Dave's Dad (5:59)

The house was on 40 acres. It has rolling hills and there's some pine trees. The closest home would probably be at least a half mile to three quarter mile away.

Vicky (6:12)

My dad hasn't been able to be in a home like that in the past. So initially I thought, wow, this is, you know, really nice home.

Narrator (6:27)

Dave and Vicki would go visit their dad in his new house about once a month. They looked forward to these weekends. They loved spending time with their dad and. And they got along really well with his wife, Charlotte, and her kids, too. One evening, Dave decided to go for a visit on his own.

Dave's Dad (6:46)

I think I was like pretty close to 16, right around 16, I had my license and I drove out to their home. They made me a sandwich and we sat down in the living room.

Narrator (6:58)

As they sat down to eat, Charlotte seemed pretty upset. And she started to tell Dave a story about something that had happened in the house a few nights before.

Dave's Dad (7:13)

Charlotte was in the living room by the fireplace, and she was sitting there enjoying the warmth of the fire. And then she heard a sobbing noise. A woman crying like a. A sob of desperation.

Narrator (7:32)

Charlotte said that she started looking around, trying to figure out where the crying was coming from. And that's when she saw something through the window out in the front yard.

Dave's Dad (7:46)

She said that she saw a ball of light. It had like a glow to it. And it was kind of whirling. And it came through the picture window. Not fast, just slowly whirling. Coming through that window was kind of coming towards the dining room, floating in the air, probably about four feet up. And as it came towards the dining room, it was starting to take shape of a human form. And it looked like an infant in flesh and blood, maybe, you know, six, eight months. And the sobbing was getting louder as the baby got closer towards her. The baby apparently floated up towards a green chest they had sitting in the dining room, like a little buffet chest. And her purse was on there, and it was playing with her keys that were hanging out of her purse. She's just looking and just in total surprise, like, you know, what is this? And she couldn't believe it. And as the sobbing came closer and got higher in the volume, she saw this apparition floating from around the corner. It was like a shape of a woman. The woman, she said, had more of a blonde hair, a light colored hair, but the face was totally blurry. And it had a dress or a gown that was white, but she couldn't see the apparition's feet. And it was coming towards the baby and it floated there and it picked the baby up and it lifted it and it went out and just zoomed around the corner and just vanished.

Charlotte (9:55)

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Dave's Dad (10:48)

It was like, wow, can this be real? But Charlotte wouldn't usually make up things. She was pretty straight woman. She wouldn't make up a story like this. I could tell that she was distraught. She would gasp for air, telling me the story. And she was almost in tears sometimes because of what she saw. After she told me that, I was kind of uneasy after that point. It's a feeling of like, what's going to happen here? Am I going to see something? Am I going to hear something?

Vicky (11:34)

One night I went over to the home and I was there with my stepsister. It was getting late, so we ended up going to sleep. I was sleeping in the bed. My stepsister was next to me. All of a sudden I just awoke. I look up and I see a woman with a long dress on, like a. Floating down the hallway. She had longer hair, but I could see mostly her dress, like, flowing. It was almost see through. I couldn't see anything about her face, but I could see that it was a woman. She was coming down the hallway and it was coming a little bit closer. It was maybe 10ft from me. My heart was beating very fast. And then it just disappeared. I sat up, My stepsister was next to me. I woke her up and I go, did you see that? She says, what? What? She didn't see what I saw. I realized that it was most likely what Charlotte, my stepmother, was talking about. I saw what she had seen. I froze up and got goosebumps and shivers. I wanted to go home. I wanted to leave because I didn't want to have to see anything like this anymore. I did not want to come back. I didn't go there as much as I should because I was so afraid to come back, you know, with all these things happening.

Narrator (13:50)

Dave, on the other hand, would still go out for visits. When summer rolled around, Charlotte invited him out for a little barbecue with her kids.

Dave's Dad (14:01)

My stepsister Joanne and her husband Tom came over with her daughter Wendy. Wendy was about 4 years old and she was like a little blonde haired girl, real cute little girl. And we were going to have like a little summer gathering. We were going to spend a night or two there. It was in midday, it was like in the early afternoon. I was in the kitchen and I was having a soda pop and I heard some screaming saying, they can't find Wendy, Wendy's missing. The father, Tom, was looking for her and Joanne was frantic. And they're looking all else. They went through the bedrooms, they walked to the living room. We look and looking for quite a while. Finally one of the adults had come up and said, we found her, we found Wendy. So Wendy was found at the bottom of the steps to the basement. And I says, what was she doing down there? He asked, what are you doing down here? We've been looking all over for you. Wendy replied, I'm talking to the lady with the baby. Right away, the first thing that hit me was, wow, I'm intrigued and I'm very curious. Could this be the female that my stepmother saw?

Narrator (15:46)

One night after school, Dave drove out to the house and had dinner with his dad and Charlotte.

Dave's Dad (15:52)

They went to bed. It was probably like about after midnight, you know, 12, 12:30. So I'm sitting on the couch by the fireplace enjoying a nice warm fire, and I hear the ping pong balls in the basement bouncing around. Am I hearing something? Am I really hearing this? It took every bit of energy and every bit of courage to go down them steps. And I got to that door. I was almost frozen to open that door. I don't know if I want to see this or not. And as I opened that door really quickly, all that was there was, was the ping pong balls sitting on a table and the paddles alongside them. I thought I was just hearing things. And then I went back upstairs, sat down again, and all of a sudden I hear the balls going back and forth. I goes, I can't believe this. I hear the balls going, I hear a spike, I hear the balls dribbling on the floor when it rolls off the table. Walk down the stairs. Soon as I open the door, it Stops. But I look on a table. The balls were on the floor, the paddles were on the floor. When I saw the balls and the paddles in different positions, I was quite worked up. It's an edgy feeling of something's going to pop out, something's going to jump out at me. I'm just waiting for that to happen. It validated that something is going on. There's something that's happening here that's not normal.

Narrator (17:44)

But just as they were getting more familiar with it, Dave's dad told them that he'd found a new job and that he and Charlotte were leaving the house. Charlotte started packing up to get ready for the move. And she found something, an old watercolor painting in the coat closet that was.

Dave's Dad (18:01)

Her main coat closet coming out into the house every day. And they never saw that picture, never saw it, till right towards the end when they're just about finishing up cleaning the cabinets out, wiping them out.

Narrator (18:13)

The painting was of a landscape. And in the bottom right corner, written.

Dave's Dad (18:17)

In cursive, it said the name Hicks. H I, C, K, S.

Narrator (18:24)

It was the first time Charlotte had heard the name. And she told a friend at work about it, a friend who had actually known the folks who'd lived in the house before.

Dave's Dad (18:34)

And they told her that the family that lived there was named Hicks. And the Hicks family had a son, he had a girlfriend.

Vicky (18:46)

She was pregnant and had a baby.

Narrator (18:53)

The young woman was on her way to the Hicks home for the very first time to meet the parents and introduce them to their new grandchildren.

Dave's Dad (19:03)

It was a winter day, the roads were bad, and she had slid her car into the ditch.

Vicky (19:12)

And the baby and the mother were killed in the accident. It was like, oh, my God, this is what we've been seeing. The baby, the woman. And it all made sense. Not that we were crazy, that we were really seeing something that could be real.

Narrator (19:47)

But Dave couldn't stop thinking about the night he'd heard the ping pong balls going back and forth down in the basement.

Dave's Dad (19:55)

I didn't think there's no baby and no mother down there playing ping pong. I think there's something different going on down there. I think there was more than one spirit in the home. That's my opinion.

Narrator (20:11)

Whatever the full story was, the family considered it a mystery that they were about to leave in the past. But then one day in October, Dave got a call from his stepmom.

Dave's Dad (20:23)

He says, your father got in a real bad car accident. You need to get out here.

Charlotte (20:43)

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Sharon (21:15)

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Narrator (22:03)

When Dave got to the house, he barely recognized his father.

Dave's Dad (22:08)

He looked like he had just gotten out of a bad boxing match. His face was all black, bruised up. He had knots on his head, he had bruising under his eyes. He had stitches on the top of his forehead, on his cheeks, on his chin. It was real hard to see him like that. And he told me, he sat down on the edge of the couch by the fireplace and he says, here's what happened. He explained the whole thing to me. It was like about 10 o'clock at night. My father was sitting at the table. A knock came at the front door. So my father's. I'll get it. So he walked to the door. He opened the door and there was a boy standing there. And the boy asked him, sir, would you like to buy a pumpkin? He goes, no, we're moving. We're not going to celebrate no Halloween or not, we're moving out. Thanks anyways. Well, how would you like to buy some apple cider? Then he goes, no, we're moving, so we really don't want to buy anything. But here, here's a dime for coming out. So he put a dime in the kid's hand. So he said goodbye. He closed the door and my stepmother Charlotte asked vic, who was that? And he explained the whole thing. She goes, vic, it's almost 10:00 at night. There should be no one at the door. Did you see headlights in the long driveway? Did you see Maybe a parent in the car or something. So he said, let me go look. He walked back over there to see if there was a car. He opened the front door, and there was a dime sitting on the threshold of the door. And there was nothing out there. It was total black, pitch black out there. About a week later or so, they were just finishing their packing. He decided to order pizza. And she said, well, you don't have it delivered. He said, no, I'll just go pick it up. So he got in his car. He had an Oldsmobile 88, a gold Oldsmobile. And he pulled out the driveway and headed down, made a right turn onto the asphalt road. He's Dave. I saw that same kid that was in the door. I saw that same boy on the side of the road when I turned out of the drive, heading down the road and became transparent. And he ran in front of the car, and I went right through him with the car, and I ended up in a ditch.

Narrator (24:41)

Dave has pondered whether or not there was a connection between that boy and the other spirits in the house.

Dave's Dad (24:47)

I have no idea why there is a spirit in this house of a woman sobbing for its baby and a baby, and all of a sudden we've got a boy around 10 years old. But I thought about the family, the Hicks family. You know, how to experience something that tragic. And it made me wonder. When the family was living there, was there things going on? There was. She was this baby and this mother in this home, haunting when they were living there.

Vicky (25:22)

I think the spirit was still in the house because she had unfinished business. She was trying to let the parents of the home know that she had this baby with their son. But she got in this accident. Even though I was scared to death, I kind of wanted to help her, you know, to help her to move on. But being 15 or 16 years old when it happened, I wouldn't know how to go about that when I got older. And after being a mother, you know, and having children, it makes me feel very bad for her and hoping that she had peace.

Dave (26:22)

Thank you, Dave and Vicky, for sharing your stories with the Spooked. And a big thanks to Dave's daughter Sharon, for reaching out to us about her family story. Spooksters. If there's a tale in your family that's been passed down from the older generations, be like Shannon, reach out. Pass it down to us. Spooked. Snapjudgment.org the original score for that story was by Nicholas Marx. It was produced by Zoe Ferrigno. Now then, there are things that walk and things that crawl, things that knock, things that ball. And if you are played with any one of these things and you feel like there's no one else you can tell, tell me. Yes, let me know. Spooked. Stampjudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spooked story from a Spooked listener. Spookednappjudgment.org Spooked is brought to you by the team that has learned not to make any sudden movements. Except, of course, Mark Ristich, whose entire life is a series of sudden movements. There's David Kim, Zoe Frigno, Anne Ford, Eric Yanez, Teo Da Cott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Creaky, Elizabeth Z. Pardue, Diviyamatu Lulu Jemima. Now on Team snap, the union represented producers, artists, editors and engineers are members of national association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications workers of America, AFL CIO Local 51. The spooked theme song is by Pat Mercede Miller. My name is Glenn Washington. One of my favorite quotes ever, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. And I think about this almost every single day. It's fantastic, the notion that the machinery of the universe grinds out to produce moral outcomes. I love this idea, but is it real? Does the universe conspire to provide justice, or does it plot to steal justice away? And I guess that's just kind of a roundabout way of asking, is it. Whatever it is, is it good or is it bad? And to be frank, right now, when I look around, it's hard to imagine that the darkness isn't grinning. The shadow is ascendant. It might curl to that floor, fetal position. What saves me from despair is recalling that nothing complex is ever one thing, that there might be a lot of different itchs making up the moral universe. And maybe, maybe we're part of it. So instead of asking if the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, ask instead, am I bending toward justice? Am I bending toward love, toward forgiveness, towards peace, towards joy? Am I? And my honest answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. And maybe the best you can hope for when you look back to see your footprints in the sand is that you can say, no, I wasn't perfect. But even in spare evening darkness, I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever turn.