Spooked - The Rocking Horse

Episode Date: December 1, 2023

When Elizabeth was 19, she got a job as an au pair for an 11-year-old girl named Amy. The girl and her parents lived on a horse farm in rural Georgia - it was remote and beautiful. But at night, when the house got dark and quiet, someone moved through the halls, waiting, and watching for Elizabeth.  Thanks, Elizabeth, for sharing your story with Spooked! Produced by Greta Weber, 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.

Rock a bye, baby, wait in the spot. When the wind blows, it's time for the swap. You lost a bet, so climb up the wall, and then snatch the baby, cradle, and all. You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned. Before starting a new school in the sixth grade, I don't have any friends. I don't have any likelihood of making any friends, and maybe that's why. Even though our church doesn't believe in celebrating birthdays,

my mother surprises me with a gift. It tells me it's not for my birthday, but just a present that happens to fall on my birthday. And mothers can give their kids things, so it's probably all right with Jesus just this once. And I see, to my heart's delight, I'm going to have a friend after all. Inside the cage chirps a gorgeous, bright blue parakeet.

I holler, thanks. Pull open the cage door, stick my hand in to stroke her beautiful feathers. She bites me as hard as a parakeet can. Ow! I snacks my fingers out. Wrap my thumb to stop the blood. Then try again. She bites me again.

Hey, hey, hey. Over the next few days, she nips me countless times. I offer her food, toys, a mirror, water, whatever I do. do, she attacks savagely. Hand wrapped in band-aids. I sit outside her cage as she screams at me. Wonder what to do. Other people's pets like them.

What is wrong with me? I need a new approach. So I unlatch the cage slowly, slowly, respectfully. Push my hand inside. outside of jumping range her feathers shoot straight up on her neck in angry pre-attack mode but I just keep my hand there

still not moving not moving been moving a little closer to her than a little closer still the raptor flash in her eyes lets me know she's ready to pounce

she's ready ready with the other hand I cover us both The cage and myself under my mother's brightly patterned bed sheet, red and orange and blue and gold swirl all around us, but I keep still. Surprised by this frantic dance of color, she jumps onto the only thing she knows. My hand, move the sheet with one hand, keep the other frozen in the cage. Then I slow the sheet, slow its spin down to a stop.

She's still on my finger. cocking her head at the bedchip kaleidoscope be still be completely still then then pull the sheet away entirely and there she sits on my hand me look at each other for a long while and slowly as she sits on my finger I touch her wing with my thumb softly as an 11 year old boy can softly she does

doesn't bite me. Instead she bends down and taps my finger with her beak. The next day she even sits on my shoulder, threatening anyone that dares to come near, but instead of scaring away people, her screams, they draw kids toward me. She turns the awkward new boy, if not popular, at least into something that's no longer an outcast. Now I'm the kid with that bird. and that bird doesn't just let anyone run up on me once they acknowledge her first. And now so many years later, whenever I'm upset, whenever I'm sad, defeated, I look over my shoulder, and I swear I still feel, I still know, and I have my back.

Watching over someone there, when our storyteller, Elizabeth was 19, she got a job as an all-pair for an 11-year-old named Amy. The girl and her parents lived on a horse farm in rural Georgia, not far from where Elizabeth grew up. Since Elizabeth always wanted to be a horse trainer, it seemed like the perfect opportunity. Weird things, when she was doing a job interview with me, is she asked how I felt about ghosts. And I thought that was a little weird question. But the South is, this area is notoriously haunted.

So it's not as weird of a question as it may seem in other places. Because around here it's pretty much like if you don't have a ghost in your house and there's something wrong with your property. I told them I was fine with ghosts if they left me alone and I left them alone. Elizabeth got the job. As she drove out to the property through thick forest, she noticed how isolated it was. She finally reached the house and drove up a gravel driveway,

surrounded by trees. And then there was this house in these three barns, and they had an old airplane hanger that they used as a barn. And it was just this kind of facility tucked away in the middle of nowhere. I remember when I got there the first day when I was going to move in, they told me the gas rooms were upstairs, and there was this super steep staircase that went to the upstairs area. And it had no ray along the outside of it.

And there was hardwood floor underneath it. And walking up those stairs was just mildly terrifying because they were just a little too steep. And there was just nothing to stop you from falling down onto the hardwood floor below. As her employers were showing Elizabeth around the house, they introduced her to their daughter, Amy, the little girl she would be taking care of. And I went up there and she was like, don't take the one with two beds. Take the one that just got one bed. I'm like, okay The room that she told me not to sleep in

looked like something from an old mental institution But you know, I didn't want to like lose my job By being like, why? What's wrong with that room? And besides, the room they put me in was a lot nicer So I'm like, whatever, you know Had this four-poster bed And with curtains around it

And the whole deal And looked out over the horse pastures My first night that I was there I woke up probably about 3 a.m. And I could hear someone clinking. There were these drawer poles. Like downstairs the hall was lined with these sort of cabinets. And they had the drawer pulls that would clink up and down.

And I heard someone clinking them up and down. And I thought the little girl was up, running around 3 a.m. And she was like 11. So, you know, I was ready to be like, I'm back to bed. I poked my head out. And I could just see the drawer pulls flipping up one by one. And I'm like, okay. And they stopped, and I went back to bed.

And then I heard a water glass rolling down the hall. And I get up and look down the stairs again. Sure enough, there's a water glass just rolling down the hall. And I'm like, so that's how it's going to be. And I'm like, stop it. And it stopped moving. And I went down, I picked up the glass, and I put it back at the kitchen. And that was my introduction.

to their house. The next morning, Elizabeth went downstairs to eat breakfast with the family. And they were kind of like smirking at me over their oatmeal or whatever we were eating. And they're like, so how did you sleep? And I'm like, all right. All right, you guys need to come clean. What is going on here? And they said, oh, that's Fred.

And they explained that Fred was the ghost of the husband. of the woman who had built the house. She had been putting a nursing home after he died, and he was apparently hanging around the house, waiting for her to pass, so they could go together. Well, I have my alarm set to go off at, like, six or seven in the morning, and it goes off,

and I get up and go downstairs, and I'm like, it's awful dark. But, I don't know, and I'm making coffee, and I look at the clock on the oven, and it's 3 a.m. And I'm like, what? So I reset my alarm clock to the right time. And I'm laying down with my eyes close, and I feel someone sit down on the edge of my bed.

And I open my eyes, and there I can see. It's one of the old alarm clocks with the buttons on the top. And I see the buttons were being pressed down, and time is being changed. And I'm like, Fred, knock it off. The alarm clock just stopped. He left. That was... That was the last time that he really messed with my alarm clock.

I guess he didn't really want to make me mad. I think he was just bored. He definitely had strong opinions about, like, what you were watching on TV. He'd sit down next to you. You could see his little butt prints appear on the couch or the bed or whatever. And if he didn't approve of what you were watching on TV, change the channel. I think that he was just...

This nice old guy. Definitely got the feeling that he was a little bit of a joker, but he seemed very sweet. I felt like Fred was all right. So it's pretty late at night. And I had woken up, and I needed to go to the bathroom, so I opened the door.

So I'm looking down this hall, and there should be this dark hall with this little yellow, rectangle of light at the end of it, and I can see the light, but it looks like there's this dark figure and standing in front of it. And it took me a second to realize this somebody doesn't have any legs. That was a little unsettling. And so I stepped out into the hall, and I'm looking, and I can see her fairly clearly. I can't see the real fine details of her face. but she had dark hair that was pulled up with what I call the school marm bun,

where her hair is kind of pulled up away from her face. She looked to me like either a school teacher or a nanny. She had kind of this Victorian, very business-like dark-colored dress on. And she dropped off right below her hips. She was very real. very there and she felt not alive. I look at her for a second and she's not really like scowling at me but giving me the stern look

and then she's just gone. I was definitely very creeped out. I was like, this is not something I want anywhere near me and I was pretty scared of her. And I went back to bed but I didn't I didn't sleep real well the rest of the night. Just I knew that she was out there. Elizabeth's employers hadn't mentioned this lady in black when they'd talked about Fred. They'd been so forthcoming about him.

They'd joked about him and acknowledged him without pause. Why then hadn't they talked about her? It was the middle of the day sometime. And I, I don't know, I'd probably been upstairs changing. clothes and I came down the stairs. There was a little railing on the inside. So I had my hand on that and was kind of going down the stairs a little slower than normal. And something whooshed up behind me and these two cold hands just slamming into my back.

and pushing me forward with a very good amount of force. So I managed to sort of turn toward the wall and not toward the floor and caught myself. And of course, turn around, look behind me and there was no one there. I'm like, this is a truly malicious spirit, the lady in black. It didn't seem like Fred would push someone down the stairs. But I was immediately convinced that it was her. That was actually the first time I had ever experienced.

having any sort of real interaction where a ghost touched me. I was like, okay, this is something that could pick someone up and throw them. This is something that could wrap a noose around someone's neck and hang them. And I was a little shook by it. Finally, Elizabeth sat the family down and asked them if they knew who the lady in black was. They confessed that she had been there since they'd moved in. They didn't know who she was and they didn't know where she came from. They didn't think she was someone who had ever lived there.

She was a mystery to them and they were afraid of her. They pretty much avoided going upstairs altogether so they wouldn't ever see her. It was absolutely terrifying to her and she was just convinced that if she got anywhere near her, she was going to die. Amy saw her at the end of the hall. She'd see her at the doorway, and Sheik and her cousins had both been pushed. As time went on,

Elizabeth would regularly see or feel the lady in black, but not just anywhere in the house. She didn't seem to come into my room. She didn't seem to come downstairs. About halfway down the stairs was where her territory seemed to end. She seemed like she was more interested in the room with two beds in it. And I would see her once in a while around the door, and you'd see the doorknob.

It was one of these old silver doorknobs, and you'd see it shaking. And I remember if you touched it, it would be just freezing cold. The air around you would change, and you felt like something very bad was about to happen. and I just sort of thought that she was angry, that we were in her territory, that she was not happy about that. Still, Elizabeth didn't want to quit and move out. She liked taking after Amy and working with the family's horses.

She actually wanted to stay in the house. Part of the reason that I didn't want to leave the job was that I was sort of fascinated by this ghosts. She was different than anything I'd ever experienced. I want to know who she was and why she seemed so

violently territorial about that particular area of the house. Elizabeth and the owners searched for clues about this woman in all of the historical records they could find, but... We could never find out much about her, but I was always real curious.

as to what was going on with her. It was getting close to Christmas time. Elizabeth and Amy's dad went into the bedroom with the two beds in it to get some decorations. Elizabeth was surprised to see a small closet that was built into the room. It looked like they had literally just slapped the wall halfway across this larger room

to cut part of it off as a storage room. And there was a little kind of half-size, door area that you could get in there. And of course, I had to go in there to get stuff because I was more agile as a teenager. And I went into that little room, and there's a little plastic table with little plastic chairs set up around it

and all sorts of kid stuff, toys in there. And there's this antique rocking horse. It was painted as a doubt, and the paint job on it was just beautiful still. It had gray legs and gray mane and tail and gray spots along its back and a little brown saddle on it. It was just, it was absolutely gorgeous. I have to pull the rocking horse out to get it what I'm trying to get at. When I pulled the rocking horse out, I got this vision of,

of the lady in black standing over the rocking horse, and there's this little girl, and she's, I'd say maybe six or seven years old. She's got blonde hair, and she's got a bow in her hair, and she's wearing this kind of fluffy white dress, and she's sitting on this rocking horse, and she is just, like, going on the rocking horse, like, really getting it going so that it's moving across the floor. You know, the lady in black still had this stern expression on her face.

But, you know, she doesn't seem angry. And then the room returned to normal. Elizabeth was standing there with Amy's dad, holding a box of Christmas decorations. She asked him about the rocking horse. And he said maybe his wife had bought her at an auction and was going to use it as decor. or something, but it just had gotten put away in the storage area instead. So we pulled it out and just left it out. And that night, I could hear that thing going.

Tick slide, tick slide, tick slide. So it went across the floor. And I was standing there at the door to that room looking at it. And I was like, do I want to open this door? and I just could not bring myself to do it. And I just went back to bed. I'm like, this is not for me. But I started to really feel like there was a little ghost girl

who was attached to the rocking horse and that the lady in black was attending to this girl that she was her opair. The next morning, Amy's parents went upstairs into the lady in black's room, grabbed the rocking horse and moved it out to the apartment above the garage. And I'm like, yeah, it kept them awake all night too. One night, Amy's former O'Pair was passing through the area with her mother,

and the two women stopped by the house to spend the night. Elizabeth let the mother have her room. And when we first went in there, you know, I take my bed and everything in there, and she's like, you know, I'm really glad that you're still. sleeping in here with me, because this is where I stayed when I was working here, and this room is terrifying. And so we ended up sitting up talking about the lady in black and Fred, and she'd had, as far as I can tell, her experience with the lady in black had been seeing her standing at the door or standing looking out the window. And she said her covers would be pulled down at night.

Her bed would be shaken, and she just felt like she was really being harassed by ghostly presence, and after a while, she decided she'd had enough of it and left. So I settled down, and the way that we were sleeping, she was on the right, and I was on the left, and the window looked right over through the window of the garage apartment. I went to sleep and I woke up a couple hours later because I could feel

this, the pressure had changed in the room and I'm like oh God she's here and I opened my eyes and sure enough there she is, the lady in black stand in there right between the beds looking out the window she just turns her head and looks at me

and she wasn't like scowling. I didn't feel like this anger coming off of her anymore. She just seemed kind of sad. I felt like at that point that if she really wanted to hurt me, that was her clear opportunity right there. And she obviously didn't want to.

We looked at each other for a second, and then she turned around and walked. out of the room. Elizabeth got up and looked out of the window that the ghost was just looking through into the same apartment where Amy's dad had put the rocking horse. There's that rocking horse and it was going. There's this spotlight in the dark on this rocking horse in the window, rocking, slowly moving itself across the floor.

and I just, I stepped back, I closed the curtains, I went back to bed, and nothing mess with us for the rest of the night. The next day, the former O'Pair and her mother left, and Elizabeth went back to sleeping in her own room. She couldn't stop thinking about the lady in black. I would have expected her to be angry that we had moved this thing out of the house, but I almost felt like she was relieved. Because it seemed like after we took that rocking horse out of the house she seemed to settle down quite a bit kind of she felt like she didn't need to

protect the child's room she didn't need to keep other people out maybe it was sort of a feeling of the child as attached to it has literally been moved you know they grew up they moved away they're in their own apartment now but she can still see them

I definitely begin to feel more sympathetic. It seems a little odd maybe, but I felt almost like we were bonded in a way because like I said, it felt like she was an au pair. It felt like she recognized that I was in the same position that she was. Even though she was really scary, I almost felt like she was kind of keeping an eye on me. Maybe she felt like she was the,

the head nanny and she was just letting me know that she was watching me. A few months after that night in the creepy room, Elizabeth moved out. By the time I left there, I said I wasn't afraid of her at all. Her energy just sort of changed. I mean, you'd still see her, but she definitely didn't seem as angry, and I didn't see, you know, rattling doorknobs and stuff. going on. When I tell people about that house, I'm like, I know this, this seems like something out of a bad movie, but I swear to God, this really happened. No, nobody was on drugs. This is

not a prank thing. The lady, the rocking horse. Fred, I had not been a believer beforehand. And, you know, after a few months in that house, I was just like, look, I've had people try and push me down the stairs before, you know. I'm ready for anything. Thank you, Elizabeth, for sharing your story with Spooked. All the Lady in Black is at rest now. The original score for that story was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Greta Weber.

Or spooksters, we walk this path together. So let me ask you, do you have a story of your own? A story that maybe you've kept secret, hidden. a story you might be afraid to tell someone. Tell me. Spooked at snapjudgment.org because there is nothing better than a spook story from a spoof listener.

Let us know. Spooked at snapjudgment.org and tell the dark side, you spook with some spook gear, the t-shirt of your dreams available right now at snapjudgment.org. And remember, if you like storytelling

under the bright light of day, Get the amazing stupendious Snap Judgment podcast. It is storytelling with a beat. Luke was created by the team that no matter where they may wander, they always check behind them. Always. Except for Mark Ristich, he just hoped for the best. There's Anna Sussman, Eliza Smith,

Chris Hambry, Annie Nguyen to win, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Davy Kim, Renzo Goryo, Teo Decott, Marissa Dodge, Zoe Frigno, Titten Delisa, Ann Ford, Doug Stewart, Isaiah Sims, and Greta Weber. This food theme song is by Pat McSee Miller. My name is from Washington. Please understand.

The shadow doesn't care if you believe in it or not. It is unconcerned about whether it meets your specific nomenclature about what is and what is not possible, what it can and cannot do. It will do as it will. But even the mystery has rules. as fragile as they may be and those steeped in the knowledge we have rules as well

the first and maybe the most important is to never never ever never never