Spooked - Wind and Fog

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

Howling wind. Swirling fog. What lurks in the mist? To whom is the wind calling? Route 666 Michael Kilpatrick is coming home from the venue, celebrating a great show. He’s taking a familiar road. But tonight, the conditions are bad: hard wind, rain, and… frogs? Thank you, Michael, for sharing your story.  Produced by Annie Nguyen, original score by Leon Morimoto Widow’s Walk Bubba has worked at the same lighthouse in coastal Maine for years. And even though the isolation has made his coworkers crack, Bubba has always been okay. He toughs it out. Until one night, when someone emerges from the night, and knocks on the lighthouse door.  Thank you, Bubba, for sharing your story with us here at Spooked. Produced by Greta Weber and Galen Koch, original score by Clay Xavier Artwork by Teo Ducot Spooked episodes drop weekly. Featuring brand new stories -- along with episodes previously available only by subscription. Listen for free wherever you get your podcasts! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night. Take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life waiting for this moment to arise. Listen to Spoot. Stay tuned. A dog near the hills by my home, I see him run away, happy. Watch him vanish to the thick bay mist. Of course, I know he's there.

Just a few feet in front of me, but I can't see Jack. Just hear him, barking, at a rabbit, at a coyote, barking at the fog itself. It's easy to pretend that there's no one else on this trail. Just me and Georgie. So I'm always startled when a figure emerges from that fog. Maybe with their dog, hooty up, head down. Each of us hoping the other wishes them no harm in this almost darkness. We nod.

One to the other, then we relax. A few more feet, I turn back around, but they've already disappeared. Spook starts. When you're driving down that dark and lonely road with the wind howling, the mist swirling, the rain pouring down from the sky, when do you decide? when you decide that you don't want to see what's just around that bend, spoof. Hi, my name is Michael Kilpatrick. I'm a musician, a full-time musician, and I was playing a gig in Huntsville, Alabama.

And I had a great show, went to the bar, thanked everybody for having us, gave everybody hugs and kisses. and on the way out, one of the guys from the bar goes, Hey, Mike, hey man, you really want to pay a close attention to the weather, man. It's starting to get bad. I think the storm's going to get bad. With that,

my girl, Karen, and I hopped into the Red Honda Accord, and we were off to Birmingham. This is a drive that I have done many, many, many times over my life. So this is just a normal drive for me. We've been driving about 30 minutes. It's 1.30 in the morning. And it's very, very dark, very windy and starting to rain a little bit. And we made a right turn onto a very, very small two-lane highway that runs 30 miles out of Huntsville, Alabama.

Once we turned onto the two-lane road, the atmosphere just felt different around us. I rolled the windows down. Oddly enough, the weather was extremely calm. There was no rain. There was virtually no wind. There were no lights on anywhere around. You ever heard the expression calm before the storm? That's sort of what it felt like.

And I changed the tape player over to the radio to tune in an AM station to find out if there were any weather bulletins. We'd been on the two-lane road for maybe 10 minutes. Up ahead I see some headlights coming toward us, which is rare for this time of night on this two-lane road. I start to slow the car a little bit. it were maybe 500 yards away. And the closer I get to them, we notice that the headlights are arranged vertically rather

than horizontally. As we neared the car, I lowered the window. We realized that we're actually looking at a perfectly pristine car. It's a dark-colored SUV. It looked like it was just off the showroom floor, and it was just sitting on its passenger side. And the engine was running. and the interior lights were on, all the running lights were on, the windshield wipers in this car were on,

and the strangest thing was the driver's side door was wide open, somehow defying gravity. And at this point, I yelled out, does anybody need any help? Is everybody okay? Hello? Hello? So I looked at Karen and I said, something's bad wrong here.

There's this car, it's been in some sort of an accident, but there's no damage to the vehicle whatsoever. The car is completely pristine. Nothing wrong. There's no broken glass. There's no skid marks. There's no debris. The car just looks like it's been set on its side and abandoned. Karen said, this just feels funny.

I feel like either someone might be watching us or someone who's waiting for us to get out. I just got a really bad feeling, just a sinking feeling in my stomach that something was really, really wrong. Karen said, let's just go, let's just go move along. We continued on, and we sort of felt like the worst of the storm probably had passed,

so we felt like we could just get back up to speed and ignore this anomaly and just keep going and get back to Birmingham. But we've been driving about four. five minutes and still kind of rattled by what we'd seen, but we sort of had put it out of our minds and we just concentrated on the drive and were making small talk when we came around another corner. And around that corner, we saw some tail lights, but the closer we got to them, we realized they were the tail lights of yet another SUV. This car looked different. It was also a

dark colored SUV, but it was more red or maroon. The closer we got to it, we realized that this SUV was on its roof. I didn't have a cell phone or I would have called 911 myself. I lowered the passenger side window where Karen was, and we both just stopped and looked out. The car is upside down in a very, very shallow ditch right next to the side of the road. I heard the windshield wipers of the car moving. The engine was on.

The interior lights were on. None of the doors of the car were open. But it just seemed like a perfectly normal car flipped on its top. No scratches. No broken glass. No broken anything. Karen, you call him. She just said,

Hello? Anybody there? Anyone around? You need any help? Hello? Hello? Karen turned to face me, and it seemed like the color was starting to drain out of her face.

She has a much cooler head than I do. And if she was upset, then I knew I needed to be upset. We had been sitting there a couple of moments, and then we just decided, we need to get out of here. There's something really, really, really bad here. I pressed the accelerator pretty hard and just said, what is going on here?

Karen didn't say a word. We had not passed another car. We had not passed another living soul on this road, and we've now been on the road 15 minutes. Well, way up ahead, I noticed something in the road, and it looked like the road was covered in, like, white-colored gravel, like hailstones. And the closer we got to it, I realized that these hailstones were moving. And they were as far as the eye could see in all directions. So I got a little closer. And the closer I got to them, I realized that they weren't hailstones at all.

They were frogs. Tiny, tiny frogs. Maybe just a little bit bigger than a 50-cent piece. Every square inch of that road And the shoulder of the road Were covered with these Hopping frogs Everywhere

The whole road looked like it was moving in front of me I pulled the car to a stop I lowered the windows We heard no noises It was as though God turned off the audio of the world We didn't hear the frogs They made the frogs They made no noise

We heard nothing but the sound of my engine No wind, no rain No radio No breathing We heard nothing And all we could see were these frogs Everywhere we looked They continued on up the road

As far as we could see It's hopping around on this wet pavement Thousands upon thousands of them Just everywhere. I reached over, put my hand on Karen's knee, and said, I don't know what this is, but it feels like the plague. She said nothing. My heart was in my throat. I kind of felt my hands shake.

I don't think I've ever been more frightened in my life. I've been through some frightening experiences, but nothing like this. I glanced at Karen, and she was motionless. just staring, staring at the frogs. I looked at Karen and said, we can't stay here. We have to keep going. And for just a moment, the animal lover in me said,

well, I can't run these frogs down. I can't run over these frogs, these poor frogs. Whatever they're doing here, I don't know, but we got to get out of here. So I went ahead and continued on. once we're driving, I'm hearing the frogs as they jump hit the side of our car. I'm hearing very, very small thumps against the front, the sides, the doors, very small thumps, and the frogs just kept coming.

And we continued down this road, and we've gone another mile, another two miles, another three miles, And these frogs are still everywhere, all around us. We're running over them. They're in front of us. They're behind us. They're on the sides. They're just everywhere. They're just like a chorus of thumps, tiny thumps against the car.

Very, very unsettling, to say the least, to know that I was killing these frogs by running over them. But I had to get out of there. Four miles I'd gone. And the frogs sort of... tapered off. After we passed through the frogs and it looked like they were behind us, I just pressed the accelerator hard and I was probably 20 miles over the speed limit. I just wanted to get as far away from them as I could. I kept driving another 10 minutes and I reach the interstate, which I need to get on to get back to Birmingham. And I see that there's one gas station right at the

the freeway entrance. And so I pull in, hoping to just sort of shake my head and just kind of make sense of what happened. Well, I slide the car into the parking lot at the gas station, pull up in a parking space, and I immediately wanted to jump out to see what the car looked like. Karen hopped out the passenger side. I hopped out my side. The first thing I did was look at the exterior of the vehicle, I just felt more than a little unsettled. Because not only had we seen what we'd seen and driven through what we'd driven through, I saw no outward evidence on the car that we'd been through anything like this, it's just a wet car on a wet road, on a wet night in rural Alabama.

Thank you, Michael, for sharing your story with the spooked. How very relieved we are. but she made it back from the Twilight Zone. Original score for that story is by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Eni. Now, we're traveling to a small coastal town in Maine. This place is called Lubbock. It's the easternmost town in the United States of America.

And once you're there, you better get comfortable because it's over 100 miles to the next city. Baba. Baba's lived there his whole life And in his 20s, Bubba worked at the town's famous lighthouse, manned by the U.S. Coast Guard. For four years, Bubba was in charge of a small crew

that kept watch and shifts. Their job? Never, ever, let the light go out. Here's Bubba. In the light, there's no other lighthouse like it, the horizontal red and white stripes. Thirteen are together. It's, you know, the flag in the club.

90 days. My name is George Eden. I'm 63 years old. Live in Lubeck, Maine. Left here in 1974 at the high school to join the Coast Guard and put 26 years in the Coast Guard.

If you guys wasn't here today, I wouldn't be in this house. I will not be in the house alone. Believe it not, I can't never be alone rest of my life. It is isolated, you know. There's bays down there. There's coyotes. There's wildlife. I've seen the honest of God, I've seen a mountain lying down there.

We've got to go 50 miles to go to Walmart. We've got to go 50 miles to go to a movie. Well, that road is a winding, you know, winding, you know, it's a dangerous road. Thick a fog down there at night, you could go off the road very, very easily. Duty was two days on, two days off, then the weekend off. But you've got to remember that you're on that for two days. you've got to give the weather report every four hours. You've got to time the light.

And then you're going to make sure the fog is going. Somebody might be drowning out there, falling overboard. So you're constantly watching the ocean, too. You always had that feeling like somebody was either looking at you or standing behind you or something like that. There was a presence there that felt it was like a dark presence, the evil presence. For somebody that is not used to a rural setting,

like Lou Beck, and they come from a sitting, get stationed down there. I've had a couple. It was a shocker for him. I come in one morning and a guy wanted to commit suicide. He was up on the light, facing the ocean, and he locked the door to get up there. And he wanted to jump off the lighthouse, kill himself. So I had to call the medical center and come down, and they took him out in the straitjacket. He was kicking, yelling, screaming, and I just kept asking him, what happened to you? What happened to you? How did you get to this state of mine?

And then this guy named Bradley, he was from Lubach, so he had trouble. He was scared. He was scared to stay there. He couldn't handle it. So one night I come down to check on him, and I went down over the hill and all the lights were on, all the lights. It's like, what the heck?

Then I got closer down there. I see his car in all the windows and everything was smashed up his car. His tail lights, his headlights. They was all smashed out. Glass all over the throat. I'm going, man, somebody did that to him, and, you know, we're going to get the bottom of it. So I went in the light and hollet,

hey, Bradley, Bradley, Bradley, where are you? And then I said, are you in the bathroom? Open the door up right now, I'm going to kick it in. Well, you opened it up like this? Honest to God, there was a mattress and a pillow, right by the flush. He had a gun. He had a knife.

He had a knife. And he's just like this, right? Like he was in horror. He was, like he's in a ghost. I'm looking at it. It ain't funny. I'm looking at him and go, what happened to you?

What happened to you? What happened to your vehicle? Your vehicles are all spent on. He goes, honest to God, I looked out the window, and there was 12 people in cloaks. And they had sticks. They was going around my car, they're smashing it up. I said, okay, where did they go out?

Did you see where they went? that this vanished in the woods. I said, okay, all right. So I got him out there and got him a cup of coffee and he was shaking and everything like that. And he was scared right to death. I called the medical center again and had to come down and take him off off the straight jacket.

I went through about 10 people down there. It was hard enough to get somebody down there to stand that kind of duty. A lot of people can't do that. A lot of people can't be alone. and if you're out there all alone I can see being scared I was scared I was scared

I wasn't happy going out there every four hours at night I wasn't scared of the animals I was scared of maybe seeing something else that's what I scared of when it started getting dark outside I felt it I felt you know this you know it was the worst feeling for me

you know I'm the only one here I'd hear a spoon and a cup I said geez we'd drink a coffee out there and I listened to it for a while I was right by the kitchen in my bedroom and I could hear it and I could hear drawers opening up and all that

you know my beard was situated so I'd look right up at the door to see if the door would be turning I was armed I never slept all night I did during the day I would during the day but not at night that's how crazy I was I put up

on the doors I put up like bells and stuff because I really wanted to hear somebody trip, you know, hit one of them. You know what I mean? I really wanted to hear that. I figure if they're coming, they'll come to me, and I'll be ready for them. I remember it was a clear day. It was a beautiful day out. You know, of course, I had the duty.

I don't think anybody could down visit. I had visits almost every day. Nobody came down that day, which was odd. I see the wind changed. It was southwest. And I said, here we go again. Southwest could be thick of fog down here tonight. I mean thick.

When I looked out the window about 10 o'clock at night, couldn't even see your car. It's how thick it was. And that makes you nervous, too. At 10 o'clock, I think I went to bed around 10 o'clock. Something like that. But I'm in there, laying down and all that. And I just get in bed, and I heard this banging on the door.

I'm going, Hmm, what the hell? Who'd be coming down here at 10 o'clock at night? It must be one of my friends or something wants to come in and say hello but they never come down 10 o'clock a night before. So I hear the, keep hearing the banging.

It wasn't loud, this banging, you know. So I said, well, it must be somebody in distress. So I'm in the kitchen, I go out through the door, and I see the shape of, I see a shape of somebody. I hung up the door and there's this woman stand

that, this, this, like this. You know, and she had to, this this this dress was like a it was like a civil war dress it was kind of gray and white and all that and I'm looking at it

and she's I mean she's as soon as I seen her eyes it's like she's looking right through me she looks like she was in I won't say terror but she was we're not a happy person I was scared shitless

I was scared right as soon as I was As soon as I went out the door, it's like that, and my heart was pounding, and I just said, I mean, I helped me, I help, and she was, yes, I have to use the bathroom. She sounded like a, like a, a, a really soft, soft voice, really soft, like a squeaky voice. And I said, yeah, and, you know, I'm going to quiz her to print. I was going to ask her a hundred questions. But all of a sudden, I just got this feeling like, I got a, you know, she wants to use the bathroom.

That's her priority, you know, okay, no problem. So I told the other bathrooms right over here, well, guess what? She walks by me, she goes, I know where it is. You do? She walks by me, opens up the door to where, and that freaked me out. And I said, you must be here before, and she didn't ask me. Well, she started going up the stairs, and I turned the light on. And she could, I watched her right up the stair, and I'm kind of,

Looking up and make sure that she's in the bathroom all right. She's in the bathroom and no light comes on the whole time. I'm going, you've got to be kidding me. And that's when I went, shit, I either got to face some music here, I run down out of here and get my truck and take off. That's what I should have done. Anyway, I backed off and went out in the kitchen's right there, and here she comes.

and she goes down she walks right out of the door and when she come out of that door downstairs she didn't even look at me she didn't even look at it she wouldn't right by me like that and I told her I got to ask her a couple questions she didn't even ask me

she went right out the door and in her sick of fog she went right out so I went out I went out because I told her I started yelling and I said ma'am you're going the wrong way because the cliff was there

That was it. She then disappeared in the fog. So, Raymond T. the next morning, I went and got him. Raymond, this woman came in here last night. She didn't look like something I've seen before. Well, then he told me he's seen her over there a few years back. And I said, oh, I said, so what do you think, Raymond? He goes, it's a ghost.

I wish now I would have touched her. I wish I would have this went like that and touched her to see, to see if there was any kind of reaction or something like that. And I just started thinking all these things that, why did she come in and see me? Why, I mean, why me? Why not somebody else? Was she safe with me?

I don't know. She had to, I think she had to be, something happened that. She either, something happened. You know, I do believe she died down there. She might have died there, she might have died at sea. You know, she might have got lost. She looked like a lost soul to me.

That's what it looked like to me. Like I said, my last two years was very difficult. Because I really thought I'd see her again. I've dreamed to her. I have dreamed of that woman. It's the same thing. She walks by me, turns around, walks out. Every dream.

Every dream, it's the same thing. Walks up there. Then I wake up. Then I wake up. and I you know even today I have a light on my every night a little light there that's all so that I feel safe thank you Bubba

for manning the light taking everyone safe for so many years we're glad you don't have to be down there anymore the original score for that story was by Clay Xavier was produced by Greta Weber and Galen Cock I know I know it goes so quickly

because time time she is an illusion Don't let them trick you And if you want to hear stories That won't haunt you in the middle of the night But we'll make you face your humanity In the middle of the day Subscribe to our sister podcast

Snap Judgment Storytelling with a beat Spook is brought you by the team that never wears a jacket On those dark stormy nights I don't know why Flea and terror from the very sight of Mark Ristich and assessment.

Our chief spookster is Eliza Smith. Chris Hamburg, Annie Nguyenne, Marissa Dodge, Wenzel Goria, Leonorimoto, Jacob Winnick, Tiffany DeLisa, Anne Ford.

Eric Yanez, Sonachan, original score is by Lauren Newsom. Their spook theme song is by Pat Nassini Miller and my name is the Washington.

Understand. And someone pretending to be your friend asked you to visit their cabin in the woods off the grid. Well, You know to turn them down, because off the grid means no power. No power means no lights, and you spookster, you know full well, to never, ever.

Never, ever. At this point, you never, ever, ever, ever turn out the lightness.