Spooked - Opal

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

Jessica keeps seeing her least favorite great aunt, Opal. She keeps telling her grandma, make Opal leave me alone. But Jessica’s grandma can’t do anything… because Opal’s been dead for weeks. Thank you, Jessica, for sharing your story with Spooked! Produced by Greta Weber, original score by Clay Xavier, 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.

Cask of whiskey, pints of rye, loves his cocktails super dry. Rum and lemon flask of gin, but the splash of water did him in. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. You're listening to Spoot. Stay. My first memory, my very first memory in life, is witness to a murder. Someone I love very, very, very much. aimed the barrel of a gun at someone else I loved very, very, very much.

I wanted to tell myself the story of that day. Still too raw. I was still too close. Instead, I'll tell you that, abandoning the home, my grandparents' place, our family homestead in Detroit City, the place where it happened, leaving, was not an option my grandmother was willing to consider. That was where we gathered For birthdays, Saturdays, holidays,

summer days, my aunties, uncles, cousins, my childhood, my walking and breathing, laughing and sleeping, I played monopoly next to an invisible stain. Listen for the ice cream truck to pass by

while leaning my head against that spot. Practice dance moves in the mirror next to that spot. echo, the ghost, the hurt, that all of us, no place is any different than any other place. When some Washington, spook starts. When Jessica was just six days old, she was sent from her place to go live with her grandparents and their place. They raised her until she was 12 years old, and in that time, Jessica's grandparents,

they took care of her Aunt Opel. Now, this Opel was the kind of nice old lady who baked your cookies and tells you. Your stories about how life used to be. No. No. I let Jessica take it from here. So, Opel was my grandmother's aunt. She was a divorcee.

You know, that was very taboo in her time. She never got remarried. She never had any children. And my grandparents took care of her. She was very thin. And she was fairly tall. And I remember how she styled her hair. I mean, of course, typically elderly women have like that,

what they call it, cute-tip hairstyle as like the permed white hair on top. If I went to her place, she would have me just sit in a chair in the kitchen and not touch anything. Sit there, don't talk. And then she'd go in a different room and, you know, deal with my grandfather or whatever. She just didn't even want to be around me. I knew enough to be a little intimidated by her, so I stayed on the stool and did what I was told. She passed away when I was about seven. A couple days later, of course, when went to the funeral. and I remember being unbelievably uncomfortable in the graveyard.

It was just an incredibly uneasy feeling for me. The feeling was ominous. I wasn't scared of death. I didn't even really understand it. So there was really no catalyst for me to be feeling like that. I was surrounded by family. It's broad daylight. You know, it's nice to sunny outside.

There was really no reason for me to feel really uncomfortable and scared like I did. And I couldn't explain it at the time, and I didn't understand it in that moment. So about two to three weeks after Opel passed away, I'm sitting in my room, I'm playing with my Barbies, and I'm like reenacting things I've seen on soap operas that my grandmother watches. And I'm like taking the Barbie's clothes off and they're rubbing on each other. And I knew I was doing something naughty, so I would shut my bedroom door. They're having a great time on the Barbie yacht in my room. And all of a sudden I hear Opel's voice behind me. She was like, oh, you disgusting child.

She said it so angrily, and I turned around, and there she was. Full apparition. And I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, wait, you're supposed to be, you're dead. Like, you're not supposed to be here. She didn't look alive anymore. She looked like she was dead. She was, like, ultra, ultra pale. And she had these kind of, like, dark circles in her eyes.

And she comes over and she grabs my arm and she digs her nails into me. And I let out a scream, but she just faded away suddenly. I found my grandmother and I told her that I had seen Opal. Their reaction was like, okay, this is part of the grief process. Sometimes when somebody has passed away, we think we're seeing them out of the corner of our eye or something. Or our mind starts playing tricks on us because we're so sick. and this and that. And I'm listening to this and I'm like, I'm not actually sad. I was just playing with my Barbies and like mine in my business. I'm not thinking about Opel when this happens.

So I see Opel a few more times. And each time she does the same thing, she's physically hurting me. She's scratching me. I was terrified. Now I was terrified to be in my room. I didn't even want to go in there. And I was told I needed to go in there because it was my room. I needed to sleep in my bed and things like that. And I would find myself being awake half the night because I was so scared to go to sleep. And I used to like leave my TV on and watch I Love Lucy on my little TV to help me get through the terror of what I was experiencing. One time in particular, I'm laying in my bed and she grabs my arm again. I kind of rustle my arm away from her.

And then she grabbed my face. And she took her thumbs and she pushed them. into my eyelids, and she dug her fingernails into my eyelids in the corners. And I let out this scream, and I wrestle away from her again and trying to escape. But she faded away within seconds. And I run out, and I go to my grandparents. I'm freaking out. I'm screaming and crying.

I'm hysterical. She's attacking me. I'm just beyond. I didn't know how to explain it. I mean, I had told them a few times that this had happened, and they just kind of blew it off. And grandfather was kind of annoyed with the whole thing because he thought, I was just making it up or I was doing it myself somehow. And my grandmother finally was like, look at this.

Like, well, tell me how she's doing that because her little hand is so small. The nail marks were too big for my nails. My nails are really small. Also, how did I make this scratch thing on my eyelids? And my grandparents knew I was not a self-harming child. I was a totally normal, happy child except for these incidents. And my grandmother said, that's it. she's going to sleep in my room with me from here on out.

There's something really wrong. Whether they fully accepted it or not, they knew there was something very, very, very wrong. I don't think they knew how to process it themselves. So my grandfather agreed to go sleep in a totally different bedroom, and I slept in bed with my grandma. And after that happened, after my grandmother moved me in her room, I didn't see Opel ever again.

She was gone. But the damage was done. Now I was scared. I didn't understand why this had happened. I was very, very confused. I can't tell anybody what's happening to me. Opal, she was not a good person in life, and I think she was a bad person in death. It's that simple.

She took that anger and distaste for children right into the afterlife. And whose house did she come to? She came to my grandparents' house after death because they were the ones that always took care of her. and she came to be with them, at least for a while. And while she was there, decided to harass me. That is how I started to kind of process it slowly over time. And when I was about nine, maybe, my grandfather bought this great big trampoline and put it in the backyard. So the very first time that I was jumping on my trampoline at night right before dusk,

I'm jumping away, I'm flipping, I'm doing all kinds of stuff. I see this man appear and he appears back by a shed 50 feet away. I can see him very clearly. I can see him just like I can see anybody else. And he has this really concerned expression on his face. Like his eyes are really intent on me. His eyebrows were kind of like furrowed, like very, very concerned and very nervous. And he had his hands in his pockets.

And he starts to walk towards me just one step at a time. time. It's really slow. And one of his legs is like, something's wrong with it. It's like he can't bend it or something. It's perfectly straight. So he takes one step and it kind of turns his whole body because he takes a step. And then he drags the other leg up to him. You have these kind of baggy pants and he had a thin gold chain that hung out of his pocket. Every time he take a step, I would see it swing. Once he got a little too close, I jumped off the trampoline and I run to the sliding door where you go into the house to get away from him. I knew he was a spirit. There's definitely like an energy change in the air when something's around. The main sense I had was that I was somewhere he didn't like. This was apparently after dusk, his backyard, I guess.

It was his area and he didn't want me there. And that's what I felt. I felt like he didn't want me back there. I saw him literally, always at the same time, I would always see him at dusk out there when I was jumping on the trampoline. He never said a word, never said a word to me. He would just walk towards me really slow with his hands in his pockets. And I saw him so many times. I didn't tell my grandparents right away anything because I thought, you know, I just didn't know that they were going to believe me.

One day, I ran to the house and I, I would run like a bat out of hell. I run to the sliding doors and I opened them. And my grandma was like, God, like, why do you do that? Why do you always run to the sliding doors like that? She was like, what's going on? Like, what's really happening? And I was like, no, I don't want to tell you.

I don't want to tell you. And she was like, well, you can tell me. You know, I'm not your grandfather. I'm not your grandfather. You can tell me. And I told her, I said, okay, well, at dusk, you know, every night, if I'm out there on that trampoline, I see this man up here. And this is what he looks like.

He has this dark hair and these blue eyes and he has this facial expression. He has this chain in his pocket. He has this walk and so many different things about him. And she just like listened super intently until I was done. And after I was done, she got angry. And she was like, if this is a joke, this isn't funny. It's not okay. She was very upset and she walked away from me.

And then I felt, I felt embarrassed. Did I hurt her feelings? Did I upset her? That wasn't what I wanted, you know, and you don't understand why. It's a very confusing moment to be in. I definitely thought there might be something wrong with me. Evidently wasn't normal. I know that.

So I definitely knew there was something up with me. but I just tried to be as normal as I could. I wanted to feel normal. So I tried to actually ignore this as much as I could. You know, I would see him. I didn't want to be around him. I'd just go inside, especially after Opal. I didn't think before what happened with Opal

that she was going to grab my arm and call me and do other stuff. So to me, you know, any spirit might do that to me. I might not think they're going to do that, but they're going to do it. and I just don't know what to expect. So I just tried to avoid them. So not too long after that happened, there was a little girl from school that she came to spend the night in my house.

And I never had sleepovers. And obviously, because it was a sleepover and it was a special occasion, it was like the one time I didn't sleep in my grandma's room. I slept in my old bedroom like before. And this little girl slept in that bed with me. And in the middle of the night, she wakes up and wakes me up

because she just starts screaming. And that man, the man that had been in my backyard, was in my room. Standing in front of my closet, not doing anything, just standing there in front of the doors. I had never seen him in my room before. I had never seen him in the house before. In fact, I had never even seen him leave the backyard past the fence before. She's screaming bloody murder.

And my reaction was not fear. At that moment, my reaction was excited. it because I was like, you can see him too. Oh my God. You know, I got really excited because the first person who I knew of that could see the same thing as me. I didn't think anybody could see him. I thought it was just me. He vanished. My grandparents came rushing into my room because I hear all this commotion and both of us, both of us, there's a man in here, there's a man. And they're like, what are you talking about? My grandfather was like, cut it out. You had a nightmare. There's Nothing in here.

You guys watch something scary. This is just imagination. And my grandmother was just silent. She just looked uneasy the whole time. This little girl, though, she was not having any of this. She's like, I want to go home. And her mom agreed to come get her.

And I was like, oh, my God, I'm not alone. When stuff like this happens to you, you feel like you can't talk to anybody. When somebody else sees it with you, and you know for sure they saw it with you because they were the one that started screaming first. You're like, oh, my gosh. Then you feel validated.

You're like, okay, this is real. There is something different about me. I knew I wasn't going to sleep in that room the following night. So I was like, no problem. I'm going to sleep in Grandma's bed, so he won't appear in there, right? Because I felt like grandma protected me. I felt like if I was in Grandma's room, no spirits would come around. So I like to try to be around her at all times, and then I wouldn't get bothered.

It wasn't too long after that happened. that I ended up moving back home with my parents. So I moved back home with my biological parents when I was 12. I really wanted to spend time with my siblings full time. And so we were all together, and that's really what I wanted. I still had, like, periods of denial. If you have something like this happened to you, it's a surreal experience. And I am 100% a skeptic.

I will try really, really hard to figure out, like, well, okay, is there a valid reason for that? Because honestly, I don't want it to be paranormal. I want it to be something that I can explain away. Even though I knew I had physically had things happened to me, I had physically had been scratched, I had seen spirits with people. All those things could still not totally convince me that it even really happened because it was so surreal. And there's a part of your brain that just wants to deny it to the nth degree and try to feel like you're just a normal kid. And I couldn't. I couldn't be normal. So when I was 14, I get a call from my grandmother. And my grandmother called me periodically. And typical teenager, I didn't really want to talk to her.

She was grandma. And I was doing my own thing. I was doing teenager stuff. And talking to grandma just wasn't high on my list of desirable things at that point in my life. So she called me, and I was trying to kind of like rush her off the phone and she's like, no, I really need to talk to you. I could just tell by her tone. I know right away that this is, I need to listen. I need to stop everything I'm doing and I need to listen. And she says to me, she's like, do you remember the guy that you used to see in the backyard? And I'm kind of hesitant. I'm like, yes. Yeah, well, what about it? Because I'm thinking, you know, I'm immediately. having a flashback to like how she reacted the first time. It was a very negative experience at that time. She seemed to get pretty angry when I told her. She was like, I saw him. I saw him in your room. Well, when? You know, when? What happened? And she's like, well, I was laying in your bed and I was thinking about you and I just to feel close to you. I went into your room where all your stuff was at.

I was laying there and I was crying. And there was a light, like a blue light that appeared from the corner of the room. And he was in the light, just like he described him. And she told me, she was like, that man, I believe is the man you saw. And if it is, that's my father. She never talked about him because his death was extremely traumatic to her. he actually passed away when my grandmother was 18 years old. They had had some kind of row, some kind of argument,

and he tried to kiss her goodbye that day, and she wouldn't kiss him. She was like, no. And he went out, and he had a heart attack that day, and he died. He actually died right outside their house. He just dropped dead in the snow and had a heart attack. And she said her father, he was a watchmaker, and he had been injured.

in World War I, and he wore a brace on one leg. And it kept that leg really stiff and straight, so he would only take one step at a time, and then he'd have to kind of drag that leg behind him. Because of that, he would always walk with his hands in his pockets. He kind of have his hand, like, pressed against his legs, probably to help him balance and walk a little better. And as a result of that, he always had a pocket watch,

but rather than have it in like a breast pocket or something, it was in his pocket where his hand was. That was where he kept it. That's what she told me. And she said there's just no way I could have possibly known any of that. And then the real kicker, like the icing on the cake as if there wasn't already enough, was that when she was a little girl, he was always really scared that she could get snatched or something.

So as soon as dusk would come around, it wouldn't even be dark outside yet. He'd demand that she'd come inside. So he'd come outside and come through the yard, demand that she'd come inside and stop playing out. And my grandmother told me, she thinks that's why he was appearing at dust. It was him trying to get me to go inside, and it was protective. I think he was just trying to get me to go inside. And maybe by looking over me in that way, he was kind of looking over his own dog. I asked her, I asked her why, why do you tell me this now?

And she told me she was sorry. She's like, I didn't know how to handle it when you told me. It just all kind of came together. It was very obvious that she knew for a long time, but when she finally saw her father spare in my room herself, that was when she truly accepted it. And then she, and then she called me and told me. My grandmother didn't have any other paranormal experiences like that ever again. She never saw an apparition or anything like that except for that one time. And that was the only time in her life.

And of course, it was in my room. It was in my room where I saw Opel and I saw him. You know, it was not anywhere else in the house. So there was some kind of spiritual connection or some people would say maybe even a portal that was in my bedroom. there was something in there that allowed him to come through and appear to her. So as we're talking about this whole experience that she saw her father in my room, and we're talking about all those details, she also brings up an even older experience that happened to me.

This is before Opal. I used to see an apparition of a little boy. And I don't even remember now what his name was, but he used to introduce himself by his full name, first and last name. So we'll just say like, oh, hi, I'm Charlie Smith or whatever his name was. Being as young as I was, I never thought twice that he wasn't real or that he wasn't a living child. He was just around. And there was one day my grandfather, he had been to the hospital for something.

He was in the house and he was looking for his hospital band. And he's asking my grandmother if she's seen it. And I'm just sitting at the kitchen bar and I'm Colorado. or doing something. A little boy is actually just standing next to me just like looking at what I'm doing. And the little boy is like, tell your grandpa that the hospital band is outside under the car. I'm like, okay. So I'm like, hey, grandpa, it's outside under the car. My grandpa's like, what are you talking about? So he goes, he goes outside and he gets down on all fours and sure enough it was down there. So he came back in.

totally annoyed, was convinced that I did this. He was so aggravated, and my grandmother just kind of looked at me, like, super, super confused. He asked me, how did I know it was out there or whatever? And I said, like, oh, like, you know, Charlie Smith told me that. And my grandmother and him both just looked at me like, I'm like, what? Like, what is this? And I'm like, no, this little boy, and I'm like, what little boy? What are you talking about?

And I was upset because I was like this little boy, and then the little boy faded away. And even then, you know, I'm not registering why he faded away or what. I just, he's just gone. So when I'm on the phone with my grandmother, and I'm 14, she's telling me like, hey, also, I don't know if you remember, there was this band incident. And I got in big trouble for that. So, of course, I'm like, yes, I remember that. And she said there was another little.

boy that lived down the street and he died. It was just a freak accident. They were paving the road down the road at the end of the street and he got out there. He was really young. He was like six six years old or so or seven. He got out there and tried to jump on top or something of the paving equipment and he got caught underneath and it killed him. And my grandmother was like, there is no way in hell I would have ever told you about that. And she was like, the name you said was that little boy. And because she knew that little boy, she knew that he introduced himself even to her. Like, oh, hi, I'm Charlie Smith. Always first and last name. She was walking me through all these different things that happened that kind of validated the spiritual stuff that was happening to me.

I don't have the answers, but I know you have some kind of special gift and a special purpose in life. And I just wanted you to know that I had seen the spirit to. and that I believe you. She said, I think you're like a candle in the dark to them. I think they gravitate towards you. It was just a powerful, unbelievably powerful moment to finally be validated and know that I wasn't alone and that I wasn't crazy and that it was okay that this stuff happened in me.

It was that, like, that moment of acceptance. I needed her to validate me because she raised me for the majority of my life. When you're a child, the person that you want the approval of is your parents. You want your parents to be the ones that are proud of you or believe you if you tell them something. I didn't have that until that moment. And it was then that I started to become more comfortable talking to people, not, you know, other members of my family anyway. I started becoming more comfortable talking to them. And it was through those discussions that I eventually got to a point where I could keep this stuff.

away from me. I don't deal with spirits bothering me all the time as an adult. I would say maybe once a year I have something paranormal happen, if that. And it's because I was able to finally get to a point where it was comfortable, and I can only thank my grandmother for that. I promise you, you don't need to rub salt all over your windows and doors or anything like that. There's a lot of ritualistic things that I think that some of them may help,

like sieging your house may help. But the number one thing is literally just, to take that power into yourself, take your power back, and simply and literally just tell something that's there, hey, you're bothering me, I don't like it. I need you to leave me alone, and it's going to end. Thank you so much, Jessica, for sharing your story with the spooked. The original score was by Clay Xavier.

The story was produced by Greta Weber. Remember, we're still on the path. don't stray too far in that dark force but if you have a personal story that spooked you where you touched a force a power, a being that was not supposed to be there where you had a relationship with the misd sinister story spooked at snapjudgment.org

there is nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener but don't tell me you saw a ghost and got scared yet if you have a real story let us know spooked at snapjudgment.org. And the best way to let the muggles know that you spooked is by sporting some spook gear. Head on over to snapjudgment.org slash shop to get the t-shirt you've been dreaming about.

If you like your storytelling in the bright light of day, subscribe to the amazing Snap Judgment podcast. It might just change your life. Book was brought to you by the amazing team that never. assumes a shape that is not their own, except of course, from Mark Ristich. Mark has many, many forms.

There's Anna Sussman. Our chief spookster is Eliza Smith, Chris Hanig, Annie Nguyen, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Renzo Goria, Tailed Decat, Maristage, Leah Yates, Zoe Ferrigna, Greta Weber, Jacob Winnic,

Sena, Tiffin Delisa, and Ford, Doug Stewart, Fernando Hernandez, and Flo Wiley. The spoof theme song It's by Pat McLeodin. My name is from Washington. Follow me on the Twitter or the Instagram for a whole different type of story and understand. To keep the dark side of bay, sage is good.

Crystals are fine. There are even a few incantations that everyone should know. That's all as it should be. But first and formally start with step one. Never, ever, never, ever, ever, never, never, ever.