Spooked - Miss Withers

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Twin brothers move to an abandoned schoolhouse in rural Oregon with their renegade dad. He’s wild and unpredictable, but that’s not going to stop Miss Withers from giving the boys an afterlife lesson.Thank you, Mike and Ron, for sharing your story with us!Produced by Zoë Ferrigno & Anne Ford. Original score by Lauryn Newson, 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.

This old man, he stayed home. No one called him on the phone, so he's tick-tac, paddy whack. You're out of the will. This old man has time to kill. You've crossed over to spook. Stay all over the world. And the oldest stories we know before sky, before sea, before the dark even knew its name. The first thing the spirit did was split.

Twin itself, not of joy, not out of love, but because it could not bear another moment alone from two brothers. My name is Ron. I'm here on the right. And my name is Mike on the left. We're identical twins. Ron is 11 minutes older than myself. We just found out we're identical when we were 38. 38, though, 38. Ron always thought we were identical,

and I always thought we were fraternal. I tend to be correct. Just kidding. Your story, it goes way back. When our brothers, Ron and Mike, are just four years old. They're living with their grandma and their auntie on their mom's side of the family in California. But one day, this man shows up,

And he says that the two little guys, they're coming with him. I just remember getting into the front seat of a seatbelt-free pickup and riding for two and a half days to Oregon. And just being like, where are we? Halfway into the trip, he said something about like, you're my boy or you're my boys. And I was like, okay, I guess this is our dad. He wasn't around, so it was just really unfamiliar guy.

You know? He was pretty skinny, but with a beer belly. Dirty brown hair. And he had some very thick sideburns. That was just so uncomfortable that this guy was taking my brother and I. I recall just being like, why do we have to leave? Why are we not staying here with the people we love and trust who raised us? but I also had some comfort of knowing that my brother was with me.

We were looking out the windows, of course. I saw just fields and open land. At one point, there was a river that we passed that was actually really pretty. Other than that, there was not much to see or really that popped out. The truck pulls off the highway. We pulled up into a nils. narrow, fairly steep dirt road that had embankments on either side. It had clearly been carved out of the land.

And I see this wood-faced building with a bell, steeple bell, just a standalone building on its own with nothing else around it, except for a few sparse trees, very high, overgrown, tall grass. It looked very weathered, and it was extremely old. The bell was rusty on the outside and some broken out windows. I remember thinking, what is it?

Is it a church? Is it a, what is this? We got out of our dad's old truck and shortly after a car pulled up and it was full of we didn't know who. And we all got out and walked up and I realized it was some of my family members on my dad's side. My grandmother, who's my dad's mom, His sister, who's my aunt Pat, and her daughter, who's my cousin Michelle. I don't even know if we had seen them before that. We had seen them.

I don't know how. Anyway, they showed up and greeted them and gave them hugs and walked up to this house. They were talking to my dad and to each other more than anything, and my brother and I were just looking around. Barron, large open room is what we see, and an iron fireplace off to the far wall, and then a staircase, almost vertical, wooden. My dad had cut a bunch of wood, and he put kindling in the wood-burning fireplace, and lit a fire, and was showing everyone around the house.

and he told them the story of how he procured this house. He met a couple named Benis and Ori, who he said, I just want to get the hell out of the city. I'd love to live in the country. And they're like, well, funny, you should say that. We have a farm in the middle of Oregon very rural. And if you take care of the animals, you can live there for free. So he said, great.

I'm going to get my book. boys and move to the sticks. We looked at each other. We're like thinking, wait, what? Is he serious? Like, is this the house? Because everything was still in shambles. And then he said, hey, boys, if you want to see your room, it's going to be upstairs. So you can go see it if you want to, but watch out for nails.

So we walk up the staircase and it's very steep. And we have to use both hands. I just remember looking around and seeing a bunch of desks with dust on them. Old, old desks. And wondering, how is this a bedroom? This looks like a school room or something. And just being kind of worried that it was so dirty. I'm facing the back wall.

And as I turn around to see the rest of the room, there's a woman standing there thinking, wait, someone's already here? Like, why is she? Who is she? She looked to be in her probably early 20s. She had brown hair and she had a lacy white dress and her lace up boots were brown. Just standing there with a pleasant look on her face, a smile, partially. kind of like resting happy face.

We just thought she was some woman that was in our bedroom, and we didn't know why. We thought it was my dad's friend maybe or my aunt's friend. And she said, hi, boys, how are you? She was definitely friendly. And I just felt comfortable for the first time since we left. She asked us her names, so we told her that I'm running. he's Mike. And then she said, well, I'm Miss Withers. Nice to meet you boys. And then she said,

are you boys in school? And we said, no, we're not in school yet. And she said, well, this, you know, this is a schoolhouse where we're at right now. And it was called Old Mill School. And I used to teach here. Do you boys know what math is? And we both said no. and she said, well, I want to teach you something. And she raised one finger and then her other finger, and she slowly brought them together. And she said, one plus one is two. I remember her on the desk putting a plus sign

and saying this means more and a minus sign and saying this means less. With her finger in dust, just the way that she explained things was so clear for our little brains. We talked to her for all of maybe a minute, maybe a minute and a half at most, and thought, well, okay, we've seen the room.

Time to go back down. So we just said, okay, bye. When we went back downstairs, my dad asked, what did you think about your room? And we said, oh, you know, we like it. The lady's nice. and I remember my aunt. She looked at us and I saw a shocked look.

And I was surprised thinking, what did I say wrong? She was like, cheat white. She just kept saying, what? What are you talking about? What are you boys talking about? And we both proceeded to tell her about the woman that is in the attic in our bedroom that used to be a school teacher in that schoolhouse. She turned and went up the stairs herself by herself, shortly came right back down and looks over at my dad and grandma and her daughter and kind of shrugs like, huh, and says, no, no one.

I was like, oh, she must have gone somewhere. And they were like, are you sure that there's a lady in your bedroom? And we said, yeah. And we described her again and talked about math. And no one taught us anything about math at that point in time in our lives. So they were like, wait, what? What did you say? One plus one is what?

And they were testing us. You know, they were kind of quizzing us. Like, are you sure there was a woman up in the attic? We didn't push the issue or anything and go back up there. We just went on with the next thing. They quickly changed the subject. talked about the plan. My dad is going to build out the house.

Our dad had got a couple twin beds and put them in the attic and that was our bedroom. It was very cold and very creaky. The days went on that we were there. They consisted of helping our dad to fix up the place. we helped him frame off a room for his room downstairs and got used to things like cutting firewood for the fire that we thinks that we had never done before. We definitely were feeling like we were out of place.

We were raised in Norwalk, California, which is a small L.A. County town, so an actual community and neighbors that we knew. well. And then this, coming out to middle of nowhere. And we were definitely homesick for the family that raised us. They would send things here and there in the mail. McDonald's Happy Meal toys.

We were really into happy meals. I would feel like, oh, you know, it came from them. But why can't we go to them? why can't we go home? I really missed them. When our dad was there, he could be pretty harsh, and as a result, his mom came to live on the property and would take care of us when she could.

She wasn't always there, and we'd have to fend for ourselves more or less. We started school when we were six, and a school bus, believe it or not, would come all the way out there to bring us to the nearest town called Daville, Oregon. I think we had a class of six, us and four people. We'd go outside a lot, find things to do that were not at home.

We would build, like, jumps for the bike that we shared. We would take chicken coops apart and made those into little forts. It was a little bit of a hard situation that we shared. made it through together. When we met a lady in the attic, I remember feeling so comfortable and at ease. She did cross my mind, and I thought

we would see her at some point, that maybe she would knock on the door even, and we didn't see her. I remember being sad that we didn't see her anymore. Because she was so kind. But, you know, as the days go on, you just sort of forget. So we moved on from that. It was the middle of the night.

And I woke up thinking that my brother left the window open because it's ice cold in the room. I looked over and I saw what I thought was the curtain moving and being illuminated by the moonlight. It was this shimmery blue light. I moved to sit up because I was going to go close the window, but then as I moved, I realized this curtain, what I thought it was, a curtain, looked like a person.

It's the figure of a woman in a dress. That's not normal. It looks very weird. Like, what am I looking at? So I just kept staring and waiting. And then the light moves forward and it comes more into focus for me. I'm seeing her eyes and her dress and her hair and even the tops of the boots. And then her legs, they basically dissipated just below her knees.

She just goes away at the bottom, but she just goes away at the bottom, She's still walking, and then I could see all the way through her. My first thought was, that can't be real. I can't be seeing what I'm seeing right now. And then I recognize her. That's her. That's the teacher. I'm immediately remembering everything about seeing her the first day.

She's got the same hair, same style of dress. But I can't see the color of anything other than this bluish light. I'm just terrified because I just shouldn't be seeing this. I'm shaking from cold and fear. She was looking forward and walking away from that window toward us in the room. I look over to my left toward Mike and saw that he was completely out cold. If I run, my brother's still going to be here. So I just laid there and waited because I'm hoping he's going to wake up and see what I'm seeing and be able to leave with me if we need to.

So she keeps walking with feet not there. There's a bookshelf that's across the room at the foot of my bed. It's about waist high for an adult maybe. It's just a kid's bookshelf. And she keeps coming across the room. then ends up behind this bookshelf and turns and looks directly at me. My heart was definitely racing. I had been slowly pulling the covers up over me the whole time as this happened up to the base of my eyes. And I'm holding my blanket tight because this is crazy. So she's facing me

and she slowly bends down like she's going to get a book or something and smiles at me and she's gone and the room is immediately warmer. After this happened, I just was blown away. I thought about waking my cup, but I just felt too afraid to move. I stayed up most of the rest of that night. until the sun came up and fell asleep finally. My brother woke me up and said, you know, let's go. We always just kind of ran down,

and we would have to do things like Chopmore Firewood first thing. I was really tired because I hadn't really slept much that night. And I was like, did you hear anything last night? Thinking maybe he did what I did in a way and just stayed still, And maybe he was awake and he was just not opening his eyes out of fear or something. And he's like, what are he talking about? And then I told him what happened. I was immediately upset with myself for not waking up and missing her.

Like, oh, that loss of not being able to see her again. I was like, damn it, like, how did I miss that? But then going, wait, was that, was she real? Like, she wasn't real. Realizing that she wasn't a person that was here with us was disappointing, to say the least, you know. She could have been someone in the house that had the calm and the normalcy that my brother and I so desired as the young people we were without a mother figure. I felt sort of almost devastated. I really wanted her to be real.

I think we were about eight or so. My aunt had moved to that town, Davil, the nearest town. We were in town to hang out with our friend Bobby, and his house was only maybe ten houses down. I decided to go see if my aunt was home and knocked on the door. She was home, so she said, come on in. I remember just hanging out with her and just, eating some snacks and just talking.

And she said, you know, that when you boys got to the schoolhouse, you told me something that I never forgot. And she told me, I looked into it and I found out some information. I was outside playing with Bobby and Levi. And I remember Rod coming out and telling me that Aunt Pat just told me something crazy about the schoolhouse. house. I could see in his face that it was something that he needed to tell me right at that moment. And I was like, what? She told me that she went to John Day. It's the biggest town, what it actually has like a sizable library and things like that with public records in it. And she went and started

researching that area and found records that referenced the old mill school. She kept reading back and reading back and reading back because we told her the name and found that Miss Withers, Mary Withers, was a teacher at that location in the mid-1800s. At some point, she had died on that property, and I don't know exactly how. That's all she could find. Hearing what my brother just told me, I was like, no way. It just made my heart race and gave me goosebumps on both my arms because hearing actual factual details about it

it became just all the more real. I honestly was excited. I almost felt breathless because not a lot of people can say that they met someone from the other side by name and then verified their name

from 150 years before. So in 2019, I had gone on a trip and on the way back home, I made it a point to go back to the schoolhouse to see it again. As I pulled up to the property, it's gated with several signs on the outside of the gate that say, don't come in. So I parked the car and jump right over the gate. I walked all the way around the building and the bell's gone now and boards on every window. I was in my studio in LA and my phone vibrated and I was like, oh, it's wrong. And I was he's FaceTiming. I was like, why are you FaceTiming me? I pick it up and I turned the camera backward. And I was like, oh my God, there it is. It was unnerving but also like, like,

like, cool to see it again after all these years. I was like, dude, you have to get in there somehow. He's like, I don't know, it's trespassing, it's boarded up. And I was like, you know, there's not a soul for miles and miles. Like, just do it. He gave me a little push, and I was like, screw it. I got to know. I'm here.

So we get off the call, and I went up to the front and on the porch, made sure not to fall through any holes. pulled on the board to the, on the left window, and it gave away some. So I pulled it off, set it aside, and just climbed through the window. Everything was taken apart, busted apart, just kind of decimated. But the stairwell was still there, so I walked up the stairs. I was very empty and very dirty and dusty. and a giant dead rat just hanging out, just dead on the floor.

But otherwise, just all the way empty. I sat there for a while upstairs in the attic with my legs dangling through the stairwell hole and just stayed quiet. Being there was heavy. A lot of memories coming back about family things that happened there and kind of harsh things with our dad. and in memories of her being there the two times that I was aware of her

I did talk to Miss Withers and said hey it's me Ron if you're here just coming to say hi and then I waited just in case I didn't see her so then I came back outside and took a deep breath and called my brother back and just said And I didn't feel. I think she showed herself when we first arrived to comfort us because we were so disoriented and confused by who the people were in our life at that time and where we were. And I think that she was there to just reassure us that we were okay with all the chaos that ensued there with my dad. It was a very disjointed life. but everyone has good in them, I'm convinced of that.

And I found that in my dad here and there. We wrote a song with him when we were probably five. Aunt Pat play guitar and my brother and I sang, this is recorded when we were about five and a half. It's called the Goodnight song. Glad her. Thank you, Mike and Ron, for sharing your story. Now, spooksters, guess what?

Mike and Ron, they are listener to this show. So if you have a story about your own Miss Withers, your own teacher or your own protector from the other side, don't keep it to yourself. Write it down and send it to me, spook at snapjudgment.org. Spook at snapjudgment.org because there is nothing better

than a spook story from a spooked listener. The original score was by Laura Newsom was produced by Zoe Frigno and Anne Ford. So spooksters, I've got a query for you. I know you love to hear these journeys through the shadow, but would you like to see a journey?

Follow spooked on YouTube, on Instagram, the socials, magic comes in many forms, And do you too have a family member that saw what you saw? Were they standing next to you when it all went down? Well, I want to speak with both of you. Hit me up spooked at soundfjudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener. Spooked is brought to you by the team who wonders every day

what it would be like to have an identical twin. Except, of course, for Mark Ristich, the very idea of two marks is. a notion best not contemplated. There's Davy Kim, Zoe Frignell, Anne Ford, Eric Yannes, Teo de Kott, Brissadage, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Creeky, Elizabeth Z. Pardue, to DiMatu, and Lulu Tamma. Team Snap, the union representative, producers, artists, editors, engineers,

are members of the National Association of Broadcast, Employees, and Technicians, Communications, Workers of America, AFL, CIO, Local 51, the spoof theme song, is by Pat Mississippi Miller. Not only as well, Washington, and growing up at a home that was often unstable, I learned there were other homes that always seemed able to accommodate another chair around the dinner table,

where it was never a thing to place some extra blankets in the fold-out couch. And these way stations were a lifeline for me. the power to draw these safe circles that youngsters seek for refuge it is a special type of alchemy and I'm lucky as an adult to witness this unconscious

magic and dear friends of mine somehow unbidden they just emulate a signal that lets the trepidious know it is safe to come near it's safe to rest to heal a field that promises monsters cannot enter here.

And I marvel at such easy magic. It is no mean feat to convince the desperate that you mean them no harm. And I remember being the desperate. The loss, head bowed, searching for that warm glow, that open door. And to those that mother, and to those of you that father, that comfort children who are not your own, I think.