Spooked - Night of the Living Bed
Episode Date: October 18, 2024Reena lives in Jammu, India. She prays every night before going to sleep. But one night her bed has other plans. Thank you, Reena, for sharing your story to Spooked! We are so very glad that you can ...sleep through the night now.Produced by Erick Yáñez, original scored by Doug Stuart, scouted by Aditya Mattoo, artwork by Teo Ducot.Spooked has a Youtube Channel! Subscribe now for a new scary story each week. Happy October Spooky PPL! 'Tis the Season to celebrate the Shadow!!! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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There was a time when we lived in small clans before lanterns or constables or health.
We're near the end of each day before the sun sets.
You have to hurry back to the safety of the group.
Because darkness is not your friend.
Bad things happen at night, but even twilight.
The almost dark, that can be tricksy as well because on the trail, on the path,
It can be very difficult to distinguish between friend and foe,
specifically at this time seeing only the silhouette, the shadow.
It can be impossible to tell a wolf from a dog.
Well, as we walk this dark path and we see that dark shadow,
I'm going to just cut to the chase.
That figure off in the disdeme.
I look over.
He's got this small burlap pouch,
tiny like half the size of his hand.
He's holding it to his ear like he's listening to something.
I'm trying to keep my eyes on the road.
What you doing?
Don't worry about what I'm doing.
But him, it is always something.
We get to my place.
He puts his stuff in my guest bedroom.
Takes out the pouch.
reverently, pulls open the string, pours the contents into his hand.
It looks like cheap glass marbles with a few rocks, like trash.
He notes the disdainful look on my face, smiles, you'll see.
I follow him back to the gas room where he breathes on each little marble and sets it down in the carpet.
into a circle, some kind of summoning.
His movements are eager, practiced.
This is her ritual.
He's done this before.
I kneel down on the floor across from him,
wondering what new religion it is this week.
And he says, I'm going to turn out the lights.
See what?
He turns out the lights.
Nothing.
Maybe my eyes need time to adjust.
I don't know.
I sit one minute, five minutes, and I'm getting annoyed.
Sitting here in the dark.
My crazy brother, do you see?
See?
Never let's see what?
After a few more minutes, he flicks on the lights, snatches up his bibles.
No ritual about it this time.
Shows him back into his burlap sac.
Now he seems angry, furious, not at me.
It's like he's mad at the sack in his hand
Holds it up to his lips hissing
Just me, huh?
Talk me!
Trying to make me look like a fool!
I don't know what all this is for
He turns, walks out of the apartment
Comes back
About a half hour later
Right
What's going on?
Look, man
I don't know what you're playing at
But you can't be burying stuff here
property magic is going to be all in my case.
It has to learn.
What are you talking about?
I found magic.
It might be the wrong kind.
For the first time since we were kids, his mask fall like fear,
air in his eyes wild, a mind that's really trying to make sense of pieces that don't fit.
And I'm scared too.
More afraid than I've ever been.
Because I've been missing something for a long time.
We are all strange in my family.
I know my brother is odd, he always has been, but that's the closest person to him.
I should have understood that this is not that.
This is different.
He's not okay.
He's not all right.
And I've been blind to it.
Maybe even made myself blind to it.
Like I gave him some help.
I don't know what to do, who to call, but I've got to get him.
some help. The rush of fear in my ears is so loud I can barely hear him.
He tells me that more often now, his magic assumes the form of a man,
that he used to be a handsome man, radiant, loving, but lately sometimes the man arrives covered in scales,
speaking in riddles, cloaked in huge leathery bat wings.
My brother
retrieves his sack
From the buried hiding place outside
Says he wants to start the ritual over
Says he wants to summon the magic forth
Says he wants me to speak with it
That I need to see it for myself
That maybe I could talk to it
For him
Please he says
Brother, thank you need to leave this alone
Instead
He starts placing marbles in a circle
And turns out the lights
His eyes
Focus on something
Something directly in front of us
He asked me again
Desperate pleading
Do I see
Sometimes though
Those signs
They're saying something very different
Than we first suppose
We travel now
To Jammu
India
To meet Rina
And Rina lives in a big
house with their brothers and cousins
But there's no time for playing
Rina's always busy studying.
When night comes, Rina just wants to rest.
But one night, sleep doesn't come very easily.
One day, I had been studying until very late at night,
and I decided that it was time for me to go to bed.
I put my night clothes on, and I sit up on my bed,
and I take out my mala.
A mala is like a rosary with wooden beads on it.
I was praying on my bed with my eyes closed and totally into it.
That was a routine.
I had never wanted to miss my praying for even a single day.
It was something which gave me a lot of peace.
Suddenly, I felt that the bed was shaking slightly.
I thought I was imagining it.
Maybe I was tired and I'm a little dizzy today.
But I was so deeply gone into the prayer
that I did not want to open my eyes.
And suddenly, it just grew.
It felt like a gentle earthquake.
and I'm thinking this is not my imagination.
So I jumped off the bed and I look at it
and I see it actually shaking as though somebody was moving it.
It was moving sideways
and I'm just looking around the room.
Nothing else was moving.
Only my bed was.
That spooked me out.
And after a time, it could have been like 20 seconds.
It suddenly stopped the way it had started, like out of the blue without any warning.
I was very alarmed and I was very scared.
This was a solid antique wood bed and it required a lot of strength to make that shake.
But who could be moving it?
I'm alone in my room.
I wanted to go to my mom's room, but I wanted to go to my mom's room,
but I didn't want to disturb her
because it was really late
I did not want to create a ruckus
so I just sit on the sofa
and stare at the bed
until I was just too sleepy
and I fall asleep
this started happening on a regular basis
I would be sitting on my bed
I would be doing my rosary
and I would feel the bed shaking
gently. After the first few incidents, I could not dismiss it. My bed does seem to have a mind of its own.
I tried talking to my father about it, but he just looked at me and he laughed. And he said,
okay, that's a good story. Just calm down. Maybe I'm just too tired. My mom, she thought that it was
something that was playing on my mind. But she started teaching me new prayers, which did put me at ease,
but the bed did not stop shaking. Everybody thought that it's something that I was imagining.
Around that time, we had some people working for us. We had two cooks. They stayed with us for years,
but they would be like forever complaining about citing somebody walking in the backyard during the night.
When we would ask them, they would say it's a man dressed in all white and he's walking across the backyard and coming from the wall towards the shed.
To the far corner in the left, we had a shed where we kept the,
gardening tools, I started wondering if that was the same spirit that was making my bed shake every night.
I was tired that nobody believed me. So one day I went up to my sister and I told her, hey,
like, could you sleep in my room tonight so that if the bed shakes, you can feel it too.
She was my elder sister and she did not want me to be scared, so she agreed.
So that night
There was a massive storm
brewing outside
And there was a lot of rain
We got into our night clothes
We sat on the bed
And we started chit-chatting about
What was happening in her college
And other stuff
Suddenly the bed starts to move
And I'm looking into her eyes
It's like, okay
This is what I've been talking about
She looks at me with her eyes wide open.
I says, oh my God.
The bed shakes gently at first.
And then it started shaking violently.
We both jumped off the bed.
Suddenly, there was lightning.
We turned and we looked towards the window.
There was this black shadow on my window.
We both screamed.
That came to my mind.
room, looks at us, why are you screaming? What's going on? Both of us were like clutching each other.
And we said, Dad, look outside the window. But when we looked back, there was nothing. There was no
shadow there anymore. So he opened the door and he went out in the veranda and he starts
looking around. Suddenly he starts screaming, thieves, thieves. Me and my sister, we rushed to
the veranda and I looked down and I saw two men dressed in black trying to climb up to my veranda
with the help of the water pipes. It sends a shiver down my spine. My dad yells, thieves, thieves, thieves
and they both fall to the ground and they start running towards the backyard. They ran away.
We couldn't sleep after so much excitement.
So we just stay up and I'm thinking about how we managed to stop the thieves.
It was all because of the bed shaking.
But this time the bed was shaking so much more violently.
Maybe there is a connection, but I couldn't really explain it.
Months later, I was getting ready to sleep.
I closed my eyes and I felt the bed start shaking.
As usual, I just waited for it to stop, but it wouldn't.
And it started shaking even more violently.
I was so scared that I ran to my mom's room.
I knew she was sick, but I didn't care.
I just needed to be with her.
I opened her door and I saw her and immediately I felt something's not right.
My mom is lying on her bed and she has her eyes open but she has her mouth also open.
She just looks as though she's choking.
That sent a shiver down my spine because I'd never seen her like this.
I screamed for my dad, for my brothers.
come, come quickly, come quickly, something's wrong.
Everybody came.
My uncle down the hall, my aunt's, everybody was standing in that room in no time.
They were saying, oh, something's not right.
She's not breathing.
Press on her chest, press her.
No, no, no, call the doctor, get the car out.
My mom gets admitted to the hospital.
My dad stays with her and we all get back home.
I knew she was in good hands, so I go back to my bed.
I started making a connection.
This presence in my room sent me to my mother's room
and helped me raise the alarm on time.
Also, the bed made us spot the thieves.
So it may be a good presence.
The next morning, we call the hospital.
hospital and they tell us that she's doing much better. She would be all right. At this point,
my bed has been shaking for almost a year and a half. I've just started living with it. I've just
started accepting it. So this one day, this sadu came to a house. Sadu is a sage, a monk kind of a person.
He was friends of the family
and he used to visit us at least twice a year.
We were told that he comes from the Himalayas
and most of the times he would be away somewhere
in the hills meditating.
He would wear orange clothes,
loin cloth, a dupatta on top
and he was one of the most loveliest person
that I've ever come across.
We would like offer him food and he would regale us with stories.
This sadu, he also had spiritual powers.
If something was lost in the house, he could tell us exactly where it was located
by just closing his eyes.
So we were like very fascinated by him.
We gather in the main hall and we sit in a circle to talk to him.
I sat close to him.
I thought there would be no better person
to tell me what exactly was happening.
Maybe he could see the presence that I was feeling.
I work up the courage and I say,
I've been feeling my bed shake violently at times
and nobody believes that this is actually happening.
Some of my family members are laughing.
Some of them are serious.
He looked at me
and when he looked at you
he would really look at you.
Then he smiled and says,
okay, take me to your room.
He just looks around, he touches the bed.
Then he went out to the balcony
that looked towards the backyard.
He took a good look and he said,
what's that shed over there?
Take me there.
So we all went downstairs and we took him to the shed where we kept the gardening tools.
And he says, I can feel something here.
He stepped inside, started rummaging through the stuff that was there.
And then he took out something which looked like a commandal.
A commandal, it's an open pot with a handle.
and he took out a tattered mat.
He said,
Who's are these?
Who's put them here?
These objects are special.
And my dad says,
We don't remember putting these things here.
They've been here since forever,
I mean, since the shed was built.
He said, dig.
Dig, there's something down below here.
You need to dig here.
construction workers were called in and they started digging.
My whole family is there, that Sadu is still there,
and while I'm watching these people dig the ground,
I'm hoping to get some answers.
They didn't really have to dig very deep.
They found some kharamas,
wooden sandals which saintly people used to wear.
The sadhu called everyone to gather in the backyard.
He told us that this was the place of a saint who would come and pray here every day,
which continued in his afterlife.
This was a person who had made a lot of prayers during his lifetime
and was on a spiritual higher plane than most people get to.
He had clearly.
named that piece of land as his own, and then we made a shed there where we put all the gardening tools.
So basically we had made this soul very angry.
It was all in his path.
And he pointed towards that wall where the cooks used to say that they saw him.
The sadu said that this saintly figure was a good soul, but when annoyed,
can be a force to reckon with and people have been known to die mysteriously.
You have been saved because this girl praying in her room every day has kept the spirit calm.
Maybe that has pleased him and he has spared your family.
And that's why he helped me and my mom.
When I heard the saddu say this, it all made sense.
now.
I felt a sense
of gratitude towards
this spirit
but my
family is in awe and
they look scared.
They are also asking the saddh
what do we do now?
He said
this is his resting place
so you need to clean this up
and you need to build a shrine
which people
call Darga
We made a small block in the shed and we covered it with a green cloth.
We put the sandals, the bag and the mat and the usual stuff for prayers that we use, the lamp and some oil.
The first night after we had built the shrine, I remember sitting down there lighting the can.
pressing the sandals and asking for forgiveness if we have done anything wrong or annoyed him in any way.
And just doing this over and over and over again.
I go back to my room and then lie down on the bed.
Suddenly, I realize nothing is shaking at all.
I slept undisturbed after that.
Thank you.
you're reading up for sharing your story of Spout.
We are so glad you can sleep through the night now.
That story was scouted by Edithia Matu.
It was scored by Doug Stewart, and it was produced by Eric Janyes.
Walking down the street, people often stop me.
They say, hey, hey, hey, hey, I've got your story.
I was thinking about maybe telling you for the spout.
What do you mean?
thinking about.
What do you mean maybe?
The best thing, the very best thing,
is a spook story from a spook listener.
If you have one we need to hear,
don't just think about it.
Let us know.
Spook at snapjudgment.org.
Spook is brought to you
by the team that must uncover the mystery at once
if the bed starts shaking.
Except, of course, with Mark Ristich,
he'd be surprised
if the bed wasn't shaken.
There's David Kim, Zoe Frigno, and Ford, Eric Yannias,
Taylor DeKott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Creaky,
Lizith Z. Pardue, Adityo Matu, and Lulu Jemima.
The spook theme song is by Pat Massini Miller.
My name is Gunn, Washington.
From the time I was little, I tried to use the force
Well, let's just be honest
I tried to use the force last week
to move objects
to get inside someone else's mind
These are not the droids you're looking for
It hasn't worked yet
But I think I still believe in the force
Well least maybe I believe in a force
Some force holding it all together
And tearing it all apart
Perhaps two forces
I am often of contradictory thoughts.
I don't see why this force should be any different.
I've come to suppose that the force is an amplifier
of what you're already doing, of what is already there,
that when you feel in a groove,
when you feel you are doing what you're supposed to be doing,
walking the path made for you that you made,
you feel the force.
I'm, of course, is the dead.
dark side. It is just as much a part of us as anything else. The shadow has a calling for us
just as natural as our better angels. A choice is to choose which part of ourselves we want to
feed. What do you want to feed? Which of course is just another way of saying, what do you
want to be
think that one reason
I slept with my lightsaber
turned on as a child
was so that I could fight monsters
yes but also
so that I would never
never ever ever ever ever
ever ever
ever never never
