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Glen Washington (5:09)

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Rich Symes (8:32)

Spook.

Glen Washington (8:32)

Start now. Wolves, vampires. There are different types of monsters carved from the shadow and different types of prey. And now we're going to cross the pond to a town called Wells in Somerset, England. Rich Symes has lived in Wells his entire life. He works as a contractor renovating houses. When our story starts, Rich has got his work cut out for him with this one place. And I let Rich take it from here. Sweet Sa.

Rich Symes (10:47)

Lovely idyllic little spot. Beautiful. It's a stone built house, two storeys, just below the Tor woods in Wales. From the front of the house you look straight across the cathedral and to the left hand side is the Bishop's Palace. The Bishop's palace is where the main Archbishop of Canterbury lives. It's a basically a castle with a moat around. Behind the house there's a little brook and that brook runs under the road and goes into the moat. Originally it was just a cider barn, so full of apples and there was a press there and they would make cider. The oldest part of the house, dated, I think it was 14 something. 1480 I think it was. So the house had a lot of history. So I got a couple of blokes in. Ted was one of my workmates, he was a stonemason, bricklayer, fantastic chap. We went up and we started pulling the house about, cutting it all, rest of it upstairs. We took all the ceilings down, stripped all the plaster off the walls and we shoveled it all out the window. And we were outside shoveling all that into the skip and this old man walks down the hill walking his dog. I would say he must have been in his early 80s. He had a cap on, brown greeny, tweed jacket. To the right, lads. How you going? Everything's all right, I said, just gutting it out, gonna start putting it all back together soon. Oh, look forward to it lad, look forward to it. Off we walked. It's nice in summertime when we were doing the renovation. So we sit out now, have our breakfast outside at 10 o'clock. Sandwich and a cup of tea and a cake or something. And this old chap, every morning he'd come along and he'd say, all right, lads. How you get on a day? Every morning he'd walk along. One day we didn't see him and I thought, oh, we hadn't seen the old chap today, Ted. He said, no, he hadn't come along today ever. I said, no. I said, that's a bit funny. I said, well, I hope he's all right. And with that, Richard Carter turned up, which was the man who now owns the house. And we were just chatting away. Richard was asking how we're getting on and that. And I said, all right, too bad. I said, we haven't been able to give our update today to the old chap walking along his dog. And he said, what do you mean, old chap? I said, well, chap will walk along his dog every day. We said we had the last three weeks. He'd come in for an update and see how everything's going on. He said, what did he look like? And I said, well, I said, you were a shortish chap, white hair and brown coat and a bit of a. Had a trophy hat on, walking a little Jack Russell dog. And he said, you sure? And I said, yeah. Richard Carter looked at us a bit funny and he went off and we went back to work. About half an hour later, Richard comes up the stairs with this picture. It's a loose photograph. It was of this chap with his arm round his wife and the dog. And the backdrop to the picture was the Bishop's palace wall, which is behind them. And Richard says, is this him? And I said, yeah, yeah. See? He said, are you sure you've been talking to him? I said, yes, I've been told we'd talk to him every day for the last three weeks. He said, he died 10 years ago. I was absolutely gobsmacked, and so was Ted. He was somebody who lived down the road when Richard Carter grew up in that house, which was his dad's, what we were renovating. He obviously knew this old man for many years. He knew his wife, he knew the dog, and for the dog to be there with him, that's the bit that I can't even get my head around, even now, because the dog never died with him. It spooked Ted more than me because he was a bit of a. Ted's a bit of a wimp. But it did spook me and it was such a surreal feeling.

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Rich Symes (15:59)

But that's not all that happened in that house. Ted and I, we were working late because he wanted to move in before Christmas and we had a lot to do. So we were working till 9 to 10 o'clock at night some nights just to try and accelerate things on one night we were putting the batons down on the concrete floor in the living room. It was dark because there was no power on in the house whatsoever. So we were working with battery lights, battery halogens. Ted was cutting the batons to length and I was screwing them down using the SDS hammer drill to drill down into the concrete. So it's a very noisy job. I was on my hands and knees and I'm drilling away and I had this feeling someone was trying to push me down to the floor. Like someone was sitting on my back. And I thought, what's he doing to Plonker? I thought Ted was messing about. And I said to Ted, I said, come on, don't mess about. I get this done, it's getting late now. He said, I'm not doing anything. And I looked up and he was nowhere near me. You know, there's no way he could reach me from where he was stood to. Not like he's Inspector Gadget. I thought, my mind's playing tricks from here. Anyway, I carried on screwing down and then it started happening again. I was being pushed down to the floor. Well, this is weird. I didn't know who it was, what it was, but I knew we weren't alone. And I turned around and said, excuse my language. Bugger off. Leave me alone. I'm trying to get this done. I want to go home. Wherever you are, leave me alone. And with that I could smell the most beautiful rose scented smell I've ever smelt in my life. It was absolutely divine. I said to Ted, can you smell that? He said, yeah. And he said, you sure that ain't Mrs. Carter come to have a look? I said, no one can come in, Ted. I locked the door. There's bolted from the inside. And that really put the spooks up Ted. His color started draining. He said, are you like this? He said, dickie. He said, I can't stay here, not tonight. We gotta go. I said, well, let's get these last two battens down and then we'll call it a night. I carried on screwing the last two down. And that was it. We just packed up and left. A couple days passed. We had a toiler come in and we needed to get the ensuite bathroom plaster boarded upstairs in the main master bedroom. So, Ted, we're going to have to work late in the night because we need to get this done. About half past eight at night it was pitch black outside and not many cars about. No electric in the house still. So we were on torch lights again. Ted and I were working away. He was shaking the measurements out and I was cutting the board and he was screwing it up. I was cutting this bit of plasterboard and he called out some measurements and I looked up the bedroom door, looked straight onto the landing, straight on the top of the stairs and I seen a man stood there, but in a black cape, a black pointed hat. I can make out the creases like a fold in the cloak. And I can see his feet, boots, black boots, but I can't see a face. The face is dark. I was gobsmacked to see anybody stood there and I said, oh, hello, can I help you? There's no answer. So I looked down to get the halogen up to turn it round to the doorway so I could see who it was. And as I looked back up with the halogen, there was nobody there. But I caught a glimpse of his hat going down the stairs. Boys ran. I said, ted, somebody's in the house. So Ted come running out and I said, you locked that front door. He said, yeah. I said, how the hell do they get in? I said, quick, come on, let's go and see who it is. So he ran down the stairs with his halogen light. He looked round and looked around the house and there's nobody there. And Ted, by that point, well, I mean, Ted was absolutely bricking it. He was like shaking, he was shaking. He says, f this dick, I'm going. I said, you ain't leaving without me. I said, I can tell you that now. So we're staying here and getting this done. So we worked 100 mile an hour and we decked plasterboard went out faster than it ever did in its life. When we left, I locked in front door and Ted was right behind me, firstly touching me. Normally he ran out, ran out of his V pretty quick, you know, left me to it. But he didn't that night he stuck close to me and I was quite glad of that, if I got to be honest. I was quite glad the fact that Ted was so close. We walked out that gate and we were looking behind us the whole time looking at every window as we walked along, I was feeling very uneasy thinking, what's in there? Does it mean there's any harm? Probably about three weeks later, we were all sat in the kitchen. It was November time, so we had these halogen heaters right in front of us. I was eating me Kit Kats and we were chatting. All of a sudden I could feel this cold. It sent shivers down my spine. I thought, well, how can I have shivers in my spine? I'm sat right in front of a blooming heater. So I put my hand out in front of me and it felt freezing, like absolutely stone ice cold right in front of the heater. I thought, that's blooming hot. I said, here, Ted, come over and fill this. I said, put your hand there. I said, it's warm there. He said, yeah. I said, put your hand down there. He put there. He said, oh my God. What is it? What is it, Dicky? What is it? I said, I don't know. I said, but whatever it is, it's blooming freezing. I started getting really cold and all I wanted to do was warm up. I just said, just bugger off, leave us alone. I'm trying to eat me KitKat. Go away. And with that it stopped and the cold went. That was it. Ted said, what's Brent at word, Dicky? I said, I don't know. I don't know what it were, Ted. I said, but twere definitely there, weren't it? He said, yeah, I could feel it. So anyway, we laughed about it and just carried on. We said, oh, well, it's what it is, Ted. And he said, yeah, yeah, it'll be all right. Be all right. We'll stick together young. And he said. I said, all right, we're stuck together. And Ted didn't leave my side that much that day. And then about lunchtime, Mrs. Carter turns up. She called in. She said, rich, Rich, can you come and do me a favor a minute? I said, well. She said, can you come and hold the dog for me? He won't go in the house. She was dog sitting for a friend. Golden Labrador dog, beautiful dog. I said, what do you mean won't go in the house? He won't go in. I can't pull it in. He keeps pulling back. He won't go in the house. I said, I wonder why. She said to me, what do you think of the house? I said, lovely, innit? Beautiful house. That's not what I mean, she said. I said, well, what do you mean? She said, what do you think of the house? I said, lovely. I said, well, be when it's done. She said, no, what do you think in the house? And she was looking at me in a real stern face. She said, the dog won't go in the house. Why? Well, I said, there have been a few things that we've had happen. She said, don't tell me. And that was it. She got the dog and she walked off. I thought, oh dear, I've upset the upper cart now. She comes back about an hour later. She said, right, I've got a lady from Glastonbury who's a spiritualist. She's coming on Wednesday. I want you gone at three o'clock. I'll pay you to five. I said, okay. Said, she's going to come in and see exactly what's in this house. And I said, are you sure you want to do this? She said, I've heard stories, what Harold used to say, which was Richard's dad, I want to know what's going on. I said, all right, 3:00 Wednesday. She come round, come on lads, I want you out, this lady's coming. So we went on at the time, I thought, oh yeah, right. O, you know, I mean it was, it was a lady from Glastonbury. I mean, Glastonbury is full of hippies. But I do know as to what we experienced in that house. So I was interested to see what this lady turned up.

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Rich Symes (27:20)

Thursday morning. Richard Carter was there early. He said, I won't tell you anything, I'll let my wife tell you. I said, okay. It was about 11 o'clock. She turns up. Mrs. Carter told me, lady come from Glastonbury. She went in and she put these stones around and incense sticks around and all these things. They were in there for about an hour. And the lady said that there was three spirits in the house that she could actually talk to and contact and resonate with. So the lady explained that there was a Victorian lady in the living room. The medium lady said that the Victorian lady said he was making a noise. And I didn't like it. And I was telling him to stop. I was pushing him down to the ground and he would not stop. And then Mrs. Carter told me. This Victorian lady heard me say, what's that smell, Ted? Her perfume was the smell. She had rose perfume on. I was absolutely gobsmacked when she was telling me. I get goosebumps on the back of my neck, the hairs go up, because I never told Mrs. Carter nothing. And I looked at her and I said, oh, my God. She said, well, that was the first instance, she said, and there was more people in the house. She said, when you were upstairs, you seen a man, didn't you? And I said, how the hell do you know that? She said, the lady told me. And do you know who that man was? I said, I ain't got a blooming clue. I said, because it put the wind up her somewhat chronic. And she said, that man asked the medium lady, why was that man standing in my mum's bed? The story is he was a man that looked after all the valuables in the cathedral because the soldiers used to rob and pillage all the gold and all the valuables out of the churches. I'm talking Civil War time, six, seven, 800 years prior. And he used to come back from the cathedral to check on his mum because she was poorly in bed. And that's what he was doing that night. And where I stood to was her bed. And the reason he had no face, because he was defaced. Apparently that was his punishment for hiding the gold. The soldiers, when they caught him, they cut his face off. I was blown away then, and I couldn't believe it. Nor had Ted. We were stood there with our mouths open in sheer amazement. This lady, she must have some merit, because to come up with these stories, nobody else knew what we'd seen. Then she said, right, you were in the kitchen and you were eating chocolate one morning. I thought, right, well, you know me too well. You know. I thought, right, okay, yeah, fair enough, yeah. I was eating chocolate and she said, and something was cold next to you, and you told it to bugger off, didn't you? And Ted looked at me and his face, and I looked at her head. She said, the little boy told the lady, he said, he made me upset because he swore at me I wanted some of his chocolate and he wouldn't let me have any. And I said, little boy, how old? And she said to me, six, seven? And I said, well, what is a little boy doing in there? And she said, he died. He drowned. In the brook behind. I felt so bad, I felt so emotional, I felt so guilty. And I said, I'm so sorry, I'm so. She's not here now, she's gone. I said, what do you mean he's gone? She said the lady asked them all to leave. She said, it's time for you all to go now. They all lived there at different times. And she said, you don't need to be here no more. You could go on to your resting place and you can rest in peace. So we carried on working in the house and from that day onwards the house felt different. It felt light, it felt fresh. So I went to Shep de Mullet one night to Ted to take some money out to him because he wasn't with me on the Friday when we got paid. So I took his money up to him on the Friday night, come back down over past the house and it was black, pitch black because this was quite late at night. And there was a light on in the landing, top of the stairs there was a window, landing, window. The light was shining in that window. I thought, oh, we left the halogen on. So anyway, I went on in the house, no light. I thought, that's weird. Well, perhaps the battery ran out, went out, locked the house, went back, got in the van, drove back up the hill, turned around in the lay by, come back down, light was on. I thought, but how the hell can this light be on in there? I've just checked, there's nothing on, there's nothing in there. So I stopped and I went in again, no light. I was absolutely scared witless. I felt sheer panic inside me. I felt the hairs go up on back of my neck and my heart's beginning to race, thinking I gotta get out of here, I cannot be in this house on my own. So I went down the stairs, I locked the front door behind me. I got in my van, I looked at that house, I knew that there's something still there. We carried on, got the house finished. Mrs. Carter and Richard moved into it. I thought all was good. Within two months the house was on the market. She wouldn't live there. She didn't like it there, she wouldn't live there. And that's the last idea about that house. They sold it and the people living in there. Now I've always wanted to stop and ask, do they get any feelings? But I don't want to put the wind up and I don't want to frighten people. But I do wonder, I drive past that house and I look at it with caution. Even though. And I look at it thinking, I wonder if it's still there.

Glen Washington (35:57)

Now, Rich, if you do decide to someday stop to get out to knock on that door, please, please, please, please let us know what you find on the other side. Until then, big love from Spooked. That story was scouted by Sasha Wilson. The original score composed by Yari Bundy. It was produced by Zoe Frigno. Now, do you imagine that because you've made it through the season of the Wolf that congratulations are in order? What do you suppose that Spook will not return to the Shadowland each and every week? Huh? Do you think the monsters are afraid? They are not. Spook continues to walk down the dark path each and every week. Tell someone you care about. Cause that's the only way they'll know. And listen. Listen to me. If you have a secret spook story that you've always been afraid to tell, tell me.

Rich Symes (37:13)

Spooked.

Glen Washington (37:14)

Snapjudgment.org because there is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. Spooked is brought to you by the team that never picks up random phone calls from numbers they do not recognize. Except for Mark Ristich. No matter who it is, no matter what time of night, Mark always picks up from the very first ring running besides the wolf team Spook. Davey Kim Zoe Ferrigno Eric Yanez Teo Dicott Marissa Dodge Miles Lassie Doug Stewart Elliot Lightfoot Paulina Creeke Juan Diego Beltran Sasha Wilson Dan Yashinsky. The Spook theme song is by Pat Mesiti Miller. My name is Glen Washington, and it's become popular to say that there are two states of being. Two types of people. The hunter and the prey. And like everything else that is overly simplistic, this is both incorrect and correct at the same time. For during the season of the wolf, the weak may find their teeth grow sharp in the shadow. The prey suddenly hungry for the hunt, while the hunter discovers that they are now the prey. And you must listen closely, because more often than not, the beast you're running from wears your own face. We are everything all at once, at the same time. And if you need a reminder, a beacon, a guide to tether you between the here and the there. The only thing I know that sometimes works is to never ever, never, never, never, ever, ever, never ever turn out the lights.

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