THERÉSA: Hello, Hello, Welcome back, Ghouls and Girls. This is Haunting,
THERÉSA: Purgatory's top podcast.
LEN: [MUMBLES]
THERÉSA: Only podcast which still makes it the top, Len. It's
THERÉSA: called spin. Where we share listener-submitted spooky stories that are
THERÉSA: guaranteed to raise the hairs on the back of your
THERÉSA: neck or not if you're me. I had all of
THERÉSA: my body hair follicles dissolved in a non-FDA-approved experimental procedure
THERÉSA: in Istanbul, hair transplant capital of the World, which, of
THERÉSA: course is neither here nor there since I'm dead and
THERÉSA: wasting what would have been my hottest years here in Purgatory,
THERÉSA: for the rest of time. So anyway, it's a very
THERÉSA: exciting time for the in-between. It's Halloween.
LEN: [MUMBLES]
THERÉSA: Oh, you're right, almost Halloween. Although, if I were still alive,
THERÉSA: I'd say Halloween is practically over. If you have any
THERÉSA: semblance of a social life, it's the weekend before that
THERÉSA: really counts. I used to throw an annual Halloween party,
THERÉSA: Ghoul Gala, a night of nefarious, naughtiness and wanton witchy wonder.
THERÉSA: One year, I went as a sexy toucan, which was
THERÉSA: iconic except the beak made it almost impossible to eat
THERÉSA: or drink, mingle, dance or flirt with the DJ. It
THERÉSA: was the best though MySpace Tom showed up, but I
THERÉSA: broke into my dad's stash of quaaludes from like the eighties.
THERÉSA: Everyone started taking their clothes off and the zombies became
THERÉSA: like real zombies.
LEN: [MUMBLES]
THERÉSA: Oh right, Sorry, getting off track. We want to hear
THERÉSA: how you're planning to celebrate Halloween this year, so drop
THERÉSA: us a note in the comments and we might just
THERÉSA: liven up your holiday with an unexpected visit from the
THERÉSA: great beyond. MySpace Tom style! Now let's get into it.
THERÉSA: Today we're keeping it classic with two good old fashioned
THERÉSA: haunted house stories. Our first comes to us from Roger,
THERÉSA: who was tormented in his neighbor's old farmhouse. I know
THERÉSA: what you're thinking. In a different context, it sounds quaint, charming.
THERÉSA: It's giving Chip and Joanna, the Barefoot Contessa. Well not
THERÉSA: for Roger.
STORY A: My brother and I are sleeping there overnight. We're in
STORY A: the living room and this sound wakes me up. I
STORY A: knew what the sound was immediately. There's this big oak
STORY A: rocking chair that sat in the living room. This thing
STORY A: weighed at least one hundred and twenty five pounds. I
STORY A: heard it creaking. I look around. The chair's not in there.
STORY A: It's been moved, but I can still hear it. I
STORY A: start following this sound and I can see that this chair
STORY A: is perched at the top of the basement stairs. It
STORY A: was rocking back and forth without slowing down. I reached
STORY A: forward to grab it, and it stopped in that forward position,
STORY A: and then it flew forward and broke into a bunch
STORY A: of pieces falling down the stairs. My name is Roger,
STORY A: and this is the story of the haunting of the
STORY A: farmhouse that I was babysat in. We were living in
STORY A: the middle of nowhere in the Midwest on a farm.
STORY A: I was just a kid at the time. My mom
STORY A: worked a lot of different graveyard shifts, and often my
STORY A: brother and I would end up at a house down
STORY A: the road with a family that also had children of
STORY A: a similar age, and some strange things started to happen.
STORY A: It was a small house, one story with a large basement.
STORY A: The mom and dad typical Midwest farm couple, you know.
STORY A: Mom stayed home, the father was great with kids. They
STORY A: had an older daughter, Jackie, who was my age, and
STORY A: they had a younger daughter, Susie, who was about five
STORY A: years old, and she had an imaginary friend. We always
STORY A: tried to involve her, but she just wanted to play
STORY A: with her imaginary friend. My brother and I are sleeping
STORY A: there overnight. We're in the living room. He was on
STORY A: one sofa, I was on the other one, and they
STORY A: had one of those old tiny radios on the corner
STORY A: of the room. And it turned on in the middle
STORY A: of the night and started changing stations. That scared the
STORY A: shit out of my brother and I. If you know
STORY A: anything about these old time radios, everything in that is mechanical,
STORY A: you actually got to physically turn the knob. It cannot
STORY A: change to another station without that knob. I don't know
STORY A: what it was, but something did indeed move that knob.
STORY A: My brother and I are sitting there looking at each other freaked out.
STORY A: He told me to shut it off. I was too
STORY A: scared to go shut it off. I said, you shut
STORY A: it off. So he crept across the room in the
STORY A: dark of night, with the only thing illuminating it being
STORY A: a little bit of light coming from the front of
STORY A: the radio itself. He didn't know how to shut it off,
STORY A: so he just went and plugged it. The thing with
STORY A: the radio happened at least five or six times. We
STORY A: told our mom this place as scary as hell and
STORY A: this is what happened, but she just kind of passed
STORY A: it off as us being imaginative or making it up
STORY A: or ,you know, outright lying. We didn't really feel that
STORY A: we had any option about where we were going to
STORY A: get babysat when she was at work, so we were stuck.
STORY A: So one day I was in this house, dinner's about ready,
STORY A: and the father told me to go grab Susie out
STORY A: of her room. I had looked in her room and
STORY A: I had stopped in the doorway, and I had said, "hey,
STORY A: Susie it's time for dinner", and she was just having a little
STORY A: classic tea party. She had the little cups out and
STORY A: some little stuffed animal friends and her imaginary friend was sitting
STORY A: across from her, she says, well, I'm busy playing, And
STORY A: I said, well, I don't care if you're busy planning,
STORY A: your dad said it's dinner time, and I was about
STORY A: to walk in. She told me that her imaginary friend
STORY A: did not want me to come in and told me
STORY A: to stay out. And as I went to step into
STORY A: that room, the door slammed in my face. That little
STORY A: girl was fifteen feet away from that door. I totally
STORY A: freaked out. I went and ran back and got the dad.
STORY A: I told him what happened. I said, I tried to
STORY A: get her, and the door slammed in my face. He goes in there and he tries to
STORY A: open the door. Susie! Susie! He can't get the door open.
STORY A: The door was not locked. You just couldn't open it.
STORY A: He's yelling her name, Susie! Dead silence in the room.
STORY A: The dad kicks the door in. Little Susie was just
STORY A: sitting there in the middle of the floor like she
STORY A: was before, completely unaffected, and just looked over and said,
STORY A: I told you he didn't want you to come in.
STORY A: I'm a little scared of this little girl at this point.
STORY A: When she was in a room by herself with her
STORY A: imaginary friend, she would turn and look at you, and
STORY A: you felt like something else was looking at you too.
STORY A: The best way I could describe it is that feeling
STORY A: of a predator watching you, Like walking by a house
STORY A: with a dog chained up in the yard that would
STORY A: clearly just love to get a bite of you.
STORY A: One night, I hear all this commotion in the kitchen
STORY A: cupboard just opening and slamming, dishes clinking, silverware rattling. I don't
STORY A: know any other way to put this. It didn't seem
STORY A: to be sounds that a person could accomplish. It wasn't
STORY A: the sound of somebody getting the bowl out or whatever.
STORY A: The only thing that I could compute at the time,
STORY A: I thought that like the entire family had gotten up
STORY A: and it was doing some kind of crazy thing in
STORY A: the kitchen, because it didn't seem to be anything that
STORY A: like one person would do. So I wake up and
STORY A: the lights were off in the kitchen, I went in there.
STORY A: I turned the kitchen lights on. My brother was with me,
STORY A: and what we saw, I mean, it sticks with me
STORY A: to this day. We were sitting there slack jaw looking
STORY A: at all this stuff. All of the cupboards were open.
STORY A: Everything had been removed from the cupboards, pots, pans, plates,
STORY A: cereal boxes, canned goods, et cetera, and had been stacked
STORY A: on the counters and on the table. It wasn't just
STORY A: haphazardly piled up like a cup with a bowl on top,
STORY A: with a jar of spaghetti sauce and then a wooden
STORY A: spoon balanced on that and then something on that. Somebody
STORY A: would have had to go in there for hours and
STORY A: hours and hours trying to do this. The parents woke up,
STORY A: came in and my brother the very first thing, he says,
STORY A: we didn't do it. They said, we know you didn't
STORY A: do it. Go back to bed, and they just kind
STORY A: of casually and calmly spent the next hour, hour and
STORY A: a half putting all this stuff away, and not another
STORY A: word was said about it. Two or three weeks later,
STORY A: they're having a barbecue. The mom asked me to go
STORY A: see if I can find Susie. So I run around
STORY A: outside for a little bit first, and then I said,
STORY A: you know, I gotta go check in the house, so,
STORY A: you know, yelling her name, Susie! Susie! Walk down the hall,
STORY A: look in her room. She's not in there. And then
STORY A: I hear this creaking. It was the sound the floor
STORY A: made when you were on the tire swing downstairs, because
STORY A: it was hooked into the rafters in the basement. And
STORY A: when the tire swing would go just you know that,
STORY A: you could hear the whole house. And I hear it.
STORY A: I was like, oh, you know, she's downstairs. She would
STORY A: sometimes play in the basement in the pitch black with all
STORY A: the lights off with her imaginary friend. Now I open
STORY A: up the basement door. It was pitch black down there. So
STORY A: I turned the light on and I called her name,
STORY A: Susie Susie! No response. As I come down the stairs,
STORY A: that fight or flight feeling starts creeping up on me,
STORY A: you know, that feeling of a predator stalking up on you.
STORY A: And I see the swing swinging by itself. All of
STORY A: a sudden, this tire swing goes boom, swinging all the
STORY A: way up, nailing the ceiling. Boom, boom, boom. I turned
STORY A: and ran up the stairs. I was so terrified running
STORY A: back up those steps that the door was going to shut.
STORY A: Ran through the kitchen to the outside Susie's standing right
STORY A: out there eating a hamburger. After that, my brother and
STORY A: I told our mom that if she ever sent us
STORY A: back to that house, we were going to run away.
STORY A: I have no doubt in my mind there was something
STORY A: very real and supernatural happening in that home. Because I
STORY A: saw it and experienced it for myself. It convinced me forever that
STORY A: there are unseen and unknown things that we're not privy to.
STORY A: I think one of the real tragedies of people that
STORY A: this happens too, is that you have nowhere to go.
THERÉSA: Yikes. Roger raises a good point, though. A hearty paranormal
THERÉSA: infestation can really upend your life. I wonder if hauntings
THERÉSA: are covered by homeowners insurance. That's actually not a bad idea. Len,
THERÉSA: write that down. We'd make a killing, especially this time
THERÉSA: of year. We could call it Haunt Safe
LEN: [MUMBLES]
THERÉSA: Ooh, Ghoul Guard. That's good. While we work on this,
THERÉSA: let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors.
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THERÉSA: a nightmare? Did you move into a new home just
THERÉSA: to discover a Satanic cult spent the better part of
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THERÉSA: the move-on memo yet. That's where Paranormal Protect comes in.
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THERÉSA: Eh pretty good, right, I think we're onto something here,
THERÉSA: and our next guest would make for the perfect first customer.
THERÉSA: For most kids, grandmother's house is synonymous with good times,
THERÉSA: new toys, endless sugar highs, that one hot cousin who
THERÉSA: taught you to smoke. Hi Colin. But for Andrea and
THERÉSA: her sister, time spent at their grandmother's house wasn't all
THERÉSA: stale Werther's and shag carpet. They were up against something
THERÉSA: much more sinister.
STORY B: The minute you walked in, you're just kind of on
STORY B: edge and hoping you don't experience something that you don't
STORY B: want to experience. There really wasn't a moment where you
STORY B: didn't feel like someone else was in the room with
STORY B: you in that house. My name is Andrea, and I
STORY B: was always terrified of my grandmother's house. I lived at
STORY B: my grandmother's house until I was about four or five.
STORY B: I don't have a lot of memories living there, but
STORY B: what I do have is a ton of memories of
STORY B: visiting my grandmother. Her house always had a creepy presence.
STORY B: It was over one hundred years old. When my grandmother,
STORY B: my mom, and her siblings moved in. It was just
STORY B: a small farmhouse, and then over the years my grandfather
STORY B: put in an addition. It's my understanding that once the
STORY B: addition was put on, things started to happen. Something came
STORY B: alive in the house. I don't know if it was
STORY B: the work or whatever. It was like a disturbance. One
STORY B: of my oldest memories was that we would never want
STORY B: to be on the second floor of that house alone ever.
STORY B: And so if you have to go to the bathroom,
STORY B: you're making someone wait in the outside hallway for you
STORY B: while you go. You're never going upstairs alone period. The
STORY B: minute that I would get to the top of the stairs,
STORY B: I would get this eerie feeling. The energy felt thicker
STORY B: and heavy. I always felt like I was being watched.
STORY B: I never felt like I was alone. And there were
STORY B: certain areas like this one long hallway that was always dark.
STORY B: I don't think I can remember a time where a
STORY B: light was on in that hallway. There wasn't a doubt
STORY B: in my mind that if I looked down that hallway
STORY B: at the wrong moment, I would see a figure. The
STORY B: feeling of the house is really heavy, especially on the
STORY B: second floor. All the grandchildren felt it, But you know,
STORY B: we weren't the only ones with these experiences or these feelings.
STORY B: I remember growing up hearing a story about my mom when
STORY B: she was a teenager walking up the stairs, she would
STORY B: hear footsteps behind her and my aunt she would have
STORY B: sleep paralysis, and when she would wake up, she thought
STORY B: she saw someone hovering above her. My cousin once said
STORY B: she saw a figure, and just weird things would happen,
STORY B: and you just never felt comfortable. All of the activity
STORY B: would happen, mostly on the second floor or in the
STORY B: new part of the house. The house was an old nunnery,
STORY B: and there was a woman who ran the nunnery that
STORY B: passed away there on the second floor. Whether it was
STORY B: family lore or this place was haunted by this woman
STORY B: we were terrified of being in this house alone. The
STORY B: most terrifying part of the house was the second floor.
STORY B: At the top of the stairs, on the landing, you
STORY B: can go left and walk down the hallway. Directly at
STORY B: the end of the hallway was a bathroom that no
STORY B: one would ever want to use, and if you made a
STORY B: right that's where my grandmother's room is. She considered herself
STORY B: very witchy, and when my grandmother would babysit us, in one
STORY B: of the rooms at the end of the hallway to
STORY B: pass the time, she would get the granddaughters together and
STORY B: do little seance ceremonies, and I remember thinking, I can
STORY B: barely go to the bathroom alone in this house. I
STORY B: cannot believe we're doing a seance. But it was really
STORY B: entertaining and a good way to pass time with your grandma.
STORY B: I never liked sleeping at my grandmother's house. I was
STORY B: always at my cousin's house. I was always at sleepovers
STORY B: with my family. I really disliked sleeping there. The minute
STORY B: you walked in for a family party or for a sleepover,
STORY B: you're just kind of on edge and hoping you don't
STORY B: experience something that you don't want to experience. It was
STORY B: always in the back of your mind. I have like
STORY B: thirty cousins. We all feel this way. It wasn't just me.
STORY B: There was always stress around where we were going to sleep.
STORY B: I just knew I would never get a good night's sleep.
STORY B: One night, when we were staying with my grandmother, we
STORY B: were sleeping in her bedroom with her. It was just me,
STORY B: my grandmother, and my sister. We were watching TV. We
STORY B: get in our jammies. We all pile into the bed.
STORY B: I managed to get into the middle. My grandmother's on
STORY B: my right, my twin sister's on my left. In addition
STORY B: to the three people, my grandmother's one hundred pounds great Dane,
STORY B: Dominique is at the end of the bed, all of
STORY B: us packed in. I really had to fight to be
STORY B: in the middle. I felt safest in the middle. It
STORY B: was a really nice night out. There was a really
STORY B: great breeze, the window was cracked, the room felt cool.
STORY B: So we're all snuggled really comfortable under the blankets, and
STORY B: so we're watching for like an hour, enjoying. I think
STORY B: it was NYPD Blue, And eventually my grandmother dozes off.
STORY B: Before she fell asleep, she had let us know that
STORY B: the way that the TV worked was if you turned
STORY B: it on from the TV, it would go but if
STORY B: you had the remote, you could actually control the channels.
STORY B: And then out of nowhere, Dominique starts to get agitated.
STORY B: She was sleeping on the foot of the bed. She
STORY B: went from like a restful snoring to on alert. Her
STORY B: ears are up and she's looking at the TV, you know,
STORY B: a low growl like hm hmm, and the television just
STORY B: turns off and then all of a sudden it turns
STORY B: back on and it's just snow. It was almost like
STORY B: the scene out of the Poltergeist, where it's just the
STORY B: white noise and the TV fuzz. Dominique starts to get
STORY B: her hackles up. She's getting more and more agitated. My
STORY B: sister and I already don't trust this house. We're immediately
STORY B: on edge and the channel starts to change another channel.
STORY B: We're grabbing the remote. We're trying to turn it on
STORY B: and off. It's not working. The dog's really uncomfortable moving
STORY B: around in the bed. It's jarring to see a dog nervous,
STORY B: but like a big hundred pound protective dog that agitated
STORY B: was really scary. We were just, you know, trying to
STORY B: shake my grandmother and saying, someone's turning off and on
STORY B: the TV. She is just like, oh, it's nothing. It's
STORY B: the wind. It's the wind, And I'm just like, it
STORY B: has nothing to do with the wind. The wind's not
STORY B: touching the button on the television. Instinctively, I was like,
STORY B: she's gone through this so much, she doesn't care. But
STORY B: that only terrified me more because this is a reoccurring thing.
STORY B: Neither one of us wanted to get out of the bed.
STORY B: We were too afraid. The journey from the bed to
STORY B: the window, I mean it was probably three feet but like,
STORY B: what if we got off the bed and something grabbed
STORY B: our feet. I had to take one for the team
STORY B: and close the window. That journey felt so long. I
STORY B: scurried back into bed. So we're watching TV again and
STORY B: we're like fine for a little bit, and then all
STORY B: of a sudden, turns off and it happens again, turns
STORY B: back on, channels change, and it continued to do this cycle,
STORY B: turning off and on, changing channels even after we closed
STORY B: the window. So we definitely knew it wasn't the wind.
STORY B: There was something in the room and whatever was was
STORY B: changing the channels and messing with the TV as we're
STORY B: tossing and turning. We're not asleep yet. My sister and
STORY B: I are just trying to calm ourselves down and we
STORY B: hear someone come in the house. They're kind of making
STORY B: a ruckus downstairs. We can hear them in the kitchen,
STORY B: and then we hear them walk up the stairs and
STORY B: walk down the hallway. We just hear like clobbering boots
STORY B: walk up and down the hallway. We wake up our
STORY B: grandmother and we're saying, I think someone's here, I
STORY B: think someone's here. She's like, it's okay, it's just your uncle.
STORY B: My uncle Paul lived at my grandmother's house, and so
STORY B: we were like, oh, okay, he was out that night,
STORY B: he came home late. Now he's home, And for whatever reason,
STORY B: knowing he was up and around made us feel so
STORY B: much better. There was something comforting in that, and so
STORY B: we finally drifted off to sleep. The next morning, we
STORY B: go downstairs. My grandmother's making coffee, were eating breakfast.
STORY A: Paul called. Paul had not come home from the night before.
STORY A: My sister and I looked at each other and couldn't
STORY A: make sense of what we heard outside that room. The
STORY A: only people in the house is me, my grandmother, and
STORY A: my twin sister and Dominique, who was at the foot
STORY A: of the bed all night. Who and what was making
STORY A: those sounds the night before. I don't think I would
STORY A: ever go back into that house alone at night. I
STORY A: can't explain it. Clearly, the house is fucking haunted.
THERÉSA: I appreciate the directness in this one most people really
THERÉSA: beat around the bush when it comes to hauntings. But
THERÉSA: my theory is when you know, you know, and she knew.
THERÉSA: Let's take a moment for the real debutante of this story.
THERÉSA: Dominique dutifully lying at the end of the bed, A
THERÉSA: protective growl at the television set. Now that's a dog.
THERÉSA: Ah. I love the idea of cozying up to a
THERÉSA: sturdy Great Dane on a crisp fall night. All we
THERÉSA: had growing up was our Chiweenie, Lady Macbeth, who was
THERÉSA: rehomed after she chewed the handle of my mom's Birkin.
THERÉSA: A taste for designer runs in the family. But let's
THERÉSA: take a quick break, shall we.
THERÉSA: Well, that's it for today. Thanks for tuning in. As always,
THERÉSA: email us at HauntingThePodcast@gmail.com if you've had a paranormal experience
THERÉSA: you'd like to share on the pod, and if you
THERÉSA: haven't had a paranormal experience yet, Halloween is the perfect opportunity.
THERÉSA: explore your neighbor's dusty old attic. Bust out the Ouija board. Seriously,
THERÉSA: we get so many Ouija board stories. But whatever you
THERÉSA: get up to this Halloween, be safe, have fun. And
THERÉSA: if you see me haunting Heidi Klum's Halloween party, no,
THERÉSA: you didn't. Keep the portals open and the veils thin.
THERÉSA: Till next time.
CREDITS: If you have a haunting story to share, please email
CREDITS: us at HauntingThePodcast@gmail.com, and if you like what you hear,
CREDITS: please like and subscribe. You can also follow us on
CREDITS: social media by searching for Glass Podcasts or by visiting glasspodcasts.com.
CREDITS: Haunting is a production of Glass Podcasts and partnership with
CREDITS: iHeart Podcast. Haunting is created and executive produced by Nancy Glass,
CREDITS: Andrea Gunning, Ben Fetterman, and Lauren Lapkus, and it is
CREDITS: hosted by Lauren Lapkus as their character Therésa. The show
CREDITS: is directed by Aleah Welsh and produced by Trey Morgan.
CREDITS: It is written by Aleah Welsh, with additional writing by
CREDITS: Nancy Glass, Trey Morgan, and Ben Fetterman. Additional production support
CREDITS: by Curry Richman and Todd Ganz. Additional voice acting by
CREDITS: Trey Morgan as the character producer Len Walker. Editing and
CREDITS: sound designed by Matt Delvecchio and mixed by Dave Saia.
CREDITS: Operations and production support by Kristen Melchiorre. Haunting's theme and
CREDITS: original compositions were composed by Oliver Baines and Dorry Macaulay
CREDITS: of Noiser. Music Library provided by Mybe Music. Special thanks
CREDITS: to Speakeasy Sound Studios in Burbank California. For more shows
CREDITS: from iHeart Podcast and Glass Podcast, visit the iHeartRadio app,
CREDITS: Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast