Spooked - The Summoning - Classic

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

Spirits, seances and dollhouses. This is The Summoning. STORIES  "Spirit on the Board" - What happens when a group of kids conjure a spirit? "The Seance" - A long-lost love comes to town for a visit, and he's been dead for years. Produced by Bob Carlson and KCRW's Unfictional. "Dollhouse" - Ali Standish came home after surgery and was shocked to find her grandmother in the living room with a gift-- a dollhouse. Produced by Eliza Smith and Mark Ristich, original scores by Leon Morimoto. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When you reach out to the other world, through the veil, you may be upset when you are ignored, when they simply fail to respond, but that is not the problem. That is not the issue. Now, understand the difficulty always comes when they pay attention. You're listening to Spooked. They say, don't mess with things you do not. understand. But if we obeyed, we would never touch anything because we know so little. We are so profoundly ignorant that we fail to recognize even our own ability to summon evil. Still, just because we don't know what we're doing doesn't mean that we can't pay the price.

My name is Clem Washington. Always know how to do the exact opposite of what you just did. because spooked starts now if you don't believe in the power of a wigi board in fact that's how it should be but just don't go playing with one spooked listener Andrea CK tells us why

spooked so there was a Saturday afternoon that was pretty warm you know I'm stuck with my little sister and that's a little bit disappointing and normally on a Saturday I would hang out with my gang. So I called around, and Gerald and Debbie and Barry, they said, don't worry, they can come over to

my place, and they'll be on their way. So at around one o'clock, here they come, and I'm supposed to be babysitting, you know, but we sit down and get in the living room, and right away, Wendy is taken out her Ouija board. I had never seen a Ouija board before, and I had no idea what it was. She said, this is what we're going to do. You know, I'm going to ask the questions. She said, people with a good relationship have to use it together because then the energy is better. So Gerald was my boyfriend. We had been going together for a couple weeks.

So of all the people in the room, we were the only couple. So we figured we had some good energy flow between us. And I said, oh, Gerald and me, Gerald and me, we'll do it. We're setting up in the dining room. We have two chairs facing each other. It's me and Gerald facing each other. And we each put our fingers. We're putting our fingers on this little coaster thing that goes around.

It has a little opening in the middle of it. Wendy says, is there a spirit on the board? It starts moving. That was so scary. It was going, at first it was going really slow. Like it was kind of trying on, like to see, oh, how to use this vessel, how to use these kids to get some messages across. It went around and around, and then it went straight up to, yes, there's a spirit on the board.

So Wendy said, what's your name? And we're spelling out L, U, C, I, F, E, R. And then it stops. Wendy said, well, we don't think you're Lucifer. Who are you really? and it spells out S-E-T-H. And from that point, Wendy said, you know, when did you live? And where did you live?

We're asking questions kind of leading the witness, like, when did you live? Oh, third century, B-C or C-E. Oh, where did you live, Greece? And he's telling us this whole story. I felt this energy in my body, but I don't remember thinking about it. It was just kind of like, this is happening. He told us this long story about finding his wife in bed with another man and killing them both. We had a violent spirit on the board.

I know if we want to keep this conversation going, like what's going to be the benefit? And we kind of looked at each other and sat back a little. And that's when Wendy said, do you have any messages for anyone here? and it went really fast over to yes and then it spelled out A-N-D-Y-A-N-D-Y andy and that's my nickname I just got a shock of energy going through my whole body like there's a message for me I mean suddenly it was about me it was personal it wasn't about Seth it wasn't about what happened in his life it's about me right now what's the message and so we said each letter one at a time. And it's spelled out just like this. T-I-L-E-S-T-O-P. So it's tiles-top-top-T-O-P. So it's tiles top or tile stop. We don't understand the message,

and it's spelled out T-A-M-M-I. C-H-O-K-E. Tammy choke. Tammy was my little sister who I was supposedly babysitting. Tammy was two years old at the time. Maybe he was going to choke her. That just put a chill through my body. It spelled out the whole message again.

It spelled no. Tile stop. Tammy choke. and we just jumped up, dropped the board, ran into the next room, found her in a closet in the next room, just hunker down in the corner with my mom's Majan set, and she had two Majan tiles in her mouth. One of them just like came right out, and the other one I had to do that finger down the throat trick to sort of pop it out of there. She was fine. She didn't have, I mean, I did hug her up.

I mean, I really hugged her up and held her close and stuff. I think we ended our play date pretty quickly after that. We were all just really in a state of amazement. This happened to me. While some people have to learn the hard way, I'm happy to report that Andrea has not used a Ouija board since this incident. Unfortunately, our next guest, her not as lucky. Get ready.

Prepare yourself because we're about to unleash a favorite of the season, a Snap Classic. It comes to us from the amazing Bob Carlson, creator of the podcast on Fictional. Download it. This story, it's got everything you need. Back in the cool 80s, attractive people, secluded location, and... Wow. I'm going to let Mark take it away. The party really wasn't going anywhere.

a combination birthday party and going away party. The only two people I know there are my friend Christy and our friend Deborah. Christy and I have been good friends since high school. She has been one of my best friends for years. The party was in an old craftsman's house in Hollywood. Just so you know, I have a very bad memory and I don't remember very much. But I do remember very clearly a lot of this event. The party was a hodgepodge of various individuals.

My girlfriend, Becky, was one of my roommates. Becky's boyfriend, Mike. He was a Malibu sheriff. Then there was Mark, the Frenchman. And my girlfriend, Debbie, then my boyfriend, Danny, and he was the rocker. In France, when we had a party, the idea was drink as much as you can, as fast as you can, and then put on James Brown's sex machine.

Unfortunately, there was no James Brown available that night. So we had to think of something else. And I started to wander off into the dining area, and there was a huge oak table. And in the back, there was an armoire and a bunch of crystal glasses. And an idea popped in my head, and I thought, hey, there's nothing else going on here tonight. Why don't we do a seance? I don't know about you. I like keeping my money where I can see it.

Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers like keeping my money as well. And finally, you can stop overpaying for wireless just because that's how it's always been. With Mint Mobile, premium wireless plan starting at 15 bucks a month, best thing. You can use your own phone and own number. Activate with the e-sum in minutes and start saving immediately. No long-term contracts, no hassle, ditch overpriced wireless. And get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks. a month if you like your money. Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans at mintmobile.com slash spooked. That's mintmobile.com

slash spooked. Up front payment of $45 for a three-month five-gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for the first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra, see Mint Mobile for details. A long time ago in my native country, of France. There was no toy store where you would find a Ouija board. So we would line up scrabble letters and cut up a piece of paper that would say yes and one that would say no, and basically improvise a Ouija board. We would turn a glass upside down. We'd put our fingers on top of the glass and then you'd concentrate real hard. It kind of just struck a core that it would be something fun and different to do.

I kind of thought, whatever, we'll do it. I think in high school, maybe we tried it a couple of times, but nothing really ever happened, so I didn't take it seriously and didn't really think anything of it. I mean, I'm a spiritualist, like, I believe in God, but I don't believe in Ouija boards. I wasn't taking it seriously. I don't believe in that type of thing at all. So we lit some candles and turned on some, you know, Enya. and just kind of played around.

We cut out a bunch of letters, you know, to create the alphabet, put them around the table in a circle. There was a piece of paper that said yes and a piece of paper that said no. And we took crystal glass with a stem and turned it upside on and put it in the middle. You know, everybody quiet down and closed their eyes. And I don't know if we are the end.

antennas, I believe we are, and I believe that the glass ultimately is just a vessel, and it allows psychic energy to concentrate at the center of it. For those of us who had their fingers on the glass, and I think at the time it was Christy, Deborah, me and someone else, we started to feel, after a very short amount of time, actually it was uncanny how quickly it started. We started to feel that very from your little tug. It was a little bit thrilling, like, ooh, what is this? I remember my hair kind of raising up, thinking, what could this be? You have the sensation that something is connecting with the glass

and then trying to find its bearings. It's very distinctive. And then after a while, it started kind of getting a flow and a rhythm, and it started kind of moving in a... in an eight, like a shape of an eight, and back and forth. And it was very rhythmic, but it was flowing and very smooth suddenly. Of course, the skeptics immediately thought, you're moving the glass. And I would say, no, I'm not moving the glass.

And a good way to take care of the skeptics is to commend the glass to do geometric forms. For example, I would tell the glass to spin. in a circle. You tell the glass to go faster and faster and faster and let me tell you that thing flies. It's so fast. You cannot coordinate four people that don't know each other. I have not rehearsed this and get a glass to move this fast.

It's impossible. At that point everybody went, huh, what's going on? Now that it was clear that something was moving the glass other than ourselves, one of us asked, who's here. And started going back and forth to the letter K-I-K-I, or K-E-K-E.

I can't remember how it spelled it. And everybody asked, who's Kiki? And Christy, who was at the head of the table in front of me, just froze. I hadn't ever seen her like that. And she looked down at the table and she said, I know who's here. I knew it was Brian. Brian had been my boyfriend for about two and a half years, and he passed after committing suicide. It spelled out K-E-K-E, which is Kiki, which was my nickname that Brian called me Justin Private. That threw me for a huge loop. That is something that I don't understand.

this day. Brian was my first love. I used to think about him every day. I still have not been able to look at pictures of him, but I can still see his face in my head. He was very good looking, had an amazing smile. He kept a tan better than anybody that I ever had seen. Brian was a very lonely, sad person,

but most people wouldn't realize that when they met him. When he would walk into a room, everybody was drawn to him, and he was really funny, and he meant the world to me. I think she was stunned. I think she was pretty shaken up, and I think, you know, probably quite emotional about it because of the way things had ended. Brian tried to commit suicide several times,

and they put him in a little hospital, and then Christmas came, and I wasn't there, and I wasn't able to speak to him while he was in the suicide watch hospital. But I did find out that he got a belt and wrapped it around his neck and hung himself. a horrible way to die.

And he was supposedly under supervision, and they were watching him, and somebody dropped the ball. Are you in heaven? The glass answered, no. Are you in hell? And the glass answered, no. We asked him if he was in a place

kind of somewhere in between. He said yes. And then Becky asked how long he was going to be there, and he said 27, which is the... age he was when he killed himself. I find myself, like, sometimes, like, I'll get, like, a little tear in my eye, like, when I was talking to you, and then I just wipe it away, and it goes away, it dries away. Christy went to leave to go to the bathroom, and then it stopped moving.

We asked this spirit, where'd you go? Did you go with Christy to the bathroom? And it said, yes. And we asked him, okay, if you were there with her, what color underwear? was she wearing? And it spelled out, well, it misspelled it, but it's a W-I-T-E white. And sure

enough, she was wearing white knickers. Now just behind Christy was another guest at the party, who was her current boyfriend. This kind of like glam rock guy sitting around the table being really cool, not believing any of it. I mean, what the

hell? The ex is showing up, uninvited at the birthday party. And he's getting all the attention. So he started to say, this is bull. And the glass immediately, he starts to move without having been asked a question. This is unusual.

And spelled you. At which point, Christy's boyfriend replied, you. And the cursor started spelling out his name, D-A-N-I and then F-U-B-R. And it kept going back and forth. D-A-N-F-U-F-U. You know, you can fill in the blanks, but Danny got very upset.

Now, what's interesting here is that when you have to say something like mutt and you're speaking through crystal glass as a spiritual entity, takes a long time to spell MO, etc., etc. Danny was getting really upset and the Ou. The Ouija board was getting really upset, which appears to have been Brian, taking a fight, if you will, with Danny, my current boyfriend. It was very disturbing. This is surreal.

These two are having a cock fight in two different dimensions. Danny was very hot-headed and very upset and ended up walking out. My poor friend Christy was completely devastated. Meanwhile, the glass repeated several times, I love you. And then I'm sorry. I was just so almost frozen, just paralyzed inside my own head, thinking all these thoughts, you know, is this really him? Why did he die? How come nobody could help him? How much I missed him? I think that because it was her birthday, we didn't really want to continue. So we said goodbye. And I remember my friend Deborah and I drove back to my house and didn't say a word.

on the way back. Ever since that night, I have completely believed. I mean, to me, this was the most proof that there is something out there, more than what we can see and what we know. And it's definitely changed the way I see things. And the biggest skeptic, I wouldn't believe this story if I weren't there, and I'm sure many people won't believe me,

but it happened. I feel like he just needed to be heard again. You know? I know this sounds crazy, but I believe he was talking to us. Me. I think the beauty of his story is not that it is a ghost story, is that it's a love story. And that someone was able to reach beyond the divide

and tell someone for the last time, I love you. Even Romeo and Juliet didn't get that. Evil lurks right after the break when a young girl finds someone uninvited playing with her favorite toys. Stay tuned. When Allie Standish was a child, she arrived home in a wheelchair after getting surgery on both legs. And she was shocked to see her grandmother waiting in the living room with a smile, spooked. I had never seen anything like the dollhouse. It was a wooden Queen Anne.

It was painted a deep shade of cornflower blue and had this cream trimming. It looked so delicious that you just kind of wanted to eat it, like icing. When I realized that this house was not only mine, but my grandmother had made the house for me by hand, all by herself, I just remember being blown away. It was actually quite a shock

that it had come from her and that she had made it. I think by that time a lot of the joy had just been kind of sucked out of her. And that was one of the times that she seemed to be truly happy. She never did anything that was completely selfless. You know, when she gave you something, she wanted something back. In addition to the dollhouse, she gave me a scrapbook. And the scrapbook was full of pictures of her making the dollhouse. It was her saying, here's my documentation of a...

of how hard I worked on this project. The dollhouse came complete with six plastic dolls. There was a mother and a father and a little boy and a little girl. So it was like my family. And then there was a baby. They were all fine. They were all just kind of typical plastic dolls that you would see in a doll house.

The more distinctive doll was the grandmother. She had this full-length blue floral dress that was almost like a nightgown, and she had silver, silver, long hair. Her eyebrows were arched in this way that made her expression just look very malicious. Because I was in a wheelchair and I was recovering, I couldn't be outside and I couldn't go to school. So I was bored and I was itchy under my casts. And I was also scared because even though, you know, the surgeon, tell you that things went fine.

When you can't walk for six weeks, you do wonder, you know, what happens if they take the casts off and I have lost my ability to walk, you know? So for me, the dollhouse, it was a way for me to escape. My mom and I would shop for mirrors that were the size of my thumb and china cabinets that I could hold in the palm of my hand and newspapers for the dining room table and plastic apple pies for the kitchen window sill. So I had a sleepover one night in the spring. My girlfriends were sleeping in the playroom, and I got up in the night to go to the bathroom. And that room had these big skylights, and so on nights when the moon was out, it was very bright.

The dollhouse was kind of illuminated, and I just glanced over at it and kind of stopped. I could clearly see the shape of each of the dolls. A man, a woman, a girl, a boy, a baby, except they were not where I had left them the last time I had played with them. The father was sitting on the couch across from the little TV

and the mother was in the bathroom with the baby and the boy and the girl were in their beds kind of turned away from one another. Only the grandmother was left at the table where I had left her. And she was just kind of staring out at me. It creeped me out.

But, you know, you don't immediately jump from that to my dolls are moving on their own. I just figured that one of the girls had moved them when I wasn't watching. But then when I asked the next morning, nobody admitted to having touched them. I just kind of, you know, went about my regular life, figured that if I ignored it, it would stop. but instead things just one night As soon as I walked into the room something felt really off to me something was telling me

do not look at that doll house do not look at that doll house but I couldn't help myself this time the father was positioned at the dining room table he had his face down and his tie had been tied around

and around his neck The baby was face down in the kitchen sink. The mother's head was plunged into the open oven and the little boy was upstairs smothering the little girl with her pillow. And the only doll that didn't seem to be dying was the grandmother. And the grandmother sat at the head of the dining room table

and she had this evil smile spread across her face. And I remember thinking that this felt personal, that this felt like some kind of revenge. I was shocked. I screamed and I ran downstairs and got my parents and told them what had happened and they were a bit bemused. And I think we all kind of decided together that this had to be my brother playing a joke.

So they went and kind of told them off and he told them right back off and said that he had nothing to do with it. I never told my grandmother about any of it. I didn't want to call her and say, thank you for the beautiful dollhouse. By the way, your dolls are terrifying me. So, no, I never spoke with my grandmother about any of it. So I was really excited when my brother was leaving for summer camp

because it meant that things would finally calm down and things with the dollhouse would stop. And that's just not, that's just not. how things went. They were lined up on their backs, on the living room floor, all of them except for my grandmother.

She was crouched above the father. She had a butcher's knife in her hand, pointed at his throat, poised to just slit them all right down the line. Her chin was tilted up, and she was leering at me. I mean, I had run out of explanations.

The only people who had been in the house were me, my mother, and my father. And so I wanted to get the dolls away from me. My eyes kind of fell on this blanket chest that we kept in the playroom. And it was a big, heavy black chest with a heavy lid. And so I took the dolls and stuck them in there at the bottom. I slammed the lid shut.

It was some time later that I had a sleepover at my house. I needed more blankets. And, you know, I thought enough time has passed, and surely I can look at these dolls and not be afraid of them anymore. And so I opened up the chest, and I dug out the dolls. As I lifted my arm to close the chest, I looked at the underside of the lid, which was wood, and the entire underside of the lid was covered in tiny scratch marks, as if a very small person had been clawing to get out. It just freaked me out.

So at that point, I whirled into motion, and I grabbed the dolls, and I went downstairs, found newspaper, and wrapped them all up. I kept all of the family together, except for the grandmother. Her, I wrapped separately. I ran up to the attic, and I threw them into the far corners. And I threw her into the opposite corner. I didn't want her to be able to hurt them anymore, you know, as silly as that sounds.

I didn't want her to be able to do that anymore. I didn't want her to have that power. And so I felt like she deserved to, you know, rot by herself. That marked the end of my thinking about the doll house, and I didn't really start thinking about it again until my grandmother passed away. When she was a couple of days away from death, she called my mother in to her bedside, and she said, I want you to know that I forgive your father.

I just can't remember what for. The night after she died, I went to her home with my mom, and we spent the night there. I think my mom really wanted to inhabit that space. So she slept in the room that she had slept in as a child. And that left me with my grandmother's room where she had slept for 50 years and, you know, shared a bed with my grandfather. Back when, you know, a lot of fighting and drinking. And my grandmother, she refused to be in the same room as my grandfather for the entire rest of her life.

And so I was sitting in this room on her bed and thinking about how that doll house came from the bowels of this unhappy place. And so I was really panicky. I got under the covers and I slowly closed my eyes. And once I closed my eyes, I felt safe. It was if for the first time I felt not in a vice graze. Like if she was there at all, she was wrapping her arms around me. I started to feel differently about her after that night. When we came across the photo album that she had made of her making the dollhouse,

when I was flipping through the book, I realized that there was this whole other side to this person that I had never had the chance to know. However troubled she was, this was the best that she could do to love me at that point in her life. Yeah, I mean, the only other thing I can do to make amends is to go up to the attic one day where the dollhouse has sat for many years collecting dust and let another child, you know, if I ever have a daughter, let it be the source of happiness that I think my grandmother had intended it to be for me. Different dolls, though.

Thank you, Allie, for sharing that story. Ali Standish is a new children's book author. Her debut novel is out right now. It contains no creepy dolls. Have a link on our website, spookedpodcast.org. Thanks as well to Snap Judgment listener. You do get the amazing Snap Judgment Storytelling Podcast, right? You subscribe to that, right?

Snap Judgment listener, Andrea C.K. for letting us know about her Ouija board and Big Love the Bob Carlson of the podcast Unfiction and as always I'd advise you to be afraid now both of the stories that we have

for you. We want to hear the stories you have for us. Some snappers have hit us already on the spook line. Be one of them. Record onto your phone device thing and send it to spooked at spookpodcast.org The spooked Monster Mask team includes Mark Ristich, Eliza Smith, Liz Mack, Anna Sussman, Jasmine Aguilera,

Davey Kim, Teo Decott, Jody Colley. Original music by Pat Massini Miller, David Kim, Leon Morimoto, and Renzo Goroio. The spook theme music was by Pat McCasie Miller. If you're digging spooked, let somebody know and hold on to someone's hand-squeeze tight. Spook Podcast.org. Hit the Snapdgment Spook Squad on the Twitter, the Instagram, the Facebook, Spook Pop. And when you're in a dead sleep, wake up in the middle of the night to feel someone sit down at the foot of your bed. And there's not supposed to be anyone there at all.

You might have avoided this terror in the future if you simply heed my advice to never, ever, never, never, ever. Do you know