Halloween Listener Stories VI

0:00No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately, though, the shop's been quiet, so Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs and help him see if he can afford it. Copilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the $1 slice work. Now Hank's has a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza. Copilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at m365copilot.com slash work.

0:30I don't know. We're doing something upstairs or something else going on, so we haven't had a chance to just sit there and listen to the weird thumping noise in your basement. Well, some night we'll have to have a girls' night where we just sit in the basement with a TV off of waiting.

0:47It's going to get weird. I'm Paige. And I'm Megan. And this is Spooky Science Systems. Hello, you're listening to Spooky Science Sisters, a podcast where we present to you a science-based and probably very giggly discussion on all things strange and unusual. We are very excited because Halloween is just around the corner, which means it is time for our sixth annual Halloween Listener Stories episode.

1:18But before we get to this year's stories, hey, guess what, Paige? What? We wrote a book. Yay! Yay! In case you forgot. And in case anyone else forgot. And we are going to keep reminding people because, hey, we're pretty proud of the fact that we wrote a book. But it is called Spooky Science, It's Dissecting the Mysteries of Ghosts, Cryptids, Aliens, and Other Oddities. If you have said book and you enjoyed it, or I guess also if you didn't enjoy it,

1:50but I want to know less about that, please go and review it on your platform of choice if you are able because it really helps us out. And, you know, it's also fun to see what some people say. And other than that, the only other thing we have going on is, and I think this usually comes out on Halloween Day, so this will have happened last night, but you will be able to watch the recording. But on October 30th, which is next Thursday, as of when I'm talking to you right now,

2:20we are doing Skeptical Inquirer Presents, and we are going to be talking about some spooky monster science, specifically focusing on vampires. It was a virtual event.

2:34And you can watch it. through their website, and we will put a link to that as soon as we have one so people can refer to that if you want to see what that was all about. But the plan is talk about vampires, talk about monster science, have a little bit of a silly, spooky time because it's the day before Halloween when we're doing it. So, yay. Yeah, by the time this comes out, we will be done with the first round of book marketing events.

3:06I don't, we don't know what next year is going to look like, but... Yes. Yeah, there's one thing scheduled for next year so far. Well, so far. Yeah. But yeah, we're kind of done with the main push of book events unless we hear from somebody else. But yes. Anyway, before we get to the stories, Paige, has anything spooky happened to you recently? No, not really, except I feel like, Megan knows this, but I've been like a little bit of like a,

3:37I don't know, nightmare. Sort of just like a manic mess the last couple of months. And I feel like the last like two or three weeks, I have finally gotten some time to just like sit and like read and, you know. And so it's like the first time in a while where I've just kind of like sat in the basement and like not had TV going or, you know, whatever. And I swear to you, that like thumping sound has gotten louder and it has become more frequent.

4:09And like maybe it's just because I haven't noticed in a while because I've really not spent much time down there. Yeah. But being down there these like last couple of weeks, it's like, I asked Elliot yesterday, like, do you think we're ever going to figure out what that is? And he's like, no, I've just like fully committed to it being a ghost. It's like, yeah, I have no idea. Yeah. Because remind me, you haven't been able to link it to any sort of like on or off cycles with your heating or cooling system, right? We've tried to like pay attention to that. And it seems like it happens like all year,

4:42no matter like whether, even if we don't have like the running. Yeah, yeah, because like the, yeah, because ducks can sometimes sort of still knock around some as like they're cooling or as they're heating up after they've been used. But yeah, if you're not, if it's year round and it doesn't depend on heat versus cold and you can't find a cycle. I don't know. It's like so loud too. So that's pretty much it. I mean, nothing new really. It's just, I had kind of like not really heard it in a while. So when I started hearing it again, I was like, damn it. Yeah, I should reshare the video you took of it years ago.

5:18Yeah, have you been over yet and heard it? I can't remember. No, I haven't been over to your house and heard it. I would like to. Yeah. It's just funny because I think every time I'm there, because obviously I've been to your house since this started a bunch of times. But yeah, it's just, I don't know, we're doing something upstairs or something else is going on. And so we haven't had a chance to just sit there and listen to the weird thumping noise in your basement. Well, some night we'll have to have a girl's night where we just sit in the basement

5:49with the TV off of waiting.

5:53It's going to get weird. That's all I got. What about you? Nope. I don't have anything spooky other than general life spookiness. Yeah. I'm excited for Halloween though. That's about it. Yay, Halloween. Okay. So are you ready for our listener stories? I'm ready. I feel like we've got some good ones this year. I haven't read all of them. I've really only read like one or two, but. Okay. I've read nothing. So to remind people how this works.

6:25That's on purpose. Okay. This is not poor planning on my part. Yeah. I opened them this year because there was like a lot of text. So I was trying to like trim some things down a little bit. But otherwise, that's all I did. You took one for the team and looked ahead of time. But after our first couple years, and I think after we got our feet underneath us a little bit in terms of being comfortable talking about debunking ghost stories and hauntings and all this stuff, we decided to start doing the Halloween listener stories episodes as basically on the fly debunking.

6:58So we don't read them or don't read them closely ahead of time. And then it's sort of we think on our feet through what might be going on in each of these scenarios or we just enjoy whoever's story because they've debunked it themselves. So we're ready. I'm gonna read the first one. Yay. So this one comes from Jennifer, who this is her third time submitting a story. So Jennifer is just living a very spooky life over in Scotland, I think. So I was like, really just like rub it in more

7:29that you're having a better time than us.

7:34Thanks, Jennifer. No.

7:39I'm gonna get a message about this. It's fine. We're very happy, Jennifer, and not jealous at all. Okay. No, we're jealous, but we're still happy for you.

7:51We can be both of those things. It's true. Okay, so Jennifer says, this happened in my early teens when I was on holiday with my family on the Isle of Wight down in England. We were visiting Carisbrook Castle. I'm positive. I'm probably pronouncing something wrong here. Anyway, we were visiting Carisbrook Castle and I had wandered off on my own. I remember walking down a narrow corridor into a fairly small bedroom, then starting to walk towards an information board on the other side of the room,

8:22but I didn't make it across. I must have been about halfway there when I was suddenly overwhelmed by extremely strong feelings of dread and sadness. Like I couldn't bear to stay even a second longer and practically ran out of there, almost colliding with the man who was coming up the corridor. I didn't stop until I reached the far end and when I did, I remember looking back and seeing the man I passed peering into the doorway of that room as if he was thinking, what the fuck is in there? There had been no one else in that room

8:54when I was there. Nothing particularly spooky about it. No noises that I can remember. So to this day, I don't really know what triggered those feelings. Of course, the castle has ghost stories associated with it as all castles do. Just like rub it in a little more that it's so great with all the castles.

9:13Megan's very upset about the castle. Listen, I just want to go do spooky things in castles. It's not fair.

9:22But this was in the middle of the day. Plus, I've been to many other castles and other types of purportedly very haunted locations. Great for you, Jennifer. But even if they felt creepy at points, I've never felt like I had to get out like I did that day at Karisbrook. I mean, I usually love this stuff. What do you think might have triggered such a strong feeling? I'm in my 30s now, so there are many details about that holiday that I can't remember, but I'll never forget that feeling in that room. Spooky. Spooky.

9:56I was going to be a dick and just be like, well, Jennifer, you maybe just started puberty.

10:02Extreme feelings as a teenage girl all of a sudden. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, could be. I'm just kidding. And I do not think that was what was going on. That could be it. That's the one. Instant. Instant strong feelings. That's definitely how that works. Yep.

10:25I feel comfortable being silly about this one because I know Jennifer knows what's up. Okay. So, honestly, I have little to no idea. Well, I do have a couple ideas. Puberty is not one of them, though, right? Puberty is not one of them.

10:45I'm just in a silly, goofy mood. Okay, so my first idea was maybe there's something environmental going on in that room. It's a little weird that, you know, halfway across the room, you're okay, and then all of a sudden you're not. Although I guess, like, you know, it could just be coincidence that it was about the halfway point as you were walking across the room whenever this occurred. I know that the evidence is a little bit mixed, but I think really strong electromagnetic fields can produce feelings of dread

11:16and, you know, feeling upset for people. But, you know, we're in an old castle, so... Right. I guess it might have some weird old wiring or something like that going on, but it seems a little less likely. What do you think? I have, like, no thoughts. I mean, sure, I had those thoughts, but, like, sort of, it seems to me like those are unlikely options. So I don't know that I have, like, a good idea of what happened here.

11:48Yeah. So the other thing I was thinking about possibly environmental is, like, maybe you were in the room long enough for, I don't know, some kind of mold in there to trigger some kind of reaction. I think it's, like, 25% of people are pretty sensitive to certain types of mold that can create, like, neurologic symptoms. So do you feel like you're sensitive to mold? Because it could have been something was growing in there and it just kind of got to you, like, almost an allergy type thing after a little while. I also thought she's pretty young

12:20at this point, and even teenagers tend to be a little bit more likely to have hallucinatory experiences. So it is sort of possible that, and, like, hallucinations aren't just, you know, visual or hearing things. They can be, like, weird sensations. So I don't know, maybe just some weird thing happened in your brain at that moment to really freak you out, or I don't know. There's obviously medical things that can cause, like, feelings of dread and stuff, but, you know, you were a teenager,

12:51it wasn't like... Does she, I don't think so, say, like, when the feelings stopped? Oh, no, she doesn't. So that would be a good follow-up as did it stop the second you left the room or did it kind of linger for a little bit? Yeah. Yeah.

13:11Yeah, that's a really spooky one. Yeah, because, like, if it's, like, a mold thing, right, or, like, presumably it's not gonna, like, linger for a long time after you leave, but it's also probably not just gonna stop while you're still in the room. I feel like the reaction time would be sort of similar to, like, having an asthma attack or something like that. Like, it takes a little while for it to work its way out of your system, but, you know, you wouldn't really know because you're probably freaked out from the experience, so you're gonna feel weird for a little while after anyway. So, yeah, I don't know.

13:41My best guess is, like, something hallucinatory. I would also guess it's something environmental, but, like, I just don't know that I have the answer for, like, what that would be. Well, that's why it's a good Halloween listener story because we're looking for the ones that can't be explained. A lot of times you hear, you know, it's very similar things over and over again, and, yeah, it's good to hear ones that I don't know what's happening. Something weird happened to you, Jennifer.

14:11That's what you get. I would just know when it stopped. Like, if it stopped while you were still in the room, then I think the environmental idea is, like, probably not what, like, not the answer. Yeah. I don't know. That's a good one. I don't know.

14:27We had some ideas. It is what it is. Okay.

14:37So, Paige, you are going to do the next one. Yes. So, this one is from an anonymous listener, and they did give us permission to trim it up a little bit because it is a long one, but I tried to keep as much intact as possible without, like, changing the story. But they also mentioned that all names and relationships throughout the story have been changed. Oh.

15:01Intrigue.

15:03All right. Surrounding the town in which this story takes place are winding gravel roads that seem unremarkable by today's standards. But years and years ago, they were vital routes between forgotten homesteads and outposts. Some take five minutes to cross, and some take much longer. Some run parallel to gentle hills of pasture, and some contain sharp slopes into rocky valleys with caves and creeks. Some host modern homes that out-of-towners have placed to avoid city taxes, and some contain remnants of the past that refuse to die.

15:34In all of these respects, the road I once lived on was the former. After graduating from college, I returned to my rural Appalachian hometown out of nostalgia and necessity. I, along with three other roommates, settled on what seemed like a steel, a two-story home located on that aforementioned road for only $500 per month in 2019, no less. A natural spring on the property meant no water bills. Sure, our commutes were longer, but sacrificing convenience for the sake of saving money was worth it,

16:05or so we thought. The house was incredible. There was an annoyingly large indentation in the ground and the front of the house by the road that made mowing a bit annoying, but we didn't mind it. Everything seemed perfect, but our first weekend in that house truly set the tone. From the oppressive darkness came a terrifying thunderstorm that resulted in a downed tree that cut off power and blocked our way back to town. There was no cell phone service, so without our Wi-Fi, we were effectively cut off from civilization. Then, less than a month

16:36into our stay in that house, I received a phone call from one of my roommates, Robert. He was panicking and speaking quietly. He became the first of the quartet to experience the place alone. I excused myself to hear him faintly repeat a singular sentence. Someone was in the house. He communicated that he heard someone walking around upstairs, their feet creaking on every floorboard. He heard them tiptoe toward the stairs as he was in the kitchen. He grabbed a knife and barricaded himself in a closet as he listened to them

17:06descend to the first floor and walk out of the house through the back. Fortunately, our roommate Kayla was due home in just a few minutes. Robert raced toward her while he was still on the phone with me. He told her everything he had just told me. They got in the car and waited for me in town before either of them would reenter the house. That evening, our fourth roommate, Ian, was informed of the situation. Ian inhabited the only room upstairs. We told him we glanced at his room to see if anything had been stolen but encouraged him

17:36to inspect further. He did. Nothing was gone. To our detriment, the sounds of disembodied footsteps became a regular occurrence that taunted anyone who remained home alone. First it was Robert, then it was Kayla, then it was me. Ian would not talk about what transpired when it was finally his turn, but after that night, he spent the majority of his time in the garage where he would often doze off. Further exploration of the house's attic, basement, and a little loft in the garage uncovered dusty boxes of vinyl records, CDs,

18:07and VHS tapes that contained gospel music. Beneath the porch, we found a small statue of an angel. As ominous as it all was, when we asked the landlord about it, he informed us that he used to be a pastor. He further stated that he simply did not feel like boxing it all up and taking it with him. Also in these spaces were historic photos of the house. We learned it used to be a one-room cabin that doubled as a post office. And as the years went on, the house was continuously built upon. The history nerd in me was fascinated.

18:37I held on to the non-religious memorabilia for a time and took it upon myself to do further research into the area at night after work. One night, which is like totally what you would do, Megan. What would I do? So you found like a bunch of photos of your house like in the past and you had been hearing weird sounds like you absolutely would go research to figure out like who used to live here. Oh, yeah. You've done it. You did it to my childhood house. I did it.

19:07That was one of our first episodes and I was like, I'm going to figure this shit out. I did not figure it out. One night, after I heard Ian enter the house through the side door and ascend to his room, I intended to step outside for a cigarette. On my way to the back door, I heard footsteps race away from that spot on the porch. Whoever it was ran around to the front porch. I rushed to the front of the house and peered out the window only to see nothing. I did not tell anyone

19:38about this experience as our collective anxiety was already high. Only a couple months into our stay, Ian abruptly moved out. Things were peaceful for several months. Before we knew it, we had been in the house for nearly a year. By that time, Robert was ready to move out and move on, as was I. And Kayla met a guy. The two chose to remain at the house together. They got married, had kids, and purchased the house. They stated for a time that the ghostly occurrences were few and far between and seemed limited to the sound of footsteps.

20:09All of that changed when they started to remodel the house. Their daughter screamed in the middle of one random night during one of their projects. Kayla and her husband rushed to her room only to see her gripping a pillow and crying beside her bed. There was something in here, she cried. She went on to explain that she woke up because she felt something tickling her arm. When she woke up, she noticed a shadowy black thing beside her. It was crouched down with its featureless face near her face. When she pulled back, it stood up straight

20:40and walked out of the room, into the hallway, and out of view. Kayla told me about it several days later. Because I suffered from sleep paralysis in my childhood, I encouraged Kayla to look into it. Reluctantly, she believed that her daughter was likely experiencing the same thing, despite the very real horror in her child's eyes. Over time, the episodes became less frequent and then stopped altogether. Kayla did some digging and learned that the tenant who lived at the house before we moved in all those years back was named Peter.

21:11Kayla reached out to Peter. She asked him if he experienced anything strange in the house. And he described waking up in the middle of the night only to see a shadowy figure in the far corner of the room. What he saw terrified him so badly that he moved out and forfeited his security deposit. Eventually, as Kayla assimilated into the nearby community, she would come to learn that years before she ever stepped foot in that house and years before Peter did, there was a devastating car accident on the property. The passenger was ejected

21:42and went face first into a large rock. That rock stood where the indentation in the front yard was, the indentation that we all took turns mowing over for months. After the accident took place, the rock was destroyed and hauled away in pieces. It had been absent from the land before anyone in this story lived on the property. The traces of the boulder probably existed in some stream or valley. Whether or not the house is haunted seems irrelevant. It is an old structure with quirks, various hands in its various periods of construction, and at least one tragic event

22:12on its land. In that respect, it seems like it has more similarities than differences with any other given house. Nevertheless, this story reminds me of our tendency as human beings to connect dots that don't even exist on the same plane. Two things can be true at once. Correlation does not equal causation. It makes me wonder how many well-known haunted places fall into a similar identity with similar circumstances. To me, the most frightening part of this story are the footsteps. I admit that many were likely misheard

22:43auditory stimuli from the house settling or something along those lines. I'm more inclined to believe this because the footsteps mostly seemed to manifest when the house was at its quietest, when somebody was alone. However, not all of the footsteps fell under this umbrella. Some of them were potentially from real people. In the months between Ian leaving and my decision to leave, we learned through the local grapevine that further down the road was an encampment of a few people on a neighboring property hiding deeper

23:13into the woods. Let's put it this way. These people were not camping because they enjoyed the outdoors and their records were not squeaky clean. Did I hear one of those campers on the porch? Was all of our fear derived from paranoia induced by anonymous lurkers in the woods that we did not consciously pick up on was all of that fear what led us to trying to connect unrelated incidents? This entire story is like Paige's worst nightmare.

23:43I know. I know. When I was like going through it, I was like, oh, someone lives in the attic. Exactly. Yeah.

23:55Oh, Lord. That's really spooky and really well written. So it's very creepy. Yeah. It's like such a good story. So thank you to the listener who shared this one with us. Yeah, it's so good. It's so good. Yeah. Do you have immediate thoughts about what's going on here? I mean, I sort of feel like it's already covered to be honest. Yeah. You know, I just like to me, there's so many different things that this story touches on. Like, I think it could be a mix of multiple things.

24:26Like, do I think it's likely that this child was probably dealing with some like sleep paralysis issues, sure. Those are like pretty common and not usual for kids to have crazy nightmares. Right. Yeah. So like, I mean, that seems like a very real possibility. Yeah. I have to imagine that like some of the footstep sounds and I think it's mentioned in here, it's like some of it is probably just, you know, like random, like misheard

24:57sounds throughout the house. A lot of it is probably at some point they just like freak themselves out enough that like every sound sounds like a footstep, you know. But I think it's like a mixture of things. Well, which is basically the entire point that this person is trying to make that basically any house you could create a haunting just through a bunch of sort of unrelated events that all happen to happen in the same house. I was going to say like I have I guess it's like

25:28seven-year-old house so it's, you know, way more brand new than this one was. Like I hear footsteps in my house. I've talked about it before and I've been able to debunk one set of them. Like yeah, we hear weird things that sound like footsteps even in this house that I assume are just something like shifting around in the HVAC system or like it's the house just slowly settling because it's still pretty young so that's, you know, still happening maybe a little bit more. I don't know. Well, and this sounds like

25:59it's like a pretty remote area. Maybe some of it's just like little critters on like the roof or in the walls or in the house. Yeah, and I, so I've lived in a lot of older houses including the one that we lived in in Sylvania. My family lived in in Sylvania, Ohio was a pretty old house like probably almost a century old and I'd be home alone. I remember being home alone and freaking myself out because I felt like I could like hear things creaking around upstairs

26:29all the time. But it was like, no, it was just the house settling and it was old and it was, I don't know, probably windy outside or something like that. Yes. My other thought though is that at least the first time, at least when Robert had like the original freak out and called them home, I'm like pretty sure someone was actually in the house. I feel, right, yes. I also think the porch story

26:59could be like somebody on the porch. Yeah, so those two like, yeah, sound like, I think they probably were actual people. I was thinking somebody was in the house before we even got to the end part where you mentioned, you know, there were people living potentially on the property next door that could have been coming over. Like before I knew that was an option already presented, I was like, yeah, I think someone might have actually been in the house when Robert had his initial

27:30encounter or experience and then everything else after that is like, well, now everybody's all freaked out. Right. So they're like super vigilant and like maybe some of those other sounds were other people but like, yeah. but like what an awful way to start at a new place like you're there the first couple days the power goes out you're like totally removed from everyone and then like, uh-oh,