Spooked - The Murmur

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

Sarah and her dad are hearing the same noise. It’s coming from somewhere upstairs, from somewhere in the wall. It sounds like someone’s talking, whispering, murmuring. Thank you, Sarah and Richard Benkin for sharing your story. If you want more scary stories from Sarah, check out her horror anthologies, Then It Was Dark and Built on Strange Ground. Produced by Annie Nguyen, original score Leon Morimoto Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

They told me that the weird things, the strange things, the things that made me hide, scared in the closet, those things they told me were normal. Turns out, they weren't normal at all. You're listening to Spoot. Stay to. As a little boy, I was told that there are some things that we don't talk about outside the house. like what? Like things that ain't nobody's business. Like what?

Like things best left alone? Like what? I wanted to ask again, but I sensed the question time was over still. I didn't know the difference between what I could mention outside the confines of our four walls

and those things I was forbidden to say. So I kept quiet. about everything, turning it all into a secret, telling no one ever. And for some things, I'm sure that was for the best, keeping it between those four walls,

but for others, my name is from Washington. Some secrets become monsters, just because no one else knows. Spook starts when you're a little kid, and you feel lonely. Sometimes you talk, to yourself. Sometimes you speak

to an imaginary friend and sometimes that friend even speaks bad. And when Sarah was a kid Sarah well she had to make a very hard choice. Spooked. I'm about six years old.

I'm on the floor of my room laying on my stomach with my papers and markers spread out in front of me and I'm enjoying the pleasure of making big swirl and spirals appear. To the right of me is the old bureau that my clothes are in

and that I sometimes climb on when my parents aren't looking. I don't have any brothers or sisters, and I've learned how to entertain myself, which is what I'm doing right now. I'm in the middle of a particularly complicated swirl. I suddenly hear a sound coming from the space behind my closet. And it's loud enough to startle me, I kind of jump. The spiral I was drawing turns into a jagged zigzag of red.

I stop and I strain to listen, because what I'm hearing is a voice, but it's not the voice of one of my parents. And it's hard to hear anything distinguishing about it. I just hear this distant murmuring. I feel a little bit of tension in my chest. That peters out after a moment. moment, and then it starts up again. So I naturally get up and I go to the other room and I look in

and I see if anyone's there. There isn't. And after a moment I hear the sound again, but this time it's coming from the other direction. It's coming from my room. When I go back to my room, it's still coming from the same place. And then I realize it's not coming from my room, it's not coming from my room. It's not coming from my parents' room, but the space between the two rooms. It's coming from the wall, just beyond my closet. I find I'm periodically hearing it again. It never talks for very long. It's not always words. Sometimes I hear a thud or a knocking, or what sounds like someone moving around in my parents' room, but again, when I go to look, I don't see my parents. I don't see anyone at all. I'm starting to wonder, where is this coming from, what's causing it. I can't say why exactly,

but I'm convinced it's a little kid like me, who lived in this house before and was trapped inside the wall when some sort of remodeling project happened and who was never found and who died there. I want to get to know this person. Maybe it wants to be friends. It's what I want. I mean, it wouldn't be talking to me if it didn't want to talk, right? So, obviously, it just needs me to help it get there, to help meet it halfway. So I find this book in the library. It's called spooky kids, and I'm immediately drawn to it. I read it cover to cover, sitting on the island of my bed across the room from the closet as far from the closet as I can get, surrounded by blankets and stuffed animals, and nothing can get close to me.

And there's plenty of light coming in through the windows. And it's while I'm sitting there. And I first read the word seance. And I start to think, maybe if there's something beyond my closet in the wall back there that's trying to talk to me, maybe there's a way that I can talk back to it. So I go into the linen closet

and I start pulling out bed sheets. And I go back into my room, and I put them all over the furniture, and I turn off the lights, but I keep the shades on my room up, because I'm still a little afraid of the dark. I look around my room. I've got my bed, it's covered with a sheet, my toy box covered with a sheet, the bureau by the wall, covered with a sheet. But it needs something else, so I go to the cabinet where,

my parents keep supplies in case of a blackout, and I grab all the candles I can find. Now, I can't use matches or lighters, but I can still have candles, right? So I bring the candles back in my room, and I set them up. I'm pretty sure that it's important that it feel right. Now, the candles are out, and I take my little rag doll, whose name is marshmallow. I grab my pound puppy toy and the pink rocking horse toy I got from my grandmother. and I put them all in a circle, put myself at the end of the circle,

in front of my closet, and facing my closet, facing the wall between my room and my parents' room, and I sit down. I'm ready to start the seance. I face the closet, and I call out towards it. Is anybody there? Can anybody hear me? There's nothing, but there's a tension in the air. If you can hear me, give me a...

Fine. Nothing. The room is quiet. So I say... If you can hear me, knock twice. Deep down, I'm hoping I'll hear a knock, and maybe then I can set up something like knock once for no and twice for yes,

and we can have a conversation. Maybe I can start asking it questions about who it is, or what it wants, or... Maybe we can just talk. Maybe we can make friends. Nothing. I don't hear what I want. I feel almost rejected, honestly.

I did everything you're supposed to, right? Despite my disappointment, it's only a few days before I try to do a seance again. I've got this idea in my head. I'm not going to just let it go, after all. Now, the next time I do this, I wait until I'm already hearing something. I set my stuffed animals back in their circle and I sit and face the closet and I say

If you can hear me, knock twice I don't get two knocks What I get is murmuring I get the same continued stream of sound that I had been hearing when I started setting up And eventually it peters out So I try to cheat I say if you can hear me, say something

Nothing I want to yell or throw something. I don't want these random knocks or these murmurs that I can't make heads or tails out of. What I want is someone who's clearly talking back to me. I give up on the idea of a seance and a few weeks pass. I still hear the noises, but I don't try to talk back to them anymore. Around this time, I'm lying, curled up in my little bed, and sleep. takes a long time to come.

When I finally nod off, I'm dreaming that I'm walking through my house, and it's dark, it's very dark. I don't see any windows, and there's no light coming from any doors. And I feel like I'm being forced forward towards something I can see in the distance.

And I'm struggling. I'm trying to force my eyes open, and very suddenly they're open and I'm awake and I'm in my room but I'm not where I'm supposed to be in front of me is the closet and the door is open

and the darkness beyond it is so deep and I know I'm awake I know this is real and I don't feel alone and I don't feel safe and I look in front of me and what I'm seeing isn't a face I see someone

looking back at me but it's not a figure It's not even a pair of eyes. It's what you get if you have someone looking at you and you take away the face and you take away the eyes and all that's left is the gaze. I feel it go through the darkness towards me and I can feel every muscle in my body clenching. And I can't close my eyes and I can't turn away.

And it's almost painful. And it goes through me. And it's gone. and I feel panic starting to come. My arms are straight at my sides and my fingers are spayed apart, and they're shaking. And I can't move. My entire body is ramrod straight. And it takes me a while before I can move again.

And when I do, I start running, and I'm crossing the hallway, and I'm going into my parents' room. They, of course, grogly tell me it's all right if I stay with them for the rest of the night. So I climb in bed with my parents, and I huddle between them, and the warm, reassuring bulk of their sleeping presence helps. Until I know they're both asleep, and I'm still awake, it takes me a very long time to fall asleep after the night. that. My first recollection of hearing those sounds was after she was out of the house. I'm Richard Benkin, Sarah's father. It's middle of the night. I'm laying in bed and waken by a bang. Not a loud bang, not a sharp bang, but a definite bang. And with one move, I sit up and reach behind me with my right arm and grab the softball bat that I keep by my bed. You see, I grew up in the city and

lived in some of Philadelphia's toughest areas. So always keep a softball bat by my bed. It's still dark, and my eyes don't adjust very quickly. But there really are only two spots in the house where someone could break in. There's a front door, and then there's a door on the other side of the house that leads to our deck.

And so I listen. Because if there is someone in the house, I'll be able to hear the next sound, but there's no sound from those areas. Within a few minutes I hear another sound that clearly is in the closet. It's clear as I hear them that I'm not asleep. I'm not imagining them. Now, I've lived in a lot of places, and I know what the sound of rodents running through the walls is like.

I also know what the sound of a house settling is like, and this was none of those. These were definite taps and bags. And I remember thinking, I don't want to get up and investigate because I don't really care. Whatever is going on on the other side is going on the other side.

So I fell back to sleep pretty easily. Things like that just don't bother me. Especially since when I thought about it, this wasn't my first experience of that kind of this house. Sarah's a teenager, younger teenager, but a teenager. When Sarah came old enough to leave the nursery, we converted it to an office for myself where I had the computer and would do work. I do human rights work, so I would get there early in the morning and I would spend a good part of the day there. And so I'm sitting there. I'm looking at the walls. I'm looking at the walls.

and realize that we never changed the walls from when it was Sarah's nursery. Three of the walls were yellow, and the wall I'm looking at is this like rainbow wallpaper on it. And I hear someone say, Richie. Now, that was very odd, because my name is Richard, and the only people to call me Richie are family. and there are a couple of childhood friends I recently reconnected with, but no one calls me Richie. And I thought, well, I'm thinking maybe I imagine that, but it happens again.

Richie. I feel kind of a startle, because I know there's nobody else in the house but me. And I know I am not imagining a sound that doesn't exist. I kind of feel a shock in the back of my head, Can I turn around quickly, one side to the next? I don't know why I do that because I know there's no one there. And then I hear again, Richie.

And by the third time, I'm thinking, wow, this really sounds like what you would expect an adult male voice to be, sort of low. And the more I think about it, it sounds like my father. And no matter what I say or what I think I keep hearing, Richie, Richie, it's frustrating. And so I say, who is it? Who is it? What do you want? And I hear nothing in return. And then I hear again. Richie. At one point I'm hearing it, and instead of feeling frustrated, For whatever reason, I'm starting to think about my dad.

You know, my dad and I often had a very difficult relationship. And when my dad passed away, we never had an opportunity to come to terms with it, to resolve it. And it's something I always wished I was able to do. And for whatever reason, I'm starting to, Think about our times together. And even though some of those thoughts that I have aren't about great times, I'm feeling a little better about my dad and me. It clearly happened that time, but it never happened again.

And yet, I still hear those sounds in the closet, and I am just so lucky to know that this stuff exists. The fact that I could finish unfinished business after my dad had been dead for so many years, I guess about seven years at that point, was pretty amazing. I know your experiences were quite different in the effect that they had. Yeah, but, you know, I was a kid. Yeah, but isn't it great having inexplicable things in our lives? I mean, I guess.

I don't know. Tell that to the six-year-old version of me that had to take the doors off her closet. Well, that's why I didn't say anything back then, but I'm saying it now. I'd like to pass away would you back and give you a sign and if so like what kind of sign? Jesus

God Jesus so if that happened I think any sign that gives me hope of a presence of an actual presence would be enough for me

So if I die Do I have permission to just haunt this house? and float objects around the room and paint get out and blow on the walls. Okay, so here's a deal. Here's a deal. First of all, God forbid that that ever happens, okay? However, I know you well enough that, quite frankly, it wouldn't be up to me. It wouldn't be my saying yes or no.

I'm going to take it out and blood on the walls. That's how you'll know it's me. Oh, man, you, I'm telling you would be a very active spirit. I wouldn't paint it out. That's silly. I don't want you to move out. I'd just, I'd paint. Move out.

Are you kidding? If you did that, that would be, man, I'll never move out. This is great. I'd paint vote Democrat on the walls. Then I'd move out. In blood, though. Still in blood. Big love to Sarah and Richard Binkin

for sharing their story. And if you want more scary stories from Sarah, I have the good news for you. She's a comic book artist. and author, she's written and illustrated two horror anthologies called Then It Was Dark and Built on Strange Ground.

You can find out more about her work on our website, spookedpodcast.org. And that story was produced by Annie Nguyen. Do you have your own supernatural encounter that you think the world needs to know about? Because we're looking for real people, real stories.

We've got a very high bar. I don't want to hear about that time your uncle Ned saw a ghost or whatever looking for people who've encountered some element of the supernatural over time and have a relationship with the unknown we want the person telling this story to have been changed, improved, altered, diminish whatever are the time they get to the end and if you have a story that hits the mark

let us know spooked at snapjudgment.org Some of our very best pieces come from listeners. Tell us the story, but you can't tell anyone else. As long as you're not sending the ghostly ghoul thing here, we cannot have that. We can't have it. Spooked at snapjudgment.org.

Send it to us when they're not listening. We've been listening to Spooked, a Snap Judgment production. And if you dig stories that were not born in the dark of night, check out our sister podcast, Snap Judgment. Amazing storytelling with the beat. Snapjudgment.org. Let somebody know that you've traveled the dark path, the lonely road that you have felt the unseen hand.

You're one of us now. My name is then Washington. Spook was produced by Mark Vistich. Anna Sussman, our chief spooksters Eliza Smith, Chris Hambrick, Annie New Inn, Tiffany DeLisa, Ann Ford, Eric Yon-Yannes, and son of Han. Our original theme song was by Pat Massini Miller.

Our sound team is Lauren Newsom, Renzo Goryo, and Leon Mourimoto. But whenever you do, wherever you go, I just ask you do this one thing just for me. For me personally, if you don't mind. Please, please, please, never ever, never, never, never. Turn out.