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- [00:08]
Laura Lee
My Bonnie fled over the ocean. I followed them out to the sea. My Bonnie ran fast when they saw me. Dear Bonnie. Oh, why would it be my Bonnie? Thought I wouldn't notice. My Bonnie was wrong, as you see now Bonnie lies under the ocean and I sw Listen to Spooked. Stay tuned. I've never met my grandfather and I don't know much about him. Except that after he was, it turned out that his family, his wife, my grandmother, his daughter, my mother and her eight siblings. This family was not his only family. There's another secret family with numerous children and kinfolk as well. A secret family that a surprising number of people somehow knew all about. And as a child I learned, I was taught this other family that those people were bad people. To be hated, to be feared. Because every branch of the tree touched by sin bears the taint of that sin. Illegitimate heirs to my grandfather's sterling legacy. Usurpers. And I saw them, the other kids, sometimes blinking angry eyes at me as I stared right back over at them. All of us with the same roundy heads, the same slope of the nostrils, the same gap between their front teeth as there is between mine. The same red running through our veins. And it's all well and good to hate the neighbors down the street, the people in some other country that speak another language, maybe the people that dress in different clothes, those that worship another God. But as a child, I learned that the cleanest, the brightest, the fiercest type of hate. But we saved that for family. Spookstyle. Now, now, Laura Lee, she grew up without her parents around. Said she lived at her grandmother's house in the Philippines, in a village just a few hours from Manila. But Lord Lee, she was never alone. Sp.
- [04:44]
Grandmother
There were more than a dozen people living in my grandma's house. My grandparents, my aunt and uncle or two, me, my brother, my sister, four of my cousins hung around at my grandma's house with us. And we were all about the same age, so it was great. We just play all day, all night. A lot of running around and screaming and yelling until it's time to have dinner. The house was two bedrooms, one bath, and then a kitchen, dining room and one really big living area. And there's a window that overlooks the front yard. It's a garden with benches. And that's where we usually hung out after school. You know, it's nice and shady out there. A lot of cats would hang out because we usually throw out scraps to feed the strays. That's also where all the pitas that's Aunt Tea in Tagalog. That's where all the pitas from the neighborhood would come over and gossip with my grandma in the afternoons when it's too hot to do anything. They were all tight. They pretty much grew up together. One day we were all hanging out in the front yard. Kids were just playing around and all the aunties were just gossiping with grandma. My grandma suddenly pops up with the last two nights I've had a really, really odd dream. I keep dreaming that onte, my uncle was standing here in the front yard and I was looking out the window and he was looking up at me and he kept saying, mom, I'm coming home soon. Don't forget to throw a really big party for me. It was odd because my grandma, she's a good Roman Catholic. When aunties would talk about weird superstitions that they had, my grandma would be the first to poo poo, that sort of thing. She said instead of feeling happy in her dream, she just felt really uneasy and she couldn't pinpoint why. The neighborhood aunties were all, well, what was weird? Did you notice anything? What was going on? And grandma says, well, number one, he was wearing a suit. Wearing a suit with a red tie. He was really dressed up. I mean, he doesn't own a suit. Also, he was surrounded by all of this luggage and it was red luggage and they all had fancy wheels on it. And he doesn't own anything that fancy. So of course all the aunties were like, oh, that's not a big deal. You know, he's coming back home in a couple of months for Christmas and he's gonna stay for three months. That's probably that you're dreaming about. You're just excited. My grandma's like, eh, I don't like it. I didn't like it at all. I didn't know my uncle all that well. The most interaction that I would have with him is when he would come back for, you know, vacations. He was my cousin's dad and that was pretty much it. All I thought was like, wow, creepy dream. That's so cool. I'm going to tell my friends about it at school tomorrow. But otherwise it was just random talk. A little less than a week after, I was in the kitchen snacking and chit chatting with my cousins and we just hear grandma yelling something bad had just happened and it's probably our fault. So we very reluctantly get up and go to the living room where my grandma was. And she's standing there, hands on her hips and she Jabs her finger and points to the ground.
- [08:42]
Laura Lee
Look at this.
- [08:43]
Grandmother
What did you do? Were you running around again? She's pointing at my uncle's framed high school graduation photo, which is lying face down on the floor. Grandma thought that because we were running around being rambunctious, somehow we had knocked this photo off a wall. She was worried that the glass could have shattered. What was weird about it was that the wire that is used to hang the photo was actually twisted around the nail. It was impossible for that photo to have fallen off without pulling the nail out. It was like somebody took it from the wall, unhooked it, and then placed it on the floor, face down. And we're like, grandma, we didn't do that. But my grandma was like, okay, I'm gonna move the photos from the wall, because obviously these children cannot control themselves. I'm gonna put it in this shelf. So she arranged the photos kind of towards the back and then put tchotchkes in front of it so it was safe. We ended up getting banished for the house for the rest of the afternoon. Later in the afternoon, we were outside playing marbles. Again, and again, we hear this howling from my grandma. Get up here. So I'm tromping up the stairs, and we go to the living room where this big bookshelf was placed. And in front of it was a picture frame. My uncle's photo face down on the floor again. And everything else was perfectly arranged on the shelf. And my grandpa's like, who did this? Her tone was different. It wasn't like 100% mad. This was more like 70% mad and 30% something else, like nervousness or uncertainty. She wanted one of us to say, sorry, Grandma, I did that. But none of us did that. At this point, my grandmother was just like, okay, fine, just go. Just go. Even us kids, we were thinking, something creepy is going on. Something is wrong. You know, there's something very off. But we didn't want to talk too much about it because these are my cousin's dad. I would be like, I'm just not going to think about it. So around this time, weird things were happening at my Aunt Virgie's house. Aunt Virgie is the aunt that is the wife of my uncle that my grandma had been dreaming about. My cousin Christopher, he just kind of pipes up with, it just smells weird in the house. It smells like church during Lent, when it's filled to the brim with flowers and all these burning cheap candles. A kind of overwhelming blanket of smell. We don't like it we're gonna stay at grandma's because at least it doesn't smell like a church. I was kind of irritated because we had to share this tiny little room with four more kids. The three smallest kids shared the bed and we all had to sleep on hardwood floors. All I wanted was for them to go home. It was very uncomfortable. A week later, my cousins and I were just hanging out in the living room watching tv. The adults were out in the front yard, chit chatting. And suddenly in the middle of Sesame street, we just hear my grandma wailing. So of course all of us went running for the window. And all we saw was all of our neighbor aunties huddled around my grandma. My grandma is just on the ground crying. My Aunt Olivia was there talking to these two foreigners. One was some blonde guy and the other was a dark haired dude, obviously not Filipino. And they were wearing suits. And she was talking to them in English. Her voice was pitched really high. I don't know what she was saying. The blonde dude was holding onto my aunt's hands and you could see that my aunt was like shaking her hand up and down as I was trying to shake off the blonde guy's grip. All of us kids were just standing there overlooking all this frozen. I never thought for a second I should go down there and find out what's going on. It was just too horrifying to see my grandma lose her control completely like that. To see my aunt so disturbed. Aunt Olivia shooed us kids into the bedroom. But as soon as that door closed, we all were plastered against the door with our ears against it, because we wanted to know what had to happened. All the adults, all my uncles, my aunts, a couple of neighbors, my grandma's friends, grandfather, we were all in the living room talking about what had happened that afternoon. My uncle had passed away two weeks before. He'd passed away in his sleep. He had a huge heart attack and just never woke up. The two guys were representatives of the oil and gas company that my uncle worked for. They were saying that they would take care of all arrangements to ship his body back to the Philippines. It was just terrible. You never want to think that somebody died in your family. Three days after the representatives came, Aunt Olivia had gone to Manila to pick up the body and his personal effects. And the luggage was brought to my deceased uncle's house. Aunt Olivia came over to grandma's house just having dinner with the rest of us. I'm sitting there picking up my fish and she told my grandma it was the red luggage that you Dreamed about it was red canvas with wheels. It was just dead silence for a couple of seconds. I'm sitting there with fish halfway to my mouth and I'm looking at my aunt like, are you serious? Oh my God. My grandmother just kind of nodded her head like, okay, there's something really weird going on here, but we are not gonna talk about it. The body was driven to my deceased uncle's house. They were going to have a five day wake. There was going to be breakfast, lunch and dinner. There was going to be karaoke. There was going to be gambling. The first day of the wake arrives, it was very chaotic. It felt like the entire town was there. I am dead certain that there were people who showed up for that wake that didn't even know our family. I just remember the massive amounts of food that was constantly being brought out to feed all these people. I noticed there's just flowers everywhere. The smell is just so cloyingly sweet. And then just feeling all this hot air because we had fans running to try to keep the room cool, keep air circulating, but it was just circulating. More hot flavor, flower smell, more hot candle smell. We had to walk down the middle of the living room to get to the casket. The top of the casket is glass, so you can see him from the waist up. I was the oldest, so I had to be the first one to go amongst all the cousins and my siblings. Not going up there to pay my respects was not an option. There would have been a spanking. I walked up there and I'm standing there really trying not to. Just try not to shudder. I'd never seen a dead body before. He was dressed really nice in a nice gray suit with a red tie, exactly how my grandma had described her dream. I saw this trail of something from his eye down his temple towards his ear. It looked like it was a tear trail. I looked like he cried. When I saw that, all the hairs on my body just went straight up. It absolutely creeped me out 100%. After that first night, my siblings and I were not expected to show up at the wake anymore. We were just hanging out at my grandma's house. It was close to dinner and my little sister was like, sis, I'm hungry, can we eat dinner now? So we go into the kitchen. The door leading out to the yard is wide open because it's hot. When I walked in there, I was thinking, oh, weird, there are no cats. Usually we have all these strays coming in, hoping for a handout. My grandma's kitchen has this antique table and chairs that are of carved wood and they're incredibly heavy. My sister could not physically pull in her chair herself. So she sits on the chair and I push it in for her. I dish out dinner, put her plate down in front of her. I sit at the head of the table so there's an empty chair between us. My sister and I were not talking. We were focused on just eating. And then suddenly that empty chair between us starts rattling. It's not like a nice, gentle rocking. It was like somebody had grabbed the back of that chair and was shaking it back and forth and then forward and back. It was a violent shaking. My heart is butting so hard. It's up my throat. I can hear it in my eardrums. My sister and I were looking at this chair just in shock. I tell her, daphne, please stop doing that. And she looks at me and her eyes are huge. She says, I didn't do that. That's not me. That's not me. I can feel all this blood rushing to my face and rushing back down. I duck my head under the table. My sister's feet are tucked under her. And this chair is just rattling on its own. It felt like it was going on for minutes, but I'm sure it was just seconds. And it rattles a couple more times while I've got my head on out there. And then it stops with a thump. Like somebody lifted it up and then thumped it back down. We were out of that kitchen so fast. We're in the living room and I'm crying. My sister's crying. I was just so scared. I knew this was my uncle doing this. Who else would it be? The wake was going on. And her Filipino beliefs. When a person passes away, they have 40 days and 40 nights to say goodbye to whoever they want to say goodbye to before they move on. Sometimes they visit you in a dream. Sometimes things fall for no reason. Lights go on and off. Sometimes I guess they decide that they're going to rattle a chair for you because that's what's available. It's probably a week after the funeral. My uncle was actually blessed and buried. And I felt okay enough to tell my grandma about my uncle visiting Daphne and I in the kitchen. She was just very matter of fact about it. That's your uncle. He's just saying hello. Don't be scared. It's because your mom was his favorite sibling. He just wanted to make sure that he said goodbye to you guys because you're important. And I'm like, did he have to say goodbye that way? I left the Philippines. When I was 11, I moved to the States to be with my mom. I had asked my mom, please, when you pass away, do not visit me. Maybe visit me in a dream, but don't make yourself felt physically. I don't want any of that, mom. She's like, okay, okay. And we just kind of giggle. Then I'm like, but when I pass away, I'm gonna haunt every single one of you. I am gonna scare the heck out of you. Why not? I mean, I've had it happen to me. But no, seriously though, I feel like sometimes there's expectations, right? And I think even after I pass, I will still feel personally responsible and obligated to do my duty as a nice Filipino person to go ahead and haunt my family members even after death. And you're expected to show up. By golly, you will show up.
- [23:42]
Laura Lee
Thank you Laura Lee, for sharing your story with the Spook. That piece was scored by Doug Stewart. It was produced by Ann Ford. Now you know someone who routinely interacts with creatures that some might call fairy Fae sprites. We folks, others a story that you don't know who to tell. Or maybe you're that person yourself with the story. Tell me cause I want to hear it. Spookedntampjudgment.org because there is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. Spookednapjudgment.org we all know the best way to ward off evil spirits is by sporting spooked gear. It's available right now. Right now@stampjudgment.org and remember, if you like your storytelling under the bright light of day, get the amazing Stupendous Sister podcast and Snap Judgment Storytelling with a beat. This book was created by the team that does not scare easy. Except of course, for Mark Ristich. He screamed like a schoolboy when I pulled the old slide the nose off the face trick. There's Davey Kim, Chris Hambrick, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Teo da Cott, Marisa Dodge, Zoe Frigno, and four Greta Weber, Eric Ganez, Tessa Paoli, Cody Harjo, Lola Abrera, Doug Stewart, and Miles Lassie. The spooky theme song is by Pat Machini Miller. My name is Lynn Washington, and I find that the thing about premonitions is most of the time you're already in the mix when the warning comes down. Unhelpful at best. So, walking the dark path, I prefer to offer useful advice. Instead, stick to the tried and true, the vetted and the tested believe me when I say the one thing that can save you when nothing else will, is simply to remember. To not never, ever turn out the lights.