Spooked - The Thin Place

Episode Date: August 22, 2019

Martin is a paramedic. He has a gift for saving peoples' lives. He also has another, darker, gift--one that he doesn’t want to use. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

When I was a kid on the television one afternoon, I watched Mr. Rogers tell a bunch of little kids in this little neighborhood. He says, when you see scary things, boys and girls, when you see scary things, look for the helpers. Because you'll always find people who are helping. And I think this is pretty good stuff. Look to the helpers, he says, the helpers, the people that help. Little me feels a little bit.

lot better inside. It's not until much later when I get to meet some of those helpers. The people that run toward the fire, the doctors who make the first incision, the nurse with the

blank stare in the maternity ward, the helpers, operating on either side of that open window between life and death, between hope and tragedy. They help. They do. But I discover that

You cannot live in that space very long without a little something of that space becoming a part of you. And when the helper can no longer help, can no longer flip back and forth between the there and the not there, can no longer hold back that dark energy. The question becomes,

who helps the helper? From Snap Judgment's underground layer, my name is Glenn Washington. Pray. You never need the helper. Because spooked, season three starts. Now, if you're one of these helpers who helps people, what if you get a call for help from someone?

My name is Martin Mosley. I'm a paramedic and I'm an ER nurse for coming on 20 years now. In 99, I was doing my EMT clinical in a hospital in San Jose. 21, so I was just a kid. And a lady had, a wife and mom had dropped her daughter off at her friend's house and on her way home. It was just so drunk that she veered off and hit a tree and she wasn't buckled in. And the top of her head went through the windshield, but nothing else. So almost like a crown.

The very top of her cranium was through the windshield. And the paramedics brought him in. And I remember standing at the foot of her bed. I was just a baby EMT. I wasn't allowed to really do anything there. If you can imagine standing inside of a trauma room, they're usually like a squat rectangle. So they're maybe 10 feet wide by 12 feet long.

The gurney's in the middle, and there's crash carts on size, there's oxygen behind, and there's maybe a sink or a countertop on the other side. I was standing at the foot of her bed, and there was nurses and firefighters on one side. and there was a doctor and some other nurses and maybe some texts on the other. I remember standing there and just feeling this super immense sadness. Like if you stand in a cold pool,

you can feel the weight of the water, the cold water on you, but it's not covering your entire body. That's kind of how it felt. I turned, and the woman from the car crash was standing just right behind me. And I just looked right at her

and she wasn't looking at me. She was looking at herself on the table and she was wearing a white colored shirt. She had long hair and her brown hair was tucked behind her ears. And it was a lot for me to take in in the moment. This was all really heavy information. This lady's dying.

They're talking about her being a wife and a mom and people are yelling, starting IVs and hooking her up to leads. and intubating her, trying to keep this lady alive, and there just wasn't a lot they could do. And then to turn around and see her there, I was questioning my sanity. Like, am I going nuts?

But she was there. There was no doubt in my mind. So anyway, I screamed, and one of the nurses helped me leave, and I went and sat down outside. I didn't want to be around that. So I left. Went to another patient,

went to another room, went somewhere else. When the nurse escorted me out, it felt like everybody in the room was like, oh, the new guy, you know, his first dead body, this is, you know, let's get him out of here and get him to a safe place where he can put his head between his knees and breathe into a paper bag. I felt like the rookie. You know, am I even cut out for this job? Like, do I, am I tough enough for this? am I emotionally strong enough to handle this job?

So I was in an EMS course, so I had to find a job while I was in school, and the school happened during the day. I took a job at Great America. Two people in the course of a year died at the amusement park. One guy jumped a fence to get a hat and literally got his jaw kicked off by a person riding the ride. I mean, he jumped two fences. All of it said, do not cross.

So I was in the security booth at the end of the day watching the video of this. We were watching the actual video of this guy's death, the moment of this guy's death over and over. And he was watching his own death with us. The man who had been recently killed was standing behind me. but between myself and another officer. He wasn't looking at any of us, and I don't even really feel like he was looking at the screen. He was just faced forward.

You know, he could have been anywhere, but I think that he was drawn to the fact that I knew he was there. It felt like he was trying to express something. Like he was trying to get him a point across. this can't be real. I was just trying to get my hat. Like, this wasn't supposed to happen. I was just getting my hat.

And I could see what he was wearing out of the corner of my eye. I honestly, I didn't want to turn. I was so afraid that I was going to see this guy without a jaw. But I knew he was there, and I knew he was feeling this anxiety. And I couldn't leave because I was surrounded by dudes. And these are in America's security. So they weren't picking like hardened soldiers or anything like that. It was just a bunch of dudes who wanted a summer job.

But I wanted to impress him. I didn't want to look like a coward, so I didn't say anything. And I was just, I was terrified. I didn't want to turn around. And we were all just kind of like taking in this moment. Because we hadn't, you know, some of these guys been working at the park for 15 years. I never seen that. I just turned my body.

just enough to be able to see that someone was there and then I'd turn back and I remember doing it maybe twice and the third time turning he wasn't there and the feeling stopped and it didn't ebb it just you know it was gone

every time I saw a presence every time I was around one I still wanted to create distance I think that I was I was still and on one hand I was still learning how to be an EMT and how to take this job seriously.

The whole world is like Disneyland. Like everything, your eyes are huge. You want to be a part of every trauma. You want to be a part of, you know, the multiple car wrecks. You want to pull people out of burning buildings. You know, you want to do the stuff from the movies. Absolutely. Nobody enters the EMS field because

they want to spend hours upon hours with a patient nurturing them back to health. And for people who work in EMS, it's not that they're not compassionate, but they're drawn to the heroic, fix the immediate problem and get the patient to a place where the people with abundance of compassion can kind of take over and do that caring. This is now 17, 18 years later. I'm 40 years old. I'm married. I've got two kids and a dog.

This was probably around September. So I went to the grocery store and it was night. So it had to be after like 9.30. And on my way back towards my house, God. So this lady is just standing in front of her house. The lady is standing in her house. The lady is standing in her.

driveway, which probably isn't even a half a mile from my house. So I've made it almost all the way home. And so it's September. It's hot. But she was in a night slip. The nightgown was shiny and real thin. It had like little thin straps over her shoulders. She was pale, silver hair, a little bit past her shoulders. But she's standing really. She's standing right in front of her house. And so I was just kind of watching her, like being like really confused. Like, like, I knew,

I knew inside that she wasn't alive. I just, I just knew. And she stared right at me. And, and honestly, and I can't tell you why, and I feel like an idiot for even saying, and I pulled over.

She was standing in the driveway, and I, she watched me as I pulled. passed and I pulled in front of her house and she was looking my direction and I got out and she was just staring at me. Like this is really weird because they don't stare at me. Like they're not looking for me. She's making icons. She was looking right at me. And so I didn't approach her. I didn't even close my door. Like I got out and she took a step forward, which was super weird and I was like, it made me kind of wonder like maybe I maybe she's not maybe she's just like a crazy lady standing

out you know late at night she was probably 30 feet away and she took another step and I said hello and it seemed to just piss her off she took another step and then took another step and then took another step and stopped this is this had never occurred they've always just kind of like accepted that I was kind of around. And so she just started walking, like, really quickly. She took probably 14 really quick steps around the back of my car. I was fucking scared. And, like, she mouthed something and then took a couple more steps.

I got my car and shut the door. As she walked up and stood, but she didn't look inside my car. She walked up and just stood there. What the fuck? Like, can they reach? Like, can they reach through shit? And she just stood there. She didn't look at me.

She just stood there. And I sat there and she stood there. And we just, for a couple of minutes, just kind of sat that way. So I turned my engine over. And then she just put her hand on the door of the car. And I was like, fuck it. And I flew home, pulled in the garage, shut the garage door, didn't get out of my car. Like, do I get out of my car?

Do I get out of my car in this dark garage? Is she going to be standing there when I get out of my car? When I turn to go up the stairs, is she going to be standing at the top of the stairs? If I wake up, is she going to be looking at me? You know, when I open the door to leave, is she going to be standing out there? Like, just the terrifying, like, thoughts that you have.

When you're watching a scary movie and you know it's not real, you know this is, like, you know it's not real, but this, like, this happened. This, like, happened to me. I let fear just have its way with me that night. Like, I was terrified. I just let myself slip into it. And since then, I've kind of come to a mental agreement with myself that they can't do anything to me that I don't let them do.

If I give them access to my fears, if I give them access to my heart and my mind like that, It's going to control me and fear is going to be kind of the guiding factor in my life. After seeing the lady, I remember sitting down days later because that whole weekend I just had to just relax and try and not to freak out. But I sat down at my laptop and was just researching it. Like, why does this happen? I just Google, you know, visiting spirits. or presences. So the Irish believe that this thing called thin places.

And what they believe is that the supernatural world and the natural world, we call the natural world, coexist and there are thin places where that existence is easily transgressed. A lot of people, especially the Celts, believe that people can be thin places and can kind of carry a mantle of thinness. Before meeting, meeting her, I never really thought about being like an active, thin place. But when I realized that these people, these presences are there, you know, I have the desire to be compassionate.

I also, my first instinct is to create distance. Cowboy was the most recent. I was there the night he came in and he came in with a job. GI bleed, gastrointestinal bleed. If you're not vomiting up the blood that's bleeding in your stomach, then the acids are already processing the blood and it coagulates and it looks like coffee grounds, like wet coffee grounds. What would cause the GI bleed?

Alcoholism. And he had, he had been struggling with health issues for years. And how many times had you treated him? this is this was the second time i had seen him he came in for a GI bleed we were able to treat it most of the time you you can unless you're far enough along in the disease process when there's just there's not a lot you can do it's just the damage so much damage usually is done that i mean the little band-aids we put over it aren't going to aren't going to do the job and he came in and he's a funny guy um older um really close

clever, like sharp. He told me the story about the first girl he slept with. And I was laughing. And that's, you know, he was probably a little more crass, you know, because we had developed some rapport. He was pink warm and dry the first time he came in and he stayed overnight. This time he was pale and he was kind of gaunt and he had lost his like shine. He was clearly scared and he had been throwing up just these coffee grounds. So we brought him in and he was just kind of sad. The floor nurses were having a little bit of trouble getting another IV on him. So I went down and I sat with him.

So I was able to get his IV started. I got the fluid running. So I was trying to joke with him. And I asked him to tell me some stories from his life. And he did. And we laughed. And so I got up and I was like, you need anything else. I asked if you wanted any coffee.

It was kind of like this joke. had developed because of the coffee grounds. And so I'd ask him if you wanted a cup of coffee. And it was always no because, like, I think that after seeing that, like, the last thing you'll ever want again is coffee. And so we laughed and then I left. And later that night, I walked down to the floor and the nurse that was there came out of his room just running down the hall.

And she said, something's happening. he's not okay and so I ran around the hallway and he was laying not you know not vertically in bed anymore like you're supposed to he was laying with his feet off the side

and he was laid splayed back so we went in and we started doing compressions we got checked his pulse and he didn't make it so we put him back in bed and we spent some time cleaning him up and getting him on some clean sheets

and one of the nurses was already trying to get a hold of family family to let them know. We're trying to get a hold of a mortuary to come pick up the body. And it was a bummer. It's 50 yards from where, from the nurse's desk to this guy's room, but it's probably another hundred down the end of this hallway. And then you hang a right down to the ER. And that's where I spend most of my time. So I went back that way. Because I was going to type up, you know, my charting notes about what happened. Finish that. I've did some filing, put some stuff away.

I texted my wife. And I was like, I'm going to head back down and see if they need any help with anything. Because he's not a, you know, a dead body is heavy. Or if you're moving a body that isn't cooperating, it's really hard to get them. So I didn't know if the mortuary was there yet. If they got a hold of them, they might be there by then. And I could go help them out. So I walked back down.

And I got to the room and a guy in a guy in. a cowboy hat and like a plaid blue plaid like shirt with the cowboy wrangler jeans and boots was standing next to the body. And I stopped. I didn't even enter. I just stopped. And I was like, okay, family's here. And I backed away. And I went down and I didn't bring it up. I just went down and hung out kind of at the nurse system. station. I got myself a cup of coffee. Probably 25 minutes went by while I was down there. I was like, I should go check on them. And I went back and there wouldn't anybody there. I thought it was weird because typically in those situations, if somebody's going to get up at three in the morning to come by, they want to talk or they just want somebody around. So I thought, well, I'm here. I'm going to grab

this guy's stuff. And the top drawer had his phone and a notepad. It was some writing on it and I opened the bottom drawer. And as soon as I pulled it out, there was a cowboy hat underneath it.

I looked inside and the shirt was there and the top of the boots. And I, it was super, it was a really strange like realization that he was there. Like that was, that was him looking down at his own body.

I regret that I hadn't known at the time. If I had known, I would have stayed. Like, if I had had a clue that it was him, I probably would have stayed and hung out. You know, I made a little bit of an emotional connection. You share a laugh with somebody and you have a moment with somebody and he, we remembered each other and we, you know, it was a like, like a happy, like recognition when I saw him in the ER before and knocking on his door.

door and giving a little two-finger wave or whatever. Like, it felt like we were more than just strangers, you know, on a train. We, it felt like we were at least friendly acquaintances. So I think that really for the first time in any of, in any time I've ever felt a presence or seen a presence, the first time I've ever really regretted not saying something is the rest of the time. what do I say to this person? I don't know them.

I really honestly didn't know or didn't have any connection with any of them. But for the first time, it really felt like, like I kind of wish I had, I just reached out, you know, maybe not physically, but just to express some sort of, like, genuine condolence. I would love to say that going forward, I'm going to offer that compassion that I wanted to give the cowboy to everybody. And I think that over the years, my heart has gone from soft and rookie vomiting in the street and screaming when he sees someone. And now maybe I'm more grizzled, but maybe I'm just tired too, you know, of the show.

Being it's in place now. If I'm being honest, I could, I could leave it. I'd rather not have that responsibility. I mean, when I think about the light of someone's life going out and then seeing them after that before they go on to whatever happens after they die, it feels like a really heavy responsibility. And honestly, I would just as soon not have it. You know, it's not like the sixth sense where you're seeing these like things. just anywhere. It's not, it's not like a party trick. It's not fun. And honestly, since the lady on the street in the back of my mind somewhere is this, this new little flicker and flame of fear

that I'm something like that's going to happen again. If they were all like the cowboy, and I could, I could live with, you know, this gift of compassion and feel like I was doing something positive and something positive was coming from it, then I think I'd feel better about it. But since that lady, that flicker of fear is always there. Every time I walk through my house with the lights off, you know, every time I walk from my car to my house or I'm driving every time I drive home from the grocery store, you know, that little flicker of flame can burn really hot sometimes and cause a, you know, a wave of fear that I honestly would just rather not have

if it's all the same. Thank you, Martin Mosley, for sharing your story with us. Martin is a longtime spook listener, and he reached out with this story. We love it. When spook listeners rock a story, they have to let the world know, and if you have a story that you need to tell,

please send it our way. Spoot at stampjudgment.org. And please understand the journey is not over, The journey to your listeners has just begun. Get ready for a season of spook, the likes of which have never been known, never been seen, be afraid. And if you're looking for amazing storytelling,

under the full light of day, there are scores with stories available right now at our sister podcast, Snap Judgment. Spook was brought to you by a team that would like to extend the helping hand but knows too well the horrible cost. Mark Ristich, Eliza Smith, Anna Sussman. My name is in Washington.

The original score for that story was by Renzo Giorio. Our theme music is by Pat Lucidi Miller. Now, he may even wear a sweater. Just like Mr. Rogers, a nice, friendly smile, goes through his imaginary land. But listen when I tell you, no matter what he says. And no matter how he asks it, pleads, begs, listen when I tell you.

Never, ever. Never, ever, never, never, never, never, never, ever turn out the lights.