Spooked - The Red Balloon

Episode Date: January 26, 2024

Sabina starts to get a creeping feeling that she’s not alone in her childhood home in Perth, Australia. She wonders what could be there. But when she finally finds out… she can’t believe her eyes. Thank you, Sabina, for sharing your story with Spooked! If you want more stories from Sabina, check out her book: Muckross Abbey and Other Stories Produced by Zoë Ferrigno, 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.

In the mirror, I play this game. I wave my hand. He does the same, but when I strike, he turns to flee. That's how I know that that's not me. You've crossed over to spout. Stay. There's a restaurant in Oakland, not far from my spot. Le Chivalve, it fuses Vietnamese, French, and Chinese cooking into deliciousness.

That lemon grass tofu on rice, fancy. It's an everyday type of place. Owned by the gregarious Tran family. That always goes to extra mile to make my family feel at home. It's where I often watch ball games. Celebrate birthday parties. We have my daughter's graduation there. Like an extension of my living room.

So, when they announced that they were closing, It felt like a gut punch. Like someone that sold the family homestead. No way. But at the same time, yeah, I knew it was coming. We all did. What else could they do? Because as much as I love my neighborhood,

and I do love my neighborhood, I love the people here in Oakland, I raise my kids here in Oakland, but something is wrong. Because it's not just one restaurant. It's one after the other. Businesses, whole families, leaving, fleeing. Like cutting off the fingers and toes of our community.

We all see the monster. It's right there. And we know that soon the set of the fingers and toes is going to come for the whole hand, the whole foot, this cancer, this stain, even as the price of housing skyrockets. leaving people to sleep alone in the streets. We can't seem to fight the beast at our doorstep.

And I don't wonder if we're making ghosts right now. I just wonder, intended themselves. When Sabina was just a baby, her dad got a job in Australia and their whole family moved across the world. From Massachusetts, the Perth. And Sabina, she's one of those kids who likes to spend a lot of time on her own,

reading, riding, playing in the yard. But Sabina, she starts getting a little older. Sometimes she'll be out by herself. She'll start to wonder if she's really alone. We had an almond tree in the backyard, and I spend a lot of time climbing in that tree. One afternoon, I was sitting on a branch, and suddenly I just feel like I'm being watched.

You know how you can sense when there's someone else there? I try to keep my balance. I have my hand on the branch, and I turn around carefully, you know, slowly. And I can't see anything. There was nothing there. All my senses are on overdrive, and I'm listening for things. I go to a Catholic school where they tell you when you misbehave, you know, God takes notice. I'm wondering, you know,

Is it God? Checking me out? I actually feel numbness in my limbs. I go inside the house. But the sense that there actually is someone watching me do this just doesn't dissipate. I just don't want to be alone. I find the dog. I just sit with her for a while.

But I don't tell anyone anything because what am I going to tell them? I was sitting in the tree. I freaked out. and I got out of the tree. It was probably every month I would get that feeling. We have a dachshund named Mousie. She's a very chilled out dog. She's a great dog for a little kid.

She lets you do everything. She lets you put clothes on her. She lets you drag around in the wagon. One day I was in my bedroom and I was lying on the floor reading a book. And she was lying right in front of me. We kind of were mirroring each other. And I get that feeling that there's someone there.

And I notice that the fur on her back has started to stand up. She didn't bark. She just seemed to really focus all her attention over my shoulder. So I looked over my shoulder. There's nothing there. But she was definitely looking at something. And she just kind of stood up and just exited the room. I think, wow, it's not just me. She's also sensing it. She senses there's something in this

house. And that just really frightened me. It's probably been about six months and I was reading in bed and I turned off the light and I'm under my covers and at this point, I'm not sure why I'm awake. And I realize I can hear music. It's kind of faint at first, just a few chords here and there. But it starts to grow in volume. I can actually make it out more clearly. And it's circus music. It sounds like it was being played by a band and a little slowly, a little off tempo.

It was kind of muted, as if somebody was playing it through a pillow or something. Who would be playing circus music? It just was so strange. I yell across to my sister. We have adjoining rooms. I yell across and I'm like, Norma, can you hear that? And she said, what? Can you hear the music?

Can you hear the circus music? And she said, oh my God, you're so weird. You're scaring me. and she put the covers over her head. But the music was like undeniable at that point. I start to notice that the room, it's filling up with this kind of smoke-like mist. It just seems to be increasing.

It's just, it's all around me. It smelled like burning. When people are burning, the underbrush or the incinerary. at school would be going. But I was just so taken with what else was going on that I didn't really have time to think about that. I was just so riveted

by what was happening at the foot of my bed. I start to see something kind of materialize. And slowly it comes into focus. It's a doorway. It has a wooden frame with a darker space within it. I am so awake. So I sit up in bed. Even though I'm scared, I also feel like I cannot stop watching.

And I start to see at the foot of my bed something red appearing. As it elevates, I can see that it's pretty. round. It's about the size of a, you know, medium-sized ball that you play with. It's kind of bobbing there, and it's hazy. It's transparent. And it's slowly kind of moving up. And then I see that it's a balloon. It's a red balloon that is slowly rising at the foot of my bed. And then I see that it's got a string. attached to it as balloons do, and that also at this point, I can see a set of stairs start to materialize.

It's as if a set of stairs has just been projected at the foot of my bed. And I can see that this balloon is going up the stairs. And at that point, I started to get really, really freaked out. And then I saw a hand holding the string. And then the top of someone's hat. It's a straw hat with a ribbon and maybe a two-inch brim. It's a boater. And I realized that there's a little girl walking upstairs at the foot of my bed.

She has long red hair in two braids tied off with ribbons. She is wearing a long-sleeved white dress with a very high collar. She's got the dress belted around with like a light blue kind of sash. And then I see that she's starting to turn in my direction. She has a little kind of snub nose. She has a whitish face. She looked like she was about 12 and she wasn't that pretty. And then where her eyes are supposed to be, there are actually holes.

I can see the wall of the room through where her eyes are supposed to be. I hit that point where I was just like, I don't want to see this. And I had my eyes screwed shut and I was just screaming. I have absolutely no recollection between the minute she looked at me, an eye clock that she didn't have any eyes to my dad showing up with my mother close behind him at the side of my bed saying, you know, Sabino, what on earth is wrong? Why are you screaming? I told them what had happened.

I'm inconsolable. I'm so freaked out. There's a girl. She looked at me and she doesn't have any eyes. My parents just respond the way that sensible parents would respond. Oh, you're terrified. Poor you. You had a nightmare.

But they didn't think that there was anything really there. We didn't talk about it after that, really. My parents' solution is to keep me away from anything that might potentially scare me. At the time there was an Australian toothpaste brand, called Uncle Sam's Toothpaste. Do you need all the teeth you can get? Uncle Sam's got a super rat. I don't know.

Maybe Australians thought Americans had great teeth or something, but that was what they called the toothpaste. And in the ad, Dracula uses Uncle Sam's toothpaste because clearly he needs great teeth. And every time it came on, my parents would say, It's the Uncle Sam's toothpaste commercial, Sabina. You have to leave the room.

This is how they dealt with what they called my nightmares. I didn't sleep in my bed for maybe two years. I just moved in with my sister. She did not have a say in the matter. I didn't care. I was not going to sleep alone. Because I was scared that she was. would come back. It's at least four years later. My dad has a grad student. She babysits me sometimes.

Mostly, she just takes me around to do cool stuff. Like she'll take me to art exhibits or she'll take me shopping for a book or she'll take me to a fair. And she wants to take me to this kind of art house, South African film. And we get to the movie theater. And another film is showing and it's picnic at Hanging Rock. The poster, it's really catching my attention. It's girls, they're outside, and they're in the long white dresses,

sashes, belted, long hair, and they have the boater hats. Oh my God. That girl. girl. That girl I saw. I could see all the details again. I remembered everything. It just kind of stunned me. And I tell her, I'm like, Sophie, can't we just see picnic at Hanging Rock? And she goes, oh, I don't think so. It's too scary. And I just begged her. And of course, you know, Sophie was in her 20s. she wanted to see picnic at Hanging Rock.

So in the end, an agreement was struck, and we went to see the movie. It's a bunch of girls in the outback in Australia at a boarding school, and they go on an excursion to, you know, the eponymous Hanging Rock. And while they're there, something really weird happens, some of the girls disappear. Absolutely terrified me. the way that they reminded me of that little girl that I'd seen so many years ago.

So shortly after I see picnic at a hanging rock, I'm with my friend Catherine. We're at the park that's literally, it's like a block from my house. It's called Mason's Gardens. It's a small park, and there's a swamp in the middle. We were just hanging out and talking. I asked Catherine, why is it called Mason's Gardens? And she goes, I have no idea. I'll ask my mother, she'll know she's a real estate agent.

She knows all about the area. Next time where together, which is, you know, just a few days later, she tells me that it's called Mason's Gardens because it used to be just a little farm. And the guy had a produce stand set up there, a guy named Mason. So I'm like, oh, that's cool. And then I just said to her, well, what about the bloodline? block where I live, which is really literally a block over. She says, well, I'm not exactly sure where exactly it happened, but my mother did say that somewhere

in that area, there was a fair that had been set up between 1900 and 1910. And there was a fire, and quite a few people were killed. I immediately thought of the girl at the foot of my bed. The weird music, the smoke, what the girl was wearing, the balloon. It suddenly made sense. It did make me think, like, that could have been me. Sometimes kids die. What if I died in a fire?

I just went home. I didn't say anything to my sister. I didn't say anything to my parents. because it was so scary to me and if I didn't hear myself telling that story to someone maybe I could pretend it wasn't true. This must have been, you know, at least 10, 15 years ago I was at the circus with my kids

and I heard the same piece of music. I hadn't heard it in a long time but immediately I remembered. It's just rabbit hold me right back to that time. I was like, yeah, That's the music. That's the piece. For sharing your story with the spooked,

if you want more stories from Sabina, well, she's published a book of them. You can find it in our show notes. The original score was by Lalene St. Juice. It was produced by Zoe Ferigno. Nothing goes away. Nothing ever, but nothing stays the same either. There are echoes.

And I have a request of you. See, several traditions mentioned beings called the gen that made not of earth as we are, but a fire. Beings that live beside us, next to us, but are not of us. Some are good, some are bad, who's to say, but if you have a relationship with a being born of fire, I would certainly love to know about it. Yes, I would like that very much. Spooked at snapjudgment.org because there is nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener. And you got to understand this entire spooked enterprise.

It only happens because of the kindness of strangers. Let me ask you for a kindness. Stop for just a moment. Share this episode with someone. You think needs an invitation to walk this spook road. Put it on your social media. Let somebody know because that's the only way spook happens. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.

I appreciate you. By the team that shows deep respect for the traditions of each and every home we enter. Except, of course, for Mark Ristich, who insists on gobbling the first bite of everybody else's food. There's David Kim Zoe Frigno, Anne Ford Eric Yanez, Teo de Cot, Marissa Dodge,

Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Creekey, Lizardue, Vithu Matu, Lul Jumima. The spook theme song is by Pat Mascily Miller.

My name is Lynn Washington. Now, there are certain things that you can't learn from a book, but you need to know them all the same and I am sorry because for this there is no

viral video. Chat GPT can't help you these things are often about place and about power because knowing your place can take a lifetime but knowing your power can take longer still how can it be

that you are powerful beyond measure a God made flesh and infantasmally insignificant on the wheel of the universe. Both at the same time. And we only get a little while to try to remove the scales from our eyes. This is madness. How do we give our lives a scaffolding

the vantage point to see things as they truly are? I have learned. The teacher only appears when the student is ready. So each and every day I try to send a signal that I am ready the best way I can I never never ever

never never never