Spooked - Out of Body

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Tiyi just wants to get away from the man in the closet. What happens next changes her life forever. Thank you, Tiyi Schippers, for sharing your story with us! You can find more of her creepy tales on YouTube. Original score by Leon Morimoto, produced by Anne Ford, artwork by Teo Ducot Spooked episodes drop weekly! Featuring brand new stories -- along with episodes previously available only by subscription. Listen for free wherever you get your podcasts! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I spy with my lie. The blade she thinks will leave me to die. But if you want my life, as I know you do, first, be very sure that I don't see you. The afternoon, and I'm feeling heavy, sad. I don't know why, so go for a walk. Around Lake Merritt, it's an urban lake, right near my place. I walk it so often that it's kind of a mesmer. Let's me hold my thoughts up to the light, tease them apart.

What is going on? I'm deep in my own fog and hear this, sir? Look up. See this young brother, draped in at least two dozen necklaces from his neck, from his arms, each necklace with a crystal wrapped in either gold or silver wire hanging from the he's like, hey, I know you need to check out these crystals, man. I promise you it will improve your energy. Huh?

And he's talking and talking. I'm not really a crystal guy, but I am a respect to hustle guy. And this brother is hustling. You can tell he's a good dude. Kind heart says his name is Gerius Emmanuel. But he walks the lakes, Fridays and Saturday, spreading the word. And I'm not saying what each crystal does, but, you know, Now, to me, it's kind of a wash.

Still, I see one that looks nice. What's that? It's called Blue Appetite, I'll take it. He hands it to me big smile. Job bless. All right, peace, brother. Now, I'm back. Walking.

Back in my mesmer. Again, trying to figure out what is wrong. Then I feel stupid. This ain't rocket science. I know exactly what's wrong. I miss my baby girl. She's off the college, having the time of her life, sending back to good grades, fully launched. I am so proud of her, so happy for her.

So what I'm sad above. This is rejoicing time, and for some reason, this is where I think I allow myself, really let myself feel what it is I'm feeling. I'm sad, exactly. I'm sad. I'm sappy. I'm sappy. I miss her. I miss that my baby girl is not here and still be thrilled for where she is.

That is okay. That's all right. Breathe. Then I kind of almost remember one of the properties that Jarius Emanuel said about this crystal. I'm still holding in my right hand. What he say? clarity It gave you clarity

Now I'm laughing For real self Not you one of the crystal people now I don't think so But I do know that my daughter is She's super woo woo loves this stuff Loves it Clarity

Well you know Maybe I might go visit her With an early crystal birthday present. Spookstar. The understanding we're all trying to make sense of things that make no sense.

And T.I. T.I. is growing up in the house where her family has lived for four generations. It's a dark house, a chaotic house, and our story starts when T.I. and her sister Kate

are moving into their own bedroom for the first time. So excited to have our own room. We shared a small dresser and got a double bed. And I remember just feeling so big. But I had never spent any time in that room before. As we were putting things away for the very first time,

I remember being really uncomfortable about that space. And I didn't know why. From the very beginning, we were obsessed with making sure that the closet door was closed at night. I would check, Kate would check, we'd get back in bed, and then we would pull the blankets up, press our backs against one another, tuck our hands inside, close our eyes, and whisper sleep together in unison until we fell asleep so that we would fall asleep simultaneously.

One night, for some reason, I woke up wide awake. I didn't want to wake Kate up. She would not be happy if I woke her up. So I laid there listening. My parents would often watch television after we all were in bed. I didn't hear the television. I tried to listen for cars. And I couldn't even hear any cars.

So I knew it was really late. Right across from me was the closet door. as I was looking, I heard the click of when you turn a door and the little latch thing gives. I looked away. I didn't want to see it. I did not want to see what was happening. When I glanced back around, I noticed that the closet door was open probably a good third of the way. My heart stopped.

I sensed that somebody was in the closet. I watched this first. figure come out to the edge of the door frame, and he was looking right at me. I closed my eyes to make him think that I was sleeping, but I was watching through my eyelashes. This guy had sideburns down to his jaw almost, and he was wearing a white shirt. It had sleeves that gathered at his wrists and he had his hands in front of him and he was wringing his hands back and forth. Slid just a little bit more forward so the light caught his eyes. I just watched him ring his hands. All of a sudden my feeling changed. I was no longer afraid. I felt what he was feeling.

Really, really sad, sadder than I had ever, ever felt in a little. my whole life. Tears falling out of the corners of my eyes down my face and my ears. I have no idea how long we were there, but I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was back to back with Kate. And I was like, oh, it was just a dream. Thank goodness it was just a dream. She was still sleeping.

I turned over and I looked in that closet door. was open, but wasn't a dream. It had really happened. After that, I started to wake up more often in the middle of the night. As soon as I woke up, I knew that he was going to be there and that I was going to be feeling this again. It wasn't every day, maybe not even every week, but regularly enough that I dreaded going to bed.

I told my mother once and she told me I was having bad dreams. She put perfume under my pillow so I would have sweet dreams, but my dream wasn't opening that door. I was not getting out of bed and opening that door. I thought to block the door some way so that it would be harder to open. I took a small stack of books and placed them up against the closet door. But when I would wake, it would be open, even if there were books there. It didn't matter. This had been going on intermittently for a few months

when one night I began to wake up, but I had not opened up my eyes yet. I felt somebody right next to the bed. I knew it wasn't the man from the closet because he never left the closet. And it also felt completely different. You could tell when someone loves you. the vibe they give.

And it was clearly someone who loved me. Her voice in my left ear. It was a lady's voice. Very soft, very soothing.

And she said, I didn't lift out. And I knew exactly what she meant. I felt my energy lift up above my skin on my body. And I inhaled and then as I exhaled, I would push a little until I felt myself like a little, it was this lightness of me that lifted up.

And I was now above my body. It almost felt like when you're asleep in the backseat of the car and your dad comes and picks you up to carry you in the house. It felt a little like that, and the next thing I knew I was standing out in front of the house. How am I here? Am I dreaming this, or is this real? It was the most amazing feeling.

I was out of that house. And I could not feel the grief of the man in the closet. I could see my house. I could see the front steps. I could see the cars up and down the street. There was no one else around. I was standing in the grass, but I could not feel the grass under my bare feet.

It was so light I could fly. And I did. I took two steps forward, and then I leapt up just barely above the ground. But I just stayed there. And then I landed so lightly. I decided to run and take off to see how high I could go. I went as high as the roof, doing loops and circles and bouncing around. I decided I didn't think it was a dream.

because I was making choices, conscious choices, of what I was doing. Then I noticed that the sky was starting to get light. So I landed down on our driveway, and I looked up in those dark windows, and I wondered how I was going to get back inside. Then I knew that my guardian angel was nearby then just off to my right. I heard her say, it's okay, just fall back in.

I have no idea how I knew what she meant, but I did. All of a sudden, I felt myself falling really fast. And then boom, I landed in my body. Oak startled. It was light outside, and the birds were singing, and I had escaped the man from the closet. When Kate woke up, I was sitting up so happy,

And I said, oh my gosh, Kate, last night I went outside and I was flying. And she said, oh, you're a big fat liar. After that first night, I never felt my guardian angel again. But a few nights later, I woke up in the middle of the night, and I knew that that man was in the closet waiting for me to wake up. I just did what she had showed me how to do. And it was so easy. I just lifted up and out I went.

At first I just stayed in the yard and then I would go to my grandmother's yard next door and to the cherry tree and then I could go to the park. I was flying around the jungle gym. I could see the birds and the nests. I was in this secret place that no one else could ever see. I told my mom that I was flying and she said, I love flying.

dreams. But this was so different than any dream that I ever had. I explained to my friends what I was doing, and they were like, just your imagination, you know, you're just... And I'm like, no, I really think that this is for real. We were all sitting in my backyard, probably five or six friends all sitting around, and they're going to go over to Ted's baby. and play records.

I said, go ahead and go, and I'll go with you. My body can stay here, but my consciousness can go and see it in Ted's basement. They were like, yeah, right, yeah, ha, ha, ha, that's great. Okay, well, whatever. And I said, go, and I'll tell you what you do when you're there when you come back. They go, and I'm sitting out there in the yard.

I just begin to lift myself out. I was there as they were coming down the stairs. I saw the record that they put on the record player. It was Jethro Tull, Aqualung. There was a tin can with those pull tabs, you know, when you used to pull the pull tab off of the can. And my friend Luann was linking them together,

making a pull-tab chain. I was there probably 30 minutes. And then I all of a sudden was back in my body. The next time we were all together, I told him about the pop top chain. Their mouths just dropped open. Couple looked as if they were, like, scared of me, like I could come spy on them.

Some asked me questions. I just sold them that it's something I've been able to do since I was little. Right around this time, I started to get a really bad headache. I recall being in bed not being able to lift my head. It was so intense that even the pillow hurt the skin of my head. My mom, she took my temperature and I had a fever. It's over 104, shivers, sweats, body aches. It was three weeks I was out of school.

After several months, I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. I was in and out of wheelchairs. I had multiple surgeries on my knees after they had stopped the pain medication. After one of the surgeries, they had to push gauze into this wound in my knee. I was fully awake and conscious. As they start the procedure and I'm feeling this pain, I started to hum and I hum. And I hummed. I remember it wasn't as easy to leave because when you're having pain, it keeps drawing.

your attention to that place in your body. My body was slamming me back in until out I went, and it was like, oh, whew, I was out. I could see what they were doing. I watched this whole procedure without feeling it. When it was over, I just slipped back into myself and opened my eyes. The nurse right by my head said, wow, you are so brave. And I said, yeah, I didn't feel a thing. I ended up moving to Michigan after the last surgery and lived there. I got married, and I had four children. As I got older, the pain got better, and I was able to do more and more.

I could walk, and I was not in pain. I no longer needed to leave my mind. body. One night, I went to sleep, and I dreamed an entire day from my childhood, from when I was a little girl, about five years old. After I woke up, I decided that I was going to leave my body and go back to that house. I was just curious. I laid back down. I just did my breathwork to push myself out. And boom, I'm standing in front of my house. I look up and it looks exactly the same. And I saw the pink and white station wagon

that was my family car in the driveway. I am not in the present. I decided to go in. And there I was standing in the living room. I saw the ashtray on the coffee table. I saw the stain on the couch, the lamp shade that had a little bitty tear along the bottom rim. My parents' room was off of a hallway next to the stairs on the main floor. I went to their room and the door was open and I went to the door and I saw them in their bed, spooning.

They were so young. and I just loved them so much. I moved from their room down the hallway and then to the right was this little alcove that went into my room. I'm in my bedroom, looking down at myself and my sister held so much love.

Can you imagine really seeing yourself as a little child? That's when I started to. to feel the darkness move in. I sensed that man was right behind the closet door. I looked down, and my little self was going, you know, making noise and moving a little bit, starting to wake up. Just as I noticed that the doorknob is starting to turn,

I knew what I was going to do. And I whispered, I did not want him to come disturb this little sleeping girl again. And I said, don't look. Come with me instead. She did. Then I did. And then I knew how to do it forever.

I was the one who taught me how to do that. I was my own guardian angel. I'm friend of Spook T-I Shippers for sharing her story. You can find more for creepy tales on YouTube where she goes by Spooky Miss T-I. That's spooky Miss T-I-Y. Original score for this story is by Leon Morimoto and Ford. Oh, I hope you enjoyed the story, spokesters. But now I have a question for you.

Perhaps you've heard of lucid dreaming, where a person realizes they're dreaming and starts shaping their own dreamscape around them. It's a pretty good trick. But I've heard whispers of taking it one step further. And when you first run into rumors about it, It kind of sounds like a campy horror movie where whoever dies in their dream dies in real life. But I understand it's not bad at all.

Supposedly, some people can manipulate dream, and that manipulation will directly and immediately impact the world outside of dream. Or maybe you know someone who does know. If so, please tell me about it. because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener. Spooked at snapjudgment.org. It's brought to you by the team that knows all too well the difference between dream and reality.

Except, of course, for Mark Ristich, he gets very angry if you don't remember the conversation he had with you while he was dreaming. There's Davey Kim, Zoe Frigno, Ann Ford, Eric Yanniers, Taylor de Kott Marissa Dodge

Leon Morimoto Miles Lassie Yari Bundy Doug Stewart The spook theme song is by Pat MacCidi Miller My name is

in Washington Many traditions around the world have their own version of the biblical passage James 214 Faith Without works

is dead And that it's not enough to simply believe in something any true belief requires actual steps be taken. This has always been my personal quandary, while not being entirely certain of what to do. One translates beliefs into action

because the same traditions also promise that wide is the gay, broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there be many that go that way. But straight is a gay, and narrow is the way that leads to understanding, and few will find it. I would like to find it And because every long journey

begins with a single step I are with the simplest, most basic of actions to walk this path which is to never Never, ever, never, never, ever, ever