← Snap Judgment
Snap Judgment
The Conjuring
00:50:40
A ghost seeks forgiveness from beyond the grave and some photos make a woman question reality. It's time to summon the Shadow...
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- [00:03]
Glen Washington
SNAP Studios. In celebration of the season, we're taking you back in time to Friday the 13th. And I'm backstage, pacing the hallowed halls of LA's haunted Orpheum Theater, where over 2,000 spooksters have gathered, waiting on the other side of that curtain, preparing to summon the shadow for the first ever Spooked Live show. Yes, I'm scared because I know there is a power here, an energy, a magic I need to channel, because I have a story to tell. Spooked live. Okay, so, four years old, Detroit City. Got my PJs on, brushing my teeth, washed my face. My mother, she bends down right next to me and my little brother. We say our prayers. Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray my soul, the Lord to keep. She tucks me in the bed right next to him, pitches us both on the forehead. Nadi Naya. Nadi Naya. I'm out instantly, sleeping until I feel this pressure. I sense this presence. I open my eyes and floating above me, I see a face looking intensely at me. And I'm too terrified to scream. I hear whimpering next to me. And I know my little brother sees it, too. This face, it's intense. It's blinking. When I say I'm not, I'm looking at it as it gets closer and closer to us. It looks kind of like us, and it's looking us up and down, closer and closer, until it bursts into this big, big smile and vanishes. And we are going nowhere. Something else might come out. The dark. We stay in the bed until light comes out enough from the sun till it's safe. They'll be jump up, run down the stairs, top speed. Go tell my mama, get to the kitchen. It's not my mother. It's my grandmother. She'll be back, babies. Where she at? She'll be back soon. She doesn't come back that morning. Doesn't come back that evening. She doesn't come back till the next night. But when she does come back, she's different, changed. When she thinks I don't see her, I see her weeping. Mama. Mama was mad. Her mama's okay, baby. Mama's all right. Next day, my auntie comes over with my cousins and we get to play in hide and go. See. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. Everybody scrambles. And I wait till they're gone. I can get to my special place right underneath the stairs, right by the kitchen. Ain't nobody never gonna find me there. I get in there, quiet, quiet, quiet, still, still. And in the kitchen, I heard my mother and my auntie talk. And my mother says, my mother says that she lost the baby. I didn't know there was a baby. And I know there's things that I can't talk to my mother about. She has her beliefs, but I want to tell her, want to tell her that. I think I saw him. I think he came to see his brothers and I think after he saw what he saw, he went home laughing. Next on the stage, this brother, he is. We're elevating things right now. We're elevating the whole situation. A celebrated CNN correspondent covered some of the biggest stories of the past decade. From Ferguson to George Floyd. He's been there to help tell the stories that America needed to hear. And tonight he's going to tell his own story in a way in this setting for the first time. Please put your hands together for Mr. John Blake.
- [07:49]
John Blake
It starts off like any other night. It's the early 1970s and I'm an 8 year old boy growing up in inner city, black neighborhood. It's one of these bitterly cold winter nights. The temperature has fallen below freezing. I go to sleep in a bunk bed, me on top, my younger brother Patrick on the bottom. Sometime deep in the night, I bolt awake. I'm drenched in a cold sweat. Something is wrong. I look over to my dresser and that's when I see him. A white man is standing there with his back toward me. He has a yellow shirt on like the color of a banana. And it's one of those vintage shirts from the 1950s. And he has coal black hair styled in a crude cut and a very square jaw. And he's rummaging through my dresser like he's looking for something. My heart is racing. I can't scream. I can't move. I'm waiting for him to turn around and attack me. But he keeps rummaging through my dresser, ignoring me. Then I look closer and I see that below his waist, there's nothing there. It's invisible. No legs, no feet. He's just floating there. This can't be real. I think. Must be a dream. I fall asleep from exhaustion. Now when I wake up the next morning, I'm thinking that was a bad dream. But then I look at my brother Patrick. His eyes are as big as saucers. Pat, did you see something last night? Yeah, I did. Some man. Was it a white man? Yeah. Yeah. Did you know? I don't know him. I go to my dresser and I pull open one of the drawers and there's a folder in there where I keep Birthday cards that are mailed to me by my relatives. And I noticed that some of the birthday cards, they're missing. I run down the hallway and I knock on the door of my Aunt Sylvia. She watches us. On the weekend when my father is sailing overseas. He's a merchant seaman. She opens the door. Aunt Sylvia. Aunt Sylvia. There was this man here last night. Stop playing, boy. Then I point toward the footsteps. This man had left footprints when he had visited. There were footsteps like someone had stepped into paint, more the color of blood. And they were scattered all over the bedroom floor. And some of them marched right up to my bed. Like he had been standing over there looking for. Looking at me at night. When I pointed toward them, the smile on her face disappeared. And I saw a look in her eyes that I had never seen before. It was a look of fear. Now I'm even more afraid. Now. Those footprints stayed there for a while. They were a constant reminder to me that this really happened. And when I went to bed in the nights that followed, I couldn't shake this feeling that this man was going to return again another night. So I try to put this visit behind me. As I get older, I focus on school. And by the time I turn 17, I discover I'm a good student and I'm about to go to college. One day, my father calls me into the bedroom. He's watching A Price is Right on television. And he looks at me casually and pauses. And he asks, do you want to meet your mother? This is a bombshell. We had never really talked about my mother before. My parents met in the mid-60s, when interracial marriage was illegal in Maryland and much of the country. My mother disappeared from my life not long after I was born, without any explanation. The only thing my father's family told me about her was this. Your mother's name is Shirley. She's white, and her family hates black people. And now, all of a sudden, I'm presented with this choice. Do I want to meet my mother? I was so shocked by my father's question that I remember just staring at him with my mouth open as I heard the audience on the Price is Right burst out into applause. And the announcer said, come on down. Three days later, I, along with my brother Patrick, were driven to the countryside of Maryland. There's this menacing red brick building before us. It looks like the set from the Shawshank Redemption film. We're escorted into this waiting area. We look to our left, and the door opens, and I see a slender young white woman walk in. And when she locks eyes with me. She has pale blue eyes. They light up. And she says, oh, boy, John. Oh, boy, Pat. It's so good to see you. And she half walks, half shuffles toward me with her arms outstretched, and she wraps me in a hug. I don't know what to do. I've never even used the word mom before. But there's another reason that I feel so awkward. It's because of where we're standing. We are in the waiting area of a mental institution. My mother had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. I didn't make that discovery until that day in the waiting room. Nobody in my father's family told me because they didn't know how. Back then, if someone had someone in their family who had a severe mental illness, they didn't talk about it. It was a mark of shame. But now know the truth. My mother didn't abandon me. She was taken from us. So when I leave the institute that day, I become one of my mom's caretakers. So I try to establish this relationship with her, to visit her, mail her letters, get to know the people who are taking care of her. Because she's been moved now from a mental institute into a group home. And I'm also trying to establish a career at this point. I've graduated from college and I got my first job in journalism. It's at a place called the LA Daily News. So one day while I'm working at the LA Daily News, I get a call from the mom who runs my group home, runs the group home where my mom stays. And she says, your mother's sister, her name is Mary, and she wants to meet you. I'm like, hell, no, I don't want to meet her. I'd heard stories about her from my father. He told me that she hated black people. She was ashamed to have two black nephews. And unlike my mom, she wasn't ill. So there was no excuse for her not reaching out to me. So I was like, why should I reach out to you now it's too late for that. But on the other hand, I was curious. I've never met anyone from my mom's family.
- [17:17]
Glen Washington
Now, when SNAP returns, John finally confronts the only part of his mother's family that he has left. Stay tuned. Snap Judgment is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, where we're dancing in dark celebration with our supernatural sister podcast, Spooked. We return to Spooked Live, where journalist John Blake was just told, after a lifetime, that his aunt finally wants to meet him. Spooked.
- [18:17]
John Blake
I was curious. I've never met anyone from my mom's family, so a week later, it's just pretty summer day. I, along with my brother Patrick, we drive up to the group home where my mom stays in Baltimore. I spot this slender white woman pacing on the porch. She has salt and pepper thick hair. We walk up to the porch. My brother Patrick, he greets her with a hug and a warm smile. And then she turns to me. She holds out her hand and says, hi, I'm Mary. I'm your mother's sister. And for an agonizing second or two, that hand just lingers there. I don't want to take it, but I give her a limp handshake. And then we walk inside the group home. And as we walk inside, I'm thinking, oh, she's probably going to apologize and say, I should have been there for you, but I'm so racist. My family's so racist. Can you ever forgive me? Instead, when we sit at the dining room table, she says, I want to show you something. She reaches into a supermarket bag and pulls out a Ziploc bag, and she takes out these pictures and she spreads them across the dining room table. And I'm looking at all these pictures of white folks, and she says, this is your mother's family. And as I start to look at the photos, I see all these photos of white people at dinner, in park benches, on park benches, smiling, having a good time. And I realized these are my family. And this is the first time I've ever seen anyone from my mom's side of my family. It's like I knew nothing about this entire side of my being. And so now I'm seeing my two identities merge in real time. And then she says, and here is a picture of your grandfather. I hear those words, I get bad vibes. I already heard horror stories about my grandfather. My father told me that when he first went to date my mom, he answered the door instead of her, tried to punch my father out and push him off the doorstep. Then he called him the N word. And then he called the police on him and had him arrested. He was nothing but a monster to me. So my aunt slides across this photo across the dining room table, and it's a vintage photo. And it looks. I see this picture of this young white man staring into the camera with these cold, brooding eyes. And he has thick, coal black hair and he has on his suit like an Al Capone gangster. And as I look at it, a cold shiver goes through my body. The goosebumps go on my arm. I look to my brother Patrick and his eyes are big and he nods at me. That was the man that came into our bedroom when we were boys. That man was our grandfather. Now I don't really know what to say at this point. I mean, I couldn't say, oh, yes, we've met before. He came into my bedroom and took my birthday card. Please tell them I want him back. The meeting was already tense enough, so I let it go. So we moved on. And as I got older after this meeting, as you can imagine, my curiosity about my mother's family has seriously diminished by this time. I didn't want to know more, so I focused on my career and I joined cnn. I joined CNN just as the time that President Obama was elected for his first term. And I get a front row seat into all the racial sickness that's spreading across America. Ferguson, the neo Nazi rally in Charlottesville, the Freddie Gray protests in my hometown of Baltimore cover it all. And along the way, my email gets filled with N word this and N word that. I get threats from white supremacist group. I grow cynical, I grow jaded. I think there's nothing that can change a racist white person. I bury myself in work, but then my personal life starts to look up. Someone says, I want you to meet someone. It's a blind date. I go to a vegetarian restaurant in Atlanta and I wait and I wait. She's a half hour late, but she shows up and we hit off. Her name is Terri Lynn. We go out again and eventually we get married. And it's not that many months into the marriage that I wake up one morning and I look to my right and she's already up. Her clothes are drenched and it's like she's been sweating. Her eyes are puffy and red, like she's been crying. What's wrong? I ask her. She says, there was a man here last night. My heart starts to race. What man? She says, I was awakened and I saw this man standing on your side of the bed, standing inches away from you. He had a suit on and he was looking down at you with this troubled expression on his face. Now I pretend like maybe she's wrong, maybe she's mistaken. You see, I had never told her anything about my grandfather, not One word. Heck. It took me two years to tell her that I had a mom with a severe mental illness. So I go into my office study. I grab a photo, and I bring it out to her. And I show it to her. Was this the man you saw? She looks at me. Her eyes are even bigger. It is. Who is that man? She said. Who is he to you? It's my grandfather, I say. Now I don't know what to do now. I'm not a ghostbuster, but I get an idea. My wife's father is a minister, and he worked as a missionary in Central America. And I recall that she once told me that he participated in an exorcism. But he never liked to talk about it. So I said, why not call your father? So I place a call to him. His name is Alberto, and Alberto has this deep berry white baritone that always intimidated me. So he answers the phone, we make small talk. And then I say, alberto, I have to tell you a story. I know it's going to sound strange, but I really need your advice. And I proceed to tell him the story about the preceding night's visit and my grandfather's history. And he just listens in silence. And after I finish, there's more silence. And I begin to think I'm going to hear a click. And the next day there's going to be a U Haul truck parked outside with Alberto come to take his daughter. But instead he says something that I don't expect. He says, have you ever visited your grandfather's gravesite? I'm stunned. I don't. I never thought about that. You have to let him know that you forgive him, Alberto said. I hang up the call, and I have to admit that I'm conflicted. On one hand, I'm kind of angry. Why is it that black people always being asked to forgive white people's racism? I think. And then I think to myself. I spend most of my life trying to reconcile with my living white relatives. How the hell do I reconcile with the dead? But then, on the other hand, I feel good because someone has given me advice. But I really don't have time to fly to Baltimore to search out for his gravesite. I have to handle this now because this man has shown up in my house and scared my wife. So I turn to my wife and I say, terry, what if we just pray for him? It can't hurt. So I take her hand and we kneel before the bed. It starts off as a standard prayer, but in the middle, I improvise. I start directly Addressing him. I don't remember much of what I said, Only that I want you to know I'm taking care of Mom. I want you to have peace. I want you to know that I forgive you. We finished, opened our eyes. There was no angelic choir, no harps playing, but it felt good. But here's something about forgiveness. It's hard to forgive somebody you don't know. So I put on my reporter's hat, and I had to figure out who was this man stalking me. And there was only one person who could help me with that, and that was my aunt. My Aunt Mary. So I give her a call and another call, and we begin to talk about the type of man my grandfather was. Here was a man who was born in 1896, when lynching was commonplace and racial segregation was accepted as a norm. He drops out of the elementary school to support his family, but along the way, he loses contact with his family because of his drinking. He was a man who was desperately poor all his life. He worked as a mechanic, a janitor, but you could never tell it by looking at him. He always wore these sharp suits, starched shirts, and he shined his shoes so well that you could see your reflection in him. His hair was brill, creamed to perfection. He gets married, but then he watches as his wife develops a mental illness and has to be institutionalized. And then he watches as his oldest daughter, my mother, develops the same illness. And then he watches as both of his daughters are taken away from him by social services because he's too poor to take care of them. But he never liked to talk about his problems. What he would do instead was go to Mass and read Catholic prayer books at night. He died three weeks before his 70th birthday, not long after I was born. What did he die of? I asked Aunt Mary. I don't know, she said. I think he just gave up. And then she tells me something that really throws me. She said, just before he died, he called his best friend. His best friend was a man named Brownie. Brownie was a maintenance man. They used to go to Mass together and have beers afterward. And get this. Brownie was a black man. So I don't know what to do with this. But there was one question Aunt Mary couldn't help me with. What about those footprints? What about those birthday cards? Well, I found a very wise friend, and we talked about it, and he gave me the answer. He said, those missing birthday cards. He said, that's something a loving grandparent would do for a grandchild to keep track of their birthdays. He was trying to get to know you. And what about those blood red footprints? Oh, he says he left you a trail to follow. He wanted you to know he was there. Now, I know this story sounds unbelievable, but to me, what happened among the living in my family is more remarkable than what happened among the dead. That aunt I told you about, the one whose hand I didn't want to take, she changed in ways that I never imagined for the better. And my mother, when I first met her at 17 years old, I only saw a broken woman. It took me years to realize how wrong I was. The same strength that it took for her to love a black man when she, when she did, was still there. I just didn't see it at the time. And of course, there's my grandfather. I now know that he was a victim of his racism. Not just me. He didn't just haunt me. I haunted him. I no longer see him as a monster. He's my grandfather. His name was Bill Michael Daley. And since I prayed for them that morning, he's never returned. Thank you.
- [33:34]
Glen Washington
Amazing. Thank you, John Blake, for sharing your story on Spook's first ever live show. To learn more about John's story reconciling with his mother's family, check out his amazing memoir, More Than I Imagined. What a Black Man Discovered about the White Mother He Never Knew. You can also follow his work on CNN and his website@johnkblake.com the original score was created and performed live by Doug Stewart and Bridgene Murphy. The story was produced by Zoe Ferrigno and Davey Kim and Snappers. If you dug this story, know that Snap's evil twin podcast, Spooked is dropping all new material. Magical, mysterious, mythic. Spooked. Season of the Wolf. Amazing stories from people who can scarcely believe it happened themselves. Available right this moment on each and every podcast platform. Spooked. Now, some people say a picture is worth a thousand words. Unless that picture leaves you speechless. Spooked right after the break. Stay tuned. Welcome back to Snap Judgment, where we're celebrating the spooky season with magical journeys from our evil twin podcast, Spooked. My name is Glen Washington. On the next path takes us to a town square. We're going to walk with Susie.
- [35:19]
Susie
It was a soul tree summer day. There was almost steam coming up from the street. We were driving around and admiring the beautiful old trees with Spanish moss that hangs down in this lacy, billowy way. We went for a scream, I remember. And then we decided to take a walking tour after that, it was so hot, we decided to go back to our hotel room. We start looking through my husband's digital camera. We are excited to see all the pictures that we had taken that day. We looked at our pictures of us eating ice cream and strolling through the park, and my daughter playing with a little dog that she had met there. But we couldn't wait until we got to the pictures of our tour. When we get to the last few pictures, we see something really strange. We're looking at golden orbs. Dozens and dozens of floating lights and orbs the size of tennis balls. The pictures were filled with these things floating all around our face and all around our bodies. It was beautiful, actually. This feeling of awe came rushing to me. I think we're both a little bit dumbfounded. After about 15 minutes, we put my daughter down to sleep. And when we went back to the pictures, somehow the last batch of pictures, they were completely black. They were all dark, and there was nothing there, including us. What happened? It was as if we didn't have the experience at all. We couldn't tell anybody anything except to tell them as a story. The tour started in the famous square. It's like a park where you can sit on benches, have a sip of lemonade. It has beautiful flowers, lovely trees. There was a whole bunch of people. I would say about 20 people and a tour guide. The tour was about three quarters of a mile. It was geared towards families by someone who. Who really knew the town of Savannah. After the tour, we ended up back at the square at the same spot. Everybody was saying their goodbyes and thanking the guide. We could see everybody wandering off. We were the last family there. We decided to walk around a little bit. My little daughter, she was about 3 years old, and she had a bright blue stroller. We would put her in the stroller and then she'd want to get out and walk. I'm like, no, no, it's too hot. No, I want to walk. I want to walk. So I picked her up out of the stroller. All of a sudden I hear, hello. I was really startled because I thought everybody had gone. I looked up and there was a couple there, the woman and a man. We didn't see them walk up. They were sitting on the fountain. We were very close to them. The woman appeared to be about in her late 20s or early 30s. She was a brunette, and she had a startling blue eyes. Her skin was very pale, as if she avoided the sun. She had her hair pulled up in a sort of bun. She had on a Longish skirt. It was modest, and she had on a little jacket, and she had on boots. And it was in the middle of summer, like, who is this person? I was like, hi. My husband looked up too and said, hey. The young man, he had on a jacket as well. Got tomato red jacket. His hair was long and wavy, but I couldn't see his face. And she said, oh, that's my husband. He enjoys looking out at the square. And I'm like, the lady just started chatting, hey, you guys are new around here. Never seen you before. And I was like, yeah. Have you ever been to Savannah before? It's a great town. It's lovely here. And I said, yes, it's very nice. And her husband is now nodding, like he's agreeing with everything she's saying, but he's still not turning his head. He's only looking off into the distance. His wife is chatting up a storm. She's not taking a pause, as if she doesn't want us to leave. Every time I go to say, well, it's time to go, she starts a new conversation. Oh, my goodness, is that your daughter? Oh, she's so pretty. That was beginning to creep me out. Suppose they're complete weirdos and they hold us up, they kidnap us. Because I watch enough Dateline to think that right at the same time it felt as if they were harmless and that they really just wanted to talk. And she says, don't you just love the square? We got married here some time ago, and so it's our favorite place. And I'm thinking, but they look so young. They haven't had weddings there in almost 100 years. She says, can I see your husband's camera? I've never seen one like that before. And my husband, who's a camera buff, is all up into the conversation like, yes, this is what it does. He didn't seem to notice anything weird at all, because he never does. I'm trying to give him the hint. Can we go now, please? I would like to leave. And she says, I want you to remember us. Take some more pictures. Take some pictures of the fountain, and I want to take a picture with your little girl. She goes to my husband, take the picture. Take the picture. This is perfect. My husband takes the picture. And then she stands up by the fountain and says, you take a picture of us now. I go, okay. And she says, no, you get in the picture. You get in the picture. She's getting more and more excited. Her attitude is almost unhinged. And this gentleman is still nodding, and he's nodding more furiously. Finally, I say to her, my daughter is getting really tired. We've had her out too late already. And she goes, oh, I wish you guys didn't have to go. You know, we hardly get any company. Okay, well, come back and see us, please. We'd love to see you again, and I hope the pictures help you to remember us. We said, okay, thank you very much, and we start walking off. And as we are walking off, she's still talking. Please come back. Please, we'd love to have you back. Please come back. My husband is always ready to start an entirely new conversation because I know him. So my husband starts turning and then I turn to kind of pull on him to say, come on, let's go. And there was nobody there. And you can see the entire square. It was impossible for them to have walked off without us seeing them walking away into the distance. That was so creepy. We get to the inn and we decide we're going to look at the pictures, and all we see is all these golden orbs. There is no man, There is no woman. All we see is dozens of these golden orbs. After about 15 minutes, the picture goes dark. I was like, aha. I knew it. I knew there was something very strange about this couple. My husband, he was saying, well, they could have walked off really quickly. He tried every which way for about 10 minutes not to believe it, but then he just said, you know what? I can't think of anything else but that they were ghosts. I had an actual conversation with a ghost.
- [48:13]
Glen Washington
Suzy, we are so glad you emerged from that conversation safe and sound. Thanks for sharing your story with us. Spooked. That original score was by Laleen Saint Just. It was produced by Ann Ford. My, my, my. Understand this was just a taste, a smidgen, a shake of Snap's evil twin podcast Spooked on podcast platforms everywhere. Don't miss a moment. Real stories from real people who can scarcely believe it happened themselves. Spooked. Brand new season of the Wolf. We are so proud. Spooked with summoned in the dark at night by the team that knows not to mix different tarot cards together in the same deck. Except for Mark Ristic. His deck is an abomination. He's got the Uno cards, bus passes, everything else shoved in there. The wizards that made this spook special possible include Davey Kim, Zoe Ferrigno, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Elliot Lightfoot, Regine Murphy, Eric Yanez, Zoe Jakes, Teo Dacott, Paulina Krieke, Juan Diego Bertrand, Sasha Wilson, Dan Yaschinski and Pat Mesiti Miller. The amazing Ryan Davis. Home base is kqed. Big, big Special thanks to Michael. It's up to Holly Kernan from the LA Ist, John cone and Rebecca Stumey. The Spook theme song is by Pat Mercedes Miller. My name is Glenn Washington and I love, love, love that these stories are a shared thing. That just telling the truth creates a fraternity, a community. All of us bound together, keepers of a secret. Make no mistake, this community is magic. Because it's all well and good to know that the shadow waits. But knowing that the next person next to you knows that makes all the difference. Because the shadow wants barriers. The shadow wants walls. Stories destroy walls by binding us together. Sorcery of the highest order. Spell casting. In fact, without this sacred community, without this special trust, how would we ever discover how we even know to never ever, never, ever, ever, never, never, ever turn out the lights?