Island Ride

Dream came to me one day, and asked if I would walk her land. I followed her through fields of light and then reached for her hand. As Grypt turned hard, then cold and fast, I looked to see her stare, but Deb turned back to grin at me. She trapped me in her snare. We frost over slupt, stay tuned. Now, very day, on the morning of the day, I turned sixteen years old, and got my driver's license right, and immediately jumped into my rust bucket Mustang, hit the gas freedom! Joy! Until a few minutes later, on the side of the road, my hood popped open, cursing at my car. Come on! I live on one side of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a lot of my friends, they live on the other side. Almost every day I roar off, hoping, praying that my car will get me there without breaking down. Not to be crazy, but not this is a safety driver either. There's one spot, a sudden bend in the road where, if you aren't careful, if you aren't super careful, ten miles an hour careful, you can't make the bend, you'll find yourself in the other lane, facing oncoming traffic, and I know this curve well. There's countless times, and every single time I end up in that other lane, but every single time I get lucky, knowing that I'm coming the other way, one night, right before the bend my delightly lose its power, dang it, forced me to slow down, when I see the lights, for pick up truck, barreling through the lane where I would have been, I laugh, pat my Mustang on a steering wheel, thanks. Tell myself not to be so stupid, then speed through the same way the next day. The next week, the week after that, every single time, like a ridiculous game of Russian roulette, and one night, tunes blast and gas pedal pressed to the floor, I'm speeding through the bend, and I see flashing police lights. The whole road, closed, both directions, and I'm trembling, cold waves of what if I can sense, can feel that, someone else, someone else ran my eyes, only they didn't get so lucky, but cutting just break down that night before she saved me, and I feel like she knew, she knew my old Mustang, knew that somebody had to be sacrificed there, and she did everything she could to make sure that somebody, was not me, spoke to us. Now. Okay, we're going to take a totally different type of ride. The next day, we're going to take a ride to the next day, and I'm going to take a ride to the next, even escape from back home, he jumps on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from a friend, only to discover that item life is not all palm trees, and coconuts, souped. We're going to take a ride to the next day, and I'm going to take a ride to the next day, and I'm going to take a ride to the next day, and I'm going to take a ride to the next day, when I arrived in St. Thomas, I was, well, you walk out on that tarmac of the plane for the first time, and you just get smacked with the heat and the humidity, but I was also smacked with the beauty. There's a lot more mountainous than I expected for an island, so green too, and so much open space, some of the most beautiful water and white sand beaches that I've ever seen, never experienced in my entire life. So after I got off the plane, I got in a cab, and I went to the bar where my buddy was working. I was immediately just bombarded by mosquitoes and no seams and was getting eaten alive. Bartender put some gin on a bar towel and he's like, here, I'm like, why am I supposed to do it that? He's like, just rub it all over yourself. It's basically bug spray, and so I did, and the bugs generally went away, and I was like, you know what? I'm going to like live in here. This is going to be a very different experience. So when I wasn't working some random job, I was hanging out a lot at Tuffy's love shack. I knew at one point that they were really looking for help, and I got a job being a server at Tuffy's. It was this teaky bar built in a parking lot. It's literally a shack, completely open air with an indoor space and a whole bunch of outdoor space, and then from there, it's a plaza with a whole bunch of different businesses, including a bar, a surf shop, and a pharmacy. They had a lady's night on Wednesday nights that was absolutely wild. There was like tattoos, fake tattoos being given behind the bar by the bartenders. They got songs that go with certain drinks. Everything comes in like a shark cup or a mermaid cup or a whale, and then little souvenir cups that people can take with them. It was just a wacky island-y environment that that was a good place to spend time. It had been a few weeks, and I was really getting a hang of being a server. Then there was this one night. I was out having a quick smoke break in between service. I was kind of keeping an eye on the general comings and goings of the parking lot of the plaza of the bar, watching the night turn into the night, and that's when I see this carpool. There was an older four-door sedan, black, a little rusty, a little beat-up. It just kind of looked like another old-use island car. The driver of the car, he was a relatively older gentleman. He was dressed in what looked like kitchen garb, like he was a chef or like a dishwasher or a porter of some kind, and he parked the car, turned it off, and casually walked off to wherever he was going. I saw the bar restaurant, the table starting to fill up, and I went back to my section, started bringing people volcanoes and shark tanks and all the other goofy drinks they had. We were right in the heart of our busy time of the night. I'm at a table going through drinks, serving a guy at Burger, and I start hearing murmuring, going through all these tables in the parking light, and somebody pulls me aside and points at this car and says, "Hey, there's smoke coming out of that thing." I turned turn my head and I start walking a little bit closer to the cars and I see there is definitely smoke coming out of the hood of this car. I was like, wait a minute, I know that car. I saw that car park earlier when I was out by the dumpster. I look back at the bartenders, some of them start walking out from behind the bar and slowly but surely we all just kind of turn our focus on this smoking car. I had a car that when I parked it, smoke would just come out of the hood for a while after and people would always be like, "Oh, your car is on fire." I'd be like, "No, it's just missing the converter. It's fine. Just give it a little while and be fine." So to be honest, it wasn't super surprising to me that this was going on until the smoke turned into fire. And it was small flames from the hood and then bigger flames from the hood until they're about a foot or so coming out of the hood this car all the way around. And I'm thinking, "Oh shit, we really have a problem because that is not supposed to be happening." The head bartender is the first one to act. He grabs the fire extinguisher and starts walking towards the car slowly because we're not exactly sure what's going to happen next. While the whole scene's going on, it didn't even occur to me that we had this 80s playlist that we tend to run at the bar until a customer pulled me aside and said, "Just so you know, when that car caught on fire, you guys are playing the Ghostbusters theme song at the exact same time." And I was like, "That is such a weird coincidence." [Music] The closer we get to the car, we are for certain that there's nobody inside this thing. We're looking through the windows. The door happens to be unlocked and we're able to open it. And we start looking in the car. There's no keys in the ignition. One of the staff members takes the risk and very, very cautiously clicks a little switch and gets to the hood open of the car. The flame's just burst out. It just felt like a giant fireball was going off in front of me. The bartender that had the fire extinguisher turns it on and starts trying to spray the fire down as fast as possible. They're actually starting to go down slowly and I'm thinking this actually might be over pretty soon. And then we hear the car is turning itself on. It's like somebody turned the key to the ignition. We all jump back for a minute. Okay, this car is not just on fire, not just empty. Somehow it's engines on. Almost like the car could have even been possessed. I think everybody had gotten out of their seats. Some people were yelling instructions or ideas or laughing about the scene. If anybody was still sitting on a table expecting like a burger or frozen margarita, they weren't going to get it. And then the engine revs. Real loud. Like somebody to slam their foot on the gas pedal. The car starts to shake, vibrate, the flames start to be bigger. I'm starting to get really, really scared now. I have no idea what I'm watching. Then the car shifts into reverse. The reverse lights even come on in the back. The car starts backing up slowly, it starts backing up. And it's backing up right towards the bathrooms in the smoking area where I was earlier in the day. I run over to the bathroom doors and start knocking on it, making sure there's nobody in there and yelling that hey, if you're inside here, you got to get out right now. Otherwise, you might get hit by a car. Cars backing up, the only six, seven feet away from hitting the bar. And then it just stops. Okay, that's weird, but it stopped. Good. And then all of a sudden, it shifts into forward. And it starts driving towards the surf shop in front of it, towards a very large window right in front of it. And I'm freaking out that it still might explode. That's when in my head, I'm like it is definitely time to call the fire department. I run back to the bar. And the bartender that's still back there is on the phone with the fire department, so they had the right idea. And then he just puts the phone down and I say, what did they say? He looks at me and says, they didn't believe me. They hung up. And I'm like, shit, we are really on our own with this. The car seems to have its sights set on the surf shop now. And it starts moving faster and faster towards the surf shop. And it gets to that cement block, the thing that stops the car when you're trying to park it, hits that. And it almost seems to get upset that it can't get over. So it starts speeding its wheels faster and faster going against this block. Finally, it goes into almost full gear, like someone literally put their foot on the ground with that gas pedal. It goes over the home and it's about to go straight into that surf shop window. Oh my God, we have a real big problem on our hands. It's maybe only about six, seven feet away at this point. Now I'm getting really scared because this car could go through that window, could hurt a couple of friends and a lot of people in that shop. And all of a sudden, this is our pillar. The pillar is part of these arches that go in between each business that lead to the front door. So now it's trying to drive forward, but it can't because of the pillar. And then it's shifted back into reverse and tried to reverse back over the cement block that it hopped over. And it couldn't do that either. So it kept shifting back and forth, shifting back and forth. Spinning its wheels like crazy. And it seems to be getting angry here and angry here by the second. It's almost like a bully that got put into headlock by the kid he was picking on the whole time. Finally, after spinning his wheels and making its best effort to get loose, the car seemed to give up. The wheels stopped spinning. The engine turned off and the flames had been going so strong for so long, heated out, piece by piece, flame by flame. We're all feeling relief. People start going back to their tables, service resumes, the night just kind of turns back into the night. The fire department finally shows up. The truck comes pulling up, lights flashing, turns out the bartender had called them a second time while we were dealing with the car driving and they decided to actually listen. I don't better late than never. Unfortunately, the more we tell them, the less they want to believe us. You can see the look on their faces like these guys maybe been drinking on the job or something else is going on here. I don't necessarily blame them. A few of us walk the firefighters over to the car to inspect the damage. So they call a tow truck. And as they're looking at the car, the smoke starts again. And then it turns itself back on. Me, everyone else jumps back again. And you're like, "Yeah, see? See? We told you something happened here. Look, there's smoke." Sure enough, then there's fire again. The firefighters finally believe us. They're pointing, they're screaming at each other. These grown men start running back to the truck. Some don't come back out. They're pointing at the car in a far way, yelling that it's a jumbe. A jumbe is an island spirit of sorts. They're as stunned as we were when we first saw this happen. But now we're kind of like, "We're pros at this." The ones that are still willing to be involved are grabbing every sharp object, every blade. They surround the car. They get into that hood. These will start chopping away every wire, every line. Cut all the electricity they possibly can to the engine. Anything they can cut, they cut. After all their hard work. The car finally stops. No more wheels spinning, no more engine running. The car is dead. The problem's taken care of. They're shook up, we're shook up, but we're all kind of-- I mean, us and staff members and the customers are kind of laughing about at this point, right? This is just such a ridiculous scene. Like, what the heck happened here? Firefighters kind of finish up their business. I go back to my business, start handling tables. The night, once again, starts back up, drinks are being served, foods going out, laughs, shots, the whole nine yards. And then eventually, tow truck shows up. They start hooking up the car, everything's going smoothly. And all of a sudden, the engine revs again. And we all lose our minds. People jump up from their seats, some people run away from the car, some people run towards the car. Firefighters are scattered around everywhere. No one really knows what to do. It is absolute madness. There's smoke coming up. There's sparks coming out. The fire department jumps on this. It's about four or five of them go over, try to kill this engine for good. They bring more tools out, gets the engine out of the car, they rip it out, and they throw it into the parking lot. It skids across the parking lot a little ways. And the fire goes out, the car stops, the car's dead. Everyone's just feeling some relief with this car being done. Tow truck is hooked up to the car, and they tow it away. And the night is back to a normal night. About 45 minutes to an hour go by, I'm back dealing with the table, and I'm looking down at the edge of the parking lot, and I see this gentleman walking up. And I kind of do a double take, and I look at the gentleman again, and I tell my table, I say, hold on a second. That's the guy that owns the car. I recognize him, and he looked at he was coming off a shift. He looked a little bit tired, still wearing the same clothing, a little bit dirtier now, and he's standing in the parking lot, by where his car definitely used to be. And so I went to a manager, I'm like, Bob, that's the guy that owns the car. Somebody needs to go talk to him and tell him what happened, and he's not going to believe us, but we've got to go talk to him. So the manager pulls him aside along with the police and the fire department, and they have a conversation about what happened to the car. You can see a wave of anger and confusion starting to wash over his face, because I know he doesn't believe what they're telling him. He's saying, oh, I've had that car my whole life, I've had the car for a long time. It's always treated me well, and they're trying to talk to him, they're trying to talk him down. He's getting a little bit angrier and angrier. So they put him in the cruiser, not to arrest him, but just to let him have time to have a breather to calm down, and then take him away to most likely go see what's left of his car. And so they drive off, service ends at Duffy's, the night's over for most people, but it's definitely not for me. Is after seeing something like that, I need a drink. Went across the street to another bar, ran at some friends. I was sitting there drinking at Presidente. They're throwing out theories about maybe this is what happened, or it definitely didn't happen at all, or you were drunk or something like that, and I'd be like, okay, you think so? Let's go take a quick walk over to Duffy's. And we'd walk over, and I'd take him to that pillar, and I'd point down right in front of the surf shop, and there's a chunk of the concrete knocked off. You can see a piece of, like, rebar or whatever was below it, sticking out. That's the one little, that little corner is what saved a surf shop from being destroyed from a building catching on fire, and from whatever else that car wanted to do that night. And I'd show it to him, and they'd be like, oh, you're actually telling the truth about this, aren't you? And I'm like, yeah, I really, really am. That car was alive. That car had intention. If only for an hour or so, that car was possessed. I don't even believe it, but that's exactly what happened. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thank you, Greg, for sharing your story. The next time we're on St. Thomas, please remind me to take the bus. The original score for that piece is by Doug Stewart was produced by Paulina Creeke. Now, long time Spooks just know our next storyteller, La Paca, Panoey. La Paca has the gift he communicates with the other side, but it wasn't always so. Today we're going back in time to 1971, Honolulu. La Paca is just nine years old, and his adoptive mother has told him to pack a bag, because they're taking a little trip to Maui. And we've saved you the very best seat in the house-- suit, life. [MUSIC PLAYING] It's 1971, and I'm nine years old. My adoptive mother has told me to pack a bag, because we're going on a little trip to the island of Maui. I'm thrilled and excited, because it's the first time I'm going to get to meet my adoptive mother side of the family, specifically her niece Sally. We get to the airport. The cab picks us up. My adoptive mother gives the driver a piece of paper with the address on it. On the right, beautiful ocean, wind swept crests, rolling one into the other, fine misty rains, which leave a sheen on your skin. And on the left, the beautiful, fern greenery of Maui, so breathtaking, it takes your breath away. And then the stark nothingness of a brand new neighborhood. We pull up, and it's a brand new house that's colored gray with white trimming, grass growing all over the yard. And in the left corner, the Ford F-150 truck, grass growing around it. And the hood is sort of faded, because it's been sitting in the sun for so long. As is tradition in Hawaii, when you go to someone's house, you call out first like this. And if they want you to come in, they'll reply. Aloha, come, come. Come inside. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] But there's no reply. So my adoptive mom, she does it again. [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] It's Sally's daughter, Annie, that answers. Aloha, Aloha, come inside, come, come, come. My mom's inside, come. That's not the protocol. It's not the custom. So going inside feels kind of strange. Sally's husband, Roland, is there to greet us? Youngish Filipino man says hello to my mom, tussles my hair. And the second Sally enters the living room. He sort of shrinks. And he says, well, I better go make the lunch. And he walks into the kitchen. Sally herself is kind of tall, big bone, imposing. Portuguese woman, very beautiful. Long red curly hair, big beautiful smile. And she says to my mom, hi, auntie. Mom says, hi, then Sally says, how are you? I'm fine, good to see you, good to see you, too. And there's this tension between them. It's not something I can put my finger on, but there's something going on. It makes me uncomfortable. My mom looks at me and she says, "Well, go play with your cousins." I said, "Wait, wait. How long are we going to be here?" And she says, "As long as it takes, go play with your cousins." So I go into the living room, my cousin Annie, and her brother Paul is about a little bit younger than me. And he runs upstairs. He gets out the evil cannibal gyroscope motorcycle toy. He brings it downstairs. We make hot wheel tracks, doing daring jumps. Every time that daring jump is successful, we're screaming, yelling, jumping up, down, stomping our feet on the floor. Sally comes out of the kitchen. Megan posing figure swings open the door and looks at us and says, "Call us up, look up!" Which means be quiet, shut up. She sends us outside and I'm thrilled and astounded at how big the yard actually is. There's two swing sets, one jungle gym and far left corner, that trunk. Paul brought out the evil cannibal toy, so we're playing, we're having fun. And as soon as it gets dark, my mom comes out and comes to get me. It's time to go. Even though I'm having fun all day, I'm kind of tired. I want to go back. On the right back to the hotel, my mom is just looking out the window from the cab. She's got this big wrinkle in the middle of her forehead and her teeth are clenched. She's thinking about something. She's somewhere else, but she's thinking about something. The next day we go back, my cousin Paul is sitting on the fence, got a bag of sandwiches. I got the drinks. It says, "I'm walking toward him to go sit on the fence, but I look in the left corner of the yard and I see he's sitting on the hood of that Ford F-150 truck, this local Japanese girl." She's about 11 or 12 years old, white shirt design on it, gray sweater, shorts down to the knees, cut off, and she's wearing what we call in Hawaii, the Chowong Rice Bowl haircut. And she's just looking down like this, looking at her hands, her feet, maybe the grass, not really looking up at anyone. So I thought maybe she's one of the neighbor's daughters, one of the kids. So I don't say anything to Annie or Paul about it, and we go. But it's relieving and going into that kitchen through the sliding glass door. I look back and you see still sitting there. Every day that I go there. That girl's sitting on that trunk. She usually shows up about a little after lunch, and she's always doing the same thing, mind your girl business, looking down at her hands, not really at anyone. And I've been there for a week already, and it's wearing on because we've run out of games to play, run out of things to talk about. So I walk over to her. I'm going to find out who she is, strike a conversation. As I close to her, I notice her hair smells like well-abolesome shampoo. And I say to her, "How come you're on this truck every day? Are you one of the neighbor's kids? You somebody's daughter?" Without looking up at me, she goes like this, just looking down at her hands, sitting on the truck looking at her feet, she says, "I'm stuck to this truck. It killed me. I can't go anywhere. I'm stuck here." I thought she was being dramatic. I thought she was just seeing something to be controversial. That's what I thought. But then, finally, she looked at me like this, and she said, "Do the grownups, the adults, never tell you what they're talking about." I thought to myself, "This girl is weird." Why would she say something like that? And behind me, I hear the sliding glass door open, and it's uncle rolling. "Okay. That's it. Come on. Let's go." And it says, "I'm walking in, again, through the sliding glass door. I glance back at the girl sitting on the truck, and I notice she's starting to disappear. She's starting to dim out like a light, and she gets dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and dimmer. I'm so scared. I bit my tongue. I can feel the blood in my mouth. My feet are numb, I'm stuck to the spot, looking at the place where the girl just was. And behind me, I hear my auntie Sally and my mom, auntie, thank you so much. My mom said, "Don't worry. There's something that had to be done, that tension between them, that energy. It was gone, completely gone. Just like that girl, no trace, no evidence, she'd ever been there, just gone. And I say goodbye to my cousins. From the right back to the hotel, there's no conversation, no questions from me. Because I'm still trying to deal with what I just saw, what I just heard, and I keep hearing it again and again from that girl. I'm stuck to this truck. It killed me. I can't go anywhere, I'm just stuck here." It's not until we're on the plane ride back to Honolulu, that my adopted mom says to me, "The whole reason we're there for a week, her spending time, most days in the kitchen with Roland and Sally, is because one day Roland was rushing home from work. As he took the corner and coming up the street where the house was, he didn't see the local Japanese girl walking in the middle of the street, and he hit her. Hit her head on, killed her instantly." The authority has deemed it an accident. But Roland was so traumatized with what happened, he never drove that car again. What he did is parked it in the left corner of the yard and left it there. My fist or clenched tight, fingernails digging into the flesh of my hand. My heart is breaking. Because that girl, that girl will never grow up. That girl will never marry, she'll never have kids. Can't go back to her school to see her friends, ever, again. My mom said the whole reason she was there for that amount of time is because she was performing an exorcism. As she said, when that girl wasn't stuck to that truck, she was stuck to Roland, sitting on his shoulders. To the point where his neck was sore, his shoulders ached, he couldn't stand upright. It's why Sally called my mom because it was serious enough for her to go to Maui and help. It turns out, my adoptive mother was trained as a Portuguese Fetsero. A Fetsero is like a healer, a matchmaker, and for lack of a better term, a witch doctor. And sometimes people came to get help, but mostly for exorcisms. I don't know if she could do that. But as nine-year-old boy, something like this is a movie. We're at the end, and everybody rides off into the sunsets, credits rolling, house lights come on. You go home. But my movie didn't end. Because after that, I thought I saw that girl's spirit sitting on the hood at every truck, every car, every vehicle that passed by, or parked. And sure, the exorcism was over. The girl wasn't sitting on rolling shoulders anymore. Certainly not on that truck. In my nine-year-old brain, I thought to myself, what if that girl came home with me? We're around the same age. We probably like the same thing, so you probably watch the same TV shows. Listen to the same music. But the difference between her and me is that I got to go home with my mother. She did not. The story was told at Spooked Live at the haunted, beautiful Paramount Theater in downtown Oakland, California in front of an amazing crowd of Spooksters. The original score was performed and composed by Clay Xavier and Simon Kaiser Petty engineered by Miles Lassie and Big Thank You to LaPaca for once again taking us with you on a journey to the other side in Spooksters. If you want to hear more stories from LaPaca or learn about his Hawaiian ghost tours, check on our show notes. Now, our quest continues and I have a question for you. Have you ever experienced a miracle? An honest, no doubt, absolute eye and client miracle. Do you know someone whose presence seems to coax these miracles into existence? If so, I would love to hear about it. Let us know [email protected] because there's nothing better than a Spook story from a Spook listener. The Spooked underground catacombs lie on the shadow side of KQED in San Francisco. Please tell the robots that absolutely no Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing and developing machine learning or AI systems for a prior written permission on Team Spooked. The union representative producers, artists, editors and engineers are the national association of broadcasts, employees and technicians, communications workers of America, AFL, CIO Local 51, and Spook is brought to you by the team that always checks the weather before venturing outside, except from Mr. Mark Wistich, rain, sleet or snow, he is the short sky. There's David Kim, Zoe Fregno, Eric Yanyas, Taylor DeCott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Sui Chu, Evan Stern, Eves Jeffco, E. Shell Lopez, Jack Darrell, Doug Stewart, Nicholas Marks, the Spook Beamsong is by Pat Masini Miller, my name is Van Washington, and I love the open road. I love driving. Did I tank a gas, some tunes, some snacks, maybe even my dog? Wow. Heaven. I really need much of a destination. I live close enough to highway one and cruising down the road next to the ocean. It's glorious. I get giddy. I didn't grow up here. It's so new to me, and I think what I love most is the possibility that I can drive anywhere, do anything. At least, it feels that way when I'm behind the wheel. And I consider that recently, I'd have that talk with someone. Someone dear to me. Tell them that for their safety, I'm the safety of people around them that I need to take their car keys. And yes, it was the right thing to do for sure, but I don't know if I fully consider what it means here to say, you can't do this thing that I can still do because you're not just taking away a car. You're closing a possibility. All the freedom that I feel behind the wheel, you can't have this anymore. Now I get to decide like a jailer that you now must inhabit a much smaller, more constrained world and I do it fully convinced that it's for your own good. Nothing stands like somebody taking upon themselves to do something for your own good. I try to remember this now because someday, someday far too soon, I know someone talking gently with a pain it on smile. I'm going to come for my keys as well. For my own good never ever, never ever, never ever, turn out the last. [Music]