in my head telling me to go to the attic that if I did, I was going to find something. And I didn't really understand why I felt a compulsion. And we'd been in the house for over two years, and I was pretty certain that I had found everything there was to find in the attic. But I found myself going up the attic stairs. I walked straight over to the edge of the South Tework room, and I stood looking down at a small opening in the floor. It was a couple inches wide, two or three inches long.

I just stood there looking down at it. And it was like that voice in my head telling me again, look more closely. So I got down on my knees, and I peered into this opening in the floor. And then I got a glimpse of a brown piece of paper. And so I reached into the opening, got a couple of fingers on the edge of this brown piece of paper, and pulled it out. To my surprise, it was an envelope. And I lifted up the flap and inside were smaller envelopes.

They were white. They were all postmarked in 1948. And they were addressed to Liddell, Alan Bonner. And I opened up the flap of one of the white envelopes and pulled out a, a letter and the salutation was dearest and it was signed love. And then under the word love was the initial P. And I realized that I had found a batch of love letters written to Liddell a couple of months before suicide. I jumped up and I ran downstairs and got a claw hammer, ran back upstairs and I prided up the floorboard.

And underneath the floorboard were more letters. in total about 80 letters, most of them from a man named Prentice Hemingway Savage. Mark sat down on the attic floor and laid the letters out in chronological order. With the sun shining bright through the attic window, he began to read. Prentice, he was a wealthy, successful businessman. He writes in his letters how much he loves her peteeness and how he can't keep his hands off of her. Enough, nothing terribly explicit,

but enough to make it clear that he's eager for the next meeting. Prentice writes, if you should show up around any part of the country north of the Mason and Dixon line, I'll find some reason to be there too. There was just that problem of him

being married. Apprentice was successful in convincing Liddell that their corresponding was okay. that their meeting somewhere was okay. Although from what Mark could tell, Liddell knew better. She was pretty paranoid. Now, she kept all of his letters, obviously,

and she kept the letters of her friends and whom she confided about the affair. In one letter, Prentice responds, What will I do with you if you don't quit worrying about your letters? So just dismiss that from your sweet little mind, my dear. But she made Prentice promise to do. destroy her letters to him. In fact, he had to tear them up

and then send the fragments back to her in his envelopes when he replied. And that's why in some of the envelopes, there are these scraps of letters stuck in the corners of the insides of the envelopes that are scraps of letters that Liddell wrote to him. Prentice and Liddell get deeper and deeper into this torrid love affair.

They find a way to meet in Wisconsin and then Minnesota, where they spent two blissful weeks together. Prentice writes, These last five days will live in my memory always, as the happiest ones in my entire life. I love you. Don't ever forget I'm thinking of you always. And I'm there on my knees or on the attic floor holding this letter. It's really hot and I'm sweating.

It seemed unreal. I'm immersed in the time of those individuals, March and April and May of 1948. And the letters are elaborate, they're vivid, they're full of expressions of affection and of growing affection. And it's not long before Prentice starts talking about leaving his wife. He writes, I know now more than ever that you and I should work out the details we talked over. I shall do my part soon. One of the things that they've been corresponding about for months is how he's going to be in Monticello for the holidays.

By Christmas, everything's going to be settled. He and Liddell will spend Christmas together. But then there's a decidedly negative turn in early December. He writes her a letter and he complains about going to the dentist and he complains about going to the dentist and he complains about being really busy. And then he says, I can't leave my wife after all. I just don't see it happening, at least not anytime soon. And he sends a letter he doesn't know when he'll be able to write her again.

Prentice signs off. Take good care of yourself, dear. I'm thinking, oh, I knew how the story was going to end. Liddell would never receive another letter from Prentice. So it was December 25th. evening. Liddell attended her mother's Christmas party. She mingled with the guest. I think she was holding out some hope that Prentice would show up on Christmas, that he would surprise her. And late in the evening, when he had not shown up, she prepared herself a plate of hors d'oeuvres and a glass of punch,

and she went up to the master bedroom, which was her room. And she used the punch and the hunch in the hors d'oeuvres to mask the taste of mercury cyanide tablets. I'd been in the attic for several hours at that point. I looked up at the rafters and said, I'm so sorry, Lodale. People often ask whether she's still there, and she is. One day, this was in April of 2014. I was walking into the master bedroom. I saw my wife on the other side of the room in front of one of the

turret windows and her back was to me. What struck me as odd was that she's looking out the window, but she didn't have the curtain pulled back. I'm about to ask her what she's doing, and I literally had my mouth open to speak to her when she vanished. She just completely disappeared right in front of my eyes. Did you ever have an encounter of inexplicable kind? We're thrilled to hear your stories on Spoot. Record yourself on your phone device thing and send it to Spoot at spootpodcast.org. And know this.

If you can't get enough Spooke, you can hear full episodes three days early. Just download the tune-in app. Download the tuning app. Get full episodes of Spooked. Big thanks today to Jim Harold, the host and producer of the podcast, Jim Harold's Campfire. Without Jim,

We would never have met T.I. And we would never have stumbled to that terrifying saloon. Huge thanks as well to Mark Spencer, who told us about the love letters he discovered. We'll have links at spookedpodcast.org. Our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram handle, spookpod. Listen to new spooked episodes each week as we make our way toward all hallows Eve. It was produced by the Ghostbusters at Snap Judgment.

Special thanks to Mark Whistich, Anna Sussman, Eliza Smith, and Jody Calli. Original music by Pat Massidi-Miller, Renzo Gorio, and Leon Morimoto. Spooked. We catch the ghosts. Everyone needs a little help. Everyone. Worth the person asking for assistance hasn't been seen in 40 years. Until then, even.

When the vampire rises from the crypt to suck your blood, always remember and you don't forget to never, ever.