Spooked - The Trespassers

Episode Date: November 14, 2019

When it comes to the supernatural: don’t poke the bear. Don’t kick the hive. Don’t mess around. Because, when it comes to the supernatural: you’re gonna get what’s coming for you. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There's a compact between us and those who've gone before. The warning sign, the hurried note, the distress signal. Pay attention. They're saying that what you're trying now, I've tried before. Turn back. You're listening to me spooked. Stay tuned. As a little kid, I love the Brady Bunch.

It's me. I don't know the Brady Bunch, but I love it. loved them. And my favorite episode is when the whole family flies to Hawaii, right? Bobby finds a tiki figure at the construction site and gives it to Greg for good luck in the surfing competition.

I straight scream at the TV. Shout to Greg Brady. No! No! Don't wear that thing to ocean, fool! Don't do it! And you better believe when that wave crashes over Greg and the scream

straight fades, but crash episode over our week. Real tears, I cry. For Greg, for Bobby, for Jan, Cindy, Marsha. But I learn a valuable lesson. Not that you don't wear a mysterious teakie around your neck. Every idiot knows that. No, no, no.

I learned that some people you can't teach. Some people, they have to learn the hard way. My name is Gunn, Washington, don't be some people. Spook starts. The hard lesson, Joe Panohu. Joe is determined to come at things his very own way. My friends and I, we love to go cruising around the island. We love to go to places that are far away, that are adventurous.

And it's about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. It was actually just me and another one of my friends. We drive all the way down. And we park on the side of the road right outside this cave. And we cross the two-lane highway. It's a little small entrance, but it's very vertical. Less than 10 feet wide, but closer to 30 to 40 feet high. We walk into this crevice and it becomes a cave.

Straight in the back, you look, there's a little hole and then you look up. And it looks like there's a ledge and the cave goes a little bit further back. It's a cave that has these lava tubes. that go all the way down and up and all around. We want to go to the top. We're looking for where the cave reaches the water, but we're afraid that we're not prepared for it. We decide that we're going to come back later, more prepared.

There's four of us that are interested in going now. And we go into the cave because there's been a lot of stories in this cave. We want to check out the legend of the Nauwe. He lured people into the water, according to the legend, and turned into a shark and then swimming out of the cave and eating them. And it said to be a place for the Hawaiian mafia at one time used the cave to dispose of their victims. We come back at about midnight. We brought rope. We brought water.

We have our flashlights. We have everything that we need. The idea is that we don't know how long we're going to be in there. and we go back into the cave and the air is released still the ground is all gravel and dirt and there's a lot of cockroaches and bugs people leave ho-ocupu

or they leave offerings in the cave of food and so it attracts a lot of bugs and stuff there's no wind, there's no sound, there's no dripping of anything and we look up to where we're We see now on the right there's a small little ledge that we can actually walk up so we decide yeah we don't need the rope we're gonna do that I'm the first one up and I turn around and I look at my friends and I'm like you guys ready to go make sure everybody gets up there all right and then I get down on all fours and start crawling I'm crawling into the cave and we're going down in a single file line so I'm in the lead and they're all behind me and the lava rock is really just really just

just sharp. My knees are all bust up and we're all cut up. Clostrophobia just started kicking in. I noticed blood is running down a little bit on my forehead. The thought occurs to me

now that we're surrounded by millions of tons of rock and if one small cavern happens we're stuck. You know, we have no way out. And it's like we could die if we can't find an exit,

which we don't even know if there is one. We're crawling further down and further down and further down until finally my friend's in the back, I hear somebody yell, Joe, let's go. This isn't fun anymore, let's go. I tell him, okay, and I shine the flashlight in front of me, and I see a little area, it looks like the cave opens up, and it levels off.

And so I'm shining my light down there, and I tell them, okay, hey, you know what, let's go just to this place right up in front of us, is if this is a place we're looking for, cool but then we're just going to go here and then turn back. So I start crawling a bit more with my flashlight shining in front of me and as I'm crawling down this figure

just crosses over from the left to the right. Really fast, it registers that there was somebody there but I can't see what it was. I'm like, oh, there's a logical explanation for this. probably just a homeless guy. But I'm not going to let my friends know that.

And so I kind of play it up a little bit until I'm like, oh, oh, guys, I just saw something over there. I just saw something walking in front of my flashlight beam. And they're like, what? What it looked like? I don't know what it looked like, but something just walked from the left to the right. And so everybody wants to see, of course, at a safe distance. We don't want to go there.

We just want to look. And now I'm lying flat into the lava rock, and my friends are on me. I got one friend lying on my back, and if you can imagine, like, all of our heads are, like, just all above each other. And we're all just staring down the lava tube

for, like, two minutes. We're staring and waiting and waiting for something to happen. And nothing does. And so my friends are like, oh, you know, you sure you saw something? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I saw something. And I walked from the left to the right.

And then as we're looking, It appears again from the right to the left, but instead of walking through the flashlight beam to the other side of it, it stops, right smack in the middle, and turns and faces us. What the heck is that? It looked like a humanoid, but it does not have the shape of a human.

The head is fused into the shoulder. this thing looking back at us had these red eyes that are burning I didn't have pupils it's just a very dark red and it's just looking at us and so we are booking it now my friends are in front of me and I'm just terrified because my friends can't move fast enough

I'm yelling at them my friend in front of me I'm trying to bite his foot I'm hitting his foot I'm telling them hurry up because as I'm yelling at him I hear and feel the presence behind me getting closer. I hear scratching noise. I hear something shuffling behind us and it's getting closer and it's closer and it's coming closer.

And I'm freaking out. And it may have taken us 45 minutes to get down, but it took us about five minutes or less to get out. And that was uphill. We get out and we're like, we're, like, we're. just booking it. I'm running down the ledge and I just decide to jump halfway. One of my friend decides to jump a little higher up, ends up spraining his ankle.

So I'm getting out of the cave and I'm helping my friend. I get to my car. My friends are in their car in front of us. I close all the doors, I lock all the doors and I go to start the car up and the car's dead. I try to turn on the headlights,

the battery is dead, nothing is starting up. And so we're just kind of looking at each other, freaking out. decide the heck with it. I'm leaving my car here. I get into my friend's car and I help my friend get into my friend's car in front of us. I tell him, all right, let's get the heck out of here. Let's go. He's trying to start it and nothing is happening. There's no noise. There's no sound. There's no starter kicking out. There's nothing. Everybody is yelling at the same time. Everybody is panicking. And all of a sudden, something changes and shifts.

And I look out the window, and all of my friends are looking out the window at the same time. Nobody will say a word. The moon came out. The clouds blew away, and the whole area is now covered in moonlight. I can see everything. I can see straight to the cave. I can see across the road, down the road. And I also see this figure, this shape kind of shambling out of the cave.

As I watch this thing come out of the cave, it's shuffling, almost like its right leg is injured. And it still has these red eyes that are burning. It's fire. It's just a very dark red fire. And I watch this thing walk to the road, and its skin looks like it's covered in scabs. It gets to the middle of the road, and it gets to the middle of the road, and it's, It stops right on the middle line, separating the two lanes, and it just glares at us. It felt like it was looking at me.

My brain is frozen. At that point, we're helpless. We're waiting for something to happen. It just stares at us, and then slowly turns around and walks back into the cave. I got a feeling that it was telling us Kapu. Kapu is keep out. Basically, it scared the bejesus out of us as a warning. I have a feeling that those caves have something in it and this thing may have been a guardian or a protector.

And to explore it as a bunch of teenagers is very disrespectful. You know, this thing came across the street. It could have done anything to us. It didn't. It settled with stopping and looking at us and then going back into the cave. These are the good spirits. The good spirits are the ones that will scare the pants off of you. The bad spirits are the ones saying,

Come, don't worry, don't be afraid of me. Come closer. Let me come closer. Let me state for the record that I am afraid and I will stay away. I'm not trying to get tied up with any ancient deities, but I want to thank my friend Joe for venturing into the cave coming face to face with the divine. The original score for that time,

piece was by Lauren Newsom. It was produced by Annie Nguyen and Greta Weber. Some people, they truly want to go out and do good. They're helpers, Samaritan, scouts, all that. But just because you call yourself

the salt of the earth, it matters not. See, if you get in Bayer way, the darkness, darkness doesn't care what your intentions are. It never has. My name is Natalie. In the summer of 2008, myself and a friend Alice traveled to Georgia.

We were going to volunteer at a kids' camp in a small town outside of Tbilisi, the capital. Natalie and Alice's flight got in late at night. Some of their co-workers from the summer camp met them at the airport. We got in a four-by-four and traveled for a couple of hours until we reached what was a very small village. There were a couple of houses dotted around. There was a big forest, but it was mostly desolate. And we got out the car, and she showed us to where we were staying, which was this huge house.

It wasn't necessarily grand. It looked like an old hospital. We were told at the time it was an old nunnery. The nunnery that we were staying in had no one else staying in it. Two stories with a big daughter. doorway, but crucially missing the actual door. We walked in. It was this big, wide, wooden staircase.

We walked up, and we were met with this very long corridor, which had maybe 10 or 12 rooms leading off it. It was very stark, it was very sparse. There were two cast iron bed frames and very thin mattresses, and that was our home. Natalie and Alice fell into a routine quickly. Every day they'd wake up early, walk through the woods, and work at the kids' day camp where they were counsellors.

After the kids went home, Natalie and Alice would explore the area. Abandoned, I guess you'd call them settlements. They were sort of wooden structures that seemed like they'd been half built. We'd walk through them. We'd walk at dusk to the shop. that was in the village. And people would warn us about packs of dogs, which roam around.

And so we tended to stay together. Then they'd reluctantly make their way back to the nunnery. They'd spend another night in their small iron beds and lie awake, listening for any sound that might break the silence of the big, empty, crumbly. building. You know, it's a big house, really old house. Every day I'd walk up this big wooden staircase back to my room and I would hear this pattering behind me, which at first I didn't

think anything of just the echo of my footsteps. It would happen a beat behind mine as I ascended the stairs. The first time I felt like something was off was when I didn't hear. the steps behind me. I went into the room where Alice was and I mentioned in quite an offhand way I said, isn't it funny? Just now I didn't hear

the echo of my footsteps behind me and Alice looked at me and she said, what echo? And I said, you know, that echo every time you walk up the steps you hear your footsteps behind you like an echo behind yours. She said, I don't know what you're talking about.

So I took her out to the stairs and I walked up the stairs quite quickly to show her what I meant and there was no sound. I started to doubt myself, but I just kept it to myself. We started to feel almost like we weren't alone. We just had a feeling we were being watched. I mean, we were being watched because we were from England and we were in Georgia in a tiny village.

The children were friendly. But the adults were kind of cold. The more time we spend there, the more aware of people's suspicions as to why we were there, what we were doing there. We definitely got the sense that people wanted us to leave. They wanted us to get out. We were beginning to feel quite claustrophobic. And every couple of weeks, we would take trips into the main town. Natalie and Alice left the village to get more supplies,

to use the internet, and to speak to their families. Then, at nightfall, they would try and make their way back to the village. On our return, we would get on the train and buy our ticket from the ticket master that would walk through the carriages, and we would mention the village's name. And he would always look very confused. and we were trying to explain in our broken Georgian where we were going and try and pronounce the name of the village and people just didn't seem to know where we were getting off.

It was almost like they were living somewhere that didn't exist. One night, Natalie and Alice got ready for bed, turned out the lights and tried to fall asleep. For some reason that night, I just couldn't get to sleep and I sort of tossed and turned in my bed and I heard what I can only describe as sort of droplets falling onto the bed. It sounded like a very slow dripping water at the end of my bed. I sat up and felt around to the end of the bed

and couldn't feel anything that was wet, but I could definitely hear droplets coming from the ceiling onto my bed. I gathered my things and called out to Alice, awake and she said yes I can't sleep she said please can you come and sleep next to me so I went and lay down next to her we could hear it was almost like a really high-pitched wailing almost otherworldly and it circled around us while we were sleeping just like it was sort of traveling just above our heads this sound we reached out for each other's hands and held on to each other and this sound lasted for about.

It must have only been a couple, you know, 30 seconds a minute, but it felt like it lasted for 10 minutes. After it died down, there was this almighty crash. From above us where the attic was. It sounded like people were hauling furniture. At this point, we were absolutely terrified. Whatever it was that was in the attic continued to thrash throughout the night.

When the sun came up, the nunnery fell silent. and Natalie and Alice drifted off into a restless sleep. In the morning, we turned to each other in sort of disbelief at what had happened the night before. In the sort of cold light of day, it seemed ridiculous that that happened. I ventured out of the room into the corridor to go and inspect the attic. And as I climbed up the stairs, I looked at the attic door, just like a trap door. and there was a lock that was rusted shut. It looked like I hadn't been opened in years, tens of years.

My stomach dropped. There was no way someone could get up there. There was no explanation for this. Those sounds that were being made, there was definitely someone with a lot of force who was able to smash what sounded like big, heavy wooden furniture against... All the noises made me feel.

I just got the sense that they were trying to communicate something to me, to scare me into doing something. Just didn't know what. So after that night, we decided to start putting stuff in front of the door of our room, big wooden table, some chairs and a bookcase. And we'd lean them all against the door. We did this for a couple of nights.

and it seemed to work quite well. One morning we woke up and the furniture had been moved back and the door was ajar. Alice, she swore to me that she didn't move the furniture and I know for a fact that I didn't move it either. There's no way

that someone from the outside could have done that as we would have been woken up. We tried to establish some kind of history for the place. So me and Alice were walking through the graveyard, which was next to the nunnery one day, and we started looking at some of the graves. We noticed that in single plots,

there'd be whole families that were buried together. And lots of the different graveyards had the same date, which was 19, 17. And it seemed like whole families had died on the same day. I walked to the end of the graveyard by the gate. And this one time something called my eye, which I hadn't seen before. It was this grey plaque. And on it, it had writing in Georgian, which I couldn't decipher.

What was noticeable about it was that it had the same date that was on lots of the gravestones. And it had this etching of this really beautiful building. that looked like the nunnery. I took a photo of it and I started to think that date and that etching held the key for what was going on with us.

It was finally time for Natalie and Alice to go home. They finished their work with the children, said goodbye and left the town and the nunnery behind. Sort of say goodbye to the village, got into a taxi and it turned out the taxi driver

had quite good English and he was asking us about our time and what we'd done and he was quite intrigued that we'd spent just over two months in this tiny village

and he asked what the name of the village was and we told him and he had no idea and we explained we described it and we described the nearby town

and he still had no idea when she got home Natalie found that she couldn't stop thinking about the town and the empty, crumbling nunnery. It was only afterwards when we got a bit of distance from it and we tried to explain to other people what happened that we really felt how odd the experience was. And I remembered the photograph that I took of that plaque.

And I had this real sense that I wanted to find out. what it said so I put an ad on I posted on Facebook asking if anyone knew anyone who spoke Georgian who could translate something for me I put my email address and one day I got an email

through and it was from someone that had translated the plaque it said that in 1917 enemy forces had stormed the village and started a fire which had decimated the town it said the fire had been started at the nunnery I think at that point

everything sort of slotted into place I thought back to the villagers staring at us and I realised they probably haven't seen outsiders for a long time because the last outsiders said. I think back to that night when I heard those sounds. I now have the overwhelming sense that whatever it was that was there wasn't trying to scare us.

It was trying to make us leave. Many thanks Natalie for leaving those spirits in peace. Original scores by Jacob Winnick, who's produced by Aunt Addeen. Dig your storytelling in the bright light of the day. Check out our amazing sister podcast, Snap Judgment and Storytelling with the beat. Sometimes in the dark woods, you may see people just laying there,

laying on the ground. It's weird, I know it's strange, certainly, but please, and don't trip over, Mark Ristich. Anna Sussman, our chief spooxter is Eliza Smith, Chris Hambrick, ain't any win. There's a Dodge, Laura Newsom, Lenz O'Gorio, Leon Morimoto, Jacob Winnick, Tiffany Delisa, Ann Ford,

Eric Yanyas, Sala Khan, the spook theme song. It's by Pat Massini Miller. My name's gonna Washington, and if you are lucky enough to go to the beautiful land of Hawaii and happen to discover a teaky idol buried in the dirt,

and stupidly, you bring such an idol home at night. I have a lot of advice.