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- [00:02]
A
A cold wind, a dark shadow. A sudden midnight certainty that something is not right. From Snapdudgment's underground lair. Your wait is over. At long last. You're listening to Spoot.
- [00:22]
B
Stay tuned.
- [00:38]
A
Eight years old, almost nine. Working the farm all day, milking balin hoeing. But mostly I'm getting everything ready so my dad knows he can trust me. Until finally. Finally the truck pulls up to her house and a red bearded man, leather gloves, work boots, comes around with a clipboard. He hands it to my father. My father says he's gonna need to see him first before he's signin anything. Alright then. The driver ambles over, slides open the back of the truck. We see the wooden crates stacked seven deep, one on top of the other. From the dark of the truck you can hear. You can hear the sound. Cheep.
- [01:27]
B
Cheep.
- [01:27]
A
Cheep cheep. The driver pries the lid off one of the crates and we see him. Dozens and dozens of yellow balls of fluff. The driver reaches in and he grabs one of the tiny baby chicks. I hold my hands out and he places her right in my open palms. She fusses. Cheep cheep. Indignant at being plucked from her sisters. And she's beautiful. I stroke a little back gently. She quiets down. I hold her right up next to my cheek and I laugh. I can't help but laugh. I laugh. My father signs a paper on the clipboard and as the man unloads the crates of baby chicks next to our brand new chicken coop, my father reminds me, remember, these birds are not your friends. Yes sir, I know this. But I keep holding onto the chick, stroking the back of her head. She closes her eyes and falls asleep in my hand before I place her back with the others. The chicken, Cooper, is my job. My responsibility. I feed them, I shovel their crap away, I water them. They grow bigger. Then their yellow fuzz starts to be replaced by white feathers. And as they grow, they begin to attack each other. I separate out the chicks that seem to be targets for the others. Chickens will eat each other if you let them. I will not let them. Then one day, my father says it's time. I want to pretend that I don't know what it's time for, but this is my responsibility. So I helped my father pack the birds back onto the crates and the red bearded man returns to our farm and we load the birds, full grown now, into his truck. The man drives away, But there are still a few chickens left. Those are for us, my father says. He puts a paper bag over the head of one of the chickens so it will not run. He gets a butcher's knife, presses the bird's neck against the stump. I stop him. This is my responsibility. I raise these birds. I raise them. I wonder if this one is that first one, the one that fell asleep in my hand. I pick up his axe. He holds the chicken down on the stump. I cut her head off with one swing. Quickly. My father holds the chicken fast. He doesn't let the wings flap wildly, doesn't allow the carcass to thrash around. He just holds her upside down and lets her bleed. Then he takes the bird to the outside sink for my mother to pluck. I can't eat that night. Later on I'm wide awake in my room thinking, and my grandmother comes in. She sits at the foot of my bed and she tells me stories of Anansi the spider and how to cut high John the Conqueror root. We sing songs and we laugh and I wonder. So I ask her, Granny, how come you're back? You know why, baby. But I don't know why, not really. My grandmother turns away from me. Then you named her Baby. Probably you shouldn't have named her. And I remember. I would never have remembered unless Granny told me. Like I had locked it as far away as I could. But it's true. I did name her up against my cheek that first day. I. I named her Birdie. And I accidentally made a promise to take care of Birdie and to keep Birdie safe forever. And even if she's fading away, Granny looks at me, serious. Don't do that again, baby. Never do that again. I want to ask her more questions, but she waves old hands and vanishes utterly from my room. Granny. And even now I don't know if my stain will ever go away. But I wonder if it's the price of passage to experience certain things, to walk certain paths. To know with absolute certainty that what we see is not everything there is. Perhaps. Perhaps everyone has to pay something to go on this road. And we must all decide whether the cost is too high. From Snap Judgment's underground lair. My name is Flynn Washington. Please find a hand to hold, because Spoop starts. Now. Then we're walking a precarious road between this world and the next. And our first storyteller, Teresa. Now Teresa knows something about the other side. Spooked.
- [08:34]
B
The first time I heard this poem was at my Aunt Jean's funeral. It was printed on the back of the program. It was the one that says, do not stand at my grave and weep. I Am not there. I do not sleep. And thinking, oh, yeah, I know. I was about 5 or 6. My mom's cousin, who was in his. I believe he was about 40 years old. He was this healthy, strong, huge man. He was such a big man. I was a little intimidated by him because he was just like this big, towering figure. And he had cancer. We kept visiting him in the hospital. And then one night I woke up in the middle of the night and I sat up in my bed, and I had this thing that I would do when I would wake up in the middle of the night and see something there. I would touch my eyes and make sure they were open because I would have confusion. Was I dreaming? So I remember touching my eyes, and they're open, and I'm sitting up and, you know, just sort of like being awake. And my mom's cousin Gary was sitting on the end of my bed. I wasn't scared of him. And that was the first thing I noticed, was I didn't feel nervous. And I thought, you're in the hospital. How did you get to the end of my bed? And he just looked at me, and I can still see it in my eyes now. He waved and he said, I love you, goodbye. And I remember feeling just sort of love sort of wash over me. And I went back to sleep. And the next morning, I told my mom, she made some phone calls, and her faith just kind of dropped and went white like. And she said, gary died last night. Not very long after that, my aunt, who was only in her mid-20s, had cancer. Liver cancer. I woke up in the middle of the night. There she is, standing at the end of my bed, walks toward me. And she was beautiful and young. And I remember looking at her face, and she said the same thing. She waved and she said, I love you, goodbye. Shortly after, there was a phone call. And my uncle had gone in that morning to give my aunt her medicine, and she was gone. So I remember my mom and my grandmother in particular, looking at me and looking at each other and making a decision. Okay, Teresa sees stuff. I started thinking of myself as someone who has this ability. I have the ability to see and hear people that have passed. And my friends knew that. I would tell my friends. They thought it was cool. However, I wouldn't mention her. She was, like, taboo for me to mention out loud. The experience was so completely different. Aunt Jean and Gary felt like someone you love coming in the room and giving you a hug. And she was just terrifying. The first time I saw her, my mom and I had Fallen asleep on the living room floor on a bean bag. And the front door was open with the screen door closed. Very small town, America, you know, it's probably summer or whatever. And this woman walked up to the door. She was sort of a petite woman, lean. She was dressed all in green and she had brown hair, and it was cut like that 1970s, 80s bowl cut that women had. She was sort of nondescript, sort of mousy looking. She was not an ugly or scary looking person. She just looked like a woman. She walked through the screen door and she said, my full name. Are you Theresa Lynn Orlegan? And I said yes. And I sat up and I touched my eyes and I touched my arms. And she said, well, I've come to take you with me because no one here loves you and no one here wants you. I said, no. And it was so mean. It was just eerie, you know, if she hadn't been saying these horrible things to me, she might have almost looked sweet. And she pointed out the door and said, well, all these children came with me. And there were all these children behind her, and they were sort of running around behind her. It was almost like they were on a playground. But they were with her. So my assumption was that they were lost, that they were somehow not with their parents anymore or not with people that cared about them. So the idea of joining these lost children was a chilling thought. And I said no. And I just, you know, grabbed my mom and buried my face and closed my eyes. And then she's gone. I would say I saw her so often that I couldn't distinguish the next time. And it wasn't even correlated with anything. It wasn't like I'd have a stressful day and I'd have this, you know, encounter, but my fear around it never diminished. She was always standing in a door when I saw her. And she would stand either in my closet door or she would stand in the door to my bedroom and do the same thing. Say, nobody here loves you, nobody wants you. It would always be that nobody wants you and you need to come with me. My sister and I had twin beds in the same room. And a lot of times I would get up and get in bed with her, or I would walk to my mom's room down the hall and get in bed with her. And it felt like so scary to get there, you know, like to get down that hallway to get to my mom. And as soon as I get in bed with someone else, I'd feel safe again there. There was a real darkness that she brought into my life that I don't think I could have come up with on my own at that age. I don't know that I could articulate what I ever thought she could do to me. But it was. When she was around, it felt like the loneliest, saddest, darkest feeling you could.
- [16:56]
A
It almost.
- [16:56]
B
You know, it almost made me feel a little shameful that I had this presence in my life. Like, it made me feel like I had something yucky on me. I. I don't know how else to say that. It's like you just have, like, a bad smell or something. I did surround myself with people often, even when I was a teenager. You know, my mom was in school, and my stepfather worked nights at the hospital. And so I would go out every night. I would get out of school, and I'd maybe come home for, like, half an hour, and then I'd go out with my friends, and I'd be gone until I knew my mom was going to be home from school. I just didn't like being alone because I was scared of what I was going to see. I had so many things up. I had, like, crystals and sage and candles because I wanted to make, like, a boundary around myself. And I was very much searching for ways to keep her out of my space. How do I manage this? Because I have to manage it, so it doesn't manage me. At some point, I decided in my mind that maybe I was like a beacon, That I was like a lighthouse to something like her. It's like a moth to a flame. It's not like you're special. You're just a light. But I was scared of her. It was exhausting to have my heart pounding that way. And as I got older, the children weren't there anymore. She began to show up alone. And I started feeling a little bit more like I had to stand up to her. When I was probably 15, she'd come in. I do remember sitting up in my bed and putting my hands out in front of me and just saying, get the fuck out of here. You're telling me nobody wants me? I don't want you. You get out. And she would leave. And I felt like I won the fight. But I also knew she could show up again. And she did. Again and again. It was pretty much the same thing, Just that same tape playing.
- [19:43]
A
When we return. Spooked. The Wraith continues. Stay tuned. Now then, Teresa can see the dead. Ever since she's been a little kid, she's been haunted by the same woman. The Wraith in the green dress. Now she's a grownup. And that woman, that ghost just won't go away. Spooked.
- [20:47]
B
I was maybe 21, 22. I was engaged to my ex husband at the time. We were living in an apartment in Portland. I had never told him about her. I was trying to not have her in my life. I was trying to grow up. And I was also moving into a phase of my life where I was sort of trying to deny these things, where I was sort of trying to grow out of the ghost thing. So one night I'm dead asleep and I have a dream about her. And Terry was his name. He wakes me up and he is, is freaking out like he is white. He is hyperventilating. He is really upset and he is pissed. He said, who is she? And I was like, how do you know what's going on? He said, I was sleeping and I woke up and looked at your face and your face changed into this other person's face. What do you mean? And I said, who, what, what she looked like? And he said, she had this like bowl cut, straight hair, brunette in green eyes. To kill. Who is this? And why did she say, I don't love you, I don't want you. And she just kept repeating, I don't love you, I don't want you. He yelled back at her, you're not Theresa. And she said, yes, I am. My heart just sank. I had not told him about her. I had purposely not told him about her because I knew he wouldn't want to hear it. And I could feel her in the room. I just felt her right there. I don't know how else to describe it. Like a person's presence was there, she was there. He wanted to pretend that never happened so desperately. He said something to the effect of, I don't even want you to think about her if you can, because I think that brings her energy in. So I just kind of let that be. And we got married, moved to Berkeley, living in north Berkeley. She's there, she's in that house. I do the same thing. Get out of here. You know you're not welcome here. Nobody invited you. I started like getting a more extensive. You're not allowed to come back, you have to stay away. But I continued to see her. A friend of Terry's, a friend of my ex husband's, said, you gotta meet my friend Sharon. She's this groovy homeopath in north Berkeley, awesome person. So Sharon invites us over for tea. We go to her house and I Walked in the front door and met her and met her husband. And we sit down for tea, and they started talking about how they did these solo camping trips. And I said, there's no way in hell I would ever do that. I'm not sleeping in the woods by myself. Are you crazy? I can't even sleep in my house by myself. And Sharon just starts staring very intensely at me. And she says, why wouldn't you sleep in the woods by yourself? And she starts to get really pushy, like, why can't you be in the woods by yourself? Are you afraid of the dark? Are you afraid of wild animals? Are you afraid of other people? She starts listing all these things. What could you possibly be afraid of? What is it? And I was like, no, not animals, not people, not the dark. No, no. And then finally, she says, then what are you afraid of? I just start bawling, and I don't even know where it comes from. I mean, I was at her house for 20 minutes, and I don't even know her. And I am sitting there bawling my eyes out. And she said, is it her? The woman that came in with you? I just was stunned. And she said, you're afraid of her, aren't you? And she said, you've got to get rid of her. You've got to get her off of you and out of your life. Next thing I know, she's like. She kind of, like, scooted up close to me. There was a part of me that was just so shocked that I was in the middle of all of this, all of a sudden with these people I'd never met. And we went back and forth, and she started saying, where did you first see her? What does she look like? Why is she with you? What does she want from you? When Terry saw her, when he looked at me and saw her, he said something else. He said, your face became her face, but your body also became her body. And she was moving, and she was fighting someone. She was fighting somebody off of her, like somebody was hurting her. It clicked. Someone hurt you. Somebody hurt you badly and ripped you from this world abruptly and left you alone, Left you looking. And when Sharon said, what does she want from you? She wants me to help her. She wants my help. She wants to stop suffering. She wants someone to tell her she's okay and that they want her. I said that, and I just repeated that. You are loved. You are loved. You are loved. You are wanted. You are wanted. You are wanted. I won't let anyone hurt you. You're gonna stop suffering and it was like, gone, split. She just split, gone. It was pretty much instantly I was done with her. She didn't have any more power over me. And I think what I realized, though, was I'd been fighting her and I had been using this sort of violent response to her, and that was just feeding was making it worse. I recently decided to change my career, and I've been volunteering at an emergency department. It's funny, I think of hurt whenever I'm there, Because when people are in pain or desperate or scared for whatever reason, whether it is they're hurt because they had a car accident or they were just attacked by another human being, they all need the same thing. They need someone to say, I'm so sorry you were hurt. I'm so sorry someone hurt you. That was what she. That's what she was seeking. So if I wake up and I feel like something's watching me or if I feel like I see something, I don't get upset because I know it can't hurt me. We hurt ourselves. Other people can hurt us. But spirits, beings, whatever they are, I don't think they have access to that. They can just mess with your head a little.
- [29:26]
A
That's right. No matter who you are, no matter what your plane of existence is, no matter if you are dead or alive, we all need the same thing. Spread your love. Big thanks to Reesa Morligan for being courageous and helping even the scariest of spirits cross over. And thank you so much for sharing your story with the Spooked. A special thanks to Stephanie Fu for bringing Teresa's story our way. This journey, this exploration of mystery, it is just getting started. Spookpodcast.org Be afraid. The team walking this dark path includes Mark Ristich, Nancy Lopez, Eliza Smith, Anna Sussman, Jodie Collie, and Tayo Da Cott. The original Spook Fiend music is by Pat Masin Miller. Original soundscapes for the ray by Leon Morimoto. And though you might hear voices begging you otherwise, you might even see visions imploring you to make another decision. Please ignore what they say. Stay true to what I am telling you. Never ever, Never, never, never. Turn out the light.