Spooked - The Empty Chair

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Max’s mom is a seamstress. Most nights, she stays up late working. The buzz of her sewing machine can be heard all throughout the house. Max is used to the sound, and when he wakes up in the night, he likes knowing that his mom is there… But then one night he discovers that she may not be alone.This story deals with grief and mental health struggles, please take care while listening.Thank you, Max, for sharing your story with us.Produced by Zoë Ferrigno, scouted by Elizabeth Z. Pardue, original score by Lalin St. Juste, 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.

As I prepare my instruments, I tell the person lying on the gurney that I have done this procedure several times. Doctor, she asks, will I be okay? I turn on the gas and pull the anesthesia mask over her face. You've crossed over to Spute. Stay. It's crazy to recall. But in another life, before Spute, I went to law school,

walk the halls of power, and at this law school, there's a list. If you fight your way to the top of the list, doors are open, tables set, futures are promised. But laying further down the list, these same doors slammed shut, understand. The profession of law does not embrace people like me. I hear their whispers.

To even have a chance, I must land on the top of their list. Yet I know pretending to belong here is a lie. I make-believe mass. Still, I need this. My grandparents picked cotton. My parents pick cotton for this chance. So against my better angels, against my weeping inner voice, I make a bargain with darkness.

And exchange older than time, I gamble, but I can touch the shadow and remain unharmed. So instead of ignoring their barbs, every slight, every dismissal, every sneer, stoking the heat of rage, I hear them. That smug laughter from those of the manner born, I stoke the storm because the first.

Fury, there is power. What? Chad? You think you can best me? Be me? You don't know where I'm from? I will skate next to madness, will you? My rage reads their books again and again.

Rage whispers, they said you don't belong here. Rage does not sleep. Rage burns the midnight oil. Rage checks and rechecks. Rage knows each and every person is my enemy and treats them accordingly. Because each and every person wants what must be mine. Really bad thing is in the end when I finally forced myself to walk alone, step by step, over to the judgment wall.

to see the final grades I look up and find my name high on bare list not the very top but high enough because rage was right

rage is a truth teller a problem solver but not a deed done I need to put rage back because I want light companionship, laughter again, to feel something, to feel anything beside fury? But this rage, this new self refuses to go. The broken, vanquished better part of me wail.

Max is just eight years old. He lives in Santiago, Chile with his three sisters. His dad, his mom, and his mom's oppression. How that Max take it from here? My mom, she's a seamstress. It was mostly for the community. If kids had to have costumes for a specific tradition or like musical theater sometimes,

she would also fix clothes for us. And other moms in the neighborhood, if they needed something for their kids, she would, you know, do those things. So she was very good at that. She would stay up late, sewing. Since it was a small house and the walls between each room, they were not very thick.

In the dead of night, we would hear the sewing machine going off. It was a very old machine, very good quality, but very noisy, especially at 3 a.m. 4 a.m. It became a bit frustrating if I had to get up early the next day. But at some point it also became a bit comforting. The sound of the machine, it was telling me that she was there, she was present. So it was probably around fall. Me and my family were having lunch.

We were just having some small talk. We heard that the garden gate was open, which is very unusual because someone would need the keys to get in. But we didn't give any extra set of keys to any uncles or family friends. So that was weird. We looked at each other and after a couple seconds we heard a knocking on the door. My older sister, Soledad. She made a joke about how it's probably the Mormons handing off, you know, Bibles or their little pamphlets.

My dad got up and walked to the door, opened it, and there was no one there. So he comes back to the table and he says, oh, it's probably just a ghost. We laughed about it because from where I come from, it's what you usually say when you cannot really find the reason why something happened. So a week or two later,

we're having lunch again on a weekend. We're all sitting down and small talking, and then it happened again. We heard the garden gate open, and then we heard the knocking on the door. I thought it was pretty weird, and I noticed that my sisters were a bit concerned because they exchanged looks.

But my dad, he just distracted us. talking about things about the news that he didn't really agree with to just focus our attention away from that thing that we cannot really explain. One night, the sound of her machine woke me up. I felt the need to go to the bathroom, so I just went out my room, and I saw my mother's room. I saw the door open,

and I can see her from behind. She's looming over the machine. She didn't even notice that I was there looking at her. She was just completely 100% focused on her sewing. And next to her, she has this old wooden chair placed as if someone was next to her looking at her work. I thought to myself, why is she working with an empty chair next to her? But I just brushed it off, went to the bathroom, did my thing and then went back to bed. I remember a couple times, a couple nights doing the same route, you know, needing to go to the bathroom at 3, 4, 5 a.m.

And my mom would never close her door. It was always open. So every time I would walk outside of the room, I would see her and the chair. On Sundays, we all do a general cleaning of the house. She would usually be on a weird mood when she would like to do things the way that she does it. and in a very specific way or she didn't want to be bothered. But this Sunday, I noticed that she was playing music very loudly because she's in a good mood.

She was sweeping kind of to the rhythm of the song. We have two dogs that would try to play with a broom, and she would usually tell them to piss off. But that day she didn't. And she was laughing with the dogs, like playing with the dogs, which made a big difference to me. It was curious to see her like that because I've been used to seeing her very depressed for so long. We all noticed it. My older sister, Soledad, she asks my mom, hey, like, you see me in a very mood.

Like, did something happen? Did something in particular happen? She just looks at us and she says, well, lately I've been missing my mom a lot. And for the past couple nights, she's actually coming to visit me. I felt surprised because by this point my grandmother had died eight years ago. She says that when she's sewing, she can feel that someone is behind her and that she can feel someone softly breathing next to her ear. And that somehow she knew that it was her mom.

I felt like a tingle through my spine. I personally thought it was scary to even picture that, that you would be doing something at night by yourself. It would feel someone breathing next to you. But she said that she was not. afraid. And then she said that so for her not to get tired, I would put a seat next to me so she can sit with me. So she doesn't have to stand up. So after my mom says this out loud, I can see that my sisters are as shocked as I am, my dad as well, this awkward silence takes over. I think we all felt a bit

bad for her. I thought that she was getting better and it was actually just that she thought that her mom would come visit. No one really challenged her views. I think we all felt more comfortable with her having these moments of happiness than just plain old depression. My older sister, Soleditha, she comments on how good the food is. She's like, oh yeah, the food is very good. Like, thank you for making this and changed the topic. So it's a few weeks later. I came back home from the mall with my dad and my sisters are in the living room. I ask my sisters, where's mom? And they tell me that she's in her room. She's been in her room all day sewing, so I shouldn't, you know, go bother her. We turned on the TV. We were watching something, then we hear her bedroom door open, and she comes crying,

like completely hyperventilating. She's freaking out, so she couldn't speak very clearly. I remember my dad grabbed her and hugged her, and we sat her on the couch. We put on some water to boil, and we made her a tea. And when she comes down, she tells us that she heard the phone ringing. My mom had a phone of her own in her room, in her studio. And when she picked it up, she said hello. Is anyone there? She cannot hear anything from the other side of the line.

But then before she decides to hang up, she starts hearing. she starts hearing a breathing, a very soft breathing. And then that breathing becomes louder and raspyer labor. And that's when she tells us that it sounded exactly the way that her mom would sound like at her last stage of her cancer. And then my mom asks, Mom, are you there? Like, is it you? and then the breathing becomes louder and louder.

It becomes very, very deep and loud and calls for her name. Orieta. That's when my mom freaks out and throws the phone and leaves the room and comes to us. Petrified. I feel like my heart is racing because I can see my mom freaking out in front of me.

I saw on her face a very special mixture of sadness and fear that I have never seen in anyone else. I also saw that my sisters and my dad were freaking out. He was walking back and forth in the living room trying to get close to my mom but also taking a step back because he knew that she was very upset. So after this episode, my mom that night, She didn't sew. She went to bed pretty early.

She was very exhausted. It was one of the few nights in which I didn't hear the sewing machine that made me very uncomfortable. The following days, my mom became very depressed again. She was not interacting with us as much. She isolated herself again. It was early in the morning. I would say 10 or 11 a.m. I was in the couch in the living room reading a book about dinosaurs

because I was obsessed with them. I hear my sisters talking in the dining room. And when I go to meet them, they are starting to burn the Palosanto. My older sisters, Soleditha, tell me, like, oh, this is just, you know, a little ceremony. I thought it was exciting. So they started burning the Palo Santo and a lot of smoke is coming out of it. Like a lot.

I've never seen so much smoke. They were walking around the house slowly, burning the Palo Santo, and I got a bit scared because I thought maybe the house is going to catch a fire. but then when I was just surrounded by smoke, I felt very safe as if it was a screen to protect me and protect us from this spirit. They start reciting these passages. We waited for the Palo Santo to consume itself. Nothing happens right away.

After this ceremony, we do our things as usual. I don't remember that we even talked about it. But I instantly felt safer. To me, that was enough. After the ceremony took place, we were sitting in the living room in the couch. We were all cramped against each other, watching this reality TV show.

On the right side of the couch, there is the door to enter the house. And the lights were off. The only light that was. was coming from the TV. I feel this icy, cold wind passed in front of us. I thought to myself,

maybe I left the window open. But then I immediately remember that I closed all the windows earlier. It was very strange. After the wind passes, after a couple seconds, I see this shadow pass between us and the light from the TV.

It's about a meter and a half tall, and it doesn't really have a definitive shape, and when it passes between us and the TV, it doesn't completely block out the light. It's still semi-transparent. What is that? And I noticed that my sisters and my mom also reacted to it. We all saw it.

We all kind of stood up from where we were sitting. And then we saw the door open. It is an old door that makes a lot of noise, but this time it didn't. It opened very smoothly. I felt goosebumps all over my skin. We were all looking at each other. And before it even closed, we heard the garden gate open. and after a couple seconds of just silence and tension,

the door closed very strongly. And then we heard the garden gate close again. My sister kind of jumped and screamed, and my mom was just shocked. My sister turned to my mom, and they said at almost the same time, like, did it leave? And to me, that was what gave away that we were all thinking the same thing.

After all that, I went to bed, and I heard my mom get into her studio. She turned on the sewing machine, and after a couple of seconds, she started playing music again. I heard that specific blend of the buzzing of the sewing machine and the music, and it made me feel safer. I woke up again around 4 a.m. and walked up to her room and the seat was not there anymore. It was only her sitting by herself. To me, that also felt safe because I felt like my mom was coming back from where she was before. Nothing ever happens again. I personally think that there was this spirit. And that was the thing that was opening the garden's gate and then knocking on the door. To me, what made this spirit evil was that it slowly came close to my mom, pretending it was my

grandmother. This spirit, this entity, is scaring everyone on purpose. And, my grandma being the sweet lady that she was, she would never do that. She would never scare us. It wasn't till my mid-20s that I came up with the theory that maybe my mom let in this spirit to our house. My grandmother, when she started to get sick, my mom developed some sort of avoidance to, you know, the painful reality of what is like to have a mom with a cancer. So she started going to their family house much less. And when her mother died, she started feeling this very strong feelings of guilt and shame. I can see my mom just sewing for hours in the middle of the night.

I always picture her just thinking about her mom, ruminating about their relationship, hearing the door and inviting it in. She was hoping that it was her mother coming to visit her. It was almost the promise of making peace with her. past. Sharing your story with the spooked that people were scouted by Elizabeth Z.

Pardu was scored by Lalene St. Juist, was produced by Zoe Frigno. Sages have long told us that we share this place

with entities that are not us. Not angels, not demons, neither good nor bad, but other and other wants. Other needs. Sometimes every once in a while, are there ones what we have. And this is a very dangerous place

to find yourself. And I wonder if I know someone who's interacted with the other, perhaps that someone is you. If so, I'd love to know about it. Please send a message, a picture, a passenger, pigeon, spoof, and stampjudgment.org. Because understand, there is nothing to. You know, better than a spook story from a spooked listener. Spook just brought to you of the team that doesn't need to touch the fire to know that it is hot. Except for Mark Ristich. Because Mark, every day is a brand new adventure. There's David Kim, Zoe Ferrigno, Ann Ford, Eric Yannias,

Taylor DeCott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Helena Creaky, Elizabeth Z. Pardue, Adi Yamato, Lul Jemima, the spook theme song. It's by Pat Macede Miller. My name's from Washington. And you know Arthur C. Clark, the brilliant writer, futurist thinker. He once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable for magic. It's kind of right. You flip a switch, light appears, tap an app, food arrives, magic.

But what about when you're lying in bed? And you know with 100% certainty that someone is watching you from the corner of your room. What about when your three-year-old daughter points to an empty chair and she asks Daddy? Why is that man crying? Technology doesn't explain the handprints that appear on the insides of your windows. doesn't postulate why your dog growls at empty doorways. Doesn't suppose how sometimes you can smell your grandfather's cologne years after he's passed right when you need him most. No.

Mystery doesn't care about our algorithms because Clark had it backward. Magic isn't what happens when technology advances. Magic is what happens. Technology fails. When we need to know someone else has walked this valley, someone else seized through this illusion, and it might be a candle. It might be a torch. It might be just the strike of a match, but whatever you do, however you do it, never, never, ever, never, never.