Max (8:31)

My mom, she's a seamstress. It was mostly for the community. If kids had to have costumes for a specific tradition, or like musical theater. Sometimes she would also fix clothes for us and other moms in the neighborhood if they needed something for their kids. She would, you know, do those things. So she was very good at that. She would stay up late sewing. Since it was a small house and the walls between each room, they were not very thick. In the dead of night, we would hear the sewing machine going off. It was a very old machine, very good quality, but very NOISY. Especially at 3am, 4am it became a bit frustrating if I had to get up early the next day. But at some point it also became a bit comforting. The sound of the machine. It was telling me that she was there, she was present. So it was probably around fall. Me and my family were having lunch. We were just having some small talk. We heard that the garden's gate was opened, which is very unusual because someone would need the keys to get in. But we didn't give any extra set of keys to any uncles or family friends. So that was weird. We looked at each other and after a couple seconds, we heard a knocking on the door. My older sister, Soledad, she made a joke about how it's probably the Mormons handing off, you know, Bibles or their. Their little pamphlets. My dad got up and walked to their door, opened it, and there was no one there. So he comes back to the table and he says, oh, it's probably just a ghost. We laughed about it because from where I come from, it's what you usually say when you cannot really find the reason why something happened. So a week or two later, we're having lunch again on a weekend. We're all sitting down and small talking. And then it happened again. We heard the garden gate open and then we heard the knocking on the door. I thought it was pretty weird. And I noticed that my sisters were a bit concerned because they exchanged looks. But my dad, he just distracted us, talking about things about the news that he didn't really agree with to just focus our attention away from that thing that we cannot really explain.

Glenn Washington (12:22)

Big news in spook land. Because this fall, we're going on tour, Spook Live. I can't wait. It's going to be awesome. And here's where you come in. Looking for amazing, mystical, magical storytellers who can rock their true story of touching the supernatural on stage in front of thousands of people. Do you know somebody who needs to be on the Spooked Live stage? Are you somebody who needs to be on the spooked Live stage? Let me know spookednapjudgment.org tell me about your relationship to the shadow, to the mystery unfolded over time. The twists, the turns, the shocks. Spooked Snap judgment. Because there is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. Spooked@snapjudgment.org and don't turn out the lights.

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Max (14:17)

One night, the sound of her machine woke me up and I felt the need to go to the bathroom. So I just went out my room and I saw my mother's room. I saw the door open and I can see her from behind. She's looming over the machine. She didn't even notice that I was there looking at her. She was just completely 100% focused on her sewing. And next to her she has this old wooden chair placed as if someone was next to her. Looking at her work, I thought to myself, why is she working with an empty chair next to her? But I just brushed it off, went to the bathroom, did my thing, and then went back to bed. I remember a couple times, a couple nights doing the same route, you know, needing to go to the bathroom at 3, 4, 5am and my mom was. Would never close her door. It was always open. So every time I would walk outside of her room, I would see her and the chair. On Sundays, we'll do a general cleaning of the house. She would usually be on a weird mood, and she would like to do things the way that she does it and in a very specific way or. Or she didn't want to be bothered. But this Sunday, I noticed that she was playing music very loudly because she's in a good mood. She was sweeping kind of to the rhythm of the song. We have two dogs that would try to play with a broom, and she would usually tell them to piss off, but that day she didn't. And she was laughing with the dogs, like playing with the dogs, which made a big difference to me. It was curious to see her like that because I've been used to seeing her very depressed for so long. We all noticed it. My older sister Soledad, she asks my mom, hey, like, you seem in a better mood. Like, did something happen? Did something in particular happen? She just looks at us and she says, well, lately I've been missing my mom a lot, and for the past couple nights she's actually coming to visit me. I felt surprised because by this point my grandmother had died eight years ago. She says that when she's sewing, she can feel that someone is behind her and that she can feel someone softly breathing next to her ear and that somehow she knew that it was her mom. I felt like a tingle through my spine. I personally thought it was scary to even picture that, that you would be doing something at night by yourself and you would feel someone breathing next to you. But she said that she was not afraid. And then she said that. So for her not to get tired, I would put a seat next to me. So she can sit with me so she doesn't have to stand up. So after my mom says this out loud, I can see that my sisters are as shocked as I am. My dad as well. This awkward silence takes over. I think we all felt a bit bad for her. I thought that she was getting better, and it was actually just that she thought that her mom would come visit. No one really challenged her views. I think we all felt more comfortable with her having these moments of happiness than just plain old depression. My older sister, Soledad, she comments on how good the food is. She's oh, yeah, the food is very good. Like, thank you for making this and change the topic. So it's a few weeks later I came back home from the mall with my dad, and my sisters are in the. In the living room. I ask my sisters, where's mom? And they tell me that she's in her room. She spent in her room all day sewing, so I shouldn't, you know, go bother her. We turn on the tv. We were watching something. Then we hear her bedroom door open. And she comes crying, like, completely hyperventilating. She's freaking out, so she couldn't speak very clearly. I remember my dad grabbed her and hugged her. And we sat her on the couch, we put on some water to boil, and we made her a tea. And when she calms down, she tells us that she heard the phone ringing. My mom had a phone of her own in her room in her studio. And when she picked it up, she said, hello, Is anyone there? She cannot hear anything from the other side of the line. But then before she decides to hang up, she starts hearing a breathing, a very soft breathing. And then that breathing becomes louder and raspier and more labored. And that's when she tells us that it sounded exactly the way that her mom would sound, like at her last stage of her cancer. And then my mom asks, mom, are you there? Like, is it you? And then the breathing becomes louder and louder. It becomes very, very deep and loud and calls for her name. Orieta. Orieta. That's when my mom freaks out and throws the phone and leaves the room and comes to us. I'm petrified. I feel like my heart is racing because I can see my mom freaking out in front of me. I saw on her face a very special mixture of sadness and fear that I have never seen in anyone else. I also saw that my sisters and my dad were freaking out. He was walking back and forth in the living room, trying to get close to my mom, but also Taking a step back because he knew that she was very upset. So after this episode, my mom, that night, she didn't sew. She went to bed pretty early. She was very exhausted. It was one of the few nights in which I didn't hear the sewing machine. That made me very uncomfortable. The following days, my mom became very depressed again. She was not interacting with us as much. She isolated herself again. It was early in the morning, I would say 10 or 11am I was sitting on the couch in the living room reading a book about dinosaurs because I was obsessed with them. I hear my sisters talking in the dining room. And when I go to meet them, they are starting to burn the palo santo. My older sister Soleda tell me, like, oh, this is just, you know, a little ceremony. I thought it was exciting. So they start burning the palo santo and a lot of smoke is coming out of it. Like a lot. I've never seen so much smoke. They were walking around the house slowly burning the palo santo and I got a bit scared because I thought maybe the house is going to catch a fire. But then when I was just surrounded by smoke, I felt very safe, as if it was, you know, a screen to protect me and protect us from this thing, from this spirit. They start reciting these passages. We waited for the palo santo to consume itself. Nothing happens right away. After this ceremony, we do our things as usual. I don't remember that we even talked about it, but I instantly felt safer. To me, that was enough.

Glenn Washington (25:33)

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Max (27:27)

After the ceremony took place, we were sitting in the living room in the couch. We were all cramped against each other watching this reality TV show. On the right side of the couch, there is the door to enter the house. And the lights were off. The only light that was on was coming from the tv. I feel this icy cold wind passed in front of us. I thought to myself, maybe I left the window open. But then I immediately remember that I closed all the windows earlier. It was very strange. After the wind passes, after a couple seconds, I see this shadow pass between us and the light from the tv. It's about a meter and a half tall and it doesn't really have a definitive shape. And when it passes between us and the tv, it doesn't completely block out the light. It's still semi transparent. What is that? And I noticed that my sisters and my mom also reacted to it. We all saw it. We all kind of stood up from where we were sitting. And then we saw the door open. It is an old door that makes a lot of noise, but this time it didn't. It opened very smoothly. I felt goosebumps all over my skin. We were all looking at each other. And before it even closed, we heard the garden gate open. And after a couple seconds of just silence and tension, the door closed very strongly. And then we heard the garden gate close again. My sister kind of jumped and screamed and my mom was just shocked. My sister turned to my mom and they said at almost the same time, like, did it leave? And to me that was what gave away that we were all thinking the same thing. After all that, I went to bed and I heard my mom get into her studio. She turned on the sewing machine and after a couple seconds she started playing music again. I heard that specific blend of the buzzing of the sewing machine and the music and it made me feel safer. I woke up again around 4am and walked up to her room and the seat was not there anymore. It was only her sitting by herself. To me, that also felt safe because I felt like my mom was coming back from where she was before. Nothing ever happens again. I personally think that there was this spirit and that was the thing that was opening the garden's gate. And then knocking on the door. To me, what made this spirit evil was that it slowly came close to my mom pretending it was my grandmother. This spirit, this entity, is scaring everyone on purpose. And my grandma, being the sweet lady that she was, she would never do that. She would never scare us. It wasn't till my mid-20s that I came up with the theory that maybe my mom let in this spirit to our house. My grandmother, when she started to get sick, my mom developed some sort of avoidance to, you know, the painful reality of what it's like to have a mom with a cancer. So she started going to their family house, much less. And when her mother died, she started feeling these very strong feelings of guilt and shame. I can see my mom just sewing for hours in the middle of the night. I always picture her just thinking about her mom, ruminating about their relationship, hearing the door and inviting it in. She was hoping that it was her mother coming to visit her. It was almost the promise of making peace with her past.

Glenn Washington (34:03)

Thank you Max, for sharing your story with the Spooked. That piece was scouted by Elizabeth Z. Pardieu, was scored by Laleen Saint Just, was produced by Zoe Frigno. Now then, sages have long told us that we share this place with entities that are not us. Not angels, not demons, neither good nor bad, but other. And other wants other needs. Sometimes every once in a while, other wants what we have. And this is a very dangerous place to find yourself. And I wonder if I know someone who's interacted with the other. Perhaps that someone is you. If so, I'd love to know about it. Please send a message, a picture. A passenger pigeon spooked@snapjudgment.org because understand there is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. Spooked is brought to you but the team that doesn't need to touch the fire to know that it is hot. Except for Mark Ristich. Because to Mark, every day is a brand new adventure. There's David Kim, Zoe Ferrigno, Anne Ford, Eric Yanez, Teo Da Cott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Creaky, Elizabeth Z. Pardu, Aditya Matu, Lulu Jemima the Spook theme song it's by Pat Masiti Miller. My name is Glenn Washington and you know Arthur C. Clarke, the brilliant writer, futurist, thinker. He once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And he's kind of right. You flip a switch, light appears, tap an app, food arrives magic. But what about when you're lying in bed and you know with 100% certainty that someone is watching you from the corner of your room? What about when your 3 year old daughter points to an empty chair and she asks daddy why is that man crying? Technology doesn't explain the handprints that appear on the insides of your windows. Doesn't postulate why your dog growls at empty doorways. Doesn't suppose how sometimes you can smell your grandfather's cologne years after he's passed right when you need him most. Now mystery doesn't care about our algorithms because Clark had it backward. Magic isn't what happens when technology advances. Magic is what happens when technology fails when we need to know Someone else else has walked this valley. Someone else sees through this illusion and it might be a candle, it might be a torch it might be just the strike of a match but whatever you do, however you do it, never ever never ever never ever never turn out the lights.