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Episode 193 - Hide and Seek

45m 59s

Episode 193 - Hide and Seek

Katie, a former college student from Atlanta, recounts her time living in an old house in Milledgeville, Georgia, where her friends frequently experienced unexplained phenomena like footsteps, creaking sounds, and sightings. Initially, these were dismissed as normal for an old home, but a night of drunk hide and seek turned terrifying when she believed she saw a person standing behind the washing machine. The experience became pivotal when a new roommate revealed that Jennifer Clark, a real person, had died in the house a decade prior during a laundry accident—directly matching the details of Katie’s encounter. This verified the urban legend, deepening her belief that trauma and presence can linger in places. Despite rationalizing her fears, Katie remains emotionally unsettled and now avoids returning to the house. Her story illustrates how personal experiences of the paranormal, when validated by real events, shift from fiction to a profound, emotionally resonant truth. It also highlights how college towns often harbor real-life ghost stories rooted in tragic events, and how such stories can blur the line between memory, imagination, and reality. The episode underscores the emotional weight of such experiences and the importance of confronting the past, especially when it involves real people and tragic endings.

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English
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Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK as well. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Otherworld. It's the best way to support the show. Welcome to Otherworld. I'm your host, Jack Wagner. This episode comes from a girl named Katie, who is from and still lives in Atlanta, Georgia. But the story takes place where she went to college, in Milledgeville, Georgia. And it all starts when she moves into an old house off-campus, a house where lots of her friends would gather due to its proximity to the downtown area of Milledgeville. This type of house is so familiar to me. I spent so much of my time in college, and probably slightly too long after college, hanging around in big old houses like this one where 15 of my friends somehow pack themselves in and live there together. And we've also had several episodes of the show that take place in houses like this, which I suppose is not very surprising given the high turnover rate of rental properties like this, the sheer amount of people who would have lived there in the past. And honestly, when you think about it, what kind of house is an owner willing to rent out to a group of mysterious college kids? Probably not one that they care about too much, or one that has a squeaky clean past. Anyway, I will let Katie tell it for herself. And I'll see you in the next episode. Bye. It's a relatively simple story that all revolves around an event on a certain night that I thought was absolutely terrifying. By the way, I have changed several names and details of this story to protect some identities. This episode is called Hide and Seek, and you're listening to Otherworld. Otherworld. It's a story about a man who's up in the sky. It's almost frustrating that it's happening. I'm going to die. His limbs were just like, wrong. Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute. My name is Katie. I'm 30 years old. I was born and raised in Atlanta, and I still live here today. I work in medical communications, and when I'm not doing that, I like to watch movies, cook, collage, travel. As far as my beliefs go, I grew up religious, and not in the sense of what media. I could consume or what I could do or what I could wear, but I was at church every Wednesday evening, every Sunday morning, Sunday evening for youth group. I went to a Christian school for middle and high school, so Bible was part of the curriculum five days a week, and we had chapel for an hour and a half on Thursdays, so I was very immersed in Christianity. I also always had an interest in the paranormal growing up. So as a child, I had the TV completely locked on Discovery Channel with A Haunting. I loved Truth or Scare with Michelle Trattenberg, Mystery Hunters, loved reading the Spiderwick Chronicles. My mom's side of the family is from Ireland, and while my grandma was a devout Catholic, I always grew up with her telling very intense ghost stories or stories about Irish folklore like banshees and fairies or like media. I also always had a lot of fun with the devil, like meeting the devil while playing cards, but I never had an experience of that like that as my own as a child. As I've grown older, I'm not drawn to organized religion anymore. I definitely consider myself more spiritual or open, like believing in a higher power. And while I say like I don't affiliate with organized religion, like in a moment of panic, I'm definitely still whipping out the Lord's power. It just feels like muscle memory and sometimes a source of comfort in that way. I moved out of Atlanta for the first time officially for college, and I chose to go to school in Milledgeville. It was the capital of Georgia throughout the Civil War, and it's also home to Southern Gothic Queen Flannery O'Connor. And I think her writing really captures just how like eccentric and at times unsettling life in middle Georgia can be. It's also home to the largest mental asylum in the world, Central State Hospital. At its height, there were like 12 or 13,000 patients there. There's still upwards of like 2,000 unmarked graves. And it's really, really spooky, especially at night. And it would be a thing during college to break in there and explore. But obviously it's very dangerous because a lot of the buildings are in decay. But it's definitely a place that. When you're there, you just feel the full weight of it. And I chose to go to school in Milledgeville just because it did feel nice. It felt slower. It was very different and distinct from city life in Atlanta. And when I took that first tour, I just fell in love with Front Campus. And I was telling myself, like, I'm not getting into UGA. This is the closest thing I can get to like a movie Front Campus because it's covered in all of these sprawling oak trees. It had the program I wanted to do. So I went with Georgia College in Milledgeville. Settling in my first year of college, I absolutely loved it. Lived in the dorms, made a lot of good friends. And then the end of my sophomore year and going into sophomore year is when you could start living off campus. So I ended up moving into a new house where some of my friends lived already. At first, it was a house full of randoms. And we had one friend move in. And then as the other roommates phased out, our whole friend group slowly took it over. And the house itself was pretty old. At the time, it was like this butter yellow color. I think we were each paying like $350 or $500 or something a month in rent. And we definitely paid the price for that because the AC would always fail. The whole thing creaked. Paint was peeling. It was covered in vines. It had, you know, a lot of street appeal. But it was super close to Front Campus, which is where all the classes were. And it was also close to the barge. So it was sort of best of both worlds. And it was a great place to be. And there are very few things to do in Milledgeville as a college-age person besides go to class and drink. And because the house was closest to the downtown area, it became a spot for a lot of our friends to crash after we would go out. And before I moved into this house, we had a friend that had fallen asleep on the couch. And while he was asleep, he had noticed a girl in his dream in our kitchen and in our living room and not doing really anything else besides wandering through the house. And when he woke up, he just knew that her name was Jen. And again, this was back in college. But he just said, he just shared it with our friend group saying like, he saw this girl and he knew her name. And he knew that we had already been experiencing strange things in the house, which up to that point, we had been attributing it to being like an old house, animals, maybe a possum problem. But this sort of gave a name to it. And anytime something would go bump in the night, things would fall off the walls. We'd hear things going on in the house. We would say it was Jen messing with us. When I first got moved into the house and officially got settled in, my room was all set up. Uh, there was only one other roommate home at the time. And I remember I went into the living room, plopped down on the couch. It was like doom scrolling on my phone. And while I was scrolling, I heard what sounded like bare feet running through the hallway into the living room and kitchen area. And I remember looking up, thinking it was my roommate. I called her name. No one answered. And I kind of sat up because it was such a distinct sound of bare feet on the wooden floor. It just sounded like the weight of a person behind it. It didn't sound like a cat. It didn't sound like an animal or something that was on the wall or underneath the house. It sounded like bare feet almost sticky on a hardwood floor and just the weight and the creak that only like a full-bodied adult person could carry and make it sound like that. The way that the living room was set up, you had the front door and you went directly into the living room. And then there was a dining room area with a hallway on the right. And in front of the dining room was the kitchen. And it sounded like it came from the right, like where my roommate's rooms were, running down the hallway. Into the dining room area that would go to the kitchen. And I was still looking at my phone. So when I looked up, I expected to see one of my roommates turning into the kitchen. But there was no one there. And that's why I found it so unsettling because I was like, I definitely know what I heard. That was 100% a person that just ran through there. But there was nothing there. And I got up and I poked my head into my roommate's room. And she was. Laying in bed. Tucked under the covers. The cat was with her. Had her laptop with Netflix. And I was like, did you just go into the kitchen? And she started laughing. And she was like, did you just have your first gin experience? And I was like, absolutely not. Goodbye. Like, no, that's not what I heard. And she was like, okay, like, whatever you say. The experiences after I moved in continued. There were a handful of occasions where we called the cops thinking that someone had broken in because it was such a distinct sound of someone going through the house or feeling like someone was there. There was one evening where we were hanging out in the back of the house. And it was a very strange, strangely crafted home. There was like a full addition on the back where one of my roommate's rooms was. And we were hanging out just watching a movie. And it sounded like a door had slammed. And we heard someone running through the hallway. Again, thought someone broke in. Slammed the door. We were literally hiding in the back bathroom. I think we had like a rake. I don't know what that was supposed to do to protect ourselves with. But we debated calling the cops thinking someone had broken in. By the time we went out and checked the hallway, like 15 minutes later, of course, no one was physically there. Things would fall off of the walls, doors would shut routinely at night. Like I had two doors to my bedroom, one by the head of my bed and one by the foot of my bed. And I would lock them every night. But there were times where I would feel like I saw shadows underneath my door or I would hear footsteps. And again, we always blamed it on it being an old house or animals. I think at this time too, so I had purchased a pink crucifix at an estate sale. So I remember seeing it and I was like, oh my God, this is so seapunk. And I wanted it on the outside of my bedroom door. And that would turn upside down. It would also fall off of my door. But I also thought, you know, maybe that's my roommates messing with me. And I would always ask them. They were like, no, I swear I didn't touch it. And I'm like, okay, this is not funny. But again, old house. Very damp with the AC problems and just the structure. I was like, maybe the nail's not sticking in the door. Like, maybe there's some sort of other explanation for this. I really tried to do anything I could to rationalize what I was hearing. Because, I mean, there was no reason to think that it was anything other than an old house. So there's not a lot to do in Milledgeville. Again, go to class and drink. So my friend group came up with the genius idea of playing hide and go seek. To do this, we would get drunk as hell and put on sunglasses. And we'd have the whole friend group in the house. And our caveat to playing hide and go seek this way was you had to, the seeker had to touch the person and guess who they were. And that was the only way that you could get people out. So if you were. To touch someone and it wasn't who you thought they were just by feeling them, then you had to keep going. And that person could shift places in the house. I think in the past it was just hilarious where people would decide to hide or you would touch someone and be so certain that it was a particular person and it wasn't. And then you would hear everyone else throughout the house snicker because it was only a one floor house. So there were enough nooks and crannies to hide, like under tables, in corners. There's like behind doors and different rooms, but it was always just like a silly game we would play if we were bored. We thought it would be too easy if you didn't have sunglasses on because then you're just playing it at night. And the front of the house had quite a few windows. So when the moon was out, it would shine through just enough that you could make out the shapes and putting on sunglasses added that additional level of like you can't. You really see what's going on and you're straining your eyes to the point where it hurts trying to figure out what's a person, what's an object. You don't want to hit your shin on something and just going around the house that way. So this particular night when we're deciding to play, we were all hanging out before, you know, people are chatting, listening to music, smoking, drinking, just hanging out and having a good time. And before we got started, because I think it reached a point in the night where we're like, we're not going to barge. What can we do here? With it only being one floor, the layout did offer still a lot of places for people to hide. We had a dining room table. The wall jutted out a little bit where if you stood sideways, you could still hide behind the entrance of the door on either side. We had two couches in the living room that people could hide behind. We had a coffee table that people would crawl under. In the kitchen, there was a washing machine and a fridge that people could kind of crouch down and hide behind. And then people's rooms were also open. So folks would hide in closets by the beds. I think at our height, we would play with like eight or ten people. So it was quite a big game of hide and go seek. And the night that we decided to play, we had a coffee table. I'd already had a couple rounds going before I was it. And I remember being very excited because I lived in the house. So I felt like I had the upper hand of knowing where people would be. And I also felt like I had a pretty good understanding of how my friends felt. When you're trying to find the person, you get like one touch. You can't feel them up. So, you know, you're going for a shoulder, their hair, their face. You accidentally grab a boob. Like you don't really see what you're grabbing because, again, super dark. You have on the sunglasses. You're just going for that one touch and trying to guess from that who it could be. So by the time it's my turn, I want to add a little bit more cinematic flair to my round of hide and go seek. So I used to like to go on the front porch and I'd give everyone two minutes and I would ring the doorbell to get my version started. It just felt creepy and it would kind of set the tone. And it would also, instead of having to call and say, ready or not, they would know that it was time to get it started with the doorbell. And this particular night, I think the reason we even decided to play hide and go seek was it was had been raining. It was a gross out. We didn't want to go to the bars. So I remember waiting on the front porch and it was like post rain. So it's steamy. It's coming off the parking lot. It's dark, but you can still see the moon through the clouds. So there is some light there. And I remember ringing the doorbell, flinging the door open. I hear the last little bit of snickers as I'm going inside and I slam it and I start looking for people. When I'm in the living room, I know that I have my hands outstretched because while there's nothing obvious there, I don't know if someone's going to be standing. Along the wall or somewhere where I might miss them if I don't have my hands out in front of me. At this point, we have all the curtains pulled back on the windows, so there's a little bit of moonlight coming through them and with the sunglasses on, your eyes are so strained, you can barely see shapes, you can't see the pattern or the texture of anything, but if you were to get right up on someone, you might be able to see, okay, they have long hair or you can see the shape of their hair, but you can't see the pattern or the texture of anything, but if you were to get right up on someone, you might be able to see, okay, they have long hair or you can see the shape of their hair. You can't see the pattern or the texture of anything, but if you were to get right up on someone, you might be able to see, okay, they have long hair or you can see the shape of their hair. of a person. Maybe if you're right up on them, you could see a pattern on their shirt. But as far as objects in the house go, I was going off of muscle memory from living there because it was so dark. You could just make out the outline and the general shape of the things around you. So I remember going through the living room, my hands outstretched. I'm going along the walls. I'm not feeling anyone. I go to the hallway where people would often hide on either side of the entryway door. And I remember like smacking both sides of the hallway. No one's there. I turn around because I'm like, okay, if no one's in the hallway, someone has to be in the kitchen. And our kitchen was kind of creepy in and of itself. Like when you went through the dining room, it was a long, narrow, galley-shaped kitchen. So if you're looking through the door, you could only directly see the microwave on a table right in front of you. You couldn't see to the left or the right of the kitchen. But I knew in the kitchen, back by the washing machine was a great hiding spot because it was big enough for an adult-sized person to get in beside the washing machine and hide. And so this particular night, I'm walking towards it. I poke my head into the kitchen and I look to the left and I look to the right. And in the far back corner, I can see what looks like one of my girlfriends standing there. And I pause before I go in because I'm like, okay, I only would have one guess if I touch her, like who is it going to be? And I'm straining my eyes trying to make out who it is. And I can see her shoulders are kind of rounded over. And I can see hair, like shoulder-length hair, down her back. And I'm guessing, and I think that I know which one of my friends it is. So I go into the kitchen, but I still have my arms out in front of me. And as I'm getting closer, it just feels off. And I've never once been scared playing this game. And I have my hands in front of me and it just feels like the energy feels off. It felt colder. I start getting nervous. Nervous. And I'm like, I'm thinking in my head, I'm like, what the hell? Like, go, go ahead and like tag them. You know who it is. I'm not seeing any details on her clothes. I can just see it as the shape of a woman. And I see her hair behind her. I see her shoulders enough that I'm like, it is very clearly one of my girlfriends hunched over in the corner and she's doing a piss poor job because she's not ducked completely behind the washing machine. She's just facing the corner. And it really felt like I thought one of my friends was trying to scare me. So I had my hands in front of me close enough to touch her. And while they're outstretched and I'm reaching and I feel like I'm not hitting a body, I freak the fuck out and rip off the sunglasses. And that's when there's nothing there. And I just remember immediately sobering up, hands sweaty as hell. Just. Absolutely so scared because even with my eyes strained, I knew that there was someone standing in the corner. Like I could see her hair. I could see her shoulders rounded over like freaking Blair Witch Project style. And it was so clear that there was someone there until there wasn't. Where the washing machine was, there was probably still about a foot of space in the corner where someone could fit. And I found it so strange because. She was standing there like her head was hunched over and bent over into the corner, but she wasn't crouching down. She was just standing there, but her arms were kind of tucked in front of her. So I saw like her rounded back and I saw her hair. I remember like throwing the sunglasses on the ground, running backwards, going into the living room and just screaming like I just saw something in there. I don't know what that was. I'm done playing. And I remember my boyfriend at the time, I hear him from like down the hallway and he's like, oh my God, you're being a baby. Like you're drunk. It's fine. Like we keep playing. And I was like, nope, nope, I'm done. I turned on the lights and it was someone else's turn to start around because I was like, I'm not doing that shit again. I felt very unsettled by it. I had already been locking my bedroom doors when I moved in after the first time I heard the footsteps in the hallway. But after that experience, I tried so hard in the coming days to just rationalize it as you were drunk, like you were just seeing things. But no matter how many times I told myself that, I think I still knew in my gut that that wasn't true because I so clearly saw her, saw someone in the corner. And I just remember feeling, generally unsettled. So I just pushed it down and just kept telling myself, you were drunk and there's no other, nothing behind it. All right. We'll be right back after this quick break. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. Thinking about organizing my finances and setting a budget used to be the absolute last thing I wanted to deal with after a long week. And honestly, it still is. But Rocket Money made taking control of my money shockingly simple. It links up your checking, savings, loans, and investments into a single unified dashboard so you can always know where you stand. I was able to set up customized spending categories and personalized goals, which helped me cut back on daily expenses. I was able to set up customized spending and start saving for some huge personal milestones. You also get real-time updates for upcoming bills and low balances so you never get caught off guard. Best of all, it identifies all those sneaky recurring monthly fees and lets you cancel unwanted subscriptions in a few taps right inside the app. While automated savings features help you build a safety net on autopilot. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps you lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney.com slash otherworld. That is rocketmoney.com slash otherworld. The Unsolved Mysteries podcast is back. I'm Jordan Murphy, and each week I'll take you inside a new investigation. It could be an unsolved murder, an unexplained disappearance, the search for a wanted fugitive, any mystery that still needs answers. We'll follow every new lead, every break in the case, and the moments when a mystery is finally solved. Because after all these years, one thing hasn't changed. Someone, somewhere, knows the truth. Listen to and follow Unsolved Mysteries. Available now wherever you get your podcasts. So some weeks after the hide-and-seek game, there was one night that my boyfriend at the time and I were standing in the hallway. And it was kind of a horror movie hallway, for lack of a better explanation. There was a singular light bulb that was in the hallway, and it didn't have a pretty fixture around it or anything. It was just a straight-up light bulb. And my boyfriend and I were talking about where to go to dinner. And the way that this hallway was set up is if you're facing the hallway, at the end of the hallway, there's a bathroom. There was a bedroom on the left. A bedroom on the right. And then in the far back corner near the bathroom was my bedroom. So when we're having this conversation, my boyfriend's back is to the bedroom on the right. And none of my other roommates were home at the time. The door was open behind him, and all of the lights were off. And we were just casually talking about where we want to go get dinner. And as we're mid-conversation, the TV flicked on, and I remember it was Friends, because I hate Friends, and everyone in my house loved to watch it. And it flicked on for just a second, maybe two seconds before the door slammed right after it. And we just looked at each other. And I remember him laughing, and he's like, I guess Jen wants us to go out to eat. And I was like, okay, well, we're not fucking sleeping here. And we left, locked at the house. I remember texting my roommates about it. And they're like, yeah, whatever. I'm sure the power just flickered. You're fine. I think in my head, I just chalked it up to, it's an old house. Maybe there was a power surge. Maybe it's shifting. The AC flipped on. That's why the door slammed. Maybe the cat went in the room, and that's how it slammed. But it was so forceful. I just remember it being so unsettling that we immediately left. And I felt so deeply uncomfortable that I was like, we're not sleeping here tonight. We can stay at your place. So all of those experiences went on, on and off again, for two years and my senior year we needed a new roommate. So we went on our campus's version of Craigslist. It was called Bobcat Exchange. And we put out a posting for a new roommate and we got lucky. She was great. She moved in and she was younger. So we had no mutual friends. And I remember once she was settled in, we were hanging out in the living room one night, like everyone's having a good time. There's something on TV. We're listening to music. People are smoking, drinking, hanging out. And she asks if her friend can come over. And we're like, sure. Like the more the merrier, of course she's welcome. So within the hour, we hear a knock on the door and her friend is standing there. And I remember she ripped this like gigantic vape cloud right before she walked through the door. And we're like, hey, what's up? Like, nice to meet you. And as soon as she walked into the room, she was like, oh, I'm so excited. And I was like, oh, I'm so excited. And I was like, she got about halfway in and she looked around and she stopped. And she was like, you guys live in this house? And we were all still kind of laughing and joking. And we're like, yeah, what do you mean we live in this house? And she said, a girl named Jennifer Clark used to live here and she died like 10 years ago. She was in a horrible accident and she died while she lived here. And you could have heard a freaking pin drop. And then everyone starts freaking out. What do you mean? What do you mean? We start Googling. We find the news article. And it was just so surreal in this moment to have this complete stranger who had absolutely nothing to gain, doesn't know the lore because we haven't told our new roommate about Jen because she's younger and you don't want to like freak someone out. I just remember the look of shock on everyone's face. Just for years, we have been calling everything that happened in the house, Jen, and to then hear a complete stranger, who doesn't know us with a new roommate who knows nothing about us. We haven't told the new roommate about Jen yet because she's younger and she's new. And we just have this random girl walk in and say full first, last name, like full government name. And, and like in that instant, it was like every fear was completely validated. I remember I was terrified and I called my mom. And I remember I was crying and I was like, I need to break my lease. I need to get out of this house. And I remember my mom just taking a deep breath and saying like, Katie, she was a college girl just like you. She's not a demon. She's like, say a prayer for the weak girl and get over it. And she hung up the phone. And I remember sitting with that. And it brought me some sense of peace. I think when I, I tried to really sit with the concept that she would have been my age. It's not like it was some ancient person, right? It's, you know, 10, 15 years ago that it happened. And I did say a prayer for her. And I felt very rusty doing that. And I remember just sort of talking to my ceiling and being like, you know, Jen, I don't know you, or maybe I do based on everything that's been happening. Um, I'm, I'm sorry that happened to you. Like we don't wish you any harm. Obviously this was your house at some point too. Yeah. So after we found out that Jen was a real person, the experiences continued. Um, and I know that some of my friends like looked up her obituary photo and composite photo. And I was like, do not show me those things. I'm a very visual person. I didn't want to know what she looked like at all. My extent was reading the news article. And to me, that was enough validation that I was like, I don't need to see or learn anything more. That's enough for me. And so one night I know it was during finals week. I was studying at home alone. Uh, everyone was at the library and my room was very small. I had a door at near the foot of my bed and a door towards the head of my bed, but it was so small that the foot of my bed basically touched the wall. And this particular night I'm sitting in bed studying German very poorly at that. And I have my headphones in and I feel like I hear a thumping sound. And my bed started to move and not in like a crazy way. Kind of if a subway or a train were to pass a room, I've been in an earthquake before. And that's kind of what I could equate it to. And I remember feeling my bed kind of rhythmically going back and forth. And I'm looking around things on my shelf and on my desk and like, are we in an earthquake? Like, is anything happening? And I see everything moving and I see that everything is still. And I take my headphones out and I still hear the thumping underneath my bed. And I just remember like sitting up completely heightened and I screamed at the top of my lungs, Jen stop. And then it completely stopped. I just like screamed at the top of my lungs. I remember I left the house after that. And the experiences continued. Like once one of my roommates was home, I was like, I'm going to go to bed. And as I described, again, it's a hallway with a bathroom at the end and then a bedroom on the left and the right of the hallway. She was getting ready in the bathroom and out of the corner of her eye, she saw a woman dart in between the bedrooms. And obviously she's terrified. She locks herself in the bathroom. She calls the police. They get there. You know, they look around and they're like, no, no, no. Nobody's here. And because, you know, like throughout the time, other roommates had their own experiences, but it culminated in like it could never be just one person staying home alone to sleep. It was like too minimum or people would find somewhere else to stay. I know that, again, I refuse to look up her composite or obituary photos and I still haven't to this day. Like I won't even look them up living in. Back in Atlanta, living in my own apartment now because I'm just so scared. Like even when I retell the story, it's like a lights on kind of sleep where, again, I'm not religious, but I will say a little prayer, talk to my ceiling, whatever, to be just like, you know, I wish you well, because I really don't want any bad juju from it. And moving out of there was just an end to a chapter. You know, everyone. Was had graduated and was going off to big adult jobs. Some people moving back to Atlanta or wherever they were headed after that. I don't remember us saying like a formal goodbye to Jen or anything. It was sort of just leaving that experience and the house itself, but just leaving. It did kind of feel like, like, whoo, okay, I can breathe. I don't have to lock my bedroom door at night anymore. I'm not living with this fear. I'm not living with this fear of the unknown. But after that experience, I think it really just opened up my mind to what is possible and what can be real. Just hearing other people's stories. I feel like I believe them all now because what I went through, I can't explain it any other way. I try not to give too much thought, honestly, to. Anything outside of nice ghosts, I guess, or energy still existing after a traumatic event. I think, you know, even being in Milledgeville with all the things that have happened there is just a city historically, like you feel the weight of a place. And I feel very much that that is real, like energy persisting, especially in the face of trauma. It's definitely made me more paranoid thinking of other paranormal aspects. Especially in relation to religion with demonic entities and things like that. I don't like to give any mind space to them, honestly, to think about it. But the way I operate in which like in through the world now is just thinking that those things are 100% real. Sometimes I always wish that we had reached out to her parents. It just, it never seemed right to be like, hey. And obviously, you know, we can't know. I try to think with my own parents, like me being obsessed with paranormal shit as a kid. If they get a call and they're like, hey, your daughter lived in this house. And I think she's still hanging around sometimes to mess with us. I feel like my dad would have thought it was funny. My mom wouldn't have. I don't know. It's just a lot, a lot to think about and don't know how to explain it any other way. © transcript Emily Beynon a big thank you to katie for talking to me and sharing this story every once in a while i hear somebody describe a real life situation that really freaks me out just based on the premise alone and this drunk hide and seek game is definitely one of those it's a scene that i think really belongs in a horror movie while i've never played drunk hide and seek myself or even heard of it me and my friends definitely had our own version of stupid games like this that we would play in college and i think what gets to me about this story is that moment when it turns from fun goofing around type scary into something dreadful and very wrong the type of situation that can instantly soothe you over you up from pure adrenaline of course the main reason why this story is on the show is that this presence that they felt in the house the one that they named jennifer ended up being a real person and look there are so so many urban legends in college towns most of them are not true but this one definitely is there are several news stories about this young woman who tragically passed and i was able to confirm those details in fact i was reading one of the articles just now and noticed something that i did not catch initially it was just one comment near the end of one of the smaller articles about this i'm going to be a little vague to protect this woman's identity but essentially jennifer was using the washing machine before leaving and getting in this tragic accident and jennifer was using the washing machine in fact she had laundry in the car with her during the accident and that's exactly where katie saw her standing next to the washing machine like i said i did not see this detail before in any of the articles i'm just seeing it now in this one and i actually just texted katie about this a second ago to see if she knew this she told me she did not realize it either in fact she just replied saying that her hands started sweating while reading my text she also told me that she was on a work call and had to hang up because her heart plummeted to her stomach when she read my text this is kind of crazy to me honestly there were even a couple other details that stood out in this story details that have relevance to katie's experience but i don't want to get too specific and risk exposing this young woman's identity this is honestly pretty wild to me there are like i said so many details that i don't want to get too specific so so many urban legends and ghost stories that exist like this but in truth when you actually dive in to investigate them there is rarely any truth to them or at least nothing to back it up and it's startling to me when i come across one where the lore is proven to be true and then even more details pop up to validate it further especially when it happens so i think it's a really interesting story and i think it's going to be a very interesting story and i think it's going to be a very interesting story and i think it's going to be a very interesting story and i think it's going to be a very interesting story and i think it's going to be a very interesting story story and i think it's going to be a very interesting story and i think it's going to be a very interesting story and i think it's going to be a very interesting story © transcript Emily Beynon

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Katie, a 30-year-old from Atlanta, moved to Milledgeville, Georgia for college and lived in an old, haunted house where her friends experienced recurring unexplained events.
  2. The group attributed strange occurrences—like footsteps, creaking sounds, and sightings—to the house’s age, animals, or imagination, until a game of drunk hide and seek led to a terrifying moment where she believed she saw a person in the kitchen corner.
  3. The experience culminated when a new roommate revealed that a real person named Jennifer Clark had died in the house 10 years prior in a laundry-related accident, validating the ghost stories.
  4. The story highlights how urban legends in college towns are often rooted in truth, with specific details like Jennifer using the washing machine matching Katie’s firsthand memory.
  5. Katie’s experience shifted her belief system, leading her to accept that trauma and energy can persist in places, and that the line between fiction and reality is thinner than assumed.
  6. The episode underscores how personal, lived experiences of the paranormal can be deeply emotional and real, even when rational explanations exist.
  7. The story emphasizes the power of verification—when ghost stories are backed by real news, they transform from folklore into a grounded, haunting truth.
  8. Katie now lives in Atlanta, avoiding the house due to lingering fear, but the experience profoundly changed her perspective on memory, trauma, and the presence of the past.

Summary:

Katie, a former college student from Atlanta, recounts her time living in an old house in Milledgeville, Georgia, where her friends frequently experienced unexplained phenomena like footsteps, creaking sounds, and sightings. Initially, these were dismissed as normal for an old home, but a night of drunk hide and seek turned terrifying when she believed she saw a person standing behind the washing machine. The experience became pivotal when a new roommate revealed that Jennifer Clark, a real person, had died in the house a decade prior during a laundry accident—directly matching the details of Katie’s encounter.

This verified the urban legend, deepening her belief that trauma and presence can linger in places. Despite rationalizing her fears, Katie remains emotionally unsettled and now avoids returning to the house. Her story illustrates how personal experiences of the paranormal, when validated by real events, shift from fiction to a profound, emotionally resonant truth.

It also highlights how college towns often harbor real-life ghost stories rooted in tragic events, and how such stories can blur the line between memory, imagination, and reality. The episode underscores the emotional weight of such experiences and the importance of confronting the past, especially when it involves real people and tragic endings.

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While playing a drunk hide-and-seek game, Katie heard a figure in the kitchen corner, with long hair and rounded shoulders. When she reached out to touch it, she felt nothing—only cold air—and immediately panicked, realizing she had seen someone who wasn’t there.

Yes, the figure was real. A woman named Jennifer Clark, who died in a tragic accident while using the washing machine in the same house, had lived there and was later confirmed to have died in the home.

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