Spooked - Matt's Flat

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

Matt is calm, peaceful, and very chill, but his apartment has a dark past. On one rainy night in Birmingham, his flat mate finally makes herself known, and her story unfolds. Produced by Greta Weber, original score by Leon Morimoto, 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.

I hated him and knew he'd lied. He said he'd seen the day I died, but then refused my date to tell. So I knew the time he'd die as well. You listen to Spooked. Stay tuned. Okay, so I recently threw caution to the win. And I went to Vegas. To hang out with some friends, I don't often get to see a lot in the rain.

garage, my boys, back in the day. One of the reasons I love reunions with people I haven't seen in forever is because we get to relive the stories. Stories we share, stories I scarcely believe myself anymore.

Bruh, did we really go down into that tunnel on Japan? If I'm making that up? And then I have the confirmation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You were the one passing out those hats we got from the mafia guys. Don't you remember?

And we'll laugh and laugh and laugh some more. And just hearing it from someone else, someone back there when? It's like, no. No, I'm not insane yet. As wild as that was, it actually went down. And it strikes me even now that so often I still don't trust what I see. Don't trust what I hear. Instead, I think, no.

No, this couldn't. I must be confused. Intoxicated, losing it. So many times, I wish there was someone else sitting in the corner to say no, bro. Who starts? To make you trust your own eyes. We begin with Matt.

Matt was seeking peace and solitude when he moved into his own place. Peace? That was easy to come by. But solitude, without, It's another story. I should let you know this story does contain graphic imagery and descriptions of violence. Since the listeners are advised, I'll let Matt take it from here. Spoot.

1996, and I'm 22 years old, and I'm living in a town called Edgebaston in Birmingham, England. I'm living in the top floor of a house. The house is a... Your typical Victorian three-storey red brick terraced house It's probably been built around the mid to late 1800s. My bedroom had a window on the left side of the house as you look from the street, and that overlooked the park and the church

and looked down the road going towards the city. It just felt very welcoming and at ease in the flat. And you could put that down to that being the first time that I'd been living by myself. So it was an exciting time. I was looking forward to just being in charge of myself. It was a weekend. It was either a Saturday or a Sunday,

but weekends were never very busy for me. It was almost a typical English, you know, still grey sky, very cloudy and it was drizzling. I sat back on the sofa. sitting with my back to the window and I had my incense sticks on the go as well because that always seems to fit with me for that type of grey, rainy, peaceful day.

My eyes closed, the music coming through the stereo I was very relaxed but as I relaxed it felt like there was somebody there it felt like they were sitting on the other part of the L-shaped couch listening to music with me, enjoying what I was enjoying. But I opened my eyes and there wasn't anyone there. I didn't think anything of it. I just thought it was whatever dopamine was going through my head.

Being so relaxed and listening to the music, then that's what I was projecting. After that first time, it started to happen. and more and more. But whenever I did feel that, you know, that there was nothing physical that you could point out, oh, that someone sat on that sofa because that part of the seats has been pushed down, can hear breathing. It was almost something in the air,

almost a warmth of somebody who just wants to be there and enjoy what you're enjoying and make sure you've got some company. That's how it felt. So I had two kittens. They were probably a year old. One was Peggy's suicide, and the other one was called Jelly Popperkegiene,

and they were both named after Julian Cope album and song. And these two kittens, of course, they were in the flat, and they're very playful. I used to play fetch with them. But every so often, they would both stop and stare at something across the wall and they would look at something at one point on the wall and then follow it around the room.

Tried very hard to see what they were watching but whenever they did it there was no flies, there was no light shining onto the wall but they were very definitely watching something together their heads would move around the room. They kept doing this and so after a while when I saw them do it, I used to say, stop watching the ghost. But that was just me making myself love thinking that was something so ridiculous.

So I'd been living at the flat for about a year and a half. And I was perfectly happy in the flat. but I decided to move out purely just to save some money. A friend of a friend who was renting in a house and he needed someone to rent with him. And I just thought, oh, it would be company and I'll save on the rent and the bills. I have more money for going out and buying records. My landlord used to come round every month to collect the rent

and I'd given him a month's rent and told him I'd be moving out the following month. And when I did, it's very strange, you know, because out of all the places that I own, this is the only place where people don't tend to stay more than a couple of months, sometimes weeks. And so it's very strange that you've been here for a year and a half. I did say to him, why has nobody ever stayed here for more than a couple of months? And he says, I don't know, it's just an outlier. So in the final week that I was going to move out, I started getting ready for bed. So I fed the cats as normal, put everything away. I did my usual, washing routine, brushing my teeth, getting changed, throwing my clothes on.

the floor and hopping into bed. I looked over towards the bedroom window and I saw the moonlight coming through the window. It was a very clear night but I noticed that the light was almost misty and so I turned my head to the left a bit looking at the wardrobe. As I stared at the wardrobe this misty light

it started to form into a shape. The shape that began to form was that of a young woman, probably late teens, early 20s. Her hair, I noticed, was long and sleek and black. It's odd because the shadow or the darkness made it look as if her hair was very shiny, and that is one of the things that stood out, that she looked like, an attractive young woman. I'm quite certain she had a longish skirt or a dress on.

I didn't want to run. I don't think I felt scared. I didn't feel threatened. I just wanted to see this image form and think, what on earth is going on? Is this part of my imagination? Is it the moonlight? But at the same time,

it was definite person formed out of dark shadow and white mist. almost like a negative image stood by this wardrobe door looking directly at me expressionless just as I began to acknowledge to myself I'm seeing something that I really shouldn't be seeing she started to

move towards the bed she may have been floating she may have been walking but I wasn't watching her feet I was looking at her face and she came closer and closer to the bed as she got right next to the bed began to lean over towards my face. That's when I began to get scared.

Well, this seems very real now and I don't know what's going to happen. She just got closer and closer and then started bending over. It's the motion of a mother standing at the side of her bed wanting to kiss a child good night. I didn't let it get that far because my overriding fear then took over.

I just dove under the covers and just lay there in fear, waiting for something to happen. I lay there for probably about two hours, just with the covers pulled over my head. I didn't want to go to sleep. I just thought, I'll lie here and wait to see what happens, but nothing did happen. and eventually my body just took over and I went to sleep. But the following day and there was nothing in the room. And I was initially scared when I woke up, but very quickly I thought, well, I must have been seeing things.

Whatever I saw wasn't real. And I just put it down to being tired. and so for a week I didn't I didn't think about it that final week came and went and I moved out of the flat

I'd been moved out about two or three weeks and it was a winter's evening it was dark and my father had come over to where I was now living and he was picking me up

so we could go back to my parents' house and so the journey took us past my old flat. As we're driving past, we both look up because, you know, most houses are in darkness, but the window to my flat had a light on. So as we look at the light that's on,

my father says, it looks like somebody's moved into your old place already. That's when I thought I was joking. and said, well, it's either that or it's the ghost. And that's when he looked at me quite seriously. And he said, are you being serious? Are you just joking? Well, I don't know.

Something might have happened. Why? So that's when he pulled the car over to the side of the road and turned the engine off, turned to look at me. and that's when my heart sort of sank because I thought, well, some things up. And he said, look, if something's happened, then you need to tell me. And I said, well, possibly, you know, I was still in the almost denial stage at that time. but I recounted everything that I could remember to my dad

about the cats looking at nothing around the room about the feeling of a presence and of course the night that I saw this young woman describe exactly what she looks like so I described how she looked what she was wearing and the thing that stood out was her long, shiny black hair. As I said that, his response was, yes, that's her. What do you mean? That's her.

And he said, well, I didn't want to tell you anything. And your mother didn't want to tell you either because we didn't want to worry you. The flat that you've lived in, something has happened there. He told me the story of the neighbour of my grandmother. Her neighbours had a teenage daughter, who was 18 or 19, and one New Year's Eve. She went back to your flat. She went back with somebody who she worked with

who was much older than her. On New Year's day, he murdered her in your flat. And when the police found her, one of the things they remarked upon was how long and shiny her hair was because she'd not long got out of the bath. I just sat there, shocked. I'm overcome with this wave of, oh my God, everything that's happened in that place, it's gone from things that you thought were in your own mind. things that you could explain away. Suddenly, all of that becomes turned on its head and it's all very real.

We just sat there for five minutes just so I could gather my composure. And then we started driving back to my parents' house. I think for most of the journey, I was just trying to relive everything that had happened. And so when I was listening to music and I felt there was a presence there, I thought, well, was she sitting in the flat with me? Was she listening to the music with me? I was very peaceful.

Was that why I was allowed to stay at the flat for so long? But when I looked back, it was obvious that she didn't mean me any harm. it wasn't like she was trying to scare me off. And when she got to the bed, if I'd have been braver at the time, I'd have just waited there to see what happened because it almost seemed certain that she just wanted to lean over and kiss me goodnight.

I thought maybe because it was my final week that she was making herself known and saying goodbye. I don't think I told anyone else for a long time. Many years later, it was maybe 2007. I started work at a company where I was a software tester, and then we employed a chap who was working in my department, doing the same job as me in. And so we're having a good conversation at work one day

and there was a horror movie that had come out, I can't remember the name of which horror movie it was. And so we start talking about these horror movies that we've seen in our childhood. And then he says, I must tell you about this experience I had one time. And he was telling me back in, The 1980s, he was living in a flat by himself. He said he'd gone to bed one night.

During the night, he had the sensation that somebody was strangling him. He was about to fight off whoever it was, but he opened his eyes and there was nobody there. And he said it was in, when he lived in a flat in Birmingham. So I just said, okay, where's this flat in Birmingham? And he said, it was in Edgebaston. Okay. Whereabout was this? And so he told me the road.

It was the same road. And the house. And it was the same house. And it was the same flat. Sat there for a minute, taking it in. And he probably wonders why the hell is he just staring. And of course, I recounted what happened to me. Of course, he had a very shocked reaction to that.

At the time, I didn't question why he'd had a bad experience and I'd had a good one. As we got to know each other, he told me that when he was younger, he had a bit more of a wilder lifestyle, I guess. I think he had a bit of a dependency with Al Gore for a while. In the news article, it said that the chap who had murdered her, he initially hit her with a cider bottle so maybe there was an alcohol connection there that she she didn't like if she was stuck in there stuck in that flat then she'd i guess she'd want to be

stuck with someone who wasn't going to make her her time there a misery and maybe my presence there was somebody she could get on with which was why i was allowed to or felt like I was allowed to live there for so long. And I did think at the time, did she realise that her neighbour was my grandmother and that there was that connection there, maybe that's what she felt when I moved into the house. Perhaps that was, well, I saw her acting as she did

on that final week when I saw her lean over the bed. Perhaps that was a thank you and a kiss goodbye. about a month ago I was recounting the story to my neighbours because the topic had gone on to that sort of thing and they asked me, well, did you research the story? And it got me thinking that in maybe 2000, 2005, I'd had a look on the internet but I couldn't really find anything but that was a long time ago.

So I thought I'd go on to the internet and see if there was anything I could find out. and a lot of articles came back straight away. The first one I saw was a photo of the girl. And of course, a picture shows her a long dark hair. And as well as that, it also showed a picture of the platter I lived in with the light on. As soon as I saw the photo,

my heart sank and my heart. raced at the same at the same time. Seeing her actual picture for the first time, I got a real sense of who she was. Before I learned of who she was, it was just an experience. Since learning a name, then I don't forget it.

It's like she's always there with me now. I do often think, should I go and knock on? the door of that house and see if they'd be open to me going upstairs and speak to the ghost of a girl that lives in the flat. Ask her if I could contact any relatives and of course I'd apologize for being a total coward and diving under the covers. Maybe I should have let her kiss me good night, but hopefully it should be. Thank you, thank you, Matt, for sharing your story

with the spooked all the way from England. If you do decide to go back to your old flat, let us know what you find. Original score was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Greta Weber. Let the record reflect. Real people. Telling you their real truth, spooked.

If you have a story where you lived with, experience, talk to, eight, with thought, with comforted, a power that was not of our experience, a story you're afraid to tell anybody else? Tell me. Spooked at snapjudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spook story

from a spooked listener. Spooked at snapjudgment.org. And if you need that spook gear, the t-shirt of your dreams, or your nightmares, available right now, snapjudgment.org. And remember, if you like your storytelling, under the bright light of day,

get the amazing stupendipendous. sister podcast, snap judgment. It's storytelling with a beat. Fook was created by the team that sleeps during the day and rises in the next. Of course, Mark Ristich, the Mark never sleeps. There's Davey Kim, Chris Hambrick, Lauren Newsom, Leon Wormorimocio, Teot de Kott,

Rissa Dodge, Zoe Fregno, Anne Ford, Greta Weber, Tessa Paoli, Doug Stewart, Parker, Hallowell. The Spook Beam song is by Pat McSilly Miller, my name's in Washington and understand there's no GPS, no satellite tracking for the dark path we walk, only those voices

those shades that claim to be guides ignore them. Liars one and all but if you do succumb and are led off the path into their madness, remember this, if you remember nothing at all

never, ever I don't know.