Uneasy Rider

Summary

Spooked: Uneasy Rider – Episode Summary

Podcast Information

• Title: Spooked
• Host: Glynn Washington (KQED and Snap Studios)
• Episode: Uneasy Rider
• Release Date: March 7, 2025
• Description: Spooked delves into true-life supernatural stories, narrated firsthand by individuals who often struggle to believe their own experiences. In partnership with KQED & PRX and hosted by Glynn Washington, the podcast offers a captivating blend of fresh tales and previously exclusive episodes available to Luminary subscribers.

---

Introduction to "Uneasy Rider"

The episode opens with a haunting narration by Sapphire, setting an eerie tone:

“There's a cat, there's a cradle, there's a silver tomb. There's a deep dark hole. By the light of the moon, we know she will rise, but we don't know when. Our mistress returns again and the ceremony can begin. You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned.”
[00:04]

This introduction primes listeners for a night filled with mysterious and supernatural encounters.

---

Listener Stories

1. The Grandparents' Secret and Burial Wish

Sapphire recounts a poignant and unsettling story shared by a listener named Andrew:

• Setting the Scene: Andrew describes visiting his friend's grandparents in Ann Arbor, Michigan. These visits were warm, centered around home-cooked meals prepared by the grandfather. However, underlying tension was evident between the grandparents.

  “They smiled fondly whenever they looked at their grandson. They even smiled when they looked at me. But when they looked at each other, their eyes narrowed, their mouths grew tight like you'd almost touched the shards of anger, of fury.”
  [03:07]

• The Foreboding Warning: During one visit, amidst the sounds of klezmer music and the aroma of frying potato pancakes, the grandfather solemnly warned:

  “Don't bury me next to that woman.”
  [03:07]

  Andrew admits his confusion and inability to respond, instead opting to appear simple and unaware.

• Tragic Fulfillment: Years later, Andrew reconnects with his friend and learns that both grandparents passed within six weeks of each other. Despite his absence, they were buried together in the family plot, igniting feelings of guilt and regret in his friend for not heeding the grandfather’s wishes.

  “The thought of them lying trapped next to each other for the rest of time makes me think that perhaps we need to take a person's last wish more seriously.”
  [05:15]

2. A Ghostly Encounter on a Haunted Highway

The second narrative involves an unnamed woman who shares her chilling experience during a motorcycle ride:

• The Accident Scene: While driving on a treacherous, winding mountain road surrounded by towering pine trees and precipitous cliffs, Andrew and the unnamed woman witness a motorcycle crash.

  “We see a large tan cargo van stopped, and there is a motorcycle crashed right in front of it. The crash was, I would say, maybe 100, 125ft in front of us. You could see us laying down on its side.”
  [07:44]

• Supernatural Manifestation: Minutes after the crash, as EMTs arrive and attend to the scene, the unnamed woman observes a haunting apparition:

  “I saw this woman standing and then starts walking towards my husband like a floating, walking type of entity. I couldn't see her face. It was not clear.”
  [11:15]

  The figure, recognizable by her full leather motorcycle gear and a vibrant helmet, approached them asking for help before vanishing mysteriously.

• Emotional Aftermath: The encounter leaves a lasting impact on the woman, who later learns through online research that the woman involved in the crash had hinted at personal struggles, possibly an affair, before her untimely death.

  “I had this sense of connection with her and I also was wondering why she had asked my husband for help.”
  [17:57]

---

Intertwining Fates and the Cemetery Connection

Andrew's Role as a Cemetery Caretaker

Shortly after the motorcycle accident, Andrew begins a new job as a cemetery caretaker. His duties involve overseeing numerous burials, a role that gradually desensitizes him to death—until an unsettling connection resurfaces:

• Encounter with the Deceased: On his fifteenth day, Andrew is assigned to bury a younger woman, tragically mirroring the same individual involved in the earlier mountain accident. The cemetery's routine veneer is shattered as Andrew grapples with the coincidence.

  “I couldn't fathom the coincidence of staring at this young woman for such a long time and then being one of three people that were going to be the last ones to ever see her before she's laid to rest forever.”
  [17:57]

• Persistent Anomalies: Andrew notices unusual occurrences at her gravesite, including vandalism efforts to obscure her name and personal items left as tokens. Driven by a sense of responsibility and curiosity, he takes it upon himself to maintain the grave's sanctity.

  “I felt a personal responsibility to do that.”
  [20:49]

• Strengthening Beliefs: Despite considering the events as mere coincidences, Andrew acknowledges the thin line between skepticism and belief, especially in supporting his wife, who experiences paranormal phenomena.

  “I need the unexplainable to be explainable, but at the same time, I'll never tell my wife that I don't believe her when she tells me she sees something or experiences something.”
  [22:50]

---

Insights and Reflections

The episode masterfully weaves two narratives that intersect through themes of untold secrets, unresolved tensions, and supernatural connections. The listeners are invited to ponder the thin veil between life and death, the consequences of ignored wishes, and the lingering presence of the departed.

Notable Reflections:

• Respecting Final Wishes: Andrew's friend's guilt highlights the importance of honoring the deceased's last requests, suggesting that ignoring them may have unforeseen implications.

  “Perhaps we need to take a person's last wish more seriously.”
  [05:15]

• Supernatural Connections: The unnamed woman's and Andrew's stories converge to suggest that unresolved emotions and neglected wishes can manifest in eerie, unexplained ways, bridging the living and the dead.

  “It's pushing the limits of my ability to explain it as a coincidence.”
  [22:50]

---

Conclusion

"Uneasy Rider" encapsulates the essence of Spooked by presenting haunting tales that blur the lines between reality and the supernatural. Through personal testimonies, the episode underscores the enduring impact of unspoken emotions and the mysteries that linger beyond death.

Listeners are left to contemplate the unseen forces that connect us and the stories that compel us to remember and honor those who have passed.

---

Key Quotes with Timestamps:

• Grandfather’s Warning:

  “Don't bury me next to that woman.”
  [03:07]

• Andrew on Guilt:

  “The thought of them lying trapped next to each other for the rest of time makes me think that perhaps we need to take a person's last wish more seriously.”
  [05:15]

• Unnamed Woman on the Apparition:

  “I saw this woman standing and then starts walking towards my husband like a floating, walking type of entity.”
  [11:15]

• Andrew on Coincidence and Belief:

  “It's pushing the limits of my ability to explain it as a coincidence.”
  [22:50]

---

Final Thoughts

"Uneasy Rider" serves as a compelling episode that delves deep into the human psyche and the mysteries that lie beyond our understanding. By intertwining heartfelt narratives with eerie supernatural elements, Spooked continues to engage and intrigue its audience, leaving them both spooked and reflective.

Transcript

[Sapphire]

There's a cat, there's a cradle, there's a silver tomb. There's a deep dark hole. By the light of the moon, we know she will rise, but we don't know when. Our mistress returns again and the ceremony can begin. You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned.

[Andrew]

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[Micah]

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[Andrew]

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[Micah]

For the qualifying trading don't wait, call.

[Sapphire]

Click or visit any Xfinity store today.

[Doug Stewart]

Big news in Spookland 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.

[Sapphire]

Do you know somebody who needs to.

[Doug Stewart]

Be on the Spoof 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. [e-mail] because there is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. [e-mail] and don't turn out the lights.

[Micah]

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[Sapphire]

I have a buddy whose grandparents live right outside of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I went to school. And I went with him occasionally to meet with them, to check in and frankly, to enjoy some home cooked meals that the grandfather, not the grandmother, prepared.

[Doug Stewart]

Oh, you wouldn't want to eat my cooking. She'd laugh.

[Sapphire]

We'd feast on warm rye bread dunked in chicken soup, borscht, all manner of things I'd never heard of. It was nice, really nice. But there was this thing. They each smiled fondly whenever they looked at their grandson. They even smiled when they looked at me. But when they looked at each other, their eyes narrowed, their mouths grew tight like you'd almost touched the shards of anger, of fury. And one day in the kitchen, listening to klezmer music, frying up potato pancakes, the grandfather says to my friend, don't bury me next to that woman. And my buddy pretends not to hear. So the grandfather turns to me, a stranger in their home, and says, don't let them bury me next to that woman. And I don't know how to respond to this. I don't. So just kind of look around like I'm simple. But he says it again. And every time we visit he says something similar. Don't let them bury me next to that woman. Do not let them bury me next to that woman. I graduate university, move to the other side of the globe for a while, and life happens. Till almost four years later, on a trip, I'm finally able to reconnect with my buddy at Chicago's Green Mill bar. Drinks, food, of course, I ask about his grandparents. He tells me they both passed within six weeks of each other the previous year. Brother, I'm so sorry. And I don't ask for this part, but he tells me anyway. Maybe because I'm the only person who can tell. He says, you know, they buried them next to each other on a family plot. And I can tell just by the look in his face, the guilt, the shame that he didn't have anything to do with that. I know he tried to stop his uncle and his aunts who insisted. But the thought of them lying trapped next to each other for the rest of time makes me think that perhaps we need to take a person's last wish more seriously. More seriously? Spook Star now.

[Andrew]

Sa.

[Sapphire]

Now lets say you're driving down that haunted highway and you pass the ghostly hitchhiker. You're not gonna pick him up, are you? Because honestly, I'm of two minds on this question. Because it's bad luck to leave a traveler stranded, but sometimes it's bad luck to pick one up. Spoot Spoof.

[Unnamed Woman]

About five or six years ago, my husband and I were driving up the mountain where we lived.

[Andrew]

It's a national forest, so it's a densely populated forest that they just made a road in a couple small towns in the middle of. It's just a two lane road that is incredibly windy. You have, I don't know, 100 foot tall pine trees on the passenger side and then anywhere from 50 foot to 800 foot cliffs on the opposite side. All in all a very dangerous road just because of how many people are there and coming up there and doing stupid things, driving Way too fast.

[Unnamed Woman]

He was the one driving, and I was in the passenger seat.

[Andrew]

And we'd seen a few motorcycle riders coming down at a much higher speed than is safe. I'm not going to put their speed under 80 miles an hour coming around corners. If you ever watch motorcycle racing where they're dragging their knees across the road, that's exactly what these two guys were doing. And we got maybe two thirds of the way up the mountain, and as we're coming up, all of a sudden the cars in front of us stop on a real sharp curve. We see a large tan cargo van stopped, and there is a motorcycle crashed right in front of it. The crash was, I would say, maybe 100, 125ft in front of us. You could see us laying down on its side. It kind of dawned on both of us that there was a person laying there.

[Unnamed Woman]

So she was lying there with her motorcycle helmet just right next to her. It looked like kind of a young boy's shark helmet. Very colorful and bright, like a happy helmet that a kid would have.

[Andrew]

After about three minutes of sitting there and the person not moving and nobody really trying to tend to the person laying there, like, it made a lot of sense to both of us that we could tell that this person was not alive anymore. It was a moment of trying to not get myself freaked out either as a motorcycle rider. It wasn't maybe five, seven minutes after we came to the scene of the crash, and we had passed two motorcyclists coming down the mountain. As we were driving up, they came up really, really fast on the wrong side of the road and got off their bikes frantically.

[Unnamed Woman]

It seemed to be her friends or rider friends. They looked completely devastated and were on their phones. They were just kind of pacing back and forth, obviously very distraught and in shock.

[Andrew]

It was a long time before the ambulance got there. The ambulance rolled up and it parked maybe 50ft in front of us. They couldn't get too much closer to it.

[Unnamed Woman]

We couldn't go around or anything, so we had no choice but to sit there.

[Andrew]

It felt like hours and hours and hours as we sat there and just stared at a dead woman on the road laying in front of the vehicle that she struck. People were getting out of their cars and walking up. And I actually yelled at some people not to start taking pictures just because people don't have any humanity left.

[Unnamed Woman]

They covered up her body. They weren't trying to rush anywhere. You know, there was no rush to lift her from the ground. Like you would normally see when they're Trying to rush somebody to the hospital. I turn around to check on how many cars had been lined up behind us. But then when I turned back around, I saw that the body bag was completely flat. It looked like her body had disappeared. I looked inside the ambulance and there was nothing in there. So I'm like, okay, that's weird.

[Andrew]

She turned and she asked me if I noticed the body bag was flat. She had panic on her face. It was a concern that I wasn't normally used to. And I kind of scoffed. I looked at it. I was like, what are you talking about? I could still see the woman underneath.

[Unnamed Woman]

The body bag in my head. I was like, you sure? Because it was flat. I felt like I was going crazy because he's still seeing the shape of it and I don't see anything. Ten seconds later, maybe 20ft away from the car, off to the side, I saw this woman standing and then starts walking towards my husband like a floating, walking type of entity. I couldn't see her face. It was not clear. And I knew it was the same woman that I had seen laying on the ground because she was wearing a full leather outfit, the motorcycle outfit. There was a cartoonish helmet that she had picked up. I just didn't know what to do at that point or what to think at that point. I didn't know what it was going to do.

[Doug Stewart]

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.

[Sapphire]

Do you know somebody who needs to.

[Doug Stewart]

Be on the spooked live stage? Are you somebody who needs to be on the spooked live stage? Let me know. [e-mail] Tell me about your relationship to the shadow, to the mystery unfolded over time. The twists, the turns, the shocks. [e-mail] because there is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. [e-mail] and don't turn out the lights.

[Andrew]

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[Sapphire]

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[Andrew]

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[Micah]

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[Unnamed Woman]

I was started to sweat. The back of my neck was burning and that's when I said start the car, roll your window up.

[Andrew]

I'm like why do you want the ac? Because I'm not seeing anything.

[Unnamed Woman]

The woman put her body through the window and got in front of my husband's face and grabbed his shirt and whispered, please help me. She sounded desperate, worried about something. Please help me. She just disappeared and I looked at the body bag and it's as if she never left. The shape was there again. I was like, did I just imagine this whole thing? Of course at the same time I was sad, incredibly sad and just thinking about her family and the news that they were about to get.

[Andrew]

So after what seemed like forever, the EMTs finally decided to let vehicles go past and we finally got home. For at least a week, it was pretty much all we could talk about.

[Unnamed Woman]

I didn't talk to my husband about, you know, seeing a figure or anything like that because he's a non believer. So every time I talk about something paranormal or spiritual, he just like kind of brushes it off like, oh okay. But I was curious about the woman. I had this sense of connection with her and I also was wondering why she had asked my husband for help. So I googled the motorcycle accident at this place, at this date. And so got her full name. Her Facebook page just came up right away. And I found a forum where she was chatting with motorcycle crew or something. And she had talked about that day that she was going for a ride and she was just waiting for her husband, quote unquote husband to leave. And then she was gonna go. She said something like, don't forget, I'm a new rider. And they're like, oh, you'll be fine. It's this mountain. I just started to piece together that maybe she was having an affair with one of them. Just because she had put husband in quotation marks. That's what I had suspected anyway. It did feel intimate looking up information about her on the Internet. I think it felt like since she asked for help, maybe I could find out what she was talking about.

[Andrew]

So a few days later, I had started a new job. I was a cemetery caretaker at one of the biggest cemeteries in the country. I think they had a little over 100,000 people that had been buried there over the past 30 or 40 years. My job was to bury people. It was 25 to 50 burials a day. We load the casket onto a lowering device. The machine lowers itself at a gradual pace. And then we have to use a backhoe to put the 1000 pound concrete lid back onto it. We would fill the hole in and then we would tamp it down. And then we had a 175 pound gas tamper that would sound like a small jet engine and it would smack all the dirt down. About 10 days after I started this job, I got assigned to a certain part of the cemetery that I'd never worked before. I had no training in. So I was a little confused. But I was still a new person. So I went and did what I was told. It's Southern California, it's 100 degrees out in the middle of the summer. And we had a fairly busy day. It was maybe 35 people that we had to bury. I was soaked in sweat, covered in dirt. I was ready to go home. The very last burial of the day. And they brought out the hearse. And as we were unloading the casket, the director for the ceremony, the burial ceremony, he told me that it was a younger woman with two kids had died in a motorcycle accident. I asked him who it was, and he showed me the pamphlet from the ceremony. And sure enough, it was the same woman that we had encountered on the mountain that had been killed in the motorcycle accident. As I'm lowering the casket, I was emotional about It I started looking around, and I started looking at the people that were out there. And I felt like I should talk to people, let them know I saw what happened. But it wasn't about me. You bury 25 people a day, five days a week. You start to become desensitized to the idea of death. You don't have a connection anymore. But as we were loading this woman in, there was this connection that I hadn't felt since I had started there. I couldn't fathom the coincidence of staring at this young woman for such a long time and then being one of three people that were going to be the last ones to ever see her before she's laid to rest forever. We weren't allowed to have phones out there. As soon as I got back to our break room, I immediately text Micah, and I actually sent her a picture of the ceremony pamphlet.

[Unnamed Woman]

I was like, no way. No freaking way.

[Andrew]

Over the next few weeks, I felt a weird draw to watched the grave. And it was pretty much the first thing I did when I would get to work. I would make a pass by the grave to see if anything had happened to it each day. It was about a week later, and I noticed people coming up and visiting the grave site of the woman. And I didn't think anything of it. That's fairly normal for a cemetery. So after the people left the grave, I kind of just walked past it, and I noticed that they had left trash on it, crumbled up piece of paper that didn't have anything on it, and a bag of chips. So I picked it up. I felt a personal responsibility to do that. Over the next few weeks, I never really noticed anybody coming to the grave, but I felt like it was important for me to go by. One time, I found the last name of it covered in duct tape. And then somebody used some kind of material, like chalk or something like that, and like, scratched over the last name. My first reaction is anger. And then the next one was sheer confusion because I never found that on anybody else's grave in the entire cemetery. So we cleaned it, and I felt that if anybody was going to do it, I guess it should have been me. I don't think I would have been able to stopped thinking about it. I had to go make sure that this grave wasn't messed with. And I remember I told Micah each time.

[Unnamed Woman]

Looking back, I feel like she had asked him to pay respects to her body and her graveyard, where maybe she knew that no one else will. Maybe he didn't hear it, and he doesn't believe it, but I think that it got to him somehow.

[Andrew]

It's pushing the limits of my ability to explain it as a coincidence. I think there's a slim possibility there's more to it, but for me to make sense of it to myself rather than just sit around and wonder, I just chalk it up as a coincidence. I need the unexplainable to be explainable, but at the same time, I'll never tell my wife that I don't believe her when she tells me she sees something or experiences something. If she has that gift, then I fully support the idea that she sees and feels things that I never will.

[Doug Stewart]

Big news in Spookland 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.

[Sapphire]

Do you know somebody who needs to.

[Doug Stewart]

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. [e-mail] because there is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. [e-mail] and don't turn out the lights.

[Andrew]

I remember riding the motorcycle down the mountain after we saw the accident. And every single ride I thought of that woman. And then it didn't take too much longer for me to just give up.

[Unnamed Woman]

Riding motorcycle was a huge relief to me because I was always worried about it.

[Andrew]

I really do love the experience of riding a motorcycle, but it's just not worth it anymore.

[Sapphire]

Thank you Micah and Andrew for sharing your story with the Spoot. That story comes to us from the podcast Stories with Sapphire.

[Doug Stewart]

Sapphire's podcast is chock full of scary.

[Sapphire]

Stories we think you're going to love.

[Doug Stewart]

We'll put a link to her show.

[Sapphire]

In our show notes. The original score for that story was by Doug Stewart. It was produced by Ann Ford. If you walk the backwoods of Michigan, you can step through forests so thick, brambles so tight, it feels like you might be the first person ever to set foot through this land. But then you look down and see that you're pushing through the remains of a homestead, passing by the crumbling casings of a well. You start searching, getting your bearings, figuring out where the back of that long ago structure may have stood. Focusing your gaze on the lay of the ground, you just may find one, two even more. Nothing so formal or grand as a tombstone. No. Often just a rock, a faded name marked on it with some simple tool etched with hands unaccustomed to this type of labor. Estelle Mead, Jasper Milroy Collins, Bartholomew Swallow, Flossie McNair, Imogene Alton. Names.

[Doug Stewart]

The disforest these trees that rain tried.

[Sapphire]

To erase from the stone standing sentry over this consecrated place. But them that set them did not mean for the names to be forgotten so easily. So they chiseled deep into the rock, patient, deliberate, so that even if they or their children or their children's children could no longer tend the sight themselves, the remembering would still be seen on the stone, would still be witnessed, would still be felt by anyone happening to wander through these Michigan woods. I know, I know.

[Doug Stewart]

We walk this path together.

[Sapphire]

Be afraid. And do you yourself possess an inexplicable power of which no one will believe? Well, try me. Tell me.

[Doug Stewart]

Tell us all about it.

[Sapphire]

Email us your story spookednapjudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. Let us know spookednapjudgment.org and tell the dark side you spooked with some spooked gear. The T shirt of your dream available right [e-mail] and remember, there is so much more. If you like your storytelling under the bright light of day, under the glorious rays of the sanctified sunshine, listen to our sister program, the Amazing Stupendous Snap Judgment Podcast.

[Doug Stewart]

It is storytelling with Avery Being.

[Sapphire]

Cuckoos are created by the team that knows full well not to trust their own shadow.

[Doug Stewart]

Except for Mark Ristich.

[Sapphire]

He asked his shadow for lottery numbers. Anna Sussman, Liza Smith, Chris Hambrick, Annie Nguyen, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Davy Kim, Renzo Goriot, Teo Dakot, Marissa Dodge, Zoe Fergnau, Tiffany Deliza, Ann Ford, Doug Stewart and Isaiah Sims. The spook theme song is by Pat Mesiti Miller. My name is from Washington. And they never tell you that you hold tremendous power, that every thought, every word you utter is a command to the universe to which the universe must respond, whether you know it or not. That which you fear, that which you.

[Doug Stewart]

Despise, that which you detest is exactly.

[Sapphire]

What you give energy to and the only antidote, the only protection available from amplifying our own dark energy is to never, ever, ever, ever, never ever turn out the lie.