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- [00:04]
Glenn Washington
A tisket, a tasket. I trapped him in the basket. He begged for me to set him free, but I knew he would come for me. Listen to Spooked. Stay tuned. And now for a bit of breaking news.
- [00:30]
Geico Gecko
Between your breaking news with me, the Geico Gecko, here are some things you
- [00:35]
Glenn Washington
ought to know today.
- [00:36]
Geico Gecko
People who switch their car insurance to
- [00:38]
Antonio
geico save about $900 a year.
- [00:40]
Geico Gecko
Experts are calling that nice to know. Also, plants can hear when bees buzz.
- [00:46]
Antonio
My ficus just heard that.
- [00:48]
Geico Gecko
And finally, animal experts have confirmed that
- [00:50]
Glenn Washington
goats have regional accents.
- [00:54]
Geico Gecko
I'm getting a hint of Irish there.
- [00:55]
Glenn Washington
It feels good to get good news.
- [00:57]
Narrator / Family Member
It feels With Plan B Emergency Contraception, we're in control of our future.
- [01:02]
Anita
It's backup birth control you take after
- [01:04]
Antonio
unprotected sex that helps prevent pregnancy before it starts. It works by temporarily delaying ovulation and
- [01:10]
Narrator / Family Member
it won't impact your future fertility.
- [01:12]
Grow Therapy / Mint Mobile Advertiser
Plan B is available in all 50
- [01:13]
Narrator / Family Member
US states at all major retailers near
- [01:16]
Grow Therapy / Mint Mobile Advertiser
you with no ID, prescription or age requirement needed.
- [01:20]
Antonio
Together we got this.
- [01:21]
Narrator / Family Member
Follow Plan B on Insta at Plan B. One step to learn more Use as
- [01:25]
Geico Gecko
directed Ever walk past a place for rent and wish you could just take a peek inside? Maybe even explore the layout. Envision the natural light streaming through the windows or plan where your vinyl record collection would go. At apartments.com you can with tools like their 3D virtual tours, you can see the exact unit you could be living in. Really envision yourself in your new home with apartments.com the place to find a place.
- [01:51]
Talkspace Advertiser
This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. November is Men's Health Awareness Month, so Talkspace wants guys to know that being prepared for life's biggest challenges and opportunities means prioritizing mental health too. Talkspace can help you go beyond fine tuned workouts, supplements and productivity hacks. Talkspace can help you fine tune your inner life so you can succeed in being the best version of yourself in any situation. And with Talkspace you can get therapy from anywhere and on your time. You can even text your therapist between sessions. If you if you're depressed, stressed, struggling with a relationship, or just need a little extra one on one support, Talkspace is here for you. Plus, Talkspace takes most insurance and most insured members have a $0 copay. Men's Health Awareness Month is the perfect time to reach out to TalkSpace now. Get $80 off your first month with promo code space80 when you go to talkspace.com match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com and save $80 with code space80@talkspace.com that's talkspace.com, promo code space80.
- [02:52]
Grow Therapy / Mint Mobile Advertiser
We're almost halfway through the year and a lot of people are running on empty without fully realizing it. Grow Therapy helps you find care that's covered by insurance before burnout becomes the baseline. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent, licensed therapists across the US Offering both virtual and in person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. There are no subscriptions, no long term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow helps you find therapy on your time. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow Therapy is here to help. Grow accepts over 100 insurance plans, including Medicaid in some states. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit GrowTherapy.com BookNow to get started. That's GrowthTherapy.com BookNow GrowthTherapy.com BookNow availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
- [04:20]
Glenn Washington
As a young child, I felt that my parents, my mother and my father, I felt they loved me very much. I did. Truly. It was just that they, and those people from their church, they were fighting for something titanic, something urgent, demonic, because their apostle, Herbert W. Armstrong, preached that this was the end of days and they had to meet with each other, had to pray, to fast, to study their Bibles, to listen to cassette tapes from the headquarters church in Pasadena, California, and run the farm. Farms, even failing farms like ours do not run themselves. So they worked. And they work. They worked from sun up to far past sundown every night with the exhaustion I heard, the fear, the terror behind my father's goodnight, apologies. Don't worry, he promised. The kingdom of God will be here soon. Then we'll have all eternity to play ball and go swimming and climb trees. I told him it was okay, but I didn't mind. And it was true. I didn't mind. Even as he asked forgiveness for not having the time to spend on me. I just wanted to be alone. I liked being alone because I never felt alone. I saw them mostly out of the corner of my eye, the shadows, shapes and figures darting in and out of sight. Sometimes they would even make themselves plain. Women, men, my grandmother, even a baby once. Other stuff I knew this was my secret. That my mother and father would holler and weep and call for a pastor. If I told them who really kept me company, they would say, I can sort it with the very demons they fought. Every single day through their prayers and their fasting. They would call the pastor for an exorcism to cast them all away. And I couldn't have that. I wouldn't. So I kept my world hidden. Never breathed a word about who I really spent my time with. And that's why when the darting shadows shrank from warned of a new force, my periphery, something that chased the laughter and the light, something that radiated an evil I had never encountered before. Something that for the very first time scared me. Scared me. I realized that I had kept my secrets too well. My name is Glenn Washington. Spook starts now. Sam, Who do you trust? Who makes you feel safe? When Antonio and his sister Anita were growing up in Texas, their family didn't have much money. That's why they were so excited to move into their very own home, even if it was a little bit run down. Spooked.
- [09:00]
Antonio
The people that my parents bought from lived there for about 50 years, so it just got in disrepair. Often you pull a pack the wallpaper and you see an old article from the Eastern European Gazette that we'd never heard of as kids. We just thought the words look funny and, you know, picked it off the wall.
- [09:17]
Narrator / Family Member
When the family moved in, Antonio was only three and Anita was a newborn. So their parents decided that all four of them should share a bedroom. Anita in her crib and Antonio in a bed against the wall.
- [09:33]
Antonio
I'm five or six years old, and one night in my bed, I decide to look to my doorway and there's a man standing in the doorway who I couldn't really tell who it was beckoned me to follow. I want to know who it is. But then in the exact same breath, I don't want to know who it is. I get up out of the bed. I start walking, but I can only see just the shape of the person. Just haze beyond. And as I get to where I think I'm going to interact with this figure, the haze turns to darkness. I then realize that I'm standing on the floor. Furnace, the grate searing through my feet. And my parents find me screaming. My parents just look at me, bewildered, wondering, why did you do that? And I didn't really know. I couldn't. I was just kind of gobsmacked, thinking, well, what? Who was I following?
- [10:33]
Narrator / Family Member
The whole family was shaken after Antonio's injury, especially after he told them that he'd been following someone. But no one had been in the house. There was no intruder. So Antonio's parents dropped it and life went on. And as the children grew older, it no longer made sense for everyone to sleep in the same bedroom.
- [10:58]
Anita
So it is summer, and some neighborhood kids, friends of the family, family members, our cousins, we were all playing in this very large room in the house and my grandmother was looking after us. But I keep looking up into the corner and I keep seeing this man standing there and he's staring at us. He has dark black hair, it's slicked back. He's wearing a suit, which is strange because it's in the middle of the summer. He's standing very straight with his arms alongside his body and he's not moving. He's standing in this corner and he's staring at us and staring at me. Nobody else seems to think there's anything wrong happening. They don't feel creeped out in the same way that I feel creeped out. And he doesn't look like anyone I know. He doesn't look like any of my relatives. And I keep looking over at my grandmother, she's not reacting to him. And I say, grandma, who's that man in the corner? And she says, what man in the corner? And I said, that man who's just standing there staring at us. She quietly gathers up all of the little kids and gets us out of the room. That was the first time I experienced seeing the banker.
- [12:36]
Glenn Washington
Look. I don't know about you, but I like keeping my money where I can see it. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers like keeping my money as well. And finally, you can stop overpaying for wireless just because that's how it's always been with Mint Mobile. Premium wireless plans starting at 15 bucks a month. Best thing you can use your own phone and own number. Activate with the ESIM in minutes and start saving immediately. No long term contracts, no hassle. Ditch overpriced wireless and get three months of premium wireless service from Mint Mobile for 15 bucks a month. If you like your money, Mint Mobile is for you. Shop plans@mintmobile.com spooked that's mintmobile.com spooked upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month new customer offer for the first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.
- [13:39]
Geico Gecko
Ever walk past a place for rent and wish you could just take a peek inside Maybe even explore the layout. Envision the natural light streaming through the windows. Or plan where your vinyl record collection would go. At apartments.com you can. With tools like their 3D virtual tours, you can see the exact unit you could be living in. Really envision yourself in your new home with apartments.com the place to find a place.
- [14:18]
Narrator / Family Member
What Anita and Antonio didn't know at the time was that back in the 1920s, a wealthy banker had built the house as a love letter to his wife. He chose the finest furnishings, imported wallpaper from France. In the backyard, fruit trees blossomed over a koi pond. And for many years, everything was beautiful. But when the banker and his wife died, they left no children to maintain the home. Anita, Antonio, and their parents moved into a house that had fallen into decay. After Anita saw him, she and her grandma knew someone was lingering in the house. But they didn't talk about it. No one in the family did. And Anita thinks she knows why.
- [15:11]
Anita
The Mexican side of the family is. I feel in touch with the spiritual world, and it's fairly normal to speak to your ancestors and for sometimes for them to speak back to you. And that's a very positive thing, you know? But if it's a stranger, if it's someone not in your family, then it's less clear what to do about it.
- [15:35]
Narrator / Family Member
Only a year or so later, Antonio's dad was out of town on business. Antonio was getting ready for bed.
- [15:45]
Antonio
I was about 10 years old, and I feel a presence near the bed. And I think, well, maybe it's one of my parents. Maybe my dad's come home and just wants to see that I'm sleeping restfully. But as I look towards the foot of my bed, there's nobody standing there. I look towards the door, there's a figure just standing, not speaking. And I think not to speak because, hey, it's my dad. Maybe I should fake that I'm asleep. And I think I'm gonna rotate to the side and fall myself to sleep. In the morning, when I asked my mother, hey, what time did dad get home? She looks at me, what do you mean? I said, yeah, what time did he get home? He was there checking on me. Her face loses a bit of color. No, Antonio, he's still in Kennedy, Texas. Her eyes water a bit. She kind of shakes her head and walks off, knowing what we never really wanted to talk about, that the spirit visited again.
- [16:48]
Narrator / Family Member
But about a week later, Antonio's mom brought the subject up herself out of nowhere.
- [16:55]
Antonio
She says, he's been here before. My sister's there. We're in the kitchen. We're looking at my mom. What do you mean? My mom says, when you're little, you'd ask me about a man you see in the hall last week. That was him. And so my sister asked, what do you mean, Mom? Who is him? Well, we don't really know his name, but it's the banker. For the first time, she's verifying something that I knew all along. We now have a name for the person that has visited. So then she relays the story to us. That one night, probably when I was about 4 or 5, she's reading a book. I'm dozing off. She decides to lay down next to me. And she dozes off. All of a sudden she feels pressure. She tries to awake and there's somebody putting pressure on her shoulders, but she can't see anybody. And she feels a presence. She said she felt the presence of a man. And as she tries to call out, she feels pressure of a hand on her face almost to the point of suffocation. And the only thing that releases suffocation is my little child, eyes awaking and looking over. And then the pressure released as she gasped for air. And apparently I asked what was wrong. And she played it off like nothing happened. We were like, well, you know, hey, mom, why are you telling us this now? And secondly, why haven't you done anything about it? Is it going to attack me? Because I don't know how you fight this thing. I think Ghostbusters had probably been around at that point. So we wanted her to strap on a protopack and go take him out. My dad arrives back at the house. My sister and I confront him. We want to know what mom said is true. He looks over at my mom and my mom kind of just motions to him. They know about him. My dad, who's a deacon in the church, he says, okay. He seems to be like he's disturbed that we now know something that they've tried to protect us from. And my dad looks over at my mother and he says, well, what we're going to do is something very simple. Bless the house. So we all proceed through the house ceremoniously. We go to the front door.
- [19:19]
Anita
He came in with this golden bucket that has sort of a scepter looking thing that's in it and it's full of holy water and it has a wand at the end. And he would pull this wand out of the bucket and start flinging the wand into the different corners of the room and praying.
- [19:45]
Antonio
And then he does the sign of the cross, turns around. We're now in the living room, blesses the top of the door, walks through each room, blesses the top of the door. And as he proceeds to my room, he says, this is where we'll end. I was nervous and I was uncomfortable, but I did feel a little comfort, like they knew what they were doing. And he gets a small book, and we look because it's not the Bible and it's a book that has the word rights on it. He starts murmuring some prayer that my sister and I don't understand. Part of it's in Latin. So he blesses the door that I've seen the man over and over and over. He just looks at us. It should be good now we're done. But then you kind of think, well, he has this book. He knows about this, so he's probably done this before. So how long does it last? How much time do we have? So there's one night. I'm now 11 years old. And as I'm drifting off to sleep, I get a sense that somebody walks into my room. So I really weakly call up, mom, dad, who's over there? And nobody answers. So all the hair stands up on my back and I can just see in the moonlight, somebody standing no less than 3 to 4 inches from my face in an old tweed suit with the little pocket for the stopwatch. I immediately think to myself, dad didn't fix it. I look up, and as right as I'm about to get to the face, and as if a hand came and covered my eyes, not touching me, but just where you can feel the electricity, if you will, of somebody right next to your face, your eyelashes, almost just brushing the hand. It's just letting me know I'm not leaving. You can try any ceremony you want. This is my house and I'm petrified. So I move my head and it tracks with my head movement, but I can't see directly in front of me. And I don't want to push my head forward because I don't want to touch it. I know what we're going to do. We're going to turn on the lights. I'm going to see whoever this is. And when the moment I made that decision, the darkness cleared and it was back to just dark room, not pitch black. So I leaped to my feet. I walk as quickly as I can the 10ft to my light switch. And I don't want to look back. I don't want to look back. I want to hit that switch. And so I go and I, I flip the switch and I turn around and at the same time I go gotcha. The damn light bulb bust. Like oh my God. So I carefully plot my next plan. I'm gonna go into the hallway and this time I'm gonna turn. At the same time I flip the switch. So I go to the hallway, I very slowly turn. I've got my hand on the switch and I'm ready to just say gotcha. I hit the switch and then you hear that. And so I get to my sister's room about four feet further down the hall. I reached into room and go to flip the light switch. It had already bursted. It wouldn't even turn on. I sat next to her, her bed and just slept sitting there. That is how my parents found me.
- [23:14]
Geico Gecko
Ever walk past a place for rent and wish you could just take a peek inside, maybe even explore the layout? Envision the natural light streaming through the windows or plan where your vinyl record collection would go. At apartments.com you can. With tools like their 3D virtual tours, you can see the exact unit you could be living in. Really envision yourself in your new home with apartments.com the place to find a place.
- [23:52]
Narrator / Family Member
It was clear now their dad's prayers in holy water hadn't worked at all.
- [23:59]
Antonio
I wanted to ask my dad many times, why didn't it work? Why didn't it just fix the problem? But I felt a certain amount of guilt, like, well, maybe it's because if I only believed as much as my dad, it would work.
- [24:14]
Narrator / Family Member
Eventually, Anita and Antonio moved out of the house. They went to college, started their own lives, but their parents still lived there. And now that they were empty nesters, they started using Antonio's old bedroom as a TV lounge.
- [24:31]
Anita
And so my mom would often go in there to watch shows. She likes telenovelas and movies. And so when I came home, I said, why don't we create a nice space for you here? The wallpaper's falling down, the carpet's pretty gross. It's not in a good shape. So we decided to renovate my brother's room and moved all the furniture out of the room. Tore off all the wallpaper, tore up all the carpeting, whitewashed everything. We moved everything back in. And you know, my mother really, really loved it.
- [25:08]
Antonio
I did stutter a little bit, thinking to myself, well, what if they change something that's not supposed to be changed? What if they move something that doesn't want to be moved? Well, what if you. Nah, I better not. It's probably for the Best. And if, if it happens, at least I don't live there anymore.
- [25:35]
Narrator / Family Member
But only six months later,
- [25:40]
Antonio
ten days before Christmas, we were getting ready to come home. We're making our flight plans and we get a call and my mom says, you need to turn on the news. The whole house is on fire. She's distraught. And when I turn it on, there's somebody standing in front of our house that I grew up in saying, 10 days before Christmas, family tragedy. And I'm in disbelief because there's two fire trucks like you would see in a movie with the flames shooting out the top of our house like a bomb was dropped.
- [26:07]
Narrator / Family Member
When the fire started, the parents were asleep. After the smoke woke them up, they got out just in time to watch their house burn.
- [26:16]
Antonio
We later on talk to the fire inspector and he goes, man, this is something I don't normally see. And so my dad and I asked him, what, what do you mean? He says, well, this is an electrical fire. Okay, so why is that unusual? Well, because of this. And he pushes away a bit of debris and we look on the wall and there's a wall plug, an outlet which is in perfect clear, non burnt shape. He says, well, this is the origin. And all the memories flood back. The origin of where my feet were burned. The origin of where the second light bulb burst. The origin of where I always saw him. The man, the banker.
- [26:59]
Anita
That was the room. That was the precious room. And we literally ripped everything out of it. And I think it was the final straw.
- [27:09]
Antonio
My parents would never come out and say that the ghost started the fire, but we know it had to have been the ghost. There's no way it was someone else.
- [27:21]
Narrator / Family Member
For Anita, it felt like the worst possible ending to her family's struggle with the banker.
- [27:28]
Anita
I think we all lost. The banker loved that house. And now they don't even get that house anymore. So everyone loses.
- [27:37]
Antonio
I'm thinking to myself, well, hey, there's the spirit's probably gone. And so maybe this fire was the opportunity to cleanse the spirit from the earth plane to wherever they're going. And then I ask, where are you going to go, Mom? Where are you going to go, dad? Are you going to go somewhere else? You have the opportunity to move anywhere you want in the city. And they say, no, we're going to rebuild. And since you're an architect, we want you to do it. And I think to myself, wow, that would be great. But also scared. Well, what if we bring it back? Visiting my home after the fire, walking through the house to see what we can salvage. And I look up to the sky, a leaf from the tree hits me in the face. And I think to myself, what if I built and designed a house that's open to the sky? And so that then became the design idea for the new house, a courtyard house, one that you would see in Mexico. It has an open air courtyard to simultaneously honor, but also not allow the spirits to be in there anymore. I had the opportunity to create and put the position of the bedrooms far away from any experience that my sister and I had with regard to any sightings, any spirit. I designed it such that that room will never be enclosed, ever. To try to give poetic release and spiritual release to whoever is there and say, hey, you know, this is still your space, but we are going to occupy the rest of it. What I thought about when I entered that courtyard for the first time is this is a truce. If this can't be my parents house, it can't be your house either. And so that courtyard to me was an offering, an olive branch. Say, look, nobody's gonna have this. This is gonna be no man's land. Come and go as you please.
- [29:34]
Glenn Washington
Just leave.
- [29:34]
Antonio
Leave my parents alone. I do honestly feel that the banker has moved on. I don't sense him anymore. It does seem like it worked. But I still have dreams about that room. Waking up in my room with the door open, halfway cracked and there's somebody there.
- [30:08]
Glenn Washington
Antonio and Anita, we are so glad your family is safe and so glad you shared your story with us at Spooked. Original score for that piece was by Renzo Goriot, was produced by Anne Ford. Oh, spooksters. Did you ever move an object with your mind? See someone or something pass through a brick wall? Feel desperate eyes searching for you in the dark? Experiences you can't tell anyone about? Well, tell me. I want to know. Spooked@snapjudgment.org because there is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. Spookednapjudgment.org show the dark side you spooked with some spooked gear. The t shirt of your dreams available right now@snapjudgment.org and remember, if you like storytelling that will never leave you afraid, get the ability. Amazing Stupendous Snap Judgment podcast. It's storytelling with a B. This book was created by the team that trust everyone at some point to do the right thing. Except for Mark Ristich. There's Anna Sussman, our chief spooksters. Eliza Smith, Chris Hambrick, Annie Nguyen, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Davey Kim, Renzo Goriot, Teo Da Cott, Marissa Dodge, Zoe Ferrigno, Tiffany Deleza, Ann Ford, Doug Stewart and Isaiah Sims. Spook theme song it's by Pat Machine Miller. My name is Glenn Washington. And we like to think that in our darkest moments, in times of fear, of horror, there will always be someone else there to share the burden, to carry the load. A parent, a friend, a relative, a spouse. Let me tell you in no uncertain terms that on this thought path, you walk alone. And you need to enlist every tool, every trick, every favor at your disposal to make this journey. No one else can do it for you. Which is why I advise, in no uncertain terms, to never ever, never ever turn out the last.