The Summoning - Classic

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Spooked – “The Summoning – Classic”

Host: Glynn Washington (with contributors Bob Carlson, Andrea C.K., Allie Standish, Christy, Deborah)
Release Date: June 12, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of Spooked dives deep into the eerie world of supernatural encounters, centering on the thin, unpredictable veil between the living and the beyond. Explored through firsthand stories, the theme is clear: dabbling with the unknown may result in consequences far more chilling than being ignored. The episode unfolds with true tales of Ouija boards gone wrong, a seance that connects with a lost lover, and a haunted dollhouse, all delivered in the signature raw, candid, and suspenseful tone of the Spooked podcast.

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Key Stories & Discussion Points

1. “The Ouija Warning” – Story by Andrea C.K.

• [03:14 – 09:33]
• Setting: Andrea is babysitting her 2-year-old sister, hosting friends on a warm Saturday.
• Event: The friends, including her boyfriend Gerald, decide to use a Ouija board for fun.
• Atmosphere: None of them believe in the board’s power; they’re just “playing.”
• Supernatural Encounter:
  • The Ouija board initially claims it’s contacted “Lucifer,” then clarifies the name as “Seth,” a violent spirit from ancient Greece.
  • Seth tells a chilling story: he killed his wife and her lover.
  • Suddenly, a message comes through directed specifically at Andrea: “TILE STOP, TAMMY CHOKE.”
  • Immediate panic follows—the group rushes to find Tammy. She’s alone in a closet with mahjong tiles in her mouth, choking.
  • Andrea manages to save her sister, shaken by the coincidence and clear warning from the board.
• Aftermath: No one present doubts something real happened. Andrea has never used a Ouija board since.

Notable Quote:

“That just put a chill through my body. It spelled out the whole message again...No tile stop, Tammy choke.” – Andrea C.K. [07:09]

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2. “The Birthday Séance” – Produced by Bob Carlson, told by Deborah, Christy, Bob Carlson

• [10:27 – 25:11]
• Setting: 1980s Los Angeles, a low-key party among friends in a craftsman house.
• Event: Bob suggests a seance using a makeshift Ouija board (with Scrabble tiles and a glass as the planchette).
• Atmosphere: The group is skeptical, regarding the activity as lightweight party fun.
• Supernatural Encounter:
  • The glass immediately moves, and skeptics are converted as it demonstrates unexplainable speed and precision.
  • The board spells "K E K E" (“Kiki”)—a secret nickname only Deborah’s late ex-boyfriend Brian used for her.
  • Emotional revelation follows: Deborah recounts Brian’s suicide and the unresolved grief.
  • The group asks about the afterlife; “Brian” claims he’s somewhere in between, not heaven or hell, for as many years as his age at death.
  • The encounter turns personal—and confrontational—when the entity insults Christy’s current boyfriend, leading to a surreal, emotional “two-dimensions cockfight.”
  • Ultimately, the glass spells, “I love you.” The group ends the seance, deeply affected.

Notable Quotes:

“You cannot coordinate four people that don’t know each other...get a glass to move this fast. It’s impossible.” – Bob Carlson [17:09]
“Brian called me Kiki...that threw me for a huge loop. That is something that I don’t understand to this day.” – Deborah [18:41]
“The beauty of this story is not that it is a ghost story, [but] a love story...someone was able to reach beyond the divide and tell someone, for the last time, I love you.” – Bob Carlson [25:11]

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3. “The Dollhouse” – Story by Allie Standish

• [26:42 – 37:59]
• Setting: Childhood home, post-surgery recovery, confined and isolated.
• Event: Allie receives a beautiful, handcrafted dollhouse from her grandmother, featuring dolls representing her family and a sinister-looking grandmother doll.
• Atmosphere: The house is enchanting yet the grandmother doll feels “very malicious.”
• Supernatural Encounter:
  • After sleepovers, the dolls in the house repeatedly move on their own, often into disturbing, violent poses. Only the grandmother doll remains unmoved, always smiling.
  • Incidents escalate: the “family” dolls are arranged as if enacting murder/suicide scenes, with the grandmother doll presiding over the carnage.
  • Only Allie, her parents, and her brother have access, but no one claims responsibility.
  • Allie locks the dolls in a chest—the next time she opens it, tiny scratch marks line the lid, as if the dolls tried to escape.
  • She finally throws the dolls (grandmother separated) into the attic, not to be disturbed again.
• Resolution: Years later, after her grandmother’s death, Allie’s perception softens as she revisits the scrapbook detailing the dollhouse’s making, recognizing the flawed love behind the gift.

Notable Quote:

“Her chin was tilted up, and she was leering at me...I had run out of explanations.” – Allie Standish [32:20]

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Reflection & Memorable Moments

Major Takeaways

• The unknown is rarely passive. Inviting spirits—whether by curiosity, skepticism, or boredom—may result in supernatural peril, psychological upheaval, or bittersweet emotional resolution.
• Even “games” like the Ouija board (or improvised versions) can bring startling, very personal interactions.
• Spirits may appear not only as warnings or dangers, but sometimes as lost loves seeking closure, or as sinister family legacies replaying themselves in unsettling ways.

Tone & Language

• Stories are recounted in a deeply personal, matter-of-fact manner that boosts credibility and chills.
• The host’s narration brings wry, philosophical wisdom (“the difficulty always comes when they pay attention…” [00:35]), setting up each tale with the right note of wary respect for the supernatural.
• Emotional honesty permeates each account—most speakers admit they wouldn’t believe their stories had they not lived them.

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Essential Timestamps

• 00:03 – Glynn Washington sets the tone: The real danger comes when the other side answers.
• 03:14 – Andrea C.K.’s Ouija story begins: “There was a Saturday afternoon…”
• 09:33 – Andrea’s story ends; Glynn transitions to the next segment.
• 10:27 – Bob Carlson’s 80s séance story starts.
• 18:41 – Deborah recounts Brian’s suicide and the effect of the “Kiki” message.
• 23:03 – The séance becomes a brief “cockfight” between the living boyfriend and the haunting ex.
• 25:11 – Bob’s poignant reflection: “It’s a love story.”
• 26:42 – Allie Standish’s haunted dollhouse tale begins.
• 32:20 – The dolls are found in disturbing poses, grandmother doll leering.
• 33:46 – The discovery of claw marks inside the blanket chest.
• 37:59 – Allie’s reflection after her grandmother’s death, with newfound empathy.

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Conclusion

This “classic” episode of Spooked weaves together different eras, geographies, and kinds of haunting, illustrating that supernatural events, whether terrifying or bittersweet, resonate deeply with those who experience them. The episode serves up a powerful mix of caution, awe, and empathy, reminding listeners:

“Never, ever, never, never ever turn out the lights.” – Glynn Washington [37:59]

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Transcript

[Glenn Washington]

When you reach out to the other world through the veil, you may be upset when you are ignored when they simply fail to respond. But that is not the problem. That is not the issue. Now understand the difficulty always comes when they pay attention. You're listening to Spooked. Stay true. All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the Strawberry Watermelon Refresher and the Mango Pineapple Refresher with Popping Boba to crafted sodas like the Sprouts Bright Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Try them all now at McDonald's. Refreshers contain caffeine. Copyright 2026 the Coca Cola Company Sprite is a registered trademark of the Coca

[Bob Carlson]

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[Glenn Washington]

They say, don't mess with things you do not understand. But if we obeyed, we would never touch anything. Because we know so little, we are so profoundly ignorant that we fail to recognize even our own ability to summon evil. Still, just because we don't know what we're doing doesn't mean that we can't pay the price. My name is Glenn Washington. Always know how to do the exact opposite of what you just did, because Spooked starts now. If you don't believe in the power of a Ouija board, that's fine. In fact, that's how it should be. But just don't go playing with one spooked listener. Andrea CK tells us why spooked?

[Andrea C.K.]

So there was a Saturday afternoon. It was pretty warm. You know, I'm stuck with my little sister and that's a little bit disappointing. And normally on a Saturday I would hang out with my gang. So I called around and Gerald and Debbie and Barry, they said, worry they can come over to my place and they'll be on their way. So at around one o' clock, here they come. And I'm supposed to be babysitting, you know, but we sit down and get in the living room and right away Wendy is taking out her Ouija board. I had never seen a Ouija board before and I had no idea what it was. She said this is what we're gonna do. You know, I'm gonna ask the questions. She said, people with a good relationship have to use it together. Cause then the energy is better. So Gerald was my boyfriend. We had been going together for a couple weeks. So of all the people in the room, we were the only couple. So we figured we had some good energy flow between us. And I said, oh, Gerald and me. Gerald and me, we'll do it. We're setting up in the dining room. So we have two chairs facing each other. It's me and GE facing each other. And we each put our fingers. We're putting our fingers on this little coaster thing that goes around, has a little opening in the middle of it. Wendy says, is there a spirit on the board? It starts moving. That was so scary. At first it was going really slow. Like, it was kind of trying on, like, to see, oh, how to use this vessel, how to use these kids to get some messages across. And it went around and around. And then it went straight up to, yes, there's a spirit on the board. So Wendy said, what's your name? And we're spelling out L, U, C, I, F, E, R. And then it stops. Wendy said, well, we don't think you're Lucifer. Who are you really? And it spells out S, E, T, H. And from that point, Wendy said, you know, when did you live and where did you live? We're asking questions, kind of leading the witness. Like, when did you live? Oh, third century BC or ce. Oh, where did you live? Greece. And he's telling us this whole story. I felt this energy in my body, but I don't remember thinking about it. It was just kind of like, this is happening. He told us this long story about finding his wife in bed with another man and killing them both. We had a violent spirit on the board. I don't know if we want to keep this conversation going. Like, what's going to be the benefit? And we kind of looked at each other and sat back a little. And that's when Wendy said, do you have any messages for anyone here? And it went really fast over to yes. And then it spelled out A, N, D, Y, Andy. And that's my nickname. I just got a shock of energy going through my whole body, like, there's a message for me. I mean, suddenly it was about me. It was personal. It wasn't about Seth. It wasn't about what happened in his life. It's about me right now. What's the message? And so we said each letter, one at a time. And it's spelled out just like this. T I L E S T O P. So it's tiles top or tile stop. We don't understand the message. And it's spelled out T A M M I C H O K E Tammy, choke. Tammy was my little sister who I was supposedly babysitting. Tammy was 2 years old at the time. Maybe he was going to choke her. That just put a chill through my body. It spelled out the whole message again. It spelled no tile stop, Tammy, choke. And we just jumped up, dropped the board, ran into the next room, found her in a closet in the next room. Just hunkered down in the corner with my mom's mahjong set. And she had two mahjong tiles in her mouth. One of them just came right out. And the other one, I had to do that finger down the throat trick to sort of pop it out of there. She was fine. She didn't have. I mean, I did hug her up. I mean, I really hugged her up and held her close and stuff. I think we ended our play date pretty quickly after that. We were all just really in a state of amazement. This happened to me.

[Glenn Washington]

While some people have to learn the hard way, I'm happy to report that Andrea has not used a Ouija board since this incident. Unfortunately, our next guests are not as lucky. Get ready, prepare yourself, because we're about to unleash a favorite of the season, A Snap classic. It comes to us from the amazing Bob Carlson, creator of the podcast Unfictional. Download it this story. It's got everything you need. Back in the cool 80s, attractive people, secluded location, and well, I'm gonna let Mark take it away.

[Bob Carlson]

The party really wasn't going anywhere.

[Deborah]

It was a combination birthday party and going away party.

[Bob Carlson]

The only two people I know there are my friend Christy and our friend Deborah.

[Christy]

Christy and I have been good friends since high school. She has been one of my best friends for years. The party was in an old Craftsman house in Hollywood. Just to let you know, I have a very bad memory and I don't remember very much, but I do remember very clearly a lot of this event.

[Bob Carlson]

The party was a hodgepodge of various individuals.

[Deborah]

My girlfriend Becky was one of my roommates. Becky's boyfriend Mike, he was a Malibu sheriff. Then there was Mark the Frenchman and my girlfriend Debbie. Then my boyfriend Danny, and he was

[Bob Carlson]

the rocker in France. When we had a party. The idea was drink as much as you can, as fast as you can and then put on James Brown's Sex Machine. Unfortunately, there was no James Brown available, so we had to think of something else and I started to wander off into the dining area and there was a huge oak table and in the back there was an armoire and a bunch of crystal glasses and an idea popped in my head and I thought, hey, there's nothing else going on here tonight. Why don't we do a seance?

[Glenn Washington]

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[Andrea C.K.]

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[Bob Carlson]

A long time ago in my native country of France, there was no toy store where you would find a Ouija board. So we would line up Scrabble letters and cut up a piece of paper that would say yes and one that would say no and basically improvise a Ouija board. We would turn a glass upside down. We'd put our fingers on top of the glass, and then you concentrate real hard.

[Deborah]

It kind of just struck a chord that it would be something fun and different to do.

[Christy]

I kind of thought, whatever, we'll do it. I think in high school, maybe we tried it a couple times, but nothing really ever happened. So I didn't take it seriously and didn't really think anything of it.

[Deborah]

I mean, I'm spiritualist. Like, I believe in God, but I don't believe in Ouija boards. I wasn't taking it seriously. I didn't believe in that type of thing at all. So we lit some candles and turned on some, you know, enya and just kind of played around.

[Bob Carlson]

We cut out a bunch of letters, you know, to create the Alphabet, put them around the table in a circle. There was a piece of paper that said yes and a piece of paper that said no. And we took crystal glass with a stem and turned it upside down and put it in the middle. You know, everybody quiet down and close their eyes. And I don't know if we are the antennas. I believe we are. And I believe that the glass ultimately is just a vessel, and it allows psychic energy to concentrate at the center of it. For those of us who had their fingers on the glass, and I think at the time it was Christy, Deborah, me, and someone else, we started to feel after a very short amount of time, actually, it was uncanny how quickly it started. We started to feel that very familiar little tug.

[Christy]

It was a little bit thrilling, like, ooh, what is this? I remember my hair kind of raising up, thinking, what could this be?

[Bob Carlson]

You have the sensation that something is connecting with the glass and then trying to find its bearings. It's very distinctive.

[Christy]

And then after a while, it started kind of getting a flow and rhythm, and it started kind of moving in an eight, like a shape of an eight, and back and forth. And it was very rhythmic, but it was flowing and very smooth. Suddenly,

[Bob Carlson]

of course, the skeptics immediately thought, you're moving the glass. And I would say, no, I'm not moving the glass. And a good way to take care of the skeptics is to command the glass to do geometric forms. For example, I would tell the glass to spin in a circle. You tell the glass to go faster and faster and faster. And let me tell you, that thing flies. It's so fast. You cannot coordinate four people that don't know each other have not rehearsed this and get a glass to move this fast. It's impossible. At that point, everybody went, huh? What's going on? Now that it was clear that something was moving the glass other than ourselves, One of us asked, who's here?

[Christy]

And started going back and forth to the letter K I. K I or K E. K e. I can't remember how it spelled it.

[Bob Carlson]

And everybody asked, who's Kiki? And Kristi, who was at the head of the table in front of me, just froze. I hadn't ever seen her like that. And she looked down at the table and she said, I know who's here.

[Deborah]

I knew it was Brian. Brian had been my boyfriend for about two and a half years, and he passed after committing suicide. It's spelled out K E. K E, which is Kiki, which was my nickname that Brian called me just in private. That threw me for a huge loop. That is something that I don't understand to this day. Brian was my first love. I used to think about him every day. I still have not been able to look at pictures of him, but I can still see his face in my head. He was very good looking, had an amazing smile. He kept a tan better than anybody that I ever seen. Brian was a very lonely, sad person, but most people wouldn't realize that when they met him. When he would walk into a room, everybody was drawn to him. And he was really funny, and he meant the world to me.

[Christy]

I think she was stunned. I think she was pretty shaken up. And I think, you know, probably quite emotional about it because of the way things had ended.

[Deborah]

Brian tried to commit suicide several times, and they put him in a little hospital. And then Christmas came and I wasn't there. And I wasn't able to speak to him while he was in the suicide watch hospital. But I did find out that he got a belt and wrapped it around his neck and hung himself. A horrible way to die. And he was supposedly under supervision, and they were watching him, and somebody dropped the ball.

[Bob Carlson]

Are you in heaven? The glass answered, no. Are you in hell? And the glass answered, no.

[Christy]

We asked him if he was in a place kind of somewhere in between. He said yes. And then Becky asked how long he was going to be there and. And he said 27, which is the age he was when he killed himself.

[Deborah]

I find myself, like, sometimes, like, I'll get, like, a little tear in my eye, like when I was talking to you. And then I just wipe it away. And it goes away, it dries away.

[Christy]

Christy went to leave to go to the bathroom and then it stopped moving. We asked this spirit, where'd you go? Did you go with Christie to the bathroom? And it said yes. And we asked him, okay, if you were there with her, what color underwear was she wearing? And it spelled out. Well, it spelled, it misspelled it, but it said W I, T, E White. And sure enough, she was wearing white knickers.

[Bob Carlson]

Now, just behind Christy was another guest at the party who was her current boyfriend.

[Christy]

This kind of like glam rock guy sitting around the table, being really cool, not believing any of it.

[Bob Carlson]

I mean, what the hell? The ex is showing up uninvited at the birthday party and is getting all the attention. So he started to say, this is bull. And the glass immediately starts to move. Move. Without having been asked a question. This is unusual. And spelled you. At which point Christy's boyfriend replied, you.

[Christy]

And the cursor started spelling out his name. D, A, N, I and then F U. And it kept going back and forth. D, A, N, I, F U. You know, you can fill in the blanks. But Danny got very upset.

[Bob Carlson]

Now what's interesting here is that when you have to say something like, and you're speaking through a crystal glass as a spiritual entity, takes a long time to spell mo, etc. Etc.

[Deborah]

Danny was getting really upset and sounds so silly. The Ouija board was getting really upset, which appears to have been Brian taking a fight, if you will, with Danny, my current boyfriend. It was very disturbing.

[Bob Carlson]

This is surreal. These two are having a cockfight in two different dimensions.

[Deborah]

Danny was very hot headed and very upset and ended up walking out.

[Bob Carlson]

My poor friend Christy was completely devastated. Meanwhile, the glass repeated several times. I love you. And then.

[Deborah]

I'm sorry, I was just so almost frozen, just paralyzed inside my own head thinking all these thoughts, you know, is this really him? Why did he die? How come nobody could help him? How much I missed him.

[Bob Carlson]

I think that because it was her birthday, we didn't really want to continue. So we said goodbye. And I remember my friend Deborah and I drove back to my house and didn't say a word on the way back.

[Christy]

Ever since that night, I have completely believed. I mean, to me this was the most proof that there is something out there, more than what we can see and what we know. And it's definitely changed the way I see things. And I am the biggest skeptic. I wouldn't believe this story if I weren't there. And I'm sure Many people won't believe me, but it happened.

[Deborah]

I feel like he just needed to be heard again, you know? I know this sounds crazy, but I believe he was talking to us. Me.

[Bob Carlson]

I think the beauty of his story is not that it is a ghost story, is that it's a love story and that someone was able to reach beyond the divide and tell someone, for the last time, I love you. Even Romeo and Juliet didn't get that.

[Glenn Washington]

Get this. Evil lurks right after the break when a young girl finds someone uninvited playing with her favorite toys. Stay tuned. When Allie Standish was a child, she arrived home in a wheelchair after getting surgery on both legs. And she was shocked to see her grandmother waiting in the living room with a smile. Spooked.

[Allie Standish]

I had never seen anything like the dollhouse. It was a wooden Queen Anne. It was painted a deep shade of cornflower blue and had this cream trimming. It looked so delicious that you just kind of wanted to eat it, like icing. When I realized that this house was not only mine, but my grandmother had made the house for me by hand, all by herself, I just remember being blown away. It was actually quite a shock that it had come from her and that she had made it. I think by that time, a lot of the joy had just been kind of sucked out of her. And that was one of the times that she seemed to be truly happy. She never did anything that was completely selfless. You know, when she gave you something, she wanted something back. In addition to the dollhouse, she gave me a scrapbook. And the scrapbook was full of pictures of her making the dollhouse. It was her saying, here's my documentation of how hard I've worked on this project. The dollhouse came complete with six plastic dolls. There was and a father and a little boy and a little girl. So it was like my family. And then there was a baby. They were all fine. They were all just kind of typical plastic dolls that you would see in a dollhouse. The more distinctive doll was the grandmother. She had this full length blue floral dress that was almost like a nightgown. And she had silver, silver long hair. Her eyebrows were arched in this way that made her expression just look very malicious. Because I was in a wheelchair and I was recovering. I couldn't be outside and I couldn't go to school. So I was bored and I was itchy under my casts. And I was also scared because even though, you know, the surgeons tell you that things went fine, when you can't walk for six weeks, you do Wonder, you know, what happens if they take the casts off and have lost my ability to walk, you know? So for me, the dollhouse, it was a way for me to escape. My mom and I would shop for mirrors that were the size of my thumb, and china cabinets that I could hold in the palm of my hand, and newspapers for the dining room table, and plastic apple pies for the kitchen windowsill. So I had a sleepover one night in the spring. My girlfriends were sleeping in the playroom, and I got up in the night to go to the bathroom. And that room had these big skylights. And so on nights when the moon was out, it was very bright. The dollhouse was kind of illuminated. And I just glanced over at it and kind of stopped. I could clearly see the shape of each of the dolls. A man, a woman, a girl, a boy, a baby. Except they were not where I had left them the last time I had played with them. The father was sitting on the couch across from the little tv, and the mother was in the bathroom with the baby. And the boy and the girl were in their beds, kind of turned away from one another. Only the grandmother was left at the table where I had left her. And she was just kind of staring out at me. It creeped me out. But, you know, you don't immediately jump from that to, my dolls are moving on their own. I just figured that one of the girls had moved them when I wasn't watching. But then when I asked the next morning, nobody admitted to having touched them. I just kind of, you know, went about my regular life. Figured that if I ignored it, it would stop. But instead, things just one night, as soon as I walked into the room, something felt really off to me. Something was telling me, do not look at that doll house. Do not look at that doll house. But I couldn't help myself. This time. The father was positioned at the dining room table. He had his face down, and his tie had been tied around and around his neck. The baby was face down in the kitchen sink. The mother's head was plunged into the open oven, and the little boy was upstairs, smothering the little girl with her pillow. And the only doll that didn't seem to be dying was the grandmother. And the grandmother sat at the head of the dining room table, and she had this evil smile spread across her face. And I remember thinking that this felt personal, that this felt like some kind of revenge. I was shocked. I screamed, and I ran downstairs and got my parents and told them what had happened. And they were a bit bemused. And I think we all kind of decided together that this had to be my brother playing a joke. So they went and kind of told him off, and he told them right back off and said that he had had nothing to do with it. I never told my grandmother about any of it. I didn't want to call her and say, thank you for the beautiful dollhouse. By the way, your dolls are terrifying me. So, no, I never spoke with my grandmother about any of it. So I was really excited when my brother was leaving for summer camp because it meant that things would finally calm down and things with the dollhouse would stop. And that's just not. That's just not how things went. They were lined up on their backs on the living room floor. All of them, except for my grandmother. She was crouched above the father. She had a butcher's knife in her hand, pointed at his throat, poised to just slit them all right down the line. Her chin was tilted up, and she was leering at me. I mean, I had run out of explanations. The only people who. Who had been in the house were me, my mother, and my father. And so I wanted to get the dolls away from me. My eyes kind of fell on this blanket chest that we kept in the playroom. And it was a big, heavy, black chest with a heavy lid. And so I took the dolls and stuck them in there at the bottom. I slammed the lid shut

[Bob Carlson]

up.

[Allie Standish]

It was sometime later that I had a sleepover at my house. I needed more blankets. And, you know, I thought, enough time has passed, and surely I can look at these dolls and not be afraid of them anymore. And so I opened up the chest and I dug out the dolls. As I lifted my arm to close the chest, I looked at the underside of the lid, which was wood, and the entire underside of the lid was covered in tiny scratch marks, as if a very small person had been clawing to get out. It just. It freaked me out. So at that point, I whirled into motion and I grabbed the dolls, and I went downstairs and found newspaper and wrapped them all up. I kept all of the family together except for the grandmother. Her I wrapped separately. I ran up to the attic, and I threw them into the far corners, and I threw her into the opposite corner. I didn't want her to be able to hurt them anymore. You know, as silly as that sounds, I didn't want her to be able to do that anymore. I didn't want her to have that power. And so I felt like she deserved to, you know, rot by her herself. That marked the End of my thinking about the dollhouse. And I didn't really start thinking about it again until my grandmother passed away. When she was a couple days away from death, she called my mother in to her bedside, and she said, I want you to know that I forgive your father. I just can't remember what for. The night after she died, I went to her home with my mom, and we spent the night there. I think my mom really wanted to inhabit that space, so she slept in the room that she had slept in as a child. And that left me with my grandmother's room where she had slept for 50 years and, you know, shared a bed with my grandfather back when, you know, a lot of fighting and drinking. And my grandmother, she refused to be in the same room as my grandfather for the entire rest of her life. And so I was sitting in this room on her bed and thinking about how that dollhouse came from the bowels of this unhappy place. And so I was really panicky. I got under the covers and I slowly closed my eyes. And once I closed my eyes, I felt safe. It was as if for the first time, I felt not in a vice grip, like if she was there at all, she was wrapping her arms around me. I started to feel differently about her after that night when we came across the photo album that she had made of her making the dollhouse. When I was flipping through the book, I realized that there was this whole other side to this person that I had never had the chance to know. However troubled she was, this was the best that she could do to love me at that point in her life. Yeah. I mean, the only other thing I can do to make amends is to go up to the attic one day where the dollhouse has sat for many years collecting dust, and let another child. You know, if I ever have a daughter, let it be the source of happiness that I think my grandmother had intended it to be for me. Different dolls, though.

[Glenn Washington]

Thank you, Ali, for sharing that story. Allie Standish is a new children's book author. Her debut novel is out right now. It contains no creepy dolls. Have a link on our website, spookedpodcast.org thanks as well to Snap Judgment listener. You do get the amazing Snap Judgment storytelling podcast, right? You subscribe to that, right? Snap judgment listener Andrea C.K. for letting us know about her Ouija board. And big love to Bob Carlson of the podcast Unfictional. And as always, I'd advise you to be afraid now, both of the stories that we have for you, we want to hear the stories you have for us. Some snappers have hit us already on the Spooked line. Be one of them. Record onto your phone device thing and send it to [e-mail] the Spooked Monster Mash team includes Mark Ristich, Eliza Smith, Liz Mack, Anna Sussman, Jasmine Aguilera, Davey Kim, Teo D Cot, Jody Collie. Original music by Pat Mesini Miller, Davey Kim, Leon Morimoto and Renzo Gorio. The Spook theme music was by Pat Mesiti Miller. If you dig in Spooked, let somebody know and hold on to someone's hand. Squeeze tight. Spookpodcast.org hit the snapdudgement spook Squad on the Twitter, the Instagram, the Facebook Spookpod and When you're in a dead sleep, wake up in the middle of the night to feel someone sit down at the foot of your bed and there's not supposed to be anyone there at all. You might have a avoided this terror in the future if you simply heed my advice to never ever, never, never ever turn out the lights.