Spooked - Old Church Road

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Chantal’s dad insists the house is fine. Chantal’s mom says the place is haunted and gives her the creeps. Chantal doesn’t want to pick sides, but she knows her mom is onto something. This episode contains mention of suicide and massacres, sensitive listeners please be advised. Thank you, Chantal, for sharing your story with us! Produced by Zoë Ferrigno, original score by Dakim, 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.

Ring around the rosy, rap'n' nice and cozy, tighter, tighter, so not. Sound. Listen to spooked. Stay tuned. Okay, so, first day, freshman year of the university. And I'm moving into the dorms, right? Co-Ed dorms. Our side is for the fellas.

But right through that big blue door, my resident counselor explains that that is where the To get acquainted with our floor mates, there's a mixer, a party, perfect. And there, Spike Glass is a punch. I get to talking to two ladies who could easily pass for sisters cute. Super cute, cheerleader, cute, bubbly. The way they speak, I think they've known each other for years, but it turns out they had just met. Assigned as roommates to the mysterious campus matching computer.

I focus on the one of the one of the ones. I'm the one closest to me, Kelly. Throw all that deep country, Michigan charm at her. And over the next few days, next few weeks, we become friends. I don't really want to be just friends, but that's all right. I need friends, too. And almost every time I see Kelly,

I see her roommate as well, smiling, joking, laugh, and teasing. I like them both, and I am envy of my floor every time they stop by and weeks go by it takes me a while it takes me a while because I'm not to say it

if it's appropriate for me to say it but one day walking Kelly to her class I just ask her if she's all right what do you mean it just seems like you're losing a lot of weight

I'm fine we don't say anything else just walk to class I leave it alone I try to leave it alone later I ask her roommate beautiful angelic face turns instantly up to me

concerned I've been so worried she looks terrible right I'm relieved that someone else's seen this what should we do don't worry she says

I'm going to talk to her it's better she hears this from a girlfriend cool cool okay things they don't get better days go by and things

they get worse and then one day I get a knock on my door for my buddy dude that Kelly girl her parents are and they're pulling her out of school taking her to a clinic or something

she's leaving right now to help her pack to say goodbye to let her know that I care about her I see her in the hallway her roommate standing right behind her holding a cardboard box and she looks skeletal, wraith like shrunken, it's shocking,

getting help. And if you need, I know what you've been saying about me. What you told her the first day, that I was your cherry case? How you think I'm so pathetic? And you think my roommate wouldn't tell me what you say about me?

You don't think that hurts. The pastor then. She's watching the very best thing that she's ever seen. My name is from Washington. Spook stars. Before we get started, understand this story references dark things, including suicide and massacres. Because some people, they know something is off before they even step in the front door. But they move it anyway.

I'm not going to pretend to understand these people, but I'm not going to pretend to understand these people, but I'm going to hear him out. Chantal was seven when her family moved into their new home, and it became clear pretty quickly that there was something off about this house. Eventually, Chantel noticed that her parents had very different ways of dealing with this. My dad would be like, what are you talking about? The house is just fine. And my mom was like, there's something in here.

At first, before they even moved in, her parents both ignored the clues, even when they were glaringly obvious. We hired this contractor from New York. He used to call us every day and say, hey, like, guess what we found today? You know, we found all of these fireplaces that were covered up. And guess what we found today? We found a whole room today.

You know, this room has beautiful columns in it. And it was covered up by drywall. And we don't understand why. It's a complete mystery towards the end of it. The end of the remodel was. while they were painting the house. He said, you know, something kind of strange happened today. We were staying really late to paint the house,

and one of my workers fell off a ladder in the main entry hall, which had an extremely high ceiling. And he fell off the ladder and broke his leg in like three places. My guys have never fallen off a ladder before, and when I talked to my guys said he was pushed off the ladder. He was painting the ceiling, and all of a sudden he said he felt a shove into the side of his rib cage and fell backward off of the ladder. But there was no way he could be pushed. There was no one near him, and he was literally alone in that house at the time.

So it doesn't make any sense, but, you know, no worries. We just wanted to let you know that this guy broke his leg, but we're going to get the job done. So in the master bathroom, there was a shower, and the ceiling in the shower was cracked. They were trying to paint that ceiling in that bathroom, and it kept cracking. Like, they would give it a coat of paint, and then they would come back the next day after the paint would dry, give it another coat. And then the next day they would come, and it would be cracked in the same way, in the same exact way. The man that was working on the house called my father and said, you know, we can't fix the ceiling. it just keeps cracking and there's no reason for it.

He's like the floor is even. I don't understand. And my dad was like, just forget about it. I don't think we can afford to give it more paint. Nothing was going to stop them because they needed the house so bad to work because they had put everything in on it. Chantal's family went ahead and moved into the house. Her parents, of course, took the master bedroom.

The one with that cracked ceiling. in the bathroom. My mom, she could smell the smell in that room that was sweet, like a sweet woman smell. She describes it as kind of herbal, but sweet, like licorice and lavender. It was the only room in the house that had a smell like this, and it stayed and stayed, and it would not leave this smell no matter what they did. The house was huge, and there were a lot of bedrooms for Chantal and her older sister to choose from. But Chantal got kind of a bad vibe from each one.

She ended up picking the one that scared her the least. The first night that I slept in that room, I sat in the dark with my eyes open for a long time because I was freaked out. I sat there looking at all the shadows, you know, trying to memorize, okay, this is going to be here and this is going to be here. Just in case I saw a shadow that was random.

you know, and I would be like confirmed that something was in here with me. But that room scared the crap out of me. I would go into my sister's room. She was like 10 years older than me, and she would always let me sleep with her. It was just so nice of her. I mean, this was the biggest house that we had ever lived in, and I think it was the biggest house that I'd ever been inside of at that point of my life. Every time I would walk up the stairs, I would run.

because I thought something was following me all the time. When you were running up the stairs, it felt like something was lurking behind you that was not a good presence at all. So there's a back staircase. It's a servant quarter staircase. It's super thin. And there was a shortcut down the stairs to the kitchen

by using the servant quarter stairs. And I walked down those back stairs and I smelled this putrid smell. And it made my stomach hurt after smelling it. It was like it stayed in your nostrils. And of course, it wasn't every single time you walked up and down the stairs, but it happened a lot.

And it felt like you had passed through something. Those stairs were always, always cold. It was like a wush, you know, but there was no wind. And so I told, you know, my mom, like, it stinks back there. So she started putting potpourri, little bags of poppari, down each, like, stair to make it try to smell better in there, but it wouldn't help. It never helped. You think you're crazy because you're a child amongst adults, you know, and you think that I don't want to complain or I don't want to say anything because I don't want to sound like a wimp. I just want to be easy for them, you know. And so I wouldn't bring up, you know, how this place scared me so bad.

Shantal was just a kid, and she didn't want to upset anyone, especially her parents. She didn't want to rock the boat by bringing up anything about the house. I think it was maybe a month and a half after we moved in and we're having dinner together, and my dad is there. And my mom says to all of us, you know, have any of you felt anything like weird or strange? You know, how do you guys like the house? And we're all like, fine, you know, because nobody wants to admit it. And she goes, you don't feel that way, really, Chantal?

And I was like, actually, I'm a little scared in my room, mom. But, you know, otherwise it's okay. She goes, I feel, I feel kind of weird. And, you know, I feel kind of like, like there's something dark in here. My dad, you know, it's like, house is solid. Like, you know, look at this place. beautiful. My dad was a definite skeptic. He did not believe in aliens or ghosts or anything paranormal. My dad grew up in an orphanage and he was very tough. He believed in what he

could see. It did not get brought up again because my dad shunned it. So there was a night that my dad was out of town and my sister was not there. My mom and I were watching a current affair. on TV in my parents' room. And my mom said to me, you know, I think we're protected in this room. And I said, yeah, I think so too. You know, this room feels better than the rest of the house, like lighter.

My parents had a really high bed. I would play under their bed all the time. I had a playroom that was supposed to be the place that I was supposed to play in, but I would never enter it. I would play underneath my mom's bed or outside. Those were the two places that I felt safe or free, free from like that heavy presence. My mom said, yeah, I agree.

She goes, I think it's a woman. It's a woman's scent, don't you? Do you feel it's a woman? And I said, yeah, I think it is a woman. and, you know, because it just felt lighter and feminine in that room versus the rest of the house, which was dark and depressing. When you would get in that room, you would just, like, exhale, you know, from, like, oh, relieved. Chantal could talk to her mom about the house, but she never talked to her dad.

He'd made it clear that he didn't want to go there. My dad came home from work one night. He had been on a business trip from London. and it was late at night and my sister and I were sleeping in the same bed and my mom was sleeping in the master bedroom. And I remember my dad opening the door,

I heard him loudly step in and he clicked on the light and said, get up. And it was like shock. Like you wake up and you have that shiver like you're stunned and you wake up and you're like, what I'm up? Like, what's going on? And my father said, we're going in our room.

You're going to sleep in our room. It scared me because he was obviously frightened of something. I was awake now, like really awake. I immediately wanted to question him, but the look on his face was so determined to get us

into his room and for everything to be okay and not to talk about it. So we get up out of bed, go into my parents' room. I was so happy to be in that room and to be with my parents and have everybody in that one room. It felt safer to be in there than I was in the other bedroom. So I'm excited for the sleepover now.

And I like, step my eyes and just fell asleep. Later, Chantel's dad told her what happened in the house that night. At first, it had been like any other homecoming after one of his work trips. He'd gotten in late after everyone else was already asleep, and he was hungry after a long flight. So we went into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. So he opens up the fridge and turns us back to the fridge while leaving the fridge door open.

And he's making a sandwich, and behind him, he hears the condomage shaking. When he turns around, the fridge door is closed. And so he thinks nothing of that, right? He just continues to make his sandwich. So I turn back around and the fridge is open. And he hears the condomin shaking again. And he turns around and the fridge is again closed.

So he opens the fridge again and he puts the manis away, closes the fridge. And then he turns back around and he's closing up his sandwich and he grabs a plate from the cabinet above him. And all of a sudden he feels like a cold wind, you know, on his back, and he hears the condiment shaking again. And so he turns around this time more slowly. And then the fridge is wide open. And he's like, what?

Like, so he just closes the fridge again. And then he says something like, whoever that is pranking me, stop it. and no one replies. And so he puts the sandwich on the plate, and he hears the condiments again. So he turns to the right-hand side and looks behind his shoulder, and the fridge just goes nuts going open-closing, open-closing, open-closing, open-closing, open-closing. And the condiments are just shaking and rattling.

And my dad, his mouth drops open, and then the lights go out. All of the lights. And my dad is in complete darkness. And he's like, okay, like he runs to get a flashlight in that spare laundry room right off of the kitchen. And so he gets the flashlight, turns it on right away, peaks around the corner with the flashlight and then sees nothing, you know, and then goes into the kitchen and shines the flashlight at the fridge. And he moves the flashlight upwards, and all of a sudden you see someone looking at him like a face. And he, like, jumps and backs up, and he's like, who, you know, like, get out of this house.

And he says that this person had a, was like a Paul Revere type, like hat on one of those old, like, 17th century hats. and like a like a ruffled cravat scarf and then long like trench coat and boots and he can see right through this thing and this thing this person is this man is looking at him and he goes I said get the hell out of this house and this this man smiles like this all this awful smile, just evil, and with like no teeth, and then points upwards. And my dad goes right up to him and he said, I said, get out. And this thing, this man just disappears, just, my dad said it was like a mist, just sort of like into the floor and just gone.

And so my dad goes towards the basement to replace the fuse. But he's like kind of shaking a little bit, like if am I going to see anything down there? But he goes right to the fuse box and puts in the fuse and the lights turn on again. He starts thinking like, why on earth was he pointing upwards? And he was like, my God, he was like, the kids. My sister and I were sleeping in the bed right about the kitchen. So my dad runs. Now he breaks into a sprint and he runs up the servant quarter stair.

opens the door. Of course, we're sleeping, so it's black in the room. And he looks on the light, and he can see that the comforter that my sister and I slept with is across the room against a wall. And he can also see that my sister and I, like, that the sheet is coming off of us. He, like, being pulled. That's when Chantal's dad woke her and her sister up and brought them into his room. So now the family had a face to put with the bad feeling in the house.

But they still had questions about the man Chantal's dad saw, who he was, and why he was there. After that, my dad was not the same about the house. He becomes really dark in a macabre sort of way. He starts to visit graveyards. He would be driving in, he'd be like, let's just pull into this cemetery. Let's just look at the graveyard, you know. There was a graveyard on the street that we lived on. He often would go there even alone.

There was a certain row in the back. They were so old that you can barely make out the markings, but it was like they had a star on them and said, like, fought or saved. My dad would even bring, like, a little brush and brush it off, like, try to see the writing. I think that he was trying to find out if like a military person had lived in the house or if a war was fought on the street

he did believe that the person was military due to the coat he said that the coat was like something he had seen in history books he was like some graves include poetry and he memorized this poem strangers stop and cast an eye

as you are now so once was a As I am now, so shall you be. Fear not death and follow me. My dad would say that at the dinner table, I mean, this was totally uncharacteristic of him. My dad was a hockey player. He was a pro hockey player at one time. He was very tough.

He was like, I'm going to find out history about this place. Chantal's dad also started going to the library a lot. During his research, he came across something terrible that historians believe took place in the area back in the 1600s. A group of European colonists had formed a militia, and they ambushed an indigenous tribe that was living nearby. They murdered hundreds of people. A couple of them, the men that had done this horrible, inconceivable act, had perished. Those men were buried in the back of an old church. That's what it said, old church.

The street we lived on was called Old Church Road. After Chantal's dad pieced all of this together, he was convinced that the man he'd seen that night, in the Paul Revere hat with the evil grin, was the ghost of one of these men. But that was only half of the mystery. There was still that sweet smell in the master bedroom and the sensation that Chantal's mother talked about,

that someone was looking after them. It was a weekend. had one of those plastic balls you get at Target that are in that big bin. I was bouncing it around, and I saw at the end of the driveway a car, which was really unusual for people to park on the side of this street. It was a red Mercedes, and it had dark windows, tinted windows, and you couldn't see the person inside. And my parents always warned me about people in cars that were staring at you. So I ran inside saying, you know, dad, I think there's a pervert outside. He got a baseball bat. He didn't even say anything. Ran out of the house and got in front of this car with a baseball bat

and was yelling. And the window opens just a little crack. And it's a really old man. And this man says, please, like, sir, I didn't mean to scare your daughter. I used to live in this house in the 60s with my wife and my four daughters. And my dad immediately put the back down and was like, you're kidding me. He was like, we've redone this whole house and we don't know any history about it. We'd love for you to come in and we want to just show you, you know, what we've done. And the man, Mr. Hall, gets out of his car. I can see he's just a really tall man, very skinny. He looked just sad walking into this house.

Chantel's parents started showing Mr. Hall around the house, pointing out all of the renovations they'd made. Mr. Hall was nodding and listening, but he was quiet. We had kept the door of the master bedroom closed, so we opened the door to the master bedroom, and Mr. Hall turned and looked at me and then said something to himself that I couldn't understand at first. He, like, whispered it. He said, it still smells like her. And he said it a little bit louder. The second time, he's like, it still smells like her.

And he turned around on heel and, like, hobbled out of that room quickly, very quickly. And my dad turns around, he follows Mr. Hall. And he says, what's wrong? And Mr. Hall was like, got to go, must, must go. and then he gets in his red Mercedes and my dad is at his window saying smells like who and Mr. Hall just leaves

doesn't come back my dad after Mr. Hall had left was really now intensely curious about the history of this house but now he had a name so my dad went to the library and said I want everything that you have on Hall as a last name

and our address and he came home and he said, I found something on the house. And my mom said, you know, well, what did you find? What happened? And he was like, well, it turns out that Mr. Hall's wife had committed suicide in the master bathroom of this house. It was like, she hung herself from that showerhead and that cracked ceiling. That's why it's cracked. It's from her body weight.

And he said, there was something else in the article. said that Mrs. Hall had no history of mental illness, but experienced mental illness once she had moved into the home. Chantal's mother was horrified. She wondered if Mrs. Hall had been affected by the darkness in the house. If she had seen the same Paul Revere ghost that Chantal's dad had seen, if she was afraid.

My mom was like, Baba, I think we need to move out now. There was no way my mom wanted to stay in that house with the history of it. She had had enough. My father was so dark, and she could tell that it was affecting me as well. She really wants to get the hell out of there. And so my parents put the house up for sale. We moved into a hotel like two weeks later.

I always thought about that house. I told my friends about that house. I thought about that house a lot. I was like, I bet you money. Like nobody's lived in that house for more than a couple of years. So as soon as Zillow came out, I was looking for an apartment. I looked up that house and I could see it on Google Earth. And I was just like, there it is.

And I was totally right. That house keeps selling pretty quickly. Thank you, Chantal, for sharing your story with the spout. Chantal is a listener who reached out to tell her spooky tale when we're so grateful she did. The original score was by Da Kim. That story was produced by Zoe Frigna. The circle is complete.

Season 5, we walked this dark path together. We'll exit separately. That's why I need you. Right now, your personal story where you touched a force, a power, a being that was not supposed to be there, was there just the same, where you had a relationship with the mystery. Send us your story.

It's spooked. SnapJgment.org There is nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener. Spooked at snapjudgment.org And you know the best way to look awesome until next season?

It's by sporting spook gear. Head on over to snapjudgment.org slash shop to get that spooked t-shirt of your dreams. Let folks know you rep the dark side. Snapjudgment.org slash shop. And if you like your storytion,

in the bright light of day, subscribe to the amazing Snap Judgment podcast because it might just change your life. And I am so proud. So proud of this team, season five of Spoop was brought to you by folk that touched an ancient talesman with their bare hands

to bring you the stories that you need to hear. Except, of course, for Mark Ristich. Mark always brought tongues. Anna Sussman is the magic glue. Our chief spookster is the lines Smith, Chris, the story exorcist's handbrae, Annie, spelled by the new end. Lorin, the music

whisperer in music. Beatmaster Leon Morimoto, resident wizard Renzo, Tudorio. Tail. The sage ducaut has wings. Marissa, the soul wrangler Dodge. The necromancer Aaliyah Yates sees dead people.

Greta Weber does not need to read your palms. Jacob, Magic Keyes, Winick, the diviner of Tales, Lost and found son of Con. Tiffany, the clairvoyant Delisa. Our blood maid is Anne Ford. Fernando Hernandez walks through walls only he can see.

Doug. The swamp monster steward flow widely, placates the dark spirits and we are so glad she does. The spook theme song is by Pat McCabe Miller. My name is in Washington. Yes. You will hear screaming coming from the dark forest, you will. The house will tremble as if wretching itself apart even as the door slammed and the cutlery fly from the cabinets.

Remember, remember, don't make their job any easier than it already is. Never, never, ever.