Spooked - Sister Sister

Episode Date: June 21, 2024

Identical twin sisters Melissa and Michelle Macedo are inseparable. They’re each other’s “own little world.” But the new girl… wants to change all that.Big thanks to Melissa and Michelle Macedo for sharing your story with the Spooked! Melissa and Michelle aren’t just Spooksters. They have their own band, called Macedo… check it out!! www.macedomusic.comProduced by Zoë Ferrigno, original score by Leon Morimoto, 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.

And through the woods, I flee through black and snow. The beast on his way cares not what I say. It's because of a first-born child. Or maybe it's just because. But I'm often oblivious to the emotional temperature of a situation or place. And growing up in my household, this spatial blindness could be dangerous with my family. If you did not first stop to sense the anger quotient of a room before you entered that room,

it became a target of the fury. And I could never learn to test the waters before the storm, but my brother, he came equipped with a different type of emotional antenna. And sometimes, arriving home from school, he just put his palm on the front door for a moment. Wait, wait, before twisting the knob and walking in. Or maybe turning to me, shaking his head, telling me, we better try the downstairs door and be quiet, okay?

And we're left to my own devices. I might just barge through and inadvertently set ablaze this unseen fuse. He didn't steady place a hand on my shoulder. Shake his head, no, no, no, no. Don't go in there right now. I don't know how many beatings I avoided just because he turned me away from a fury I couldn't even see gathering around me. I only wish I had understood enough to steer my brother away from the demons that were gathering around him. Stoog starts.

We're taking a trip down to Southern California. We're going to meet two sisters. Hey, I'm Michelle, and I'm on the left. Hi, I'm Melissa, and I'm on the right. And we're identical twins. Okay, we'll try to get. Hey, I'm Michelle. Hi, I'm Melissa, and we're identical twins.

At the time this story begins, Melissa and Michelle, they've just started kidney garden. They actually separate us in class because we look too much alike. So they separate us and give us different teachers because the teachers say they can't tell us apart. We both have long brown hair and very epic 90s bangs. Our mom dresses us up exactly alike most of the time. Melissa Michelle, they don't just look alike. They are close. Outside of school, they spend all of their time together.

We were our own little world. But that's about to change because Melissa and Michelle are moving into a new house, and their world is about to get a whole lot big. So it's moving day. My parents are really busy. They're getting everything together. And Michelle and I walk into the house, wandering around alone just by ourselves. Yeah, we like to explore a lot on our own.

And our impressions of the house at first was that it was very cold. It's very isolated. It's at the top of a hill. And really all you could see when you looked outside was mountain. and trees. It's much bigger than our old house. There's a huge amount of windows and light, and something about the house feels off. As we're walking around, we can't help but shake the feeling like someone is watching us, like we're being spied on. So we started holding hands immediately, and we went around the house and inspected every room. We looked behind every room. We looked behind

every door, looked in every closet, examined every part of the house to see what was going on and who was watching us. And as we're walking down the stairs, we feel someone is right behind us. We don't have to say anything to each other. We both start to speed up in our walking, and then we both start to sprint into a run. We see our parents on the first. We see our parents on the front lawn, bringing stuff inside. So we run to our mom. And we're yelling, Mom, Mom, Mom, there's someone

there's someone inside, but we can't see them. And my mom sort of looks at us and obviously she's stressed out from the moving day. She's like, no, this is just a new house. You're just scared because it's bigger and there's a lot of dark spaces. Don't worry. Nobody's inside.

So we count on, you know, Maybe she's right. As the days go on, will probably become more comfortable, and it will start feeling less scary. But from that moment on, we made an agreement that we would not separate in the house or go anywhere alone in the house.

At this time in our lives, we had only recently started school, and it was very difficult school. Our dad came to this country because of a scholar, and that changed his life. And education was the highest priority on our parents' list. So always after school, there would be math classes, additional English classes, piano lessons, violin lessons. So when we do get an opportunity to actually play, it feels really special.

It feels like a big relief. We had a dollhouse that we loved. And the dollhouse was an antique dollhouse. house built by our grandmother. We have this Malibu Barbie and this Ken doll that had this gold mesh top and neon green shorts. He was a pretty fabulous Ken. So we're playing with the dollhouse and we're doing our thing. And all of the sudden, this little girl just walks into the room.

She is the same age as we are. She has brown, long hair. And I noticed that her skin color was similar to ours. So I thought, oh, awesome. You know, maybe she's mixed too. We're surprised. What is this girl doing here? Do we know her?

Then she comes closer to us and sits down as if to say, okay, let's play. Yeah, and we always had people visiting the house. My parents have big family. So there was always people there and they often came with their kids. And it was like an automatic thing that then obviously we, We play with the kids and the adults talk. She takes a Barbie doll. She didn't say anything.

She doesn't introduce herself. And we figure maybe she doesn't want to talk. We're nervous about talking to. So, yeah, let's just all play together. Melissa and I, we're talking. We're moving the Barbies around. We're speaking for the Barbies, playing like that. and she's really just moving the Barbie around.

Even though she was just holding the Barbie and not saying anything, we're having a lot of fun with her. It felt that she was involved in playing with us, and she didn't really need to say anything. It just made sense. She plays dolls with us for a while, and then all of a sudden she gets up and walks right out of the room. We thought, oh, it's time for her to go.

her parents must be downstairs and they must be leaving. So she just left. We wonder when she'll come back again to play. So a few months go by and Michelle and I are playing this game where we gather nuts and seeds from outside, from the ground, and we crush it up and make it into perfume. We add a little water and then it becomes magical perfume. And as we're doing that outside, all of a sudden, we see her again.

She's walking towards us up the driveway. And at that point, we figure, okay, maybe she's not a family friend. Maybe she's a neighbor and she sees us playing. So she just wants to join in. And she does. She sees what we're doing. And she just starts collecting nuts with us. Her demeanor is very quiet.

But she was still laughing a bit, smiling a bit. It seemed like she was having fun. So we're playing together, and Michelle and I both start asking her questions. How old are you? Where do you live? How did you get here? What school do you go to? What's your name?

She doesn't answer. Looking at us, but not responding. It leaves us curious. We assume that she. She's just very shy, so we don't really push it. We play this game with the nuts for probably about an hour. And then again, all of a sudden, she leaves. She doesn't stay by or anything like that.

She just sets down the nuts and starts walking away. It's sad because we are having a lot of fun with her, but we think, well, that's great that she came and this is our new friend. Every few months, this little girl shows up. We're playing dolls, and she all of a sudden shows up, and it's playing dolls with us. We're playing dress up, and all the sudden she is there playing dress up with us. We do every once in a while try and ask her questions, but she always just continues to play. It is frustrating, but even though we don't know that much about her, she's still.

feels like a safe and comfortable person. In a weird way, we feel like we know her still. And so we just kind of leave it alone, although we do find it a bit strange. One day we were talking about this little girl that would come visit us. And I said, where is Melinda? Michelle said, yeah, Melinda, where is she?

What's going on? Michelle immediately understood who I was talking about. It was something that we both knew. There was a girl who was our friend, and her name was Melinda. We never have a conversation about why her name is Melinda. We just always call her that, and that's her name. So there was one night when I refused to do my homework. I just didn't want to do it.

I was very annoyed. And my mom, she said, sent me to my room. So I went upstairs. I went into the closet and closed the door and I sit in the closet crying. After a few minutes, I hear the closet door open slightly. I think it's Michelle coming in to comfort me. So I look up and it's Melinda. I thought, how did she get in here? I'm very happy to see her. but I'm very upset, so I just can't stop crying. Melinda came next to me and sat down and wrapped her arm around me. Her touch felt very loving, very comforting, very warm,

and she just, she sat there with me while I was crying. There was this overwhelming sense of, you're okay, it's going to be okay. I know you got in trouble, but you're not bad. After about 15 minutes, when I was feeling better, we both got up and walked out of the door. And Melinda continues on her way. She walks out of the room and is gone. For the rest of the day, I felt better. I felt so much better.

As we grow older, we get into other things. We're going out with friends, seeing movies. We just gradually grow up. Melinda stopped showing up as we play together less. At first it's every few months, and then it becomes every six months, and then it gradually dies off to maybe once a year. The time we get to middle school, we don't see her at all. We were sitting having dinner, Michelle and I and my mom,

and at this point we hadn't seen our friend in, a few years. So Michelle and I were talking and I said, hey, do you remember that girl? Do you remember that girl who would always come and play with us? Michelle was like, yeah, I do remember her. And I said, Mom, do you remember her? And we were asking, did she move away? We, you know, we haven't seen her in a while. And my mom goes, who are you talking about? And I'd say, Melinda. And she froze. It was like we said something were really wrong.

And she was like, no, I don't know who you're talking about. Clearly we've struck her nerve. It seems like she's not willing to talk about it anymore. She doesn't want to talk about it. We didn't understand why, but we just kind of let that go and thought, that was a weird reaction.

I guess we're not talking about that anymore. We don't bring it up again. And our lives are busy, time goes on, and we just sort of forget about her. So it's a hot summer day, and it's very rare that my mom is not testing us or bringing us to some summer school thing, and we have the day off, and nobody else is at home. And so we decide we're going to go out and sit by the pool. So we put our bathing suits on, we take out our towels, our magazines, our sunglasses, our sunscreen and I'm laying there just looking around. And I see some movement that catches my eye in the second story window.

I look up at it and Melissa's in the window. And it really confuses me because I'm thinking, what is she doing upstairs? What is she doing inside? Why isn't she in a bathing suit? I didn't see or hear her go inside. So I was confused how she got up there. So I wave at her.

And I'm like, hey, Melissa, hello, what are you doing up there? And she just stays completely still and is just staring back. And I'm like, hey, what are, come down? What are you doing? And then I hear from a little bit behind me, Who are you talking to? She looks back at me jolted. And she's like, no, wait, you were just in the window.

How is that possible? And I'm like, I literally just saw you in the second story window. And Melissa's like, I've been right here the whole time. I don't know what you're talking about. I looked up at the window. No one was there. That's when I look back at the window because it's like, wait, if you're here, then who is in the window? And when I look, nobody's there anymore.

It dawns on me that it must have been Melinda because of how similar she looked to us. She had always been dressed very similar to us. Her hair was always very similar. She looked very similar to us. Yeah, some other things we started connecting together as we were talking about it was she only ever came to play when we were alone. Just us two were the only people that saw her. So that's when we start realizing, oh my God, was this little girl even real? Like, is she a ghost?

Now it was starting to get scary because we thought, are we going to see her again? Why is she here? What are her intentions? What if she's going to do something harmful to either Michelle or myself? Eventually, Michelle and I finished high school

and we both moved to the East Coast for college. Our lives are going on. Michelle and I were both home for winter break, and we had a friend who said, You must go see this medium. She's great. She was really helpful for me. This woman said life-changing things and had messages from the other side.

So we wanted to go to see if we had any messages from the other side. You know, grandparents who have passed or whoever family members, we were just really curious. And since our friend said such good things, we thought, okay, let's see if this person is the real deal. So we go to see this medium. This psychic's house was surrounded in trees, a beautiful spot, very lush and tropical. It's sunny, even though it's December.

We walk in the room of the medium's house. There are crystals everywhere, incenses burning. There's candles, there's chimes. We're pretty skeptical at this point. We went in with the idea that, okay, maybe this will be fun and exciting at best. So let's just see how it goes. We sit down and the medium says right away, your sister's here. We're like, what? What sister? It's just us.

Michelle and I look at each other confused. She says, no, your sister who passed. And we say we don't know about any sister who passed. She says, oh, you had a triplet. Michelle and I look at each other in total shock. We're so confused. We never heard anything about this. We started to ask her more questions about it,

but I don't really remember anything past that part of reading because we had no idea what she was talking about. We were very overwhelmed. And then we decided, okay, we're going to go home. We need to verify this and see if it's true. So we immediately go home, we walk into the house looking for my mom, and she's there cleaning up the kitchen. We say, Mom, we need to talk to you. We sit down at the table.

She's worried. She's like, what's going on? Is everything okay? And Michelle and I look at each other. And Michelle asks, Mom, do we have a triplet? She looks very surprised. She goes complete. completely pale. And she says, how did you know that? We say, we went to this medium today. And she said we had a

triplet. And my mom gets very serious. And she said, yeah, you had a triplet who passed away. And her name was Melinda. It was like a sucker punch to the gut. It was like a huge, like, splash of cold water on my face. And we said, you never told us this. We never even knew that. Why didn't you say anything? She said, well, I just thought there's no reason. She was born, stillborn. It was very upsetting for her and not obviously something that you want to talk to kids about. We thought, oh my God, this was her the whole time. This was a triplet that we didn't know about. But she decided she wanted to come and play with us still and still wanted to be in our lives. All of these things start to make sense.

The fact that she was always wearing something similar, the fact that she always looked our age. She looked kind of like us. She was growing up as we were growing up, and all of these things finally came together. I feel bad that I was afraid because, you know, this whole time she had had good intentions and wasn't trying to scare us at all.

I think she heard us that day of the pool and realized that we were scared, so she backed off a bit. And we didn't see her after that. I would like at some point in the future for her to show herself to us again. Yeah, I think I would like to see her again. I think it would be scary at first. But I think now that we have more understanding and wisdom about it, I think that would be nice. even though I don't see her physically anymore, I feel her. Even when Michelle and I talk about it, I can feel her spirit there.

And that's comforting to know that she is still with us. Thank you, Melissa and Michelle, for sharing your story with the spout folks. Melissa and Michelle are our favorite kind of storytellers. They are spute listeners. And one more thing. Listen, Michelle, they aren't just spooksters. They have their own band. It's called Moseedo.

You can find out one. more information in our show notes. The story was scored by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Zoe Frickno. Oh, it happened again. And I have a question. Do you or someone you know have powers that by all rights a person is not entitled to? Powers, you're afraid to tell someone about, well, tell me.

Spooked at snapjudgment.org. I want to know all about it because there's nothing better. than a spook story from a spooked listener. Spooked. Snap Judgment, the ORG. And here's the thing. In the nighttime, in the dream state, do you know what you're wearing?

I know what you could be wearing. The spooked t-shirt that lets other folk know you walk the dark path, spook gear, available in real life. Right now at snapjudgment.org. Remember, if you like your storytelling, Under the bright light of day Get the amazing stupendous sister

podcast, Snap Judgment, Cinema of Sound, movies of the mind, storytelling with a beat. This book was created by the team that stops people on the street if they're given off a certain type of aura except for Mark Ristich. He's the one giving off

a certain type of aura. There's David Kim, Chris Hamburg, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Teo DeKotte, Mercer Dodge, Zoe Feridno, Anne Ford, Greta Weber, Eric Yannes, Tessapaioli, Cody Harjo, Lola Abrera, Doug Stewart, and Miles Lassie. The spook theme song is by Pat Massidi-Miller. My name, Michigan, Washington, and people, they want to talk about extracensory perception,

detecting forces through mean science cannot explain, and that is all well and good. We try to make the simple, complicated. With ambulance, with spells, potions, we know far simpler methods have proven their work. through time and memorial, wear that chain, if you will. Taste the sanctified water. I'm sure it will do you no heart, but always remember. First things must come never, ever, never, ever, never, never.