Morbid - Episode 516: Listener Tales 80

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

It is Listener Tales 80 and this installment is brought to you by HEROES with the spookiest of tales… A decomposing body, florescent yellow fluid, possessed toys, a baby seeing ghost, and a man in black. These are brought to you by you, for you, from you and all about you so if you have a listener tale please go ahead and send it to [e-mail] with "Listener Tale" somewhere in the subject line :)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

You're listening to a morbid network podcast. I'm going deep into my wife's family history, digging up the cold case of her murdered great-grandmother. And did I mention that I'm looking into whether the murderer was actually the beloved family patriarch? Binge all episodes of Ghost Story, add free right now on OneDrewPlus. Hey weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Elena, I didn't have a microphone in front of my face, so that would have been weird. We've been doing this for five years,

and I still don't remember to put the microphone in front of my face. And this is morbid. Yeah, it is. It's listening to Dells. So it's brought to you by you for you from you and all about you and it's Lucy, mother, fucking, goosey up in here. It is Lucy and it is very goosey. And I have the microphone in front of my face now, so we can do this. And I'm gonna start this listener tails

because I'm excited for this, this tail subject, subject line. Thank you for trying to help me out, I appreciate that. I will always try. I will always try. I will always try. I will always try. I will always.

So this one's called listener tail Tail Decomp on Demaray Drive with a eat for ash. It's gonna say, don't you forget it. Don't you forget it. But anytime I see a decomp on something, I'm like, huh, you're like, tell me all about it. It's happening there. Hold me.

So this says, well, hello, my spookalicious ladies of all things morbid and spoopy. Have I got a Listener Tail for you? I'm confident we'll inspire you to eat yourself right out of my childhood memories and back right back to the safety of wherever you are listening from. Be prepared to grab your butts and secure your titties. We're about to have some full-body chills.

Let's go, brother. But first, a little pretail gushing. A big shout out to my oldest daughter, Meg. Yes, you can use her first name and my first name. Thank you. Thank you. Your name is Heidi. Heidi introduced me to your podcast back on April 15th, 2023.

During a short three hour, a short three hour road trip. That's not short. That's pretty short road trip. I was going to say, for a girl's day out shopping. The first episode I heard was the one where you stumbled across a video on the dark web that pictured feet moving around with a suitcase leaking black fluid. And when you went back to find it again, the video was gone. Oh, yes.

Remember those TikToks? Yes. Fuck, I forgot about those. What was the name? I can't remember. No, me either. Damn it. What did you love to see?

Then the episode of the killer lady clown who shot her lover's wife in the face. You literally have me at Hello Weirdos. I've been hooked ever since. Then the episode of the killer lady clown who shot her lover's wife in the face, you literally have me at Hello Weirdos. I've been hooked ever since. I went back to episode one and have since finished episode 347, the Jack the Ripper series, all year in a good place. Yeah, you are. All those episodes in under four months, damn. As most of us hooked on morbid weirdos tend to do, I listened to you as I cooked, I cooked clean, fold laundry, drive around, et cetera, et cetera. And, sound your podcast is my favorite.

And, I've told the dozen or so fellow true crime fans to check it out. Thank you. Now, to my spoopy story, I've withheld the names of my family members for their privacy. However, I've listed their names and resources for your eyes only at the end of the tale and my resources page.

Wow, look at you. I know. In the event, your curiosity inspires you to research this case even further. Oh, I hope you do. My research skills are total lack thereof. Left me frustrated. I have to tell you, ladies, I'm so impressed

with your research skills and Dave's. I was gonna say it. Mostly it's Dave's. But thank you very much. I couldn't find shit without creating multiple accounts. Forget that. I'll give you all I've got and let you take it from here if you so desire.

So here goes. I've attached my all I've got and let you take it from here if you so desire. So here goes I've attached my listener tail roughly a 20-minute read without commentary called decomp on Demare Drive Enjoy. Let's go. Let's go I gotta bring it up. Okay, bring it back back in the day. I was like what? You're like where are I thought you were going oh? I was like what? No, no, I said bring it back and then I went, oh, you didn't see the shoulders of it all. That's what took me out.

Sorry, back to hideous tail. It's not about me. Back in the day, my father worked as an insurance agent with a side hustle as a contractor, builder, and craftsman. Damn, he would find a trash heap of a home by it for pennies, gut it, remodel it, and flip it for profit. He carried paper on those homes and did so well fiscally that he eventually gave up his insurance work for a don-t-dontile dusk self-employed contractor

building gig, which incredibly, he is still hard at work today in his mid-70s. Let's go, pop up. You're a dad. What can I say? Dad loves what he does. That's great. My little- I'll never work a day in your life. Hell yeah. My little brother and I spent many summers as free laborers for a dad's intensive home renovations. Sure, we'd both grown in Unison when dad announced

that he bought another Hubble. But we learned some incredible skills of our own and first-hand lessons in the value of hard work and visionary promise. That was a beautiful sentence. Yeah. The vast majority of my dad's remodeling projects were from phenomenal.

Everyone who knew him wanted my dad to remodel their kitchens, bathrooms, or build their entire home conditions. There was even a time when one of his homes was featured in an architectural digest magazine, damn. Look, Mama, we made it. Yeah. Nevertheless, the home I'm about to introduce you to

was not one such phenomenal project. On a hot July day in Grant's Pass, Oregon, is that all right? Dad or a contrail? Dad loaded my little brother and me into our family's brown Ford van and took us with him to inspect a potential remodel that was owned by Mr. Floyd Baker, one of my dad's insurance clients. Floyd had fallen on hard times and was looking to sell his house. I like that you made up those names in this and you chose Floyd.

I appreciate that. It's similar to Boyd and that's what me and Alina go each other. There you go. Quick side note. If you google the residence, I've attached the information for your eyes only. You'll find that it sits near the west end of Demare Drive. Today, this area is considered suburbia with the surrounding pastures, pastures divvied up in an additional housing and pot gardens. But back when I was just a tween in the mid-1980s, this property was a good 15-minute drive out into the countryside of Grands Pass proper. Now back to that fee-full July day. Dad pulled up in front of the home's two-car garage, which was and still is is attached to the right side of the house. It's double wing single garage door stood gaping open.

What? You just said double wing. Oh, I thought he said double wing. And now it actually says double wide. But I said double wing and I'm done 12. To you are 12. So double way. Like I said wing and that was still wrong.

We out here. It's double way. Like, I said, wing and that was still wrong. We out here. It's double wide. Single garage doors did gaping open like a dark yawning mouth. That's scary. Yeah, I don't know about that. I hate that. Dad told us to stay in that too.

I know exactly how I feel about it. Dad told us to stay by the van as he hopped out and greeted Floyd who approached the van with a toothy grin. I don't like that. Dad and Floyd. I like my men to smile at me with no teeth. Give me a soft smile. Give me a soft smile.

Give me a gummy smile. No, no, no, a soft smile is only. It smises. Do you just let me bid it? Floyd. So dad and Floyd moseyed off to inspect the house and surrounding Aikridge. My brother and I quickly grew bored of sitting in the hot van

and decided to loiter in the shade of the trees near the house. As we tumbled out of the van and moved closer to the house, a horrendous stench slapped our faces and burned our nostrils. Good God! What is that? You said it like that. We were farm kids.

We'd smelled dead animals before. A routing rodent left by the barn cats here, a putrid post butcher gut pile there. You got the idea. Well, that was a chill and foul. Sure do. I feel like I can smell it. But this smell? Far, far worse.

The pungency was profound. I love that sentence. And it had a disgustingly and indescribably sweet twist to its rancid odor. Oh, we know that's right. You. You. You. So gross. Our senses of the I loved that sentence. And it had a disgustingly and indescribably sweet twist to its rancid odor. Oh, we know that. You. That's right.

So gross. Our senses of smell were seared by it. My brother and I flippantly commented on how awful the smell was. But again, boredom and a touch of curiosity, sent in. What the heck was taking dad so long? While we waited, we tried to pinpoint

where the nasty odor was coming from. We quickly determined it was coming from the garage. Yep, definitely the garage. We had no doubt. We peered into the dimness of the open garage door with our hands clamped tightly over our mouths and noses. Our eyes took a moment to adjust from the bright summer sun. As our vision came into focus, we noticed that a slab of concrete had been cut out of the parking space on the left side of the garage floor. The missing slab was roughly four to five feet long by two or three feet wide and five or six inches deep right down to the dirt.

There were dark red splotches around the missing section of concrete. Weird. Weird indeed, along the left side of the garage, or like, you know, we like to say unique. Yeah, yeah, unique. Along the left side of the garage, there was a step and a door that led into the house. The bottom half of the door was dented in. Huh, that's odd too. Mm hmm. Sure. The rest of the garage was

unassuming. A cluttered workbench stretched along the right side of the garage and the back wall was covered with overfilled wooden shelving that reached from floor to ceiling. At the back of the garage toward the left side, a door stood opened and offered a peek into the backyard. As I aforementioned, we were 80s kids. I was 10 or 11 and my brother is 2 years younger than me. So it goes without saying that electronic divergence was not an option for us back in those days. Instead, our curiosity is peaked and we resorted to our youthful and warped imaginations for entertainment. What could be a better game than this? One of us decided it would be great fun

to see who could run all the way through the foul garage and out the back door without taking a breath. My God. I would have 100% played this game. I would not. I don't recall whose grand idea it was, but the game was a foot. It was a linos.

We ran, it was, it was mine. We ran from the front and out the back, then again from the back to the front. Next, we mixed it up by adding a jump over the missing section of concrete sledge. As we ran through the rancid garage. After that, we realized we were much too successful with these minor challenges and decided to see how many times we could run back and forth through the garage without having to gasp for a gulp of future day. We were nailing it. Oh my god, you guys are probably so stinky. So stinky. Jump ahead about a decade. I was fascinated with forensics and seriously considered it as a field of study as I headed off to college. However, the memory of my experience and the memory garage and how truly disgusting the pong of

human-comp-decompensation is persuasively steered me away from that career choice. So I ended up caring for the living rather than the dead. Hey, good for you. Jump ahead in other 10 years. I'm around 30 years old and assisting a surgeon with lancing a softball-sized abscess and a patient's groin. That sounds fucking horrible. You picked that sentence up and you just dropped it right in front of us.

A softball-sized abscess. You didn't ask me. On the groin. You didn't knock on the door. You busted through the door and you just dropped that sentence in my lap. Like remember when you had no one else to have that. Remember when you learned how to hold a softball,

you had to figure out how to arrange your fingers around it. And still they wouldn't fit because the softball's fucking huge. Yep. On your groin. Yeah. In abscess, it's gonna get worse. We successfully drained about a liter of loose yellow pearl.

Luh, luh, luh. You wanted to read this one. Some stuff from the abscess. No, no, no, she's like, liter of loose yellow pure lessen. Wait, were you gonna skip over the whole thing? No. No, shut up.

It had black flecks of necrotic tissue in it. Neet. She just goes yeet. I'm so upset. The stench of that drainage was the closest smell to human decompet that I've ever experienced in nearly 40 years. Oh my god, girly, I just had onion rings for lunch. Why did you do that to me?

And that's supposed, that would make sense. Necrotic tissue, after all. In fact, you ladies read a listener tale of which a thoughtful writer tried to describe the reek of human decompt. She was so close. But I remember saying out loud, what about the sweetness? Thank you, ready? No sooner had the words left by, I was going to say, I say that. No sooner had the words left my mouth. And Elena said, there's a sweet smell too. Truth. It's my personal conviction that a sweet odor in decomposition is what makes the decomp smell uniquely human. It's just, it's true. It's a sickly sweet smell. That's how I felt about my onion rings today. Yeah, it was, they were sickly sweet.

No, I got sonic onion rings and why do they make them taste like cake? They don't like it. They literally have vanilla in them. Like why were my onion rings like decal? I too know the smell of human decal positions. I do at this point. It was like my sonic onion rings. Honestly, it might be close. It was like my sonic onion rings.

Honestly, it might be close. It was like making onion rings. It was like a blood-end assist. It's true, though. There's like a weird, you know when something is so sweet that you're like, it smells bad. I want to launch myself into the sun. That was so bad.

I don't know if I know about that. You know, sometimes somebody will give you, like, you'll order a coffee and they put too many pumps of something and you take a sip and you're like, whoa! Like, it's just like, oh my God. Yeah. It does this certain thing to like your tone, I feel.

Yeah, and it's just human decom. Is all the horrible smells you can think of of, like, garbage rotting, but add a sweet, sweet, uh, I don't know how to just get like a like a sweet layer on top that just as you smell that, that hot rotting garbage that turns your stomach, the sweetness like leaks in after it. So you're just like, well, it's just like, you don't know where you're, that was loud. You don't know where you're, you're supposed to go or feel, because you're like, it's so, you know where you go, you go home Roger. You go home Roger and

you take a shout-out. It's a lot, it's a lot, it's really hard to describe. I think that's why nobody can really describe it accurately. It's like rotting garbage that is Starbucks-Buriste. I just like goes by and like pumps all the caramel on. Yeah, but she puts like the sugar-free one. I was just gonna say the sugar-free one that's somehow sweeter. Like it's just, because it's like fake. Like it's like I asked for time.

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at masterclass.com slash morbid. Masterclass.com slash morbid offer terms apply. More bid tell us the kind of spooky and macabre stories that send chills down your spine. But few stories are creepier than the one at the center of my new podcast, Ghost Story. Ghosts aren't real. At least that's what I've always believed. Sure, odd things happened in my childhood bedroom. But ultimately, I shrugged it all off. That is, until a couple of years ago,

when I discovered that every subsequent occupant of that house is convinced they've experienced something inexplicable too. Including the most recent inhabitant who says she was visited at night by the ghost of a faceless woman. It just so happens that the alleged ghost haunted my childhood room might just be my wife's great grandmother, who was murdered in the house next door by two gunshots to the face. Go story, a podcast about family secrets, overwhelming coincidence, and the things that come back to haunt us. Follow Go Story on the Wondry app wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus.

Now back to the mid-1980s. Dad finally returned with a grumpy look on his face and told us to get in the van. We're leaving. Yeah, I get out of there. My brother and I playfully bounded back to the van, offhandedly commenting on how vile Floyd's garage smelled. Dad merely grunted an agreement. We started back down Demaray Drive toward our own home, which was less than two miles away. We lived on the road that runs parallel

to Demaray Drive along its south side. In retrospect, we lived much too close to Floyd's house. Dad was silent for a minute. As we turned off the road, dad finally asked, do you know what that smell was? Oh my God, is he going to tell you? My brother and I both offered lame ideas, like really rotten garbage. Dad eventually clarified by saying, that was the smell of Floyd's wife. She was murdered in the garage while he was away on business. He said, so take that rinse. It smell out of your mouth, okay? After a beat with our mouths hanging open in our eyes bulging, my brother and I started asking dad all sorts of

questions. He calmly, this is a dad. He calmly and matter of factfully answered each one. Good for your dad. Just being like, you know what? Here it is. The story was that Floyd's wife was bludgeoned to death in the garage with a hammer that was reportedly plucked from the cluttered workbench. Well, that's horrific. The removed concrete slab had a bloody footprint or something on it in the wife's own blood. And so it was taken for evidence. The dent in the door was from the wife falling against it during the attack.

Oh, that's so sad. She was like brutally killed. The odor was from the wife rotting in the garage for two weeks in the heat of summer. Because he was away. And apparently she had been found by Floyd himself upon his return from the business trip. Oh, my God. The cherry on top was that Mrs. Baker's decomposing body

was removed not long enough before my brother. And I were carelessly, we're running carelessly through the garage. My dad didn't realize we would be exposed to any of that. Ooh, mistake number one. Mistake number two, my dad decided to buy Floyd's house. What the fuck? Let me repeat myself so that this is plainly clear.

My father of previously sound mad. Resolved to purchase Mr. Floyd Baker's murder home. That's a choice. Okay. So dad gives each one of us his remodel, excuse me, sorry. It's okay that you were a little flustered after that. Okay, take that breath. So dad gives each one of his remodels a unique or sophisticated name,

such as the Woodland or the Redwood Falls or the Chateau. I love your dad. To list a few. But for this important model, names such as the Woodland or the Redwood Falls or the Chateau. I love your dad. To list a few. But for this important model, we understandably and very simply dubbed it the Murder House and still call it to that to this day. Honestly, I don't know what else you could name it.

In the months following my dad's decision to make the Murder House's Re-Model, we would show up on site as a family to help deep, clean, dispose of garbage, and otherwise assist Floyd with moving out of the home. Or Floyd. Floyd's wife had a little white palm Iranian, which Floyd claimed to utterly despise. On one such occasion that we were there helping them clean, I distinctively recall Floyd carrying the palm in one arm, while dramatically waving one of the dogs positive, so repeatedly saying, bye bye, bye bye.

As he climbed into his vehicle with the dog and drove away, no more palm. It turned out that Floyd took the palm to be euthanized, cremated, and buried along with his wife. I didn't see the end of that sentence coming. I thought you were saying that. He came to love the dog. And he was like, bye bye, going on a trip.

That's what I thought. Oh my god! Oh, Floyd, that's not okay. He had to have that sentence with such a jumpsk. That was so mean. Fucking Floyd. I feel like I was just tricked. I you were, you were duped.

I was like, oh, bye bye, bye bye. Oh, that's what Floyd was like too. And the dog's just like, okay, that's so sad. And also it's like, dude, your wife probably loved that fucking dog. Damn. What the fuck did you use it? You know what?

Heidi has the right response. What the actual fuck? Oh shit. You should have given it to somebody else. Yeah, you know, just kill a dog because you don't want it. I'm not an emotional roller coaster right now. It's like Lucy, Lucy, Apple, juicy. Damn.

Flash forward two decades with me. I'm here with you. Yeah, let's get out of there. I'm working as an ICU nurse, so you're a superhero. Yeah, yeah. And have a male patient who purposely blew half of his lower jaw, oh, who purposely blew half of his lower jaw off during a failed suicide attempt.

Oh, my God. The kicker, he first shot and killed the family dog before attempting to kill himself. I don't think that's a kicker. I don't think anybody told you what a kicker was. Well, when I learned of that fact, my mind had instantly gone back to Floyd, cheerfully waving the paw of his wife's palm

as he left to have it euthanized. What the heck, why not give the pet to someone who would love to have it? Honestly, there are no adequate words for these people. Truly, that's a thing. Just give it to someone else. God. Back at the murder house,

I remember that the inside of the home reaked of cheap cigarette smoke. The interior walls were formally white, but it required a permanent orange tinge and had brownish streaks of nicotine tar that had dripped down the walls like wet mascara. Ooh. You paint a picture by me.

Have you ever been in a house where somebody has smoked like that? It's crazy what it does to the walls. Oh, it's wild. We scrub them as best we could to no avail. The tar persistently seeped through several, several fresh layers of paint. So we eventually resorted to painting them with a special sealant used after grease fires

before repainting the wall successfully. And if that's not an anecdote to not spill pepper. What one day my mom, brother and I were cleaning out the in the garage, sons the odor of human decomp. Floyd had a large trash can by the workbench. At one point, while tossing some garbage into the trash, my brother spied a bone more than a foot long and nearly an ancient diameter with bits of fatty flesh on it. He anxiously pointed it out to mom and me, mom, who was

an e-arner, noted that she didn't think it was human. Oh, damn, where's she short? Maybe an animal of some sort? We lived on a farm full of horses, cows, dogs, cats, turkeys, chickens, pigs, ponies, etc. And we assisted with butchering our own meat. But this bone was unfamiliar and downright unsettling. Could it be from a child, I asked? My mom didn't think so, but we all agreed. It didn't look like a bone we farm folks were familiar with.

As we gathered around the trash, postulating and gawking at the bone, Floyd came in through the back door of the garage and asked, what are we looking at? The kids are curious about a bone in your trash. It's heard my mom with a quick side nod toward the garage. After a passing glance, Floyd burst out into gravel laughter. Ha! That's just a turkey leg bone. No, it's not Floyd. He then turned and sontered back out the way he had come in.

My Floyd's always lying. He's lying. He's always lying. That was and still is the strangest turkey like Boni have ever seen. Yeah, that's because it was not. Mom gave us a wide eyed shrug and we returned to cleaning. But from that moment on,

I was exceedingly suspicious of Floyd. Me too, after the bye. August brought the Josephine County Fair to town. My family owned a vacant lot near the fairgrounds. So we parked cars there every fair season to help pay for the lots annual property taxes. As a reward at the end of the hot and exhausting week of parking cars all day, every day, my parents stayed to park the cars after sunset, while my brother and I got to go enjoy a couple of hours of fun at the fair before it closed for the season. We were noshing on cotton candy and strolling through the selection of reds,

when Floyd literally jumped out at us from around the dark side of a ticket booth. Boo! Get out of here Floyd, you're too wily. You're wicked wily too wily. My brother and I gasped and grabbed each other's arms with sticky fingers. Floyd burst into obnoxious caccles, rubbing his hands together with glee. He was pleased.

He was plainly very pleased at our fright. Lloyd Glens from side to side with his dark BDIs. Where are your parents? Everywhere. Ah, they're everywhere. Everywhere, Floyd. Get the fuck out of here. My parents are everywhere. Every single person in this fair is my parent's Floyd. And they'll get you, Floyd. Oh, they're close to... I love... Oh, they're close by somewhere I answered, even though they weren't. Smart, Floyd looked around for a few seconds longer then said, well, I guess I'll go find them then.

As he disappeared back into the shadows around the ticket booth, my brother and I exchanged horrified looks and took off running the opposite direction. We fled the fairgrounds frequently dancing behind us and met up with our parents back at the property. We were unnerved and trembling. My parents looked worried and became hyper-vigilant in keeping one eye out for us and the other for Floyd, who never did reappear that night, at least as far as my brother and I knew of. Floyd finally moved back to California, I think,

from which he had originally come. My entire family breathed a huge sigh of relief at his departure. Not too long after Floyd left, my parents received news that Floyd had killed himself somewhere along the Pacific coast. Well, that's sad. Only then did my parents start sharing additional details about Floyd. Apparently, I wondered about this. Apparently the police believed he had murdered his wife

and staged a business trip as an alibi. I believed it. Oh, shit. Never had I ever met a man creepier than Floyd. Supposedly, he hadn't been arrested because the police didn't have enough evidence to support their theory. Moreover, a local police detective and a close family friend of ours told my parents that Floyd reportedly had at least two former wives who had also died under suspicious circumstances.

Fucking Floyd. Geez, we had associated ourselves with a possible serial killer. Could it get much worse than that? Yes, yes it could, and it did. What? I didn't think it was gonna get worse. My dad started ripping down walls at the murder house

and adding on a master suite. Oh no. I remember him telling us that he had found some really bad things written on the sheet rock. But he never did say what those things were. Moreover, my dad replaced the dented inner door of the garage and filled it in the missing concrete slab. Everything got a good scrub down and fresh paint,

new carpet, new linoleum. However, my dad always felt like he was being watched as he worked. And so he got his remodeled project done in as little time as possible, just the basics. No detailed craft work. By the way, dad's craft work is one of his signature moves. Too bad murder house.

You're basic. Well, it's like, when Nicole Buyers is like, you're basic. You're basic. I love that he has like craft work that he puts in his homes. That's really cool. That's really cool.

Estonishingly, my parents decided to use this particular home as a rental rather than selling it. Mistakes number three. The first people they rented it to was a young couple with several small children. I don't even think they made it a full month before telling my parents, we can't stay here any longer.

Things come out of the walls at night and scare the kids. I'm sorry. Of things come out of the walls at like things or people. Several things. Go. Apparently. Yeah. Or things. I hate it. I hate it here. I made a mental note to myself. I don't even know if I'll ever be at there at night, but never, ever fall asleep at the murder house. That's a dope mental name. It is back then. Write that down.

My mom was part of a women's prayer group. So after hearing the news of demons in the walls, no real surprise there, she and her lady friends went through the murder house, room by room, praying over it, blessing it, and binding any evil spirits in the name of Jesus Christ. Ash, this is the Christian equivalent of a good staging. I got two girls.

After that, my parents were successful in renting out the home. In 1988, my mom's oldest brother and his wife bought the murder house and moved into it. I remember my aunt asking my dad if he could go under the house and cover any exposed pipes. She explained, because animals keep getting under there and bang on the pipes, it keeps us awake all night. That's not animals, baby. My dad had a blank look on his face and responded along the lines of, there aren't any exposed pipes under your house. Another time my aunt and uncle invited our family

over for a movie night, they had a big screen TV that faced their bed. So the adults all piled on the bed while my brother and I sat on the floor leaning against the foot of the bed to watch the show. At some point during the movie, a huge frigid gust of air came up through the floor beneath my brother and me. We were startled by it as it shot past us towards the ceiling.

We literally had chills running up and down our spines. We asked our aunt and uncle if they had turned on the AC. Nope, no AC, scared out of our minds, my brother and I leapt off the floor and into the bed. I remember the adults complaining about not having enough room for all of us on the bed, but my brother and I simply refused to go back down on the floor. I don't blame you. My aunt and uncle only lived there for a couple of years. My last memory inside the murder house

was a time when I was hanging out with my aunt. I wasn't feeling well, so she had me lay down on the couch in the living room while she worked from home. Somehow I fell asleep. Even as I type this, my brain is screaming. You never went down your dope mental. No, you didn't write down that dope mental though. I remember waking up with a start as desk type this, my brain is screaming. You never out down your dope mental. No, you didn't write down that dope mental though.

I remember waking up with a start as dusk was falling. I couldn't believe I hadn't died or been tortured by a wall demon. Nevertheless, never again, what I let that happen. Almost every day from the time I was 11 until I moved out of my family home at 18, I would jog the three mile loop that consisted of my street, two side streets, and Demory Drive. Every time I would jog the three mile loop that consisted of my street, two side streets, and a Demory drive.

Every time I would near the murder house, I would jog along the opposite side of Demory drive and watch the house with a steady side gaze as I neared it and then passed it. I always felt like the house was watching me back. In preparation for this listener tale, I had a couple of details that I simply couldn't pin down. I spent hours, literally hours researching online with zero success. So I resorted to calling my parents.

Hey, Mom, I know this is out of the blue, but do you remember when Dad took us to the house in Demory for the first time? The murder house? Of course, I chuckled to myself at the involuntary note of disgust in her voice as she said, of course. Do you remember what year that was or how old I was? Goodness, Mom answered, maybe 10.

I don't remember the year. Let's ask your dad. My dad wasn't sure the year either. He was certainly about the murder house from Floyd in the mid 80s, though. And he knew that my aunt bought it in 1988. Dad chuckled when I told him that the house was back on the market with no mention of a garage murder

and that it had gone through several owners over the years. He said that he wasn't surprised at all. Dad wrapped up our little trip down memory lane with a touch of astonishment about Floyd. Man, I can't believe he was in our lives. What a great answer. No, it's not on Floyd. Like, shit, can't believe we knew that, man.

Can't believe we knew that, man. Damn, what a guy to know. I love that. I can't believe. So ladies, the moral of my story is this. Keep it weird, but not so weird that you accidentally expose your kids to the horrid smell of human's e-cop in the heat of summer.

But do keep it so weird that you are honest and calm about answering all of your kids' rambling murder questions. But not so weird that you decide to buy said murder house and then rent it to an unsuspecting young family with little kids who wake up to demons coming out of their walls. And certainly, don't keep it so weird that you then sell the home to an unsuspecting young family with little kids who wake up to demons coming out of their walls. And certainly don't keep it so weird

that you then sell the home to your in-laws who invite you over and expose you and your own kids to cold, ghostly, air-in-banging pipes. And don't keep it so weird that you watch the house that's watching you as you jog by every day. And definitely don't keep it so weird that you let a possible serial killer be a part of your family's lives.

Yeah, don't keep it that weird. Bye. Heidi. Oh, you know what, Heidi? This house does have creepy vibes just looking at it. Shit went down. You see it? Shit went down.

Yeah. It's sad because it's like a cute house in a way. That's how I pictured the house. But it feels, it's actually not how I pictured it. That's funny. I think that's how I pictured it.. But it feels, it's actually not how I pictured it. That's funny. That's how I pictured it. Yeah. Uh oh, Heidi, you just gave me a new hyper fixation.

So thank you for that. Wow. Because now I'm gonna go crazy looking into this. Investigate it. I'm gonna investigate this, Heidi. Yeah, Heidi, that was a good one. Heidi, that was horrifying and so well told. And thanks for being a hero, I see you, Nurse. Yes, you're a good one. Heidi, that was horrifying and so well told. And thanks for being a hero, I see you, Nurse.

Yes, you're a fucking badass. Never changed. Your parents sound hilarious. I love them. And I am forever impressed that your dad just decided to make something he loved into his whole job and did it forever and he's in the 70s and still doing it and then he's a craftsman.

Poor one out for your dad. And what I love to his vibe. Your dad's vibe was a good bot. Impecable for your dad. For your dad. A lot of people. I loved his vibe. Your dad's vibe was right. He was good, but impeccable, actually. Yeah, it was macular. I pictured him as the good guy in the movie that hangs out with the crappy guy who he really just wants to kill the whole time.

Yeah. You're right. The sopranos of it all. The sopranos of it all. You know? Well, my next one is called, uh, Listener Tale, My Haunted As Baby. That's amazing. So it says, Hello, attached to a putt-a-foot about my haunted ass baby. Also attached to some pictures of my family and haunted baby as a baby.

Haunted baby as a baby. Haunted baby is adorable. I love haunted baby. She said, I haven't really come across anyone else with a haunted baby, so I thought this would be a good story to send it. Happy reunion. They're like, I've been on the lookout. I love you.

I never have I come across another haunted baby. Oh, we can use her name Casey. Casey. Hello Casey. Also your family and you are just beautiful. Oh my gosh. Thanks for being a big is so cute. He's so cute. Oh my god your kids are so cute. I don't know what this is. This this other photo yet, but I'm afraid. I'm afraid. Okay. Hello my spooky friends. Alina and Ash how tickled I was to have discovered your podcast by random once sweltering South Carolina evening. That sounds delightful. Wow, you guys are great writers.

Yeah. I was pissed that day because of the heat and humidity. That sun sure does have the audacity. Truth. I was tired of feeling sweat and every nook and cranny from my toodies to my booties. Oh my toodies to my booties. My toodies to my booties.

I love it. This is when I got in my car that night to head home from my sister in-laws house after helping her in her yard that day, I had no desire to turn on my normal music playlist. I swiped over to the podcast and saw morbid. Yep, that's me. I'll give it a listen. Like, hey, look at that, that's me.

And I haven't stopped since. That's why we named it morbid, because we're like, I know a lot of people feel like they are morbid. Yeah. And I was like, we should name it McCob, and I was like, what's that mean again? And I was like, morbid. And I was like, we should just name it morbid. And I was like, we should name it McComb. And I was like, what's that mean again? And I was like morbid. And I was like, we should just name it morbid. And I was like, that sounds better.

And here we are, five years later. There we are. And Casey says, I haven't stopped since. I torture my kids on road trips listening to you guys. Quote and Quote, only six episodes. And we'll be in Florida boys. Woo! communal groans of displeasure in the back seat.

They're used to you now and are happy to oblige these days. My name is Casey. Yeah, thanks, man. My name is Casey. I'm 32, happily married to my man of 14 years Eli. And we have three children. I was blessed with all boys. We've got Lane pronounced as Lane,

but my husband was really into world of warcraft at the time and insisted on spelling it with two Ls because that was the name of the realm that he played in. I rule. I love that for you guys. I love that a lot. And I realm that he played in. I roll. I love that for you guys. I love that a lot. And I love that you were like, you know, I love the whimsy of it all.

And you indulged him in that. And you know what, Mikey just gave all the rock on. Because he loves Vowels. Isn't that what the cool kids call it? So Mikey approves, we approve. I think it's Vowel. And Lane is a really cool name. I like the name Lane a lot.

Well, that was fucking terrifying that that just happened. What fell? Did it fall onto the castor? The applause is happening right now. Oh, our ancestors in the room. They also approve of Lane. Yeah. Because our our roadcaster is haunted. That's the thing we were calling to. Yeah, our pod lab is haunted really and every time that we need encouragement or Or they like to make a decision or they like something the roadcaster will just hit the applause button for without anyone near it And it just did for you and at the same time something fell. Yeah, it was the the What's it called lighter Lighter but not on to it. No, oh, so they like your kid's name. Cool.

Well, there's also Watson and Ellis. Oh, Watson and Ellis? I love all those names. Good job. Watson is a wicked cute name. That's my favorite of them all. They are 12, 6, and 2. Oh, I love them with all my heart.

Oh, me too. He is 12. I love all of them. When I was in high school and was constantly asked what I wanted to be, what career I wanted to pursue. I never had an answer because all I ever really wanted is to be a mom. Me too. I feel that in my bones. I just want to hug you.

You're a great human and I love you. I had never felt the fold until I held my first son in my arms. Yep, this is it. This is what I meant to do. Oh my god. KC, high five. I love you so much. You fucking rule. Oh my god, more baby pictures and I'm so excited. You see the fruit loops. Oh my god, Casey, hi five. I love you so much. You fucking rule. Oh my god, more baby pictures.

You're probably fucking Bob. And I'm so excited. You see the fruit loops. Oh my god. Obsessed. So whenever about that, I've been wanting to share my story with y'all for a hot minute, but I could never find the time to just sit down and write.

My mom brain be all over the place. You know how it is, Alina. I do. I do know that. So here it goes. One of my kids was born haunted. Yay. Can you guess which one it was?

Just for fun, Z's, I'll insert a pick of each of them, and you can feel them out. I wanna see. Alright, so first we have Lane. He doesn't give me haunted vibes. No, Lane is just a little... Lane is just like, I wanna smush Lane's shoes. The picture we see is just like this beautiful little baby,

and a little basket. And he has a lamb. And then there's Watson with a cool sick-ass shark hat and matching shark shorts. I... He might be wanted. And then there's Watson with a cool sick ass shark hat and matching shark shorts. He might be Watson. I think it's Watson. But then there's Ellis and an elf costume. They're all so cute that I want a scream

at the top of my lungs. I don't know. Something I feel Watson. I feel Watson, but then something's also telling me Ellis. Yeah, I can see Ellis too. There's nothing distinctive that I'm like, that is a haunted baby. No, it just vibes. It see Ellis too. There's nothing like distinctive that I'm like that is a haunted baby. I just fives.

It's just vibes. It's just vibes. I'm going Ellis. I'm going with Watson. All right, let's go. Let's go. Do you get any creepy vibes from them? Yeah, I didn't either, but that middle one.

Oh, did I get Watson? Well, I got Watson. In the cute ass hat and the shark panties is the one. He must have shared my womb with his many spirit friends because no lie, the day we brought him home was the day the activity began. And I knew it was Watson. This Joker put us through the winter.

So Watson was born January 9th, 2017. We got a capy. Hey, that's the day. Maybe that's what it was I felt the vibe with. The capy vibes. I mean Watson together forever. I had a fast and easy labor, eight hours. Oh fast.

So quick. You go. He was born after four pushes with the most perfect round head at nine pounds. Damn, Mama. That's good job. My biggest baby out of all three of them. We were over the moon and we're so happy to be going home to start our new adventure as a family of four. I felt super confident going into the second baby and I was less anxious and way more prepared. It helps me a lot that we also waited six years in between kids. Oh, yeah.

Although I did think to myself, what the fuck am I doing? I have a six-year-old at home that can wipe his own ass and make his own pop tart and sleep all night, and I'm starting the shit all over again. I could literally leave this kid at the hospital and walk away. Oh, part, oh, postpartum and truce of thoughts.

I was just gonna say that's exactly what it is. The immediate thought of like, oh fuck. What is all this? That's a whole person. Like, I am responsible solely for this thing. So much fun. Alas, we did bring his little cute ass home, and we quickly fell into a routine.

Yeah, don't feel weird if you ever think that when you have a baby, everyone has that moment of like, oh fuck, that's a whole last person. And I have to bring it home and keep it alive forever. And keep the other one alive if you got it. Yeah, that's the thing. You got it. You get it through my bottle.

So when he was about a week old, I got up after feeding around 2.30 AM and went into the kitchen to wash the bottle where I found our side-by-side refrigerator. Why the fuck open? Oh, fuck. Thinking it may have been my six-year-old lane, I closed the fridge and went to his room, prepared to scold,

and found a little angel sleeping in his bed with no snacks to be seen anywhere near him, not narrowed. Not narrow crumb of the lip or sticky jello fingers. So I chalked it up to being a weird happening. Maybe my husband accidentally left it open on one of his late-night food benches after smoking his devil's lettuce because anxiety.

Although after questioning him about it, he denied this claim. A couple weeks later, I was sitting out in the living room with both my boys. Lane had his toy box out here, and we were just lounging around. Toys were scattered all over as they do, I roll. I noticed that one of his RC cars was lit up, which was weird, because I had recently removed the batteries because things with noise get on my nerves. I had to break the news to Lane and just tell him that it was broken.

Slaps hand, bad mom. No way. But I'd be damned if this thing wasn't lit the hell up. I got up to check it and remove said batteries again, thinking my husband banded against me and put them back into game parenting points with Lane. As I bent down to pick it up, that thing drove across my living

room into the dining room. I looked at Lane, and he looked at me. I looked at Lane, and he looked at me. He did not have the controller. I did not have the controller. Who has the controller? The spirits. I went over to pick it up.

The lights had turned off at this point. No fucking batteries were in there. Oh, no. I threw that thing in the trash immediately. No possessed toys in the house. No way. As the weeks went on and turned into months, we were still having weird phantom toys, speaking, driving by themselves, and the occasional kitchen cabinet opened in the middle of the night. That gives six cents, and I don't like that. The cabinets are better than the refrigerator. Well, for like, you know, like in, I'm just thinking perishable.

Parachute waste, yeah, sorry. I could not get the word perishable as out of my face. I was just thinking practicality wise, it's like, okay. But it's way scary. Yeah, no, the sixth sense scene where he is sitting there with his hands on the table

and all the cabinets are open. Hate, and he takes his hands off and it's like the pan prints in the sweat. Yeah, too much. Actually, my hands are kind of sweaty when I'm thinking about it. I hate that. I'm a little stressed.

That sucks me up still to this day. Oh, yeah, that movie is fucked. But we were learning to live with these weird happenings. But then things started to get a little more weird. I posted a picture on my Facebook one day of Watson. He's always had these huge blue silver eyes that look too big for his head. I love them.

Thank you, too. My great aunt commented on this particular picture of him. I should point out that this great aunt was very spiritual, practice white magic, and once had a ghost friend that she claimed was a Cherokee native that followed her everywhere. I love this aunt. I do too. I want to be this aunt. She was very eclectic, and I always enjoyed interactions with her and hearing her stories.

She posted that Watson's eyes were beautiful, and that he can see more than we can. Ooh. That's cool. She got the vibes from the picture. Okay, Aunt Jan, thanks for that. I took it with a grain of salt, but didn't like the idea that my big-eyed baby was seeing those season spirits, but alas, I believe she was right. I was big-eyed baby. Not big-eyed baby. When Watson was about five months old, that had been brought to my attention by my husband, that I had developed this new annoying habit of snoring, and I didn't believe him.

So to prove him wrong, I paid $2,999 for an app and quickly learned he ain't no liar. I'm trying to move she. So now I felt obliged to continue to use this thing, so I didn't feel like it was waste of money. At night, it would begin to record. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm so excited. I always think that I want to do that to like hear if my story has stopped. I want to so bad, but I'm not gonna. I might do it. Someone died in my house, so I'm not doing that.

I'm gonna do it. Did anybody die? Right here. I don't know, maybe. You don't know. I don't know. You should look into that. I should look into that.

Well anyways, at night, it would begin to record when it detected snoring or snoring like noises. It kept a log of what time it was when these noises took place. I would wake up in the morning and scroll through my snores and listen. Sometimes we got the occasional fart and it was like, my day, I love you so much. We would be friends. I love farts and snoring and you. So on this day, I was listening to my little sound bites and got to one that had the time stamp of

3.03 a.m. I love that it was 3.03, like that band. Yeah. I'm listening to it, but I don't hear snoring. What I do here is what sounds like something sitting down on my bed and an aggressive breathy sounding whisper says, What's in? No.

I don't fuck with that. No. I would throw hands with a spirit if they said my kids name. Oh, I'd be like, I'm gonna fuck you up. Yeah, like don't say my kids name. Ooh, I don't like it. Now, Watson was still in our room at this point.

He slept right beside me every night. My phone recorded on a side table between me and his baby bed. I immediately woke up my husband and demanded to know if he was up last night with Watson. He said he hadn't woken up at all. Let alone go sit on the side of my bed and talk to Watson. This freaked me out.

This was not okay. Something was trying to get my baby's attention, and I am not okay with this. No, I don't blame you. I reached out to a medium. I was scared as it was, but definitely didn't want negative energy trying to get my baby.

And I knew I needed to know if he was safe. Have y'all seen paranormal activity, too? I have. I have not. I know what's up. Not today, demons. No way. We sat up, uh, excuse me, we sat up a meeting with the medium and she came to the conclusion that

Watson did attract spirits, but from what she could tell, they were harmless and mostly familial. Oh, fun side note. I found out after Watson was born that my great-grandfather had a twin brother that died at four years old and his name was Dun Dun Dun Watson. Whoa. That's crazy that you just felt compelled to name a child that too. This made me feel lots better about it, but we had a stern talk to the ghosty after that, that there will be no talking to the baby.

I didn't have any other issues as far as that was concerned. Still, the occasional toy, the occasional cabinet, that was old news at this point. Flash forward to a few months later, Watson's now walking. Watson is adjusting to sleeping in his own room and it is not going great. Oh, I feel that. I mean, damn, it was worse than when he was a newborn. He would always wake up screaming

and most of the time end up in bed with me and Eli. When I say most of the time, I mean every night. Oh, I feel this so hard. After one of the worst nights we had with him, I was cleaning around the house, checking things off my list one by one. Vacuuming was done, kitchen cleaned. So I went on to my next tour to clean and dust out our mantle above the fireplace. Above the mantle, there's a mirror

that doesn't get much attention because no one can reach it without being on a stool. As I'm dusting the mantle, I notice something on the mirror. It's kind of waxy. Like one of those crayons you get with your Easter egg dikits. I see a w and then an a and then a T S O N. Something slash someone has written my baby's name on this fucking mirror. Nope. I'm freaked the fuck out. I call my husband at work and demand to

know if he did it. Why would I do that Casey?? It's very, very valid question. Why would I ever? He's right. He'd never do anything like that. I called to Lane who's only six and asked if he did it. The kid barely knows how to spell his own name, so of course he denied it. Plus, he would never have been able to reach out there, up there. Talk about freaky. We left the house and I got some sage.

I'd never cleansed my home before, but something had to be done. I read sage for dummies and got to it. I felt accomplished, be gone, you intrusive spirit, and stop being so obsessed with my baby. Why are you so obsessed with Watson? Why are you so obsessed with it? Things really tapered off after the sage. Watson still had issues sleeping in his room

and didn't willingly sleep in there until his little brother Ellis moved in last year. Watson sleeps in there with Ellis so that Ellis won't be afraid like he was. My heart. Watson has told me that he used to see monsters in his room and that's why he would cry. He's also told me that I'm not his real mom and that his real mom died in 1984, but he still loves me. Oh wow. Okay child. Thanks for that. Okay child. Oh my God. As he's gotten old during, began taking in interest in other things like sports and school,

he really hasn't talked any crazy to sleep. We are thankful for that. Me too. He's growing up to be a kind, handsome boy and only a little haunted young man. I'll attach pictures of the mirror for you guys as well as a video I took of him where you can clearly see an orb fly from his head. I wish I still had the recording of the whisper, but apparently the app deletes sound bites after 28 days, and I didn't know that at the time,

sad face. Thank you for taking the time to read about my spooky boy. I hope I did a good job writing all of this out, you did. Writing was never my thing, and we'll continue to not be my thing. Lots of love to you guys. I will be tickled pink if you choose to read this on your podcast.

Love and light always, Casey. I love this story. Oh my God, I love it so much. And I'm so obsessed with these little boofies. And it says Watson for sure. Oh yeah, you can see that clear as day. That's really upsetting. That's really upsetting.

Oh my gosh, he's so cute though. All of them are so freaking adorable. Let me see, hold on. Oh yeah, it definitely does. It says Watson. Yep, that's. Yeah, that's Watson right there. That's it. That's really upsetting. I'm downloading, I had to download the video to see. Let me see, hold on. Oh yeah, it definitely does, it says Watson. Yep, that's Watson right there.

That's it. That's really upsetting. I'm downloading, I had to download the video to see. Oh my goodness. Let me see if this orb is flying from this baby's head. Him's got a jumpalene. Him's got a jumpalene. Okay.

Oh shit. Let me watch the fucking video. Oh my God. Did you watch the fucking video? Oh my God. Hold on and just went away. Look up here. It literally flies out of his head. Oh wow. That's wild.

Damn. I've actually never seen anything like that. What's it? It literally comes like straight out of his head. He is so cute. I, that was such, such a wild journey. Oh my God. That's obsessed with all three of those little muffins.

And they have really great names. They do. Lane Watson and Ellis, like those are cool brothers right there. And they all go really well together. Yeah, they do, they flow really well. Yeah. So I think we have time for one more. Yeah, they do, they flow really well. Yeah. So I think we have time for one more. I would do one more.

What's party? Do you want me to do a cautionary tale for runners and joggers or the man in black and the glitching lights? I think you know. The man in black and the glitching lights. I knew you knew. I knew you knew. So this says, hello spooky ladies. My name is Kate.

Yes, you can use my first name, and I'm a long time listener of the pod. I started listening back in COVID times and fell in love with your podcast as I was dealing with the stress of navigating my first year of teaching during the pandemic. Holy shit, you're another hero. Another one. Side note, we have, we have three heroes here. Yeah. We got an ER and an ICU nurse, a mom, and now we have a teacher. We stand. I brought to you by heroes. Side note, thank you so much for the respectful way you always talk about teachers. Having been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism, speculation, negative comments, and even a couple of punches. No joke.

What? I want you to know I truly appreciate it. I love my job, but I'd be lying if I said it was easy to honestly teachers. I don't say that lightly. I think you have one of the hardest jobs on planet Earth. You absolutely do. Also, Kate, I will throw hands for you. Yeah, throw hands for you.

Your podcast also helped me stay grounded while I was dealing with postpartum depression last year as a first time mom, I'm so sorry you went through that. Me too. My therapist actually recommended I listened to something comforting when I felt like I was not in control. And somehow your true crime stories did the trick. Not sure what that says about me,

but thank you nonetheless. God, I'm glad we could help you get through it. I appreciate your sense of humor and wit, the detail you put into each case and the dignity you give to each victim. I think the true crime genre can sometimes fall into sensationalizing the crazy murders out there. So I'm grateful that your podcast sheds light

on the wonderful people who are taken from this world too soon. But I also love how much you shit talk. The peaches pieces of literal human garbage that commit these crimes. The amount of f-bombs I casually drop may have increased since I started listening to your podcast. I'm not mad about it. We should put like a side effect warning on. I know, I'm sorry, side effect.

Attach you will find the size 14 double space putter foot. Oh, you get it. If you read it on the show, I might literally die in the best way possible. Don't do that. You can feel free to trim this down as needed. Seriously. double space putt of foot. Oh, you get it. If you read it on the show, I might literally die in the best way possible. Don't do that. You can feel free to trim this down as needed. Seriously, I'm an English teacher with ADHD, so brevity is not my forte.

And you will find several parenthetical interjections throughout, like this one. The story is about 10 to 11 minutes long, perfect. Also, sorry for adding like 10 minutes just to the introduction. Consider this my pre-show banter. Anyway, onto my spooky story about the man in black that haunted my childhood home.

Let's fucking go. Let's go. Subtitle. Am I haunted, possessed, being punked by an old timey ghost? Well, I hope the latter. I like a punking ghost. And an old timey ghost. Before we get into the spooky stuff,

you need a little background info. You know, setting the scene with a little imagery, some tasty details and a sprinkle of facts that might come back later. A nice exposition Sunday, if you will. It's like an exposition dump. I have always had a super close connection with my dad. We looked alike, we acted alike, and we both struggled with anxiety, yet always managed to look on the bright side of things. My dad and I could finish each other's sentences, had some of the same mannerisms, and enjoyed a lot of the same hobbies.

My biggest compliments I've ever been given are that's something your dad would do slash say and you're just like your dad. I know I love that. We had a few more things in common but more on that later. Unfortunately my dad passed away last year. I'm so sorry. It's been hard to keep positive without him and our family has sort of fallen apart as of late. Oh I want to give you a hug. It's been even more difficult raising my son without him around to see. My dad passed away a few months before my son was born.

Oh, my God. He does see. I'd like to think that I'm carrying on his legacy of being kind, lighthearted, and silly in a world that wants you to be anything but you are. Wow. Wow. Like, yeah, everybody listen to that.

That last paragraph wasn't necessarily important to the story. I just wanted to gush about how awesome my dad was for a minute, do it anytime. Yeah. everybody listened to that. That last paragraph wasn't necessarily important to the story. I just wanted to gush about how awesome my dad was for a minute, do it anytime. Yeah. I think he'd get a kick out of this story being featured on the pod.

Well, first, he'd probably say, what's a podcast? I mean, I taught the man how to copy and paste on at least five occasions and it never stuck when I digress. I love. That's such a dead thing. Oh, yeah. I've been debating on whether I should submit my listener

tale for a while now. And something in pal, me, to finally just start typing it on whether I should submit my list in her tale for a while now. And something in Palme Me to finally just start typing it. As I type this, it's actually Father's Day. So maybe the universe is trying to tell me something. Definitely. Anyway, our connection was always super strong. One day when I was in my late teens, I was driving my home, my dad home after we got in dinner. It was nighttime. So the street lights were on and we had the windows down. As dad blasted the B-52s from this crackly rate stereo of a crummy, my crummy beat-up Saturn, rock-lopster, he assisted. I love it. We pulled into our neighborhood. The curve streets lined with street lights

casting their warm yellow glow. We passed the house with the Yippee-Yorky and suddenly the street light went out, I sighed. This had happened to me before. In fact, it had happened quite often. Since I started driving, I could not recall a single trip in which at least one streetlight didn't go off as soon as I passed it. Wow. It was usually more than one. On occasion, it was a store sign. Ah, once I shoot once, I shoot you not while waiting at a red light after leaving my friend's house at 1am, the red light changed, but not to green, to nothing at all. What? So when this street light went off with my dad in the car,

I wasn't phased. I really didn't think anything of it. It was just some weird coincidence, or maybe I was part robot, and I gave off some kind of weird interference, I don't know. But as we passed the house with the blue shutters, another street light went off. My dad turned the music down and said,

sorry, for what, I asked, the lights. They always go out when I drive by. You reply. Oh shit. They go out when you drive by, I asked. I just turned onto my street when I said this. Our house was at the very end of our street. It wasn't a super long street,

but there were probably four to five street lights on either side of the road. As we drove past the first one, every single light went out at the same time. Like someone had just pulled the plug on our neighborhood. When I pulled into our driveway, our porch light went off too. The fuck? Fun fact, the switch for the porch light was on.

It literally never worked again the whole time my parents lived there. They called them electrician once and everything. It was never fixed. What? I turned off the engine and we both sat there for a minute. That was the first time we realized that we'd both been experiencing this. As the years passed, we'd find out that it wasn't just the lights that would turn off. We both had trouble keeping our cell phones because ours would randomly die.

RIP, my first purple razor. A favorite pastime of ours was watching movies and it was just when it was just the two of us, sometimes the TV would turn off on its own. Oh, fuck. My husband has told me so many times that I'm cursed when it comes to technology. Things just always glitch around me. But the street lights turning off, I guess that had been happening to my dad for years,

and I'd never really noticed. He never said anything to anyone about it. I couldn't believe I hadn't noticed, but thinking back to our family car trips, I was definitely a sleepy passenger, especially if it was dark outside. Mm. As we sat in the driveway, my dad asked me,

did my mom ever tell you about the man in black? No, he was not talking about Johnny Cash or Will Smith. This is the story my dad told me. I later got more details for my mom, which I'll throw in there too. My brother refused to talk about it. I think you'll see why. Uh-oh. I was born on the East Coast.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. But my family is originally from Ohio. When I was in infant, my parents moved us back to Ohio and a small farm town kind of in the middle of nowhere. And my parents both worked in restaurants, so money was tight. We rented a small two bedroom house in this farm town. My brother was three at the time,

and he got one bedroom to himself. Since I was only months old, I was sleeping in a bassinet in my parents' room. Within a few weeks of moving in, that summer, my parents started to notice something wasn't right. It started off small. A glass of water, my mom's war she set on the table

would suddenly be on the bathroom counter. The cabinet door that my dad's shot would be open the next time you walked into the room. Just little things that made you question your sanity a bit, but didn't make you think much of it. Plus, my parents were hardworking, sleep deprived, parents of two young kids. Maybe they were just imagining things.

This went on for weeks, but by autumn, things started to get more sinister. Sinister by. Sinister by. One night, while my dad was at work, my parents worked opposite shifts. My mom was watching TV while my brother and I slept. She heard me crying from the bedroom,

so she turned off the TV and went to check on me. She opened the door to the bedroom, only to find me fast asleep. Then she heard crying from my brother's room, only it didn't sound like a three-year-old's cry. It sounded like a newborn baby. Oh, fuck. A little freaked out, my mom went into my brother's room.

He too was asleep. Oh, I hate that a lot. Pretty soon, cabinet doors would open on their own right in front of my parents. Coffee cups sometimes fell out of the cabinets. My brother wouldn't sleep alone anymore, so he slept out on the couch with my mom. My mom pretty much always fell asleep in the chair in the living room anyway. She was quite the snorer and preferred to sleep upright.

My mom says one afternoon her cup of coffee slid quickly off the coffee table and shattered onto the floor. According to my dad, my mom wanted to move out from the first supernatural incident. My dad convinced her to stay. Rent was cheap and they couldn't really afford to move out. Plus, we lived really close to my grandparents who were frequent babysitters and helped with my dad had to leave for work before my mom got home.

The final straw was when my grandma was watching us in between my parents' shifts. My grandma, a very religious woman, won't talk about this event either. So I'm just gonna go off what my mom told me. I was napping, and my brother was playing in the front room, which was kind of a little foyer that was treated like a playroom separate from the living room.

My brother had his hot wheels cars and was playing by himself as my grandma was fixing a msnack. My grandma, who's clear across the house, heard what sounded like a man's deep laugh followed by my brother screaming. Oh, fuck that. When my grandma got into the front room,

my brother was in the fetal position in the corner, crying and hugging in his knees. My grandma asked him what was wrong, he wouldn't answer. She scooped him up and held him until he calmed down a second. Then he said, the man in black won't leave me alone. Oh. My grandma, who, I just got chills. I hate that.

My grandma looked around the room and didn't see anyone. The front door wasn't locked. A common, stupid small town thing. So my grandma thought maybe someone had come in while she was in the kitchen. For context, the four-year was separated by a small. By a set of small wooden doors, like you'd see for a closet.

So it's not unthinkable that the front door could be opened without my grandma seeing it. My grandma asked my brother what the man looked like, but all he would say was he was the man in black and he had a black hat. So my grandma looked outside, but saw nothing. My grandma got my brother calm down on the couch just in time to hear the same deep laugh again.

This time it was coming from the room where I was sleeping. According to my mom, my grandma said she found me lying in the bassinet with my eyes wide open, but almost like I didn't register that she was looking at me. There was no signs of any man. Like you were looking at something else. Needless to say, when my mom got home from work, my grandma insisted that we move out. She told my grandpa who was a very protective, who was very protective in a man of action,

and he convinced my parents to move in with them until we found a new place. Those are some good grimper. They're like, get the fuck out of there. In fact, the house we moved into was actually bought under my grandpa's name since my parents couldn't afford to buy it and break their lease.

My parents had that house until five years ago. What a good set of parents. That's a good fam. As my parents were packing our things from the haunted house, my dad checked the attic and the ceiling of my parents' bedroom to see if we'd stored anything there. Once up there, he realized they'd never even checked out the attic in the first place, and the only thing up there was an old dusty box. He took the box to the dining room table, wiped off the top layer of dust, and removed the lid.

No. Inside were several very old black and white pictures. They were not ours. And my dad guessed that they had been left by the owner of the previous renter. There were a couple of family photos, some pictures of a farm, and one picture of a tall man and a black suit with a black hat.

He was staring right into the camera with a blank face. My dad said he had large bushy eyebrows that almost looked furrowed, giving him a menacing demeanor. In his hand, he held a lantern. The lantern was not lit. He had a feeling that this man was the man in black. He never asked my brother to look at the picture because he didn't want to scare him. A little worried that he would disturb whatever spirit this was. If he took any of the pictures, he put them all back in the box and put the box back in the attic.

The door of which was the ceiling of my parents' bedroom right above my bassinet. And if you remember, my mom slept in the living room with my brother, so only my dad and I slept in that room right under the man in Blacksphoto. Would the unlit lantern? Yep. Now, my dad didn't necessarily believe in the supernatural all that much, which is probably why he didn't feel the same sense of urgency my mom did

when she asked to move out. So I don't think he came to the same conclusion that I did, but I feel like the man in black might be the origin of the lights going out around both me and my dad. We shared a room with the man's picture, so maybe we shared a room with his spirit. I'm not really sure how ghosts prefer to haunt people, but maybe we were both a little haunted by the man in black. It's a pretty harmless haunting, if you think about it. The whole glass is falling off shelves. Thing didn't follow us to our new home. Just the lights going off here and there. I think I can handle that.

My brother still won't talk about it, so I don't know if the lights go out for him too. As for me, I'm very happy that I don't remember a thing about that house or all the crazy shit that happened there. Oh, real? I'm grateful that my mom and my grandparents insisted on getting a sat of there before anyone got hurt. And I'm happy my dad can still laugh through it all. Seriously, even telling me that story in the car was almost like he was telling a joke,

or like he was just telling me about what he did over the weekend. He so casually told me about how we lived in a haunted house for months, and then was like, well, I'm going to bed, see ya. Oh, and yes, street lights still go off when I drive by them. The computer I'm using will randomly turn off and won't turn on again until my husband turns it on. And then it magically works just fine. Wow.

I like to think it's my dad saying hello, especially when I'm watching Jeopardy, which my dad and I watched and played against each other all the time. And then to connection from the antenna will glitch and make the screen freeze just at the right time, so I can't answer the question. It's my dad getting the last laugh, like always.

That's awesome, I love that. So yeah, that's the story of the man in black and the glitchy lights. I hope you enjoyed it. And if you're reading it, thanks so much for taking the time. Keeping awesome and keep it weird, but not so weird that you freaked out by lights randomly going off. It's just an old-timey man in black having a good time fucking with you. Or my dad saying hi from the other side.

Okay, bye. Bye. Damn. That was creepy. Holy shit. And she, oh, when you sent photos. Oh, let me see. And your name is Kate. Sorry, I didn't, I forgot if I could use your name again. Oh, my God, you're so cute. Oh, my God, look at you and your dad.

And your dad giving you a little croissant. Oh, shut up. Oh, my God. You guys are adorable. This baby is the cutest baby I've legit ever seen. That was such like a touching story as well. And it was a creepy and touching. Oh my God, Kate.

Thank you for that. And I'm glad that Street Lights still go off for you. I know that's fun. Because that's really fun. You're like Nancy in the craft. Yeah. I love it. It never gets like dangerous though.

I hope you can actually just like raw. Damn you guys. You guys always sent me such good tales. You really gave us some stuff here. Guys, and I appreciate you. We had a teacher, a mama, and an ICU nurse. I love it. Killin' it.

Well, as always, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it. Wee-e-e-e-e- or your street lights turn off or you go and play in a garage where someone was murdered. Woo! Bye, I love you so much. Oh, my God! I'm going to be a little bit more careful. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to Morvid, Early, and Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen Add Free with Wondery Plus and Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. at Wondery.com slash survey.