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- [00:02]
A
Hush little baby, don't say a word. Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird but if that mockingbird don't sing. You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned. Write this down. Write this down. I wake up 3:47am I'm frantically feeling around in the dark for a pen, some paper, some light. Write this down. Huh? Huh. What am I supposed to write down? Something about floating this dream so crystal clear just a moment ago. It's fading. It's remember the feather. I'm trippin. I know I'm straight trippin'. Need to quit with the late night cocktail. So stupid. I go back to sleep. And then the next day at work, I'm staring out of the window. I don't see a bird, just a dark feather falling from the tree. And before the phone rings, I know it's going to ring. I know who is going to be on the other side. And I know exactly what she is going to say. Spook starts now. Now, now, now, now. So we begin. Caroline Liu. She just got her art degree and she's moving in with her boyfriend Will and his baby girl. The new home is in beautiful, sunny, always clear sky. Albuquerque, New Mexico. But there are some ominous clouds on the horizon. Spooked.
- [02:40]
B
So I pull up to the driveway and I get out of my car and I'm walking up the entryway to my porch and I notice this perfectly dead bird just lying there in the front of my house. And so I like look down at the bird and I noticed like, you know, nothing was really wrong with it. Like the beak was intact, the wings were intact. How did this dead bird die? It seemed as if it had just fallen out of the sky and was gently placed in front of our house. We have a dog, he's a three year old basset hound, blue heeler mix named Oreo. And so he spent a lot of his afternoons outside in the backyard. So I went outside to go give him some water and food. I notice another perfectly dead bird on the back patio of our house. It was just like the first bird, perfectly still, everything intact, the wings, the beak, the feet. Nothing was like alarming about it. And that was the scary part. You know, how are these perfectly intact birds dying and being left unharmed? You know, no one's touching it, no animals are trying to get at it. And Oreo definitely didn't kill it. I opened my computer, I started googling. If you find a dead bird, what does that mean? And so I read maybe like three or four articles before it really became apparent that dead bird is an omen. A dead bird near your home is something bad. It's something evil. It's something that you should watch out for. So one of my favorite aspects of our house is the front porch area. It's screened in, and it's large enough for us to have two rocking chairs out front. I really enjoy sitting on the porch and really looking at these houses across the street. One night I went out to our porch. I sit down in the rocking chair and I notice there is like a bulldozer. There's taping going up around the house. And I start to realize, oh, they might be getting rid of this house. I felt this sadness inside of me because it's a part of our neighborhood. And it didn't make sense to me why this really nice looking house had to be bulldozed. They demolished it and they had the level, the ground. There was this kind of, like, uneasiness in the air. And I didn't know if it was just because, like, my routine of looking at the house was gone or if it was like they had completely changed the energy field of, you know, like, the neighborhood or whatever. And then other things started happening in the house. So I just got home and I'm walking up my entryway and I walk through my porch and I open our front door, And there's this, like, stillness in the house that I notice, but I can't figure out where it's from. So I walk straight into the living room. And right off of the living room to the right of the house is the second bedroom, which I use as my studio space. I open the door to my studio, and that's when I notice another perfectly dead bird. Lying on the floor in the middle of my studio. I text Will because he has got to know how this bird got into my studio. Maybe he left a window open and then closed it before he went to work. So I text Will and I ask him about the bird, and he's confused. He has no idea. He asks, why would I put a dead bird in your room? Where would I get a dead bird? Would I poison a bird? That's weird. I would not do that. So as I'm racking my brain trying to really understand, I'm also the most upset by it. Because it feels like the bad omen is directed at me. Because I found the first bird, I found the second bird, and now this third bird is lying directly in the one space that is truly mine, my studio space. Every time I paint in my studio, I try my hardest to not let my cats in with me. I have two fat orange cats, Minnie and Winston. Every single time that my cats actually ended up getting inside the room, they would just run to the closet door and they would just be perched there. It was always like they stood there and stared at it as if they knew something was inside of there that I didn't see. I notice Will has already gone to work. The baby's in daycare. I have the whole day in front of me to be in my studio and paint. Immediately walk to my studio, and I notice that the door is slightly ajar. I go inside my studio. My big, heavy table that I put in front of my closet door is now in the center of my room, and the closet door is wide open. So I immediately text Will, why did you move my table? Why were you in my studio? What was the point of moving everything? Nothing was touched. Every some like, did you need something? And so he tells me that he noticed that. That the door to my studio was left open when he left for work. But maybe I left it open for a reason, so he didn't want to touch it. Instantly, I felt scared, and I felt panicked, and I felt watch. And I felt two women energies like it was me versus them. Despite all of the scary things that were happening inside of the home, I still tried my best to make the home my home. It was Saturday, and a bunch of friends came over, and we're all hanging outside in our backyard. The grill's going, Baby's outside, having a good time. I realized, oh, it's time for Baby snap. I'm like, all right, guys, I'll be right back. I'm gonna go put Baby down. So I bring Baby inside, put her down, and I go back outside to join everyone for the barbecue. Soon we realized that Baby had pushed aside the curtains, was standing in her crib staring outside at us, and she starts screaming. At that moment, as she's looking at us and screaming, the light on the garage starts glowing super bright. And Will and I are super freaked out. Everyone's looking at us like, guys, it's just a light bulb. What's the big deal? I tell them, that's not a battery powered light bulb. That's an electricity light bulb. And there's no electricity that goes out to that. There is no possible way that that light bulb could be turned on. Right now. Everyone is feeling a little bit spooked. So Baby's still screaming. The light is still glowing brightly. I say, okay, you guys, I'm gonna go inside. I'm gonna Close the curtains, and I'm gonna put her down for her nap. So I go inside, I see how baby's doing. She's okay. So I put her down, I close the curtains, and I walk back outside. The second that I come back outside, Everyone is looking at me. Their eyes are wide, their mouths are open, and everyone's dead quiet. And I'm like, what just happened? Why are you looking at me? And will tells me, he's like, when you went in there to put baby down, I told everyone, oh, just watch. When she closes the blinds and puts her down so baby's not staring at us anymore, the light's gonna go off. Just watch. You know, he was just joking, though. The second that I put baby down and closed the blinds, the light turned. I am so freaked out by that. So I go to my friend's house for a barbecue. There's like six or seven of us there, and we're all sitting around the bonfire. And I started telling everyone about all of the scary things that were happening inside of the home. One of my friends said, well, that makes sense because of the area that you're in. That area of Albuquerque is one of the most haunted areas in the whole city. You're next to all these different hospitals that used to carry and hold and house tuberculosis patients. Back in the day. This one to two mile stretch really became a dumping ground for unmarked graves all across this part of town. Then in the 50s and 60s or so, when, like, development came, they bought up this land and just built these houses on top of it without really understanding, like, the history of it. And she started telling me about how she lived a couple blocks down. She was telling me that one night she was walking home. It was super late at night, and in Albuquerque, there's not a lot of city lights. The streets are very dark. The whole sky is illuminated with stars with planets. It's absolutely beautiful, but it's also slightly terrifying if you're walking home late at night by yourself. My friend Jackie was walking home, and her house was kind of on a hill. And at the very base of the hill was this freestanding wall. It stood up pretty tall. Take 10ft, She said. As she was walking up to her house, she noticed that there was a figure just sitting at the very top of the wall. And so she stops, and she calls out to the figure, hello. Who are you? Do you need something? And the figure is still sitting there. And she tells me it's a woman figure. She had long black hair. She was wearing a dress, and she was Just sitting there. And so my friend Jackie calls out again, hello there. What are you doing? Do you need help? At that moment, Jackie said that that woman stood up and, like, turned around and, like, stared at her with these, like, piercing eyes. And she just jumped off from the top of the ledge. And then just ran off into the night at an alarmingly faint, fast speed. She knew it wasn't human. After that, she kind of just ran back inside of her house and pretended that didn't even happen. After Jackie finished her story, our other friend Anna chimed in and she said, I've heard of that ghost. I've heard people running into that ghost before and seen that same woman. The long dark hair, the dress, the piercing eyes. She was saying how this woman just walks around that area late at night and is seen by so many different people. She said, I saw that exact same ghost. That ghost came to my house. And once she starts talking, another person says, that ghost is very common in Albuquerque legend. That one is seen throughout the decades. After hearing all of their stories, I was feeling very scared. And I felt good that it wasn't just all in my head. And that most importantly, that there was a history, an understanding of the area and why it was so haunted. So as I'm sitting there in my living room, I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw some people had posted these articles. The community college found several skeletal remains. I clicked on the link, and it was the house across the street. Everything kind of started to make a little bit more sense. So I'm in bed watching the romantic comedy, and I hear the buzzer for the laundry just went off again. So I pause my movie and I walk into the kitchen, into the laundry room when I hear my movie start playing again. Yeah, I'd love to. And I think, huh, that's weird. I definitely paused that, right? So I walk back through the kitchen, walk through the dining room, back into the room, press pause on the movie again. I make sure it's paused. The movie's not playing. So I walk back into the laundry room, ready to switch the load again, And I hear the movie playing. I'm, like, feeling annoyed, a little scared, but I'm like, this has got to be a technology error. So I walk back to the bedroom a third time, pause the movie. That's when I hear what sounds like footsteps running on top of the roof. And our house is a one story adobe house. The roof is flat and there's nothing on top, but I hear footsteps. And I hear footsteps running. They're running from the main Part of the house, from the kitchen to the dining room to the living room. You can hear the thumping of the body weight, but it felt like there were two people running up there really quickly, like they wanted their stomps to be heard down below. I was really freaked out, and so I called Will, and the call was dropped. I tried texting him. The text isn't sending. My phone was completely jammed, and there's running on the ceiling. And I'm like, okay. I said to myself, all right, Caroline, you got this. You're fine. You're an adult. This is your home. Baby's sleeping. She's coming in on you. Just finish making your food, get the laundry, and then you can come sit on the bed under the covers like an adult. I like pep talk myself. Walked into the kitchen, turned off the stove, and then I walked into my laundry room. And this laundry room is very small. It just had one of those stackable washer and dryers where the washer is on the bottom and the dryer is on the top. And this dryer, almost every single time I opened up that dryer door, I broke some of my nails. Because you had to, like, pull so hard to open it because it wouldn't just, you know, pop open. I take my laundry from the washing machine, I put it inside the dryer, I shut the door, I turn the dryer on, and I drop something on the ground. So I reach down, and as I'm picking it up, the dryer stops, and the door flings open and hits me in the face. It felt like a deliberate act, like they're actually trying to harm me. Like they just hit me in the face with this door that doesn't open. It never opens. They mean business now. So I shut the dryer, turned the dryer back on, ran back to my room, ran under my covers, and I tried to call Will again. My call dropped. My heart starts racing a little bit more, and I hear running on top of the roof. So I call Will again. I'm like, please, please, please, please work. I'm really scared right now. And the call is dropped again. Literally two minutes later, Will walks in through the front door. And he comes in the bedroom, and he's like, what's going on? Baby's still sleeping. I'm freaked out. I'm, like, telling him what just happened. He's like, you know what's weird is that I was leaving work, and as I was about to leave work, this customer came in, and he was telling me all the ways in which to get a Ghost. To leave the house. While this customer came in was while all the scary shit was happening to me. And I feel like that can't just be a coincidence. Like, they had to have known that that Will was trying to remove them. He tells me, this is what we have to do. We need to open up all the doors, all the windows, and we need to go from room to room, yelling. We have to tell them that this is our house. We have a lease. They're not on the lease. They need to get out. They are not welcome here. So we start in the kitchen. We're like, yelling, you gotta get out. Like, this is our house. We go to the living room, we go to our bedroom. We go to the studio. We go to the front living room. And after, like, 10 minutes of this, we, like, close all the doors, close all the windows, and we kind of just stand there. And I'm like, okay, so did it work? And he's like, I don't know. I don't know what we're supposed to do. Is something supposed to happen? I'm like, I don't know. So he's like, okay, well, I'm gonna go sit out on the porch. I'm gonna smoke a cigarette. So I sit back down and turn the movie on. The sound is pretty low because Baby's bedroom is right next to our room. And I don't wanna wake her, even though she didn't seem to wake up. But ultimately, the house feels peaceful. Minutes later, Will comes rushing into the house, and he's panicked. He runs into the bedroom and he's like, what's going on? What's going on? Like, what's happening? Are you okay? Are you okay? Is Baby okay? And I'm like, yeah, we're just sitting here in this quiet house. I'm just watching this movie. Baby's asleep. Why, like, why are you so panicked? Like, what's going on? He said, I was sitting outside, I'm smoking my cigarette, when all of a sudden, it just sounded like these shrill screams were just rushing from the house. I thought you were being murdered. I thought something was happening. I thought that you were in trouble, that you were hurt. Like, these screams were so loud, and they sounded like woman screams coming from the house. And I was like, oh, nope, no screaming here. I'm not screaming. Baby's not screaming. And he was so freaked out that, like, we sat down and we talked about it. And we immediately were like, was that the ghost for the ghost leaving? Were the ghosts leaving the house screaming at him because he's the one that, like, really forcibly removed them from the house. And obviously, you know, afterwards I googled on my phone and I looked it up, and apparently that's a common thing that happens is when ghosts are leaving a property or a place, you know, they let you know about it. All the spirits that came from the tuberculosis history of the city, that's still pretty recent history within, like the last 100 years or so. The neighborhood is definitely still crowded with spirits. I can only assume that whatever remains that they found across the street, those spirits floated towards our house. It's likely that they will continue to kind of roam the area, you know, if that's all they know and if they haven't found a way to, like, move on yet, I think they just moved on to probably my neighbor's house.
- [32:12]
A
Thank you, Caroline, so much for your story. We here are so glad those ghost ladies are at least haunting the next house on the block. It's true. Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future. If you want to hear stories that won't haunt you in the middle of the night, but will lead you toward the light, subscribe to our sister podcast, the Amazing Snap Judgment. Storytelling with a Beat. Spooked is brought to you by the team that knows there is, in fact, something hiding in the closet. Hope that he is who he says he is when he says he is Mark Ristich. There's Anna Sussman. Our chief spookster is Eliza Smith. Chris Hamrick, Marisa Dodge, Renzo Gorilla, Jacob Winnick, Tiffany Yeliza Ann Ford, Eric Yagnez, Sana Khan, Annie Nguyen, Leon Morimoto. Our original score is by Lauren Newson. The Spook theme song is by Pat Messini Miller. My name is Glenn Washington, and if someone asks you to pick the red pill or the blue pill, you tell them that it's easy to decide if they don't mind that you'll gladly choose the one that involves you never ever, ever, ever, ever, never having to turn out. It.