Spooked - Old Hady

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

Jack and his family move to an old farmhouse in the middle of the country, looking for a place to call their own. But they may not be the new owners after all. Thank you, Jack Irons, for sharing your story with Spooked! And thank you, Hady... for taking care of Jack. Produced by Erick Yañez, scouted by Elizabeth Pardue, original score by Nicholas Marks, 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.

Sing a song of sixpence. Never tell a lie. All my many enemies, listen to them cry. I could grant their freedom with this key upon my string, but I'm not the kind of person that likes to do nice things. Listen to spout. I filed for a very long time, Daryl Lennox. Hilarious.

Aerodite, a storyteller's storyteller. On his album Blind Ambition, which you absolutely should listen to, Daryl tells the story of his rapidly diminishing eyesight. His field of vision is shrinking and he's terrified of impending total blindness. He can still see a little and he wants to hold on to the sliver of vision as long as he can. So he searches everywhere for a doctor who will attempt the dangerous surgery to reattach his cornea. And specialists after specialist refuses, warning him away from the operation, telling him it's too dangerous. It's far too dangerous. Until one Canadian doctor finally agrees to perform the procedure.

But he too cautions that this can result in total blindness. And Darrell needs to be prepared for this. Daryl admits that he is not prepared for this. but he schedules the surgery anyway desperate to prolong the last of his sight the operation requires Darrell to be awake and after topical anesthesia is applied to the eye itself the doctor begins the operation

but like all difficult cases their complications or surprises and at one point the laser device the physician is using proves inadequate it. So the doctor decides to revert to one of the oldest technologies there are, a needle and thread. So Darrell's cornea back onto his eye, horrified.

Daryl feels the needle, puncture his eyeball, feels the hiss of thread, even as anesthesia is wearing off. Daryl begs the doctor, stops closing. It's too close the thing. study tells Darrell, listen, this is just going to hurt. Here's the doctor's heavy breathing, the physicality, the push, forcing a needle and thread in and out of his terrified eye. But he also feels the care, just going to hurt, and I'm so sorry.

Instead of screaming, Darrell keeps his head rock still on the operating table, and he takes it again, the needle piercing his eye, until the doctor, exhausted, finally pulls away, leaving Darrell in darkness, fully unsure if the operation is successful, and so he waits. And the amazing news is that it is successful.

Darrell enjoys, truly enjoys a few more years of limited sight before finally his vision slammed shut entirely. Shortly thereafter, Gerald himself passes away, but since hearing him speak about his story, I think about it every single day. Wanting, bravery, the joy, the sharing of his darkest moment and the trust. Trust is just going to hurt, knowing that someone's in our corner. Now, Jack, Jack's a kid from Omaha, Nebraska.

And when he's seven years old, his family decides to move to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. But Jack's excited. He's finally going to get to have his own bedroom. But has never been the safest place for city dwellers. So the first time I saw the house, I couldn't believe the state that it was in. All the windows were boarded up from the inside and the outside. There was no electricity.

The water came from a pump from a well that was down a short hill. I remember the first night actually having a mouse go across my sleeping bag wondering why we would ever move down there. We had electricians and plumbers coming into the house and I could start seeing the charm that the house actually had that my parents had fallen in love with. There was woods, there was hills,

there was a creek that ran through the back part. I was quick to start building tree forts. I was out riding my bike. I tried to hang out with my sister, you know, being an annoying little brother. We'd been living there for about six months.

I was sitting on the floor in the living room, playing with my action figures. My dad was working night shift over the weekend. My mom had gone into the bathroom. A couple of minutes go by,

And all sudden, my mom just screams as if she was being attacked. She flew from the bathroom into the living room. I can hear my sister flying down the stairs. We had all met in the kitchen area right outside the bathroom. My mom doesn't say anything else to me and my sister, but grabs her hands and says, we're leaving. I'm being yanked. Out through the door, the door slamming behind us,

got into the station wagon, opened the door again so the dog could hop in, and we flew down the road all the way to Omaha, an hour away. I'm in the back seat. I'm confused. My sister's asking what's going on. I'm asking what's going on.

My mom, she said, Don't worry. We're going to be at Aunt Carol's house soon. She didn't talk about it until after we came back home that following Monday, and my dad was home. I heard them discussing in very low tones about what had happened. My dad was kind of upset that we just left the house. But my mom was like, there was another person in the house. she had gone into the bathroom to wash her hands

and when she looked up into the mirror she saw an older man standing directly behind her staring at her directly into the mirror their eyes met and she turned and when she didn't see anything behind her it scared the crap out of her

and she knew that she wanted to get out of that house that very instant. My dad goes, that's impossible. We live out in the middle of the country. My mom answered him, I know what I saw. I'm scared.

At first, I was thinking that it was actually a real person that could have been in the house. But we would have heard the sound of someone opening the door. Someone would have had to walk past me in the living room to get to the bathroom. I'm thinking to myself, is this a ghost? Some time had passed, it might have been a couple weeks.

This was close to about 11 o'clock at night. I'm laying in my bed, trying to go to sleep. When I start to hear the sound of someone coming up the stairs, everyone's in their own bedroom. So I thought it was just the house creaking, but it was a steady pace of one foot each step. It was so loud that my dad yelled to me and said, Get back into bed.

And I replied, I'm laying in bed, dad. My dad tells my sister, what are you doing up? And she goes, I haven't gotten up. I'm still in bed. And it got quiet. Then we hear the footsteps start again.

My dad goes, Hattie, it's getting late. We need to go to sleep. And the footsteps stopped. When my dad said, Hattie, my mind is racing. It was like a puzzle piece being put into place. The previous tenant, his name was Hattie Schaefer. From everything that I heard,

Hattie lived in this area his entire life. And his father actually built that house. He was well known in the area for always going around town, driving on his tractor. He was always there for his neighbors and was always willing to help. But he preferred pretty much to keep to himself and just kind of tend to his own house. As Haddy got older, he didn't get around as much. And whether it was old age or dementia, he became kind of a recluse. and he had boarded up and closed off every single room except for the kitchen.

And that's where he died. When my dad said his name out loud, he was confirming that Haddy was the ghost that my mom had seen in the mirror. All this stuff is just running through my mind. And I'm laying there, looking up at my ceiling, wondering if that thing was going to start coming into my room. After we heard the sound of the footsteps, I was a lot more keenly aware to things that were out of the norm. We would always hear sounds coming out of that kitchen area at least once a week.

There would be creaking sounds as if someone was walking across the old boards. It sounds like somebody was hammering sometimes. and we could sometimes see what looked like a shadow passing from one room to the other, even though all four of us were in the living room. At this point, we had started giving a name to what was going on, Hattie. But I was still scared. Is this thing going to be coming after us?

Is this thing going to get more and more angry that we're living in his house, taken over a space. Our very first holiday at the house was the 4th of July. We were really surprised that this small town had a huge 4th of July celebration. They decided to start

lighten off the fireworks a little bit earlier because there was a massive storm coming in. I'm watching the flashes of blue and red and yellow bursting in the sky and behind the burst of fireworks our crash Lacking lines of lightning flashing along with the explosions.

And it went from a light drizzle to a heavy downpour in a matter of seconds. Everyone started running to their cars. We hopped into the station wagon. My mom quickly got us down the road, turned the corner, and the pavement turned into a gravel road. Windshield wipers are flashing back and forth, My mom's going too fast, and I'm sitting in the back, and I can feel the back end of the car starting to sway. We were sliding in mud, and we were heading directly towards the dark ditch.

My sister is yelling at my mom to slow down, but it was already too late. Next thing I know, we were in the ditch. We were stuck. I was scared. because there's no street lights. It's completely black. My mom turned to me and my sister and said, we can't stay in this car.

I know I saw a light to a farmhouse that's about a quarter mile away. We're going to try to get there as fast as we can. We grab my mom's hand. The lightning's flashing, the rain's coming down. I can see my sister's face in the flashes. was panicked, we're about 100 feet from the car, and although I could clearly hear the rain hitting all around us, I realized that there was no rain hitting us. In the next flash, I looked

over at my mom and my sister, and I realized that there's no rain hitting them at all. I'm about to say something when my sister, she goes, Mom, why isn't it raining on us? Another flash of lightning We all look up, and it was as if there was a clear dome above our head. As if there was a large umbrella above us blocking the rain. I was getting goosebumps. My mom said, don't say anything, look down, just keep walking and walk faster. From that point until about the last 50 yards to the farmhouse that we, walked to, it never rained on us.

We knocked on the door. It wasn't long until they answered. This farmer quickly went out, started getting his tractor ready. My mom went with the farmer. He helped her pull it out of the ditch. Me and my sister climbed in and we got home safely. But it just kept running through my mind. What the hell was happening?

why weren't we getting wet? So I went to my older sister and she was in her room and I asked her, I'm like, did you see what I saw? She was still really shaken by what it occurred. She says,

well, obviously there's something that was looking out for us. I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, you know, Hattie. I'm like, do you think that was Hattie? She goes, I don't know what else it could be.

And I was thinking myself, this ghost has been scaring us. Why would this ghost turn around and want to start helping us? Maybe he wasn't there to hurt us. He was there just watching us. At this point, I wasn't scared of Hattie. I was kind of actually getting used to having him around. And it was kind of a cool feeling being a kid knowing that

You know, you had maybe a friendly ghost in your house. Matt was my best friend, and I had mentioned to him about Hattie. Like, oh, man, you come over and stay at my house, you're going to hear the footsteps. But, of course, you know, when your friends come over to stay, nothing happens. I could tell that he didn't believe me because, I mean, who would? We'd probably lived in the house at this point for about two years. My friend Matt and his brother came over. We were hanging out for the day.

We had gone to my fort in the woods. We played action figures. This was probably about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. And it was a hot summer day. Across the street from our house was another old farmhouse. Now our farmhouse was bad when we moved in. This house was even worse. It was crumbling.

We used the chimney in the windows as target practice when we're shooting guns. And being dumb kids, we decided it'd be fun to break into this old abandoned farmhouse. Then we realized, hey, on the side of the house is an old storm cellar door, two wood doors that close inwards on the ground. So the three of us use all of our strength and we managed to pry open one of these doors. We can see the steps going down into the darkness. The stairs are crumbling as we're walking. Dust is swirling in the air.

Spider webs everywhere. The basement has nothing in it except for old moldy chairs. Then we discover that there's a flight of space. stairs that leads up to the next floor. As we go up, we decide, hey, let's split up and see what's in each of these rooms. We get to the top, I head towards the right.

I'm looking around. I could see faded curtains that had collapsed the remnants of the bed. I hear Matt talking in the other room. There's nothing here. Let's get out of here. I was about to say something. when every single door in the house on the first and second floor all slammed shut. It scared the crap out of us.

We all turned and bolted down the stairs to the first floor. We flew through the living room down into the dark cellar back out through the cellar door. We were outside in a matter of seconds. We're panning, covered with dust and spider webs looking at each other. And before we even say another word, the entire floor of the second floor completely collapses. We see it through the windows. Those two floors go smashing into the attic. Huge rolling cloud of dust comes shooting out of the solid.

door. And I look around and I start to realize it was Hattie. This is the same ghost that had protected me, my sister, my mom. Matt turns to me and goes, was that Hattie? I go, yep, that was Hattie. And he just saved our lives. The only way that he could do it was by scaring us out of there. After that, Matt and Mitch completely believed every store I had told them about Haddy. Haddy, when he was alive, he was a good nature soul. Maybe when he saw these city folk trying to make it in the country, he kind of took it upon himself to, you know, watch out for these dumb people who didn't know better.

I'm pretty sure that he saw that and was like, I need to keep an eye out on this idiot. He's going to need some help. But the sad thing about it is that that was the last time that I had any interaction. with Hattie. We never had a swaying light. We never had a sound of a footstep. He was gone. Maybe Hattie had stuck around that long

until he fulfilled his purpose of watching after me. Jack Irons for sharing your story with Spooked and thank you Hattie for taking care, Little Jack. The story was scouted by Elizabeth D. Pardue. scored by Nicholas Mars and it was produced by Eric Yanez. Now then, in the late 1970s,

Maryland Fort Mead, a secret military project was started to investigate the potential for psychic phenomena used for military purposes. It was called the Stargate Project. It largely involved remote viewing the ability to psychically see events, to see sites, information from a great distance, millions of taxpayer dollars were spent. According to some sources, related projects continued as late as 2017.

Some are maybe still active. A number of those involved claimed remarkable feats. Other stories around the project remained top secret classified, but here's the thing. Just because one aspect might be locked away, that doesn't mean that if you know something, that you can't tell me about it. Tell us, and I have learned that spooksters know stuff.

Classified, backdoor, clandestine, knowledge holders, if you know something real about this world, if you have a story to relate, please let me know. Spooked at snapjudgment.org. I promise to only share it with the best person's on The planet's spooked nation. Spooked at snapjudgment.org. Spooked is brought to you.

A team that can hold its breath longer than anyone you've ever met. Except for Mark Ristich. We had to pull him out of the water. That's not holding your breath. That's just being stubborn. There's David Kim. Zoe Frignault, Ann Ford, Eric Yanez,

Taylor DeKat, Merse of Dodge, Miles Lassie, Yari Bundy, Doug Stewart, Paulina Creaky, Lizzie Pardue, Adityamatu, Lulu Jemima. The spook theme song is by Pat Macedia Miller. My name is Gunn, Washington. And we know that people, places, things are never all good.

We're all bad. We can get right to the edge for sure, but even that perfect person has a dark secret. And the monster always has. as a tiny bit of humanity left. At least I like to imagine, there's no such thing as the binary. All this or all that,

we know from our own lives. Still, we impose this sense of either or on the shadowlands. Black, white, angels, demons, good, evil. Why would we suppose that it's simpler there than here? Why we suppose there are more answers instead of more questions? Why imagine an end instead of one more step on the road? Nothing, nothing suggests less complexity, less depth, less nuance, which makes it all the more important to hold fast to your own North Star,

which, for me and mine, is a mantra. we repeat every single night.