198. Reddit Scary Stories: Terrifying Ring Camera Footage, a Crawling Stalker, and Other Mommy (feat. Sylas Dean)

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Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Heart Starts Pounding. It's the best way to support the show. Welcome back to another episode of Heart Starts Pounding. As always, I'm your ghost, Kaylyn Moore. Today, I'm bringing back my friend Silasdeen of the Sinister podcast to read you some very scary stories for Halloween. For usual, Silas brought me some stories that made me want to absolutely crawl out of my skin and I'm glad that you're all going to share in the terror with me. But before we dive in, I just wanted to say a very big thank you to everyone who's been watching my podcast last trace on Netflix. It's officially been out for a month and I just really do appreciate the love that you've all been sending me. It's really amazing to do deep dives on cases on a platform like Netflix. And you can join me there every Monday as we go through the last few scraps that people leave behind. A grainy CCTV recording, strange text messages, a phone call that makes no sense. Last week, we covered a case that I've been following for a long time. It's the story of Michaela Bali. She's a 16-year-old girl who was last seen on CCTV talking to someone on the phone for hours before she vanished. She was known to talk to strangers online. And police still to this day do not know who she was talking to. It is an incredibly haunting case and you can watch it exclusively on Netflix. Also, if you want more Heart Starts Pounding, specifically more scares this spooky season, this month's bonus episode on Patreon and Apple Podcast subscriptions was "Terrifying Trucker Encounters" think ghosts on the side of the road, let's not meet stories all told from truckers themselves. You can hear the episode streaming now on both those places Patreon and Apple Podcast subscriptions. And with that, let's dive straight into these scary stories. Today, I have some of the scariest true terrifying stories that we were able to find. And joining me, I have Silas Dean, and welcome back to the show, Silas. I'm so happy to be here. I was gonna have you. You kept me waiting for quite a long time and that lobby is for a year as you ate 60 years. It's been a while. No, thank you so much for coming back. You, what you were just telling me that you went camping. I did go camping. Oh, you want the story on front? I want to hear about camping because when you told me you were going camping, I was like, "Is Silas a camping person?" I am. You are. I am. Are you not? I mean, we talked about this a little bit last time. I haven't camped in a long time. And now that I have a baby, it's going to be probably a minute before I go back. Start them young. That's true. That is true. Could be like the perfect time. Bring the toddler out, ruin your entire camping. Yeah, just have a bad time. I would say I'm a camping person to an extent where there are certain things that I need while camping. Like, I have some friends that I think are real campers where they just want to be out in the middle of nowhere. I grew up doing family campgrounds where you've got access to a bathroom to running water. Yeah, a shower. Okay. So that's what I'm doing. I do like it, but while do you want this story now? Because if I'm going to go into it. Do you want to come to the story, Silas? Tell me he had a story for me earlier. And now I just kind of want to hear it. All right, all right. I'm bringing it to you. And I just shared it on the sinister because I can't shut up about it. I also told it to stew. This will be the third time I'm telling it, but I think you need to hear it. So when I was camping, we were like sitting around a fire and it was me. I'm going to omit names for this. My friend, his little brother came. Who's 24, right? And you know, he's like warming up to us and telling us stuff. And we're sitting by the fire and I have the bright idea. I'm like, does anyone have a ghost story? Does anyone have a spooky story? And his brother was like, oh, you tell him the story about what just happened to you on this trip. Context, his little brother just did a cross-country bicycle trip from Connecticut to California. C.T. to Cali. Literally 3,000 miles. That's a lot. 60 days of pedaling. Oh, 60 days. And he literally saw the video where he arrived in Santa Monica on the pier. He went all the way to the pier and that was like his finish line. Well, that's so impressive. And I'm like, oh, my God, you must have had crazy experiences. And he's like nervous going into this for how crazy this is. He's like, well, something did happen on the way. And he's like telling me the story. He's like, I was riding through the west. He's like, I had made it all the way to. I think he said New Mexico, a very rural part of New Mexico. And he's like, when you're out that far, there are just long, long stretches of road. We're like, nothing's around you. Like, you're not going to find a rest stop. You're not going to find a Walmart. His back tire popped. So his bike is screwed. And he's like, I don't know what I'm going to do. So he just starts hitchhiking. My body. My nervous system. He starts hitchhiking. A guy pulls over. And he's like a backwoods kind of like he's clearly from these rural parts. And he's like, he needs some help. And he's like, hey, I know this is like a long shot. But could I maybe pay you to like pick me and my bike up and drive me to Santa Fe? Which is why I think it was in New Mexico. And he's like, I'll pay you. And the guy's like, yeah, let me go swap out for another car. My truck. So he leaves, comes back with the truck. But now he has another guy in the passenger seat. It's an old man. Like when I say old, like 50s or 60s, young for me. Yeah. And this guy, so he gets in, loads his bike in. And the old guy has real bad vibes. And he turns around. And he turns to him and he goes, you seem nervous. Are you nervous? And this kid's trying to play it cool because he's 24. So he's like, no, man. I'm cool. I'm good. So then they get back to the other guy's house. The original guy picked him up because he's going to like tell his wife. Like, by the way, I'm driving this kid to Santa Fe. These are like backwards good old boys. They're like drinking mother driving. So by the time they get to the house, the wife is like, you are not taking that boy. You're not taking him to Santa Fe. Your drunk is hell. You're going to stay here. He'll stay the night. So this kid's like, I don't want to cause any trouble. Can I just like camp in your front yard? And the guy's like, yeah, I don't care. But then the older guy who was like, you nervous, he goes, you know. I've got a spare room at my place. Why don't you just stay at mine and this kid's got bad vibes. So he's like, you know, I'm really like kind of doing a camping thing. I just kind of want to be outside. But this guy's insistent. So he's like, no, no, come over to my place. If you see the room, you don't want it. You can camp in my front yard. So this kid gets pressured. He goes to the guy's house in his car. And by the way, he does not live in a shack. He lives in like a mick mansion in the middle of the desert. So like, rich guys got money. Walks in liminal, eerie space of a mansion. Walls are covered in like mounted animal heads. So he's a hunter, obviously, takes him to the spare bedroom and the mother's standing there. And this kid's like falling silent. The old guy turns to him and he goes, he ever seen the movie Delifference? Which do you have a point of reference for that movie? Remind me. Because okay, nobody at the campsite did. And this kid did not either. So when he's telling me this at the campsite, I'm like, what? And he goes, yeah, I told him I didn't know the movie. It's like an alien movie or something. And I said, no, no, baby. It's not an alien movie. It's a very graphic movie from the 90s with a very infamous male on male scene. That's where squeal, piggy squeal comes from. So when I said the whole campsite was like, what? What? So then he said, he said, no, I haven't seen Deliverance and the guy goes, well tonight's going to be just like Deliverance. And then the kid's like, he doesn't know what to react to. He has no point of reference. Are we getting abducted by aliens? He doesn't know what the matter is. No point of reference. Then the guy says, how about you watch it with me right now. And this kid, he just gets bad vibes. Jeffrey Dahmer, it's literally like Dahmer. I was blowing up at this campsite. I was losing my mind like shaking like I was in the ward. And then this kid says, you know, I appreciate you like offering the room is like, but I really am doing like a camping thing. So if it's cool with you, could I just post up in your front yard? This isn't even the crazier part. Can I just post up in your front yard? And the old guy's like, yeah, that's, that's fine. So all night, this kid is sure. This guy's going to come to his tent and like do something to mess with him. So he sleeps with a knife at his chest and sleep. The hours are rolling out like around like two, three, four, I am. And he's watching through the mesh of the tent to the house because the guy kept the lights on all night. And he sees him getting chills, stumbling from like room to room because he's getting more and more drunk. As the night goes on, then 5 a.m. comes. And that's when the other guy, the original guy who was like, this wife was like, you're not driving that kid to Santa Fe. He's supposed to pull up to pick him up. Truck comes soaring up to the property. And the guy gets out and he goes, get in now. We're leaving. So the kid grabs his tent, throws it in the back of the truck, gets in. There are like other friends and people on the truck. And then the old guy starts stumbling out from the house to try to get to the truck. Truck speeds off at 60 miles per hour, just leaves him in the dust. And the kid is like, what the hell just happened? Like why are we like frantically like taking off? And then everybody in the truck, their phone starts blowing up. Texts, calls. Somebody plays a voicemail. It's the old guy. And they played out loud. And this kid hears it. And the old man's like, you promised me. You promised me I was going to get time with the boy. With the backer boy. And this kid is like, what the fuck? So then he's like Like, what's going on, everyone on the truck is like, yeah, that guy, he's really well-known in town. He's got a lot of money, but he's a bad dude, like really bad dude. And this kid had no idea that he narrowly escaped whatever was going down there. Oh my god. Telling me this, I was like, you've got to be kidding me. You're serving me a story. I'm a podcaster. You're serving me a story to tell to the world on a silver platter. As a sinister, I was like bouncing off the wall, sure. Yeah. Isn't that wild? That is so horrifying. That's like, it's my biggest fear. But I wonder why the other people let the boy go with it. I had questions about that too, because this kid also I think asked, he was like, why did you guys like set me up? Like, why did you let me sleep there? And they, I think that they're afraid of this guy. Because remember the very first guy, he went to get his truck and swap out and came back with the dude. So I'm like, there must be some like weird relational thing where I think maybe he employs these people in that area or has like enough money to do stuff. And that was the guy that drove him away was the same guy that picked him up. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, not the old man. But I was like, I was hearing this and then I really killed the vibe when I was like, by the way, everyone deliverance, not an alien movie, we're not doing return to Mars. Yeah. This is a very graphic movie about, then the backwards. Yeah. That's a crazy thing to say. Know that someone has no point of reference for it and then not to explain it. I know. Tonight's going to be just like that. Wow. Horrifying. Was that good? Okay. When you were talking to him. I'm like, he seemed great. Okay. It takes a special breed to really, if you're listening, please know, I admire everything of what you did. Well, you've already set the stage. That's good. That's my first story of the episode. Oh my gosh. I know. I'm like, do I have anything that's that level? I actually have what? Okay. So this is a story that I found on Reddit. It's coming from, let's not meet. It's, I guess really the story that you just told is very, let's not meet. Ask, right? It's the very much stranger danger. Okay. So that's what this story is to. And it takes place on Halloween. So I wanted to bring this one to you. So this one that I'm going to read is from three years ago, user underpants bandit and it's called the worst Halloween hide and seek ever. I'm ready. And it begins. This one has illustrations, unfortunately. So if you're listening to this, I will be posting those on our Instagram. That's at heartless pounding. My husband Jim and I own an antique business and a big old bizarre barn of a building. Five floors, multiple other tenants, including a restaurant. Halloween was a Monday last year. We locked up the business 5 p.m. and we went to an early dinner across town. Then we got a call from our security monitoring company at 630. Everyone was detected on the lower level and then another motion. We left in a tearing hurry, but I figured, oh, it's got to be a bird or a rat. We don't have rats, but you know, it's something maybe a cat got in. It was way too early in the night for a break in at 630. I went inside the main level upstairs and I disarmed the alarm and I started fumbling noisily with the keys and the big iron gate. One of many that separate the floors at night, Jim checked the perimeter outside for signs of a break in, nothing, doors and windows intact, definitely a bird or a rat or a cat. Dusk was now long gone, the shadows had settled in and taken over, just wardrobes loomed in the dark, wardrobes and nothing more, right? I headed down below to the location of the alarm, trusting that Jim would follow behind, after all it was just a rat or a bird. I am accustomed to the building after dark, so I just turned on my phone light, not the overheads and I walked around boldly like I own the place. I looked in the corner with the motion detector, nothing, just the red eye blinking mindlessly at me, no animals, no rats, no cats, no birds. I turned and went the other way while Jim poked around a few aisles over. And there it was, it was what looked like a burglary kit sitting in the middle of the floor. Bolt cutters, a fire extinguisher, just sitting there waiting, I have a picture of it for you. Wait, did I? I can see? Yeah, so you can describe what you see. Whoa. Okay. Now, my eyes aren't as good as they used to be, you understand? Oh, yes. I am seeing a fire, I'm so curious about this fire extinguisher, I'm seeing a bolt cutter. I mean, I would have said those are pliers, but that lets you know my home depot knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. What else do I say? What am I missing? So it's, I think it's just this fire extinguisher, like maybe they were, they brought it into break something. Yeah. But a fire extinguisher shouldn't be sitting there. So you would think, you would like notice that immediately, like, why are these two things just sitting out in the middle of nowhere? It's an odd thing to bring in. Yeah. Now, I've never gotten a bigger case of sheer terror so fast. After all, there was no broken window or door. So whoever was there was still in the basement with me in the dark somewhere. I hissed, "Jim, Jim, Jim, please, please, please!" But he didn't hear me. I literally couldn't scream just like in those stupid goddamn dreams my voice was stuck. Just me, the spotlight burglary tools, and a hostile presence I could feel lurking in the dusty shadows, watching while I whispered for someone to save me. Finally, a thousand years, or maybe ten seconds later, Jim wondered why I had taken route in the hallway and he came to see what was going on. He saw what I was frozen and pointing at, and he was like, "Oh God." We bolted out the front door to call 911 and wait, and we abandoned the building to the burglar. An eternal five minutes later, the police showed up and were initially pretty unimpressed with our find of the crowbar and fire extinguisher until we pulled up the security footage that revealed the actual horror. The face of my new sleep paralysis demon, I'll share with you. This is what they saw. Stop. Stop. Huh. You're going to put this up online? Yeah. Oh my God. I'm going to put this so you'll see it on our Instagram and it's also on our YouTube. What is it? Is it wearing a mask? I'm guessing? Like, what kind of a covering is that? Yeah, but like, why that mask? It looks like an Avengers outfit or something. Like, all spandex, like, does he have stuff on his hand? I'd say. He's a little built. Yeah. He's like, well, he looks strong. He looks like those are muscles. Those are packs coming through. Like, he looks strong and like, he definitely has something. What? I can. I can. That would do me in Caitlin. Could you imagine seeing that? Do you have a security system? I have one. We do, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I am constantly fearful. I'm going to see something on like a camera or have you ever heard like? Because I don't know what system you have. But mine have the monitors like on the window. So in the window opens, it goes like, tiding, tiding, yeah. I was in bed one night and heard that. No. And I was like, well, it's been a great ride. Was it someone opening your window? No. I don't even-- What is malfunctioning went off? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think maybe he could have been windy or something like that. But even so, you wouldn't think that that would happen? Yes. I don't know. So the poster goes on to say, this guy. As is obvious, he's built like a lean mean brick [bleep] He crouched on a landing behind a bookcase when we closed and he watched me and my staff lock up. This is what they're seeing on the video. He bided his time and then as calm as could be, he walked out and went to the men's restroom and the hallway downstairs. That area isn't set for motion detect for a variety of reasons. He spent a while in there moving around with the door open. He constructed the mask using one of ours and a fake flower wreath to hold it on. People plastic, climatus. He looked right into the camera, bare face, and then put the mask on, stared at it fixedly in his mask for a time and then finally pulled his gloves on. This is another image that they shared. So that was him before he put the mask on. Even that's kind of scary to me. I know. It's the blank look in the eyes. And he just doesn't care. He saw the camera and then put the mask on because he didn't care. Oh, God. And then they go on to say, he stacked a few solid body vintage suitcases in front of a tall iron gate and he hopped right over like it was nothing. He ran down the hall which triggered the 630 silent alarm and looped the floor. He ran back into the hall, moved a ladder to hop back to the other side of the gate and bizarrely just repeated this whole thing a few times. Then he went into the basement. He warmed over a 15 inch gap over another iron gate and back into the hall again and then he stared into the camera more. And then he repeated that again. He was moving fast up over, back forth, upstairs, downstairs, park core style almost. And then he got the tools out and peeled apart one of our steel lock boxes with the crowbar and stole a handful of our keys to access showcases. There's another. So they show. It's so rare. I see stories of missions that have photos. So this is wild to contextualize it. Whoa. I know all these pictures of like the stuff that he had done of how he broke in. And then they go on to say, at this point, he heard me fumbling with our gate keys upstairs. He ditched the stolen keys and tools and he hid watching me while he waited in the dark. We exited to call 911 and then he ran back into the basement. In the basement, there's access to a dirt tunnel that circles the perimeter of the building. He broke the door open and entered spiders, the size of dinner plates live in there. He had no light. It's muddy. It's dark. It is petrifying in there. And then again, they sure didn't like this is oh my god, it sounds really agile. I know like the park court that he's doing. There's a tiny exit hatch and if you walk the whole thing. thing and take multiple turns, it dumps you into the busy kitchen of a restaurant where upon you would need to stroll past the lined cooks out into the restaurant proper, which has cameras, and then one could leave their front door, plastered with mud, which does leave tracks. When we found it, there was his clear entrance into the tunnel, but there were no exit tracks. No money footprints, nobody walking out on the restaurant cameras, the cooks noticed nothing. From the footage, the timing of it all, tracing his path from camera to camera and searching the building, all took hours, and by the end, all of us, including the police, were starting to lose our collective cool and freak out. There was no chill, even the guys with the guns were rattled. After all, where did this guy go? Jim and the two officers had no choice but to walk the dirt tunnel, but there was nothing there, just spiders. Jim got the okay from them to board up both ends of the tunnel, which he did solidly, and thus, the story ends. The pictures got spread widely, but we got no useful leads despite the decent face shot. Did he, indeed, crawl out of a hatch into the busy kitchen and stroll out past the cooks, leaving no trace of mud? Maybe. We got no suspicious smells coming out of the tunnel in later weeks and months. Nobody has really walked to the far side since, though. We only onboarded the tunnel last week for the split-water main shenanigans. I have vowed that I will use his skull in this year's Halloween display if he is dead down there. Oh, God. And that's how it ends. It's a real severe turn of the end. That's how it ends. Imagine he's just the health inspector. They're really doing a number of these. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Where did he go? That's the thing that I don't like is where did he go? Because was he living there the whole time? I just think about, like, we've covered stories and hardships pounding, like, the Denver Spider-Man where someone was living in your house. Please, please. I can't, my nervous system can't take stuff like it's so crazy. You're bringing this up because I was, I just did the sinister last night and I was remembering a story when I worked in a restaurant of something not nearly to this degree, but like, if I were going to restaurant and like, you know how dry storage isn't always like on the same floor of the restaurant. It's like in the basement or something. I only did fast food. Not like a real restaurant. Oh, so you were really in the trenches. Oh, yeah. In the trenches. She were at the front lines of war. Yes. We had, this was a big one in Century City. So like, the end of it was in the mall. So this dry storage was several floors down and it was like very open, like a huge like basement storage level, but there was one hatch in the wall that if you, it was padlocked, but if you opened it, there was extra storage in there. They called it the dungeon. I had never gone in there and then like to get in, you have to crawl through the hatch, like not crawl, but like step in because it doesn't meet the floor and I went down there one time during a private event with my manager and she can only managers have the key and she went to go unlock it and she opened it and I looked in, it's pitch black in there. But if you like, look really far in, you can see like, oh, yeah, there's like old like faux plants. Like from 10 years ago and we're like, all right, let's go in and like get the extra chairs and when we're about to step in, we both heard something in their move. Yeah. It like, Occam's razor. Was it probably an animal? Even though there are no windows, but still, I don't want to see a rat down there. That's also terrifying. It did not sound like a rat. It sounded heavy. It almost sounded like something was shifting in there, but we looked at each other and I'm happy she kind of took her manager hat off and she was like, they can stand. We're not doing it. How about they stand? She locked that thing so quick. We went right back upstairs. So scary. I mean, I told the story on this show like a long time ago, but I got locked in the back freezer of the fast food restaurant that I worked at. Are you kidding? I thought it was going to die. You would have died. This was probably 2010. So we had cell phones, but not like good cell phones. How were you working when you were six years old, Kaelin? I know. When I was a year. A year child. That's child labor. Because I was born in 2004. No, but I had to go in the back freezer for something. I was closing, so it was just me and my manager did not care if I lived or died and went back there. So there's the fridge. It was a back freezer, walked through the fridge, got some stuff, opened the back freezer door. It closes behind me and I hear like, and a bunch of produce had just fallen in front of the door and I go to open it and it's stuck. No, no, no, no, no. I don't even think I had my cell phone. If I did have my cell phone, there would have been no service, but I don't even think I had my cell phone on me. So start banging on the door like, hey, hey, but my manager is in the other room. And eventually I was able to throw my body against the door so hard that it just opened. And so I get out and like sobbing, I'm like my tears, oh my god. And he's like, what happened? And I was like, I got stuck in the back freezer. And he was like, oh yeah, Pam got stuck back there and she had to go to the hospital. She almost died. Like careful. And I was like, imagine he's like, that's great. Can you, um, how does your Sunday look and like, can you cover the PN shift? Yeah. All right. Do you have a story for me? I do. Oh my god. Stories are really excited about because the last time you brought a story, it was so scary. I brought it to you today. Just so you have enough. My day. Yeah. Amazing. This episode is brought to you by Warby Parker. Buying glasses used to be such an unnecessarily stressful experience. The price is made no sense. The styles always felt kind of dated and trying to figure out what's actually going to look good on your face just from a tiny picture. Forget it. That is why I'm so excited to tell you about Warby Parker. I have been shopping with Warby Parker for at least 13 years at this point and I've really never looked back. My most recent frames that I purchased are the Shay narrow frames and burnt lemon tortoise and I think they are absolutely gorgeous if I say so myself. Warby Parker's virtual try-on is a game changer. You point your phone camera and see tons of frames on your face in real time and it actually works. Prescription glasses started at just $95 plus they also have contact sunglasses and I exams all in one place. And for every pair sold, they give a pair to someone in need. Over 20 million pairs so far. Right now by one pair of glasses and get 20% off any additional pairs at Warby Parker.com/HSP. That's 20% off any additional pairs when you purchase one pair at WARBYparker.com/HSP. This episode is brought to you by Minky Kitchir. We are officially in the colder months and if you listen to the show you have heard me talk about Minky Kitchir before because once you try one there is no going back. I mean obviously you can see me here in my Minky Blanket. Now I have this really nice October one covered in bats that I love. It's nice and soft. It's perfect for cuddling on the couch watching scary movies. Their original hugs blanket is double-sided with a four-way stretch that genuinely hugs you back. Minky Kitchir is woman-owned and has donated nearly 100,000 mini-minkies to over 300 NICUs to bring comfort to babies and families. And now we're excited to partner with Minky Kitchir to bring that same comfort to you. Our listeners can get 50% off full-priced items with our exclusive code HSP. Just visit MinkyKitchir.com and your code HSP@Checkout and treat yourself or someone you love to a Minky Kitchir blanket. Because it's cozy season people and seriously once you have a Minky Kitchir you'll understand why people say it's the best blanket ever. "Do you like scary stories? Thank you for it at all. We've never heard it like this." Radio Renter was a horror podcast featuring true scary stories told by real people. "He's tapping, tap, tap, tap. He's tapping on the door. He wants us to open the door." And then their light turns on and then their light turns on and a shape of a triangle and I'd say it's probably about the length of a school bus, you know, right above my head. She had long, ratted hair. She was wearing a dress. Her ribs were showing, her fingers were long. She looked shriveled, partially decayed. "I'm standing the freak out a little bit. I'm pleading with him to just please let me out." These eyes started opening. They were pure white and I lose it. Radio Rental returns October 23rd. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Well, this is I found a paranormal story, actually. "Actually, could you hold my cane for me?" "I'll try to stay stable." "Good, wait, is this, did you order it for your costume or did you like have this?" Just poking around. I'm kidding. It's like just at home. Yeah. You know, it is a nice cane though. It's really nice. It's solid. Brought to you by Canes and Canes Plus. Yeah. Our sponsor for today. Now, this story, it came in anonymous. I titled it. You know, I'm not going to share the title of it, actually. You're going to go in blind. Last time too. You did so in the story. It's my thing to kick again. I was never really a believer of the paranormal, which is a laugh in hindsight. But sometimes, it takes a bit of personal experience before you come around to an idea. And this was an experience that definitely left a mark on me. Back in 2006, my husband and I were newly married and we were both hustling with our jobs, trying to climb, quick get our companies. We hadn't really started a family yet and we had not bought our first home together. That changed one day when I saw a listing in the paper for a place that was a good few towns over, but it looked adorable. I remember it was a quaint little two bedroom spot, had white paneling on the outside and these gorgeous rose bushes that lined the windows underneath. But really, it caught my eye because we could afford it. It was cheap, surprisingly cheap. But I remember thinking you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. So I called the number for the listing agent and before I knew it, we had the option to tour the place and we put in an offer. Now, I'll admit, we jumped on it pretty quick and I have definitely learned my lesson in years gone by that you should always do an inspection of a home before you move into a place. But we started having issues with the HVAC unit right away since it was getting warmer out. So we had to call a repairman and figured we might as well call an inspector to come do a full sweep of the house. house to figure out what we had gotten ourselves into and if there were any other hidden issues. But this was when we actually learned about the history of the home. The inspector that we called was local. And he came through the place and definitely noted the HVAC unit was an obvious problem, but couldn't see any other noticeable issues in the home other than normal wear and tear. And it wasn't very old really, it was built in the 1990s. But what he had also mentioned were the people who lived in that house before us. And he said that they were good people and a lot of folks missed them. I guess I'd stuck my nose out where it shouldn't belong and I decided to ask him what he meant by that. Which I remember is when he looked at me and realized I had no idea who lived in the house before we moved in and really why we got the place so cheap. The couple that had lived in that house, so we were told, had died in a murder suicide. He wasn't going to be forthcoming with the details but I kept on prying almost like I couldn't stop asking questions since it was all lining up now as to why we got the place at such a good price. The wife had become unstable I guess and was paranoid that her husband had been having an affair behind her back and although this guy described her as a sweet woman, it sounds like her mental state had kind of declined and she grew suspicious of her husband to the point where when he threatened to finally leave over the accusations, she shot him with his own gun that he kept in the closet and then took her own life in the master bathroom with the same gun. It was almost two weeks before anybody had gone to check on them and the bodies were discovered and when the house had been passed to the family they kept it off the market for over a year just before they listed it. My husband and I had no idea. But I would say shortly after this was when I started to notice things around the house which honestly complicated things because I wasn't sure if we were picking up on things that were a part of my own paranoia just from knowing who had been living in that house before us and that there were two people who were found dead the year prior. It was little things at first like small objects that would go missing. I was often losing earrings that I was sure I had left on the dresser, sometimes a pen that my husband was convinced he had left on the desk in our second bedroom which we used as an office. Suddenly wasn't there anymore after a few hours. I also had a repeat issue with this mirror in the house. It was a small vintage mirror that I hung up on the outside of the doorway that would enter our kitchen and no matter how many times I would straighten it, I would fix it, I would check the level on it, I would constantly walk away, come back and find the mirror tilted ever so slightly. It was a strange time to be a skeptic and at times I myself felt like I was losing my mind and just couldn't tell if I was psyching myself out. Repeatedly thinking about what had happened in that house and which rooms it had happened in. Hell, which room she took her life in, which was my bathroom. But that's exactly where I saw what I saw. My husband had joined a golf club with a few of his buddies and they met every Sunday which meant that I had the afternoons alone in the house to sleep in, catch up on some cleaning, I could run out and do errands. He had gone right after 9am since it was a bit of a drive and he had to pick up a couple of his friends so I remember being in the living room, folding some laundry that morning that I had left in the dryer the night before when I suddenly had a very bad feeling come over me. It wasn't a very obvious feeling, it felt more like I was getting sick or nauseous out of nowhere. I couldn't figure out what had brought that on and why the room suddenly felt so heavy but I decided I wasn't going to force myself to fold clothes if I wasn't feeling great. I remember I stood up from the couch where I'd been sorting socks from underwear and when I did I went to go cross over the living room towards the kitchen and I could have sworn for a very split second in the reflection of that glass mirror, the vintage one, which was also now crooked. I caught a quick glimpse of myself moving past it and thought I saw another person in the reflection as well. I remember it happened very quick and just as quick as I thought I saw it I looked back and it was just me in the mirror. At this point I really thought I was losing it. Maybe it was just early and I was tired, maybe I was really coming down with something. So I decided to shake it off and just put a pause on the laundry and I decided I was actually going to shower and get dressed and maybe carry on with my day, maybe heading out of the house for a few could do me some good. I walked back to our bedroom still with that heavy feeling in my legs and the paranoia that I couldn't shake and I told myself you're tired, you're tired, you're home alone, you spooked yourself because I couldn't stop thinking about that couple in this house. Let it go, let it go, go on with your day. So I got into the bathroom, I turned on the hot water hoping that it was going to jolt me out of this feeling and I remember being in the shower and still feeling that something was wrong and it wouldn't let up. It's like as if you left a burner on on the stove top and something's burning and you know it but you're actively choosing to ignore it pretend like it's not happening. Like you can smell the char in the pot even though you're not looking at it. Still I pushed myself to shake it off, wash your hair, wash your face, wake yourself up. But in the shower is where I experienced the moment that made me a believer. I had my head under the shower head for a bit, was rinsing out the very last of my shampoo so my eyes were closed for just a minute. When I opened them I pressed my hands to my face to wrap the water out of my eyes still feeling that nauseous pit in my stomach and when I turned over my shoulder to reach for the conditioner I felt like my heart stopped. I'd come face to face with the corner of my shower curtain where I could see the partial and close up view of another woman's face peeking into the shower, looking at me. It was a woman with her face right up against the curtain's edge and I could only see one side of her face so I saw her big wide eye staring at me and her mouth just hanging open like she was stunned. Her skin looked colorless. I can't even really say she looked gray or white like a ghost it was just like her skin had no color at all. I remember the feeling of trying to scream but I was so scared it felt like my chest locked up for a second and I couldn't even get a breath in. I fell backwards towards the opposite wall of the shower and knocked some bottles off the ledge which hit my feet and broke my focus from her face for only a second as I looked down at the tub when I looked back up. She wasn't there. I ripped the shower curtain open the water still running and getting everywhere and there was no one in the bathroom. What I saw was so clear I was momentarily convinced there was a woman in the house so I immediately thought I'm gonna have to call the police. I walked straight out of the shower I pulled the towel off from the rack to cover myself up and I walked into my bedroom there was nothing. It was all silent it was totally still. If there had been somebody in the bathroom I couldn't imagine how they had gotten out of there so quickly so I started to run through the house frantically looking in every room I checked the front door which was still locked and I picked up our phone in the kitchen to try to get a hold of my husband who had a cell phone from work at the time. He drove straight back to the house where he found me still in the towel trying my best to explain to him what I had just seen. Well we only lived in that house for another year after that we re-did the kitchen put it back up on the market and we still talk about our experiences in that place from time to time. Sometimes he makes me think that it's all in my mind that maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me that day and I was just paranoid being home alone knowing what happened there but I know what I saw. I remember what I saw that morning and it was real it was another woman looking right at me in the shower. No. Oh my god. Just on was that listener right in the submission. Oh. They're crazy for the sinister things like and I'm like I sit at home reading them like skating them crying. Truly. Oh my gosh. Imagine walk me through this imagine being in your shower because you were so vulnerable. You're so vulnerable. Nothing can happen to me in the shower. Yeah. Well yeah that's like being in the shower especially because it's like if someone breaks in it's a worse spot for you to be in. I'm wet. I'm slippery. You're naked. You don't I'm not in my best shape. Give me until the summer like you look bad. But I think about that too glasses. Like I've started sleeping with like glasses next to my bed because I'm like what if something happens and I don't have and I can't see anything in like in the shower. I think about that. No because when I take my contacts out at night I don't even think about that if I would have to run out in the middle of the night. Now that I have a baby glasses on the bedside. Just no that's smarter. Anything happens. I throw them on. I'm good. But you know what's weird is that's not the first story I've heard about something peaking over a shower watching you while you shower. I hope that's something when that come on. I know some of them are like freaky. It's bad. It's really bad. Yeah that one too it's like I don't know because the stuff was going missing. There's something about this woman. I imagine it's the woman. I thought that woman who was like very curious about this other woman that moved into the house. Because why? She killed her husband over fears of infidelity. Oh my God I wasn't even thinking about that. I think there's something there. I think there's something there about like behooves this woman. Yeah like there's a woman in my master brought her in my home. I wasn't even thinking about that because if you remember the description that she said she was like she had wide eyes and her mouth was hung open like she was in shock. Almost like I can't believe there's a woman in my house. Yes. Oh my gosh. Oh, it's so bad. That's so scary. That's so scary. I was at a friend's engagement party once. This maybe this maybe think of this story. Okay. Where she had moved it. She told me the story of when she first moved into her boyfriend's house. So he like was renting this house, had other roommates, but he loved this house. He lived there for so long, like a couple of roommates would come in and out. So I'm going to say for a year, leave, they get another roommate. There's like always three people in this house, but he was always there the longest. Okay. And so he had like the biggest bedroom. She moves in to be with him. And one morning, like two in the morning, she wakes up and there's someone standing at the foot of her bed. And she just remembers that they're wearing what looks like a cowboy hat. It's just the outline of a person. And as she like gets up to look at him, he kind of like flashes and is gone. And she like and grabs her boyfriend who's sleeping. Soundly next to her, she starts freaking out. She's like, there's someone in the house. Like, I don't know if it was one of your roommates. They were in our room. Like someone was at the foot of that. And he just goes, that was the guy with the cowboy hat. And she's like, yes, how do you know she? And he goes, everyone who has moved into this house sees that guy. Stop. He's like, every single roommate has told me about that guy. We kind of like joke about it now. I didn't know that it would happen if you were here. But yeah, there's just like a cowboy ghost that lives in this house. So casual about that. So casual about it. Like both of them were telling me the story together. She's like cracking up about it because then it became like a thing. But oh my God. Here to in that moment. But yeah, just like something that lives in the house that like people are seeing and that, oh, you find that comforting though that like other people like if you were to see a ghost and then somebody was like, oh, that's Todd. You know, like do you find that comforting being like, okay, I'm not alone in this. One, I'm not crazy. And two, at least it's showing itself to other people because the ghost could really hurt us. I think we'd all be dead by now. I know. Yeah, there's part of me that's a long gone. But if Todd didn't hurt anyone, you know, he just kind of shows up. But he's just curious, especially because I think about that. Like when I, I did like the ghost house with two girls went ghost. I've gone to some other ghosty places. I'm kind of always the first person that's just like looking for stuff. Like it doesn't, the story's really scare me, but I don't think that's ever stopped me. You know, like I just kind of do it scared. So I think even if, so if someone's like, oh, this thing is in the house, I would maybe be scared of it, but I don't think that would stop me from like being very curious about it. Interesting. I do get scared. I do do almost anything. Really? I can't do, and I can barely do any in person. And she always wants to do stuff like in person. She's like, we should go something. And I'm like, I can't go to a CVS. I can't make it to the wall. I can't even buy my own robot. I actually speaking, I just want to share this story. Well, Quicks reminded me of this as you were just saying it. She was at like, I guess this would be like a, not a wedding, but kind of like, what's the thing that happens before a wedding that's not a bachelor party? No, no, I guess maybe it was just like a friend's celebration before the wedding. And it was way up in like Montana or like some place remote. And it was like most of like her then boy friends friends. So she didn't know a lot of people there. So it's a mix of guys and girls at this place. This like cottage, giant cottage, they're renting. And they decided they're all going to go to like this lake, which was like really far like an hour away. She wasn't feeling great. So she was going to hang back at the house. So while she was there, she called, I remember her calling me about this. And I still get chills thinking about it. She was like getting out of the shower and looked through the window from the upstairs bathroom to the backyard. One of the guys who was like in the friend group who had a real bad vibe was back in like on the property, but almost like he had come back to like, I don't know, do something because that's the thing is like here. This is the scary part is she's like, what the hell is he doing here? And she like covers herself up. Those downstairs goes outside. Nobody ever came in the house. And like nobody's in the backyard. But she very clearly saw him like lingering in a backyard calls her boyfriend after that. And she was like, Hey, is this guy like so? And so she's like, he left you guys out of the lake. And they were like, Oh, he took off from like a little bit, but he didn't come back to the house. She goes out of her way that night when like everyone's back to like work up the nerve and question him. And she was like, Hey, um, I'll call him Jeremy. She's like, Jeremy, were you here today? Were you at the house? He says, No, I was at the lake all day. But that's scary. It's scarier than the denying is scarier because she knows what she saw. Yeah. And then everyone like, not everyone, but like her boyfriend was like, maybe it was like in your head. And she's like, no, no, I saw him. He was in the backyard. Jeremy was in the backyard. So Jeremy was in the backyard. Yeah. Oh, it's like, what if why deny it? Why was he there knowing that she was the only girl who hung back was going to be at the house alone? My question. There's sickos out there. There's absolute sickos that walk among us. Anyways, I have another story for you. I can wait to hear it. Alrighty, let's be. You've got my nervous system out of 10. Oh, me. My blood pressure is quite hitting me. You are stressing me out so much every time you bring a story, it's like the worst thing I've ever heard in my entire life. I have a second one for you that I think is worse than that one, to be honest. Really? Okay. So I have, I have a couple of ones on the shorter end. Oh, okay. Yeah. So this one is another reddit story. It comes from a thread in paranormal where people were asking about like the scariest thing that your kid ever said to you or saw. And it comes from user, the user names are so unhinged on this whole episode, but this is badass with two kids. It's from four months ago. I like to think that reddit generated that for that. I know. Yeah. It's like one of the auto user names. Any control over it. So this, so badass with two kids writes, when I was a few months pregnant with my daughter, before we knew that she was a girl, I was folding laundry while my son watched care bears in the living room and out of nowhere. He starts sobbing. I asked him was wrong. And he starts asking me where his baby sister was. He was two and a half at the time and he had a slight speech delay. But as he was asking me these questions, he started speaking a lot more clearly. He started trying to tell me that they hurt his baby sister, that they hurt her hands and her legs. And when I asked what he was talking about, he told me that his old mommy, his bad mommy, they hurt him and his sister and everything went black and they chose to come to me and my husband. I started freaking out. I'm not super religious or really into anything spiritual like that. And also I was hormonal and pregnant and I was worried that my son had been exposed to something strange or scary. But I was a stay at home mom. He was never really out of my sight. Not even when my parents would babysit him at that age. So I kind of pocketed that experience, put it in the back of my mind. Now when my daughter was born, my son was obsessed with her. He would constantly check up on her. He would count all of her fingers and toes constantly. And my daughter was an incredibly clingy baby. She would only fall asleep in my arms. If I left the room at all for that first year, she would start screaming bloody murder. When she started talking in full sentences, around two years old, she was a bit more advanced than her brother. She started calling me her good mama and she would say it constantly. When I would ask why she was calling me that, she would say that I wasn't bad. I didn't hurt her like her bad mama. I'm telling y'all, hearing that come out of her mouth almost three years after my son had his tiny freak out, knowing that I'd never brought it up around her or made a point to tell anyone else about it other than my husband. It freaked me out. I started crying really hard. It just really messed with my head because it was coming from both of my kids. I don't know if my son ever talked to his baby sister about their bad mama. They don't talk about it now at all since they're older, but I do go a little easy on them and I spoil them a little bit too much just in case there's truth to what they've told me. You know what's gonna make me cry? What? That they found each other in the next life. Stop. That to me is so. It's like part of the reincarnation theory, though. It's like you're still with the same mix of people, but your sister became your mom or something. I get those tiktoks that are like me and my son in every lifetime. Oh god. And I'm gonna have my lawyer reach out to every single person that post one of those because it's for emotional damages. It's so crazy. I get so worked up over those. But it is the idea of like like those tiktoks that are like us in every lifetime. Me and my sister in my lifetime. I know. So I haven't thought about reincarnation in a minute, but you're also very appropriately dressed for like another mommy scenario right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is why I wanted to do that. With the inspiration for the past, which came first. Oh, yeah. Bad mommy. I know. I don't know about that. It's scary that it happened with two of them. I know. Which makes me think, but I, oh my god. What a blessing that you just have each other in your next life too. Did you believe in reincarnation sometimes do reincarnation? There's a lot of very convincing past life stories out there. I've done past life regression. I definitely like covered it as an episode or you did it with like no, I did it. I went and I did a past life regression. And you know, my favorite part of this whole experience of standing in the bathroom and lying to we're like gonna go in and do the past life regression. I'm waiting in line in the bathroom. And the guy in front of me is like, you know, I've done this before. And I was like, oh, yeah, you know, what did what's it like? Would you say he's like, I was on the mountain with Moses when he got the 10 commandments. And I was like, you? You know, like a Santa Monica man bun guy now. Girl, things like you're in the line at the 7 11. - That was on the mountain with Moses. - Yeah, I was like, it's always that they're, it's always, I was Cleopatra. You know, it's always something amazing in their past life. But what I always say is, so I started doing it. You know, they have you go through the past life regression you're like doing this really intense meditation. I wasn't getting anything, like glimpses of anything. - Really? - And then all of a sudden, I started seeing myself walking in the woods and I could tell it was a really long time ago. And I've never had a meditation where sites just kind of take over my mind. - Yeah, I don't get that either. - So I was like, oh, maybe there is something to this. Maybe I really did reach something in my subconscious. Like, I don't know. It was the woods, I was carrying sticks. - Are you sure that you were a person in this? 'Cause I always thought about that with past lives as well. I'm like, am I sure I was a person in every life? What if I was an animal? - Do you feel like if you were an animal, which animal do you think you were in a past life? - Have we done this, the psychology trick of animals? We did do this, didn't we? - Maybe we did. - For the three questions. - Say the three questions 'cause I want the listeners at home to do this right now. - Okay, so yes, everyone do this right now. Pick an animal, the first animal that comes to mind. Say you're as out loud. - Pig. (laughing) - All right, pick the second animal that comes to mind. - My dog this year old. - Okay, so dog. - Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. - My standard poodle. (laughing) - Oh, pig is poodle. - The third animal that comes to your mind. - A cardinal. - So the psychology trick behind it, or really the thought is that the first animal that you chose is how you see yourself, like in a very public facing way. It's just crazy. - It was a little slap-pig. - The second one that you chose is how you believe other people see you and perceive you. - It's a beautiful standard poodle. - Exactly, but the third one is the deepest layer. That is who you really believe yourself to be deep down. - A cardinal. I wonder what that means. - I did this while camping too, and people had wild ones. Most people ended up being something between like, a boar, a pig, a hog, yeah, a boar. - I found the only one that's hogging it up. - No, no, no, not at all. And then some people were like a penguin. - Oh, interesting, okay. - I'm like, huh, stoic, majestic, either. - Majestic, yeah, very majestic. Ooh, that's interesting. What are you at what were yours? - I don't really remember because I feel like it's tainted now because I like administer the psych tricks. - Yeah. - So I'm like, can I really choose like, at my most base level, but I feel like somewhere in there, I think the first one, I did like a tiger or something. - Yeah. - Like some kind of a lion, but I think I ended up as like a squirrel. (laughing) - This episode is brought to you by SoFi. The everything app for smarter money. SoFi brings award winning, banking, investing, borrowing, and more together in one place. So every dollar's working. Your money is a lot less mysterious when you can see it in one place. With SoFi checking and savings, earn up to 4% savings, APY for up to six months. Pay no account fees, no minimum deposit to open, and get a bonus of up to $400 when you sign up with eligible direct deposit, terms apply, SoFi bank, NA member, FDIC. When you're ready to invest or pay down debt, it's all right there. SoFi members can also access SoFi wealth's world-class financial planners. Get started at sofi.com/hurtstarts. This is a paid advertisement by SoFi Technologies and is not intended to be financial advice. - Shall we shift into the story? - Please do. I hold my cane again. - Thank you. My brittle hands, they need all the strength to hold this. So this is a story that is from tour that was submitted to us. I am bringing it to you because it is truly one of the scarier ones I've come across. - Oh my gosh. - I don't really tell this story to many people kind of because people look at you strange when something awful like this happens to you, but also because it's a scary thing to remember. Just for the purposes of sending it to you, please do keep my name anonymous on this one. Back in 2017, I had just started my senior year in high school and I was trying to get a job at a movie theater that was near my house to make a little extra money. This place was definitely a bit rundown. It was a smaller theater kind of like an indie and it was owned by this older couple who really, really needed the help at the time. I think it was weekend. I remember I rode my bike over there because I didn't have a car yet and just asked the manager if they had any job openings and he pretty much hired me on the spot. They needed some extra help with really every part of the theater, like the snack bar, doing tickets, but they also really needed someone who could help them out in the projection booth to play the movies. The manager who interviewed me said something about the person who had been doing it basically stopped showing up for work out of nowhere and I guess they'd quit. And the only other people who knew how to do it were that one manager and the owners. But honestly, I was fine to learn the ropes and learn how to work the projector. I really didn't care. I just needed any sort of job as an after school thing. But actually, working the projector, it isn't really that hard at all. The only thing that sucks about it is that you're pretty much alone up there the whole shift in that one room so you do get bored. Also the theater was old. So the projectionist booth had like no heat and it was small and cramped. But you do get to chill up there. You can watch the movies from the booth, which is cool. It's just that the booth is not what makes the story scary. It's what I saw in that theater one night. It was three weeks into me working there where this woman started coming in every single night. Like sometimes she would buy a ticket and sometimes she would just stand by the arcade corner. And when I tell you she had an eerie vibe to her, there was something off about this woman. She looked maybe middle age, sort of tired every time I saw her. And I only noticed her after maybe the third time of seeing her in our lobby that she was always wearing the same clothes. I wasn't sure if maybe she might have been homeless or something else could have been going on there, but the thing that stuck out about her, when you looked at her, was her hair. It was this wild, frizzy mane. And it also sort of covered most of her face. But if you actually locked eyes with her, she had these dark, sunken eyes that were always really wide any time I talked to her when she was buying a ticket. Just not your everyday kind of person. Not sure how else to describe her. I usually only worked with this one other girl. And we both knew this woman had something wrong with her just from the way that she would walk about the theater. And I actually had one weird encounter with her in our parking lot before all of this went down. I always locked my bike up behind the building, and there was this one night, where I wasn't the closer, so I was gonna get to head out a bit early, and I went through the back exit from our office right at around 10 p.m. and while I was out there getting my bike unlocked, I thought I heard something, so I remember looking up, just to make sure that everything was good, but it turns out something was very wrong here. Our parking lot was deep and way out in the distance of it, in the dark where the grass meets the pavement, was that woman standing there, watching me. It was honestly too dark and too far from me to tell if she was actually facing me or if her back was turned to me and she was just standing there. But it was her. I could tell it was her from the hair alone. It was like she was stalking the building or something. That one was a freaky thing to see, but really, I just got on my bike and took off without looking back and I did think about her on my way home. But this wasn't gonna be my last experience with this woman because something went down in our theater that one night, that is easily the scariest thing that has ever happened to me. So it was a Friday night when this happened and I was working the late shift, which basically means that I'm gonna be working the projectionist booth and I am the closer. 'Cause our latest showing is at 11 p.m. but nobody really ever comes to see those, but we still had to run the movie because of some contract that we had with Disney or something like that. I'm not really sure. Usually I kinda just sit around in the booth on my phone. I was texting people, I'd play games and no one really comes up to check on you. So sometimes you just fall asleep 'cause it's slow. So this one night we were playing a very late night screening and I was bored so I started watching the movie in my chair until I accidentally fell asleep. When I woke up I got that really panicky feeling. Like if you're somewhere really late that you're not supposed to be. Also, I hadn't done anything to close up and we were way past closing. It was like one or something in the morning. I hadn't locked up, I hadn't cleaned the theater. So I got up from my chair and I was gonna head down from the booth to the theater to flip on the lights and just do a spot check for cleaning and then lock up. But before I even went downstairs, I see something through the window while looking down at the theater that still gives me chills to this day. Just from the silhouette of the hair I could tell you, it was that woman. That same frizzy wild hair from behind by the way because she was sat all alone in the center of the theater seats and was facing towards the screen, which was playing nothing. I know for a fact she wasn't in the theater when the movie started and before I fell asleep. Plus we were closed so I was annoyed at this point and started to rush down from the booth to ask her to leave the theater. I got my way down and kind of stormed into the entry way up the theater to be like, ma'am, you have to leave. We are closed, but the second I got in there, there was nobody in the audience. And I got down there pretty fast. So I took a second and they looked around all over the theater at different seats. She'd be hard to miss, but she definitely wasn't in the room anymore. Maybe she ran out through the emergency exit near the screen when she heard me coming. No idea, but at least the problem was solved. She was gone. So I walked back up the entrance. I just came through to flip the lights on, but literally the second I turned around, I heard something in the theater. It was the sound of one of our theater seats flipping up to its upright position and they don't do that on their own. So this was my confirmation. That woman was still in the theater and at this point, I was creeped out but mostly pissed. I remember turning back around and I went and stood in front of the seats again and I said something like, Listen, ma'am. "I know you're here, and I need you to leave right now. We are past closing. I didn't want to lose my confidence in saying it, but the more time that passed in the silence of waiting for a reply or to see her, the eerier it felt, just standing there. But what was I going to do? I wasn't going to back down, because at this point, this woman was hiding in our building, so I turned and started walking up the stairs to check each row of the seats, and I was heading towards the back row. I was checking and checking and each time I didn't see her down a row, I was getting more and more nervous. Like the thought of all of this was crashing down on me, just how creepy it was, like this woman was hiding in our movie theater. So while I was checking and made it to the very back row, I swear to God I heard a noise that told me I had to get the hell out of that room. It was like a really quick series of thuds on the ground like she was crawling through our theater on all fours. I wasn't really confident to confront her anymore. Something about all of this was getting way too creepy for me, this woman, who I definitely knew was here, was basically playing hide and seek with me in the dark of this theater, and I started to freak out. Like it's not worth confronting some unstable woman when I was alone at work, so at this point I was just going to get the hell out of there, call the cops, but that's when I saw her. If you can imagine it, I'm standing near the back rows of the seats, so I turned to get down the stairs from the aisle and go out through the exit in the hallway, get out of the theater, but when I turned around to go down those stairs, the woman crawls out from the aisle from the front seats on all fours and turned her head up towards me. This had to be one of the scariest things I think I'd ever seen, like the full weight of being alone in this place just hit. I couldn't even see her face because the theater screen was still on and the lights in the theater were off. I never got a chance to flip them on. So I'm just seeing this woman on her hands and knees, the silhouette of her hair facing me. All I could think to do was run, get out as fast as I can, so I start sprinting through the rows of the seats next to me to get to the left side of the theater and make a run for it to get to the emergency exit and I kid you not while I was running. I never looked back to actually see her, I could hear her, get to her feet, and start chasing me. Scariest feeling I had ever felt in my life. You can't even think about what happens, you just got to go. I ran into the dark area of the emergency exit and slammed myself against the door to get it open and took off as fast as I could. I didn't grab my bikes since it was locked up and I was not going to pull my keys out or something like that. When I got to the furthest part of the parking lot, that's when I glanced behind me for the first time to see if she was chasing me, but she wasn't there. Which immediately made me slow down since I was flying on adrenaline at this point. I kept darting my eyes from left to right across the back, parking lot looking for the woman. But to me, it seemed like she had never left the theater behind me. She was still in there. To pretty much tell you how my experience ended, I kept running until I got to a 7/11 that was up the street and called 911 and I actually didn't go back to the theater that night. They sent one officer to the movie theater and another met with me at 7/11 to ask me exactly what happened. I ended up giving him my key because he said that he was going to go back to meet up with the other officer once they could get a hold of the owners and call them down just to clear the whole theater and make sure nobody was still in there. And I actually never went back to that theater at all. After they called my parents that night, my mom came and picked me up and spoke with the officers about what I just saw. She didn't let me work there after that. But the most unsettling part of the story is that they never found her. We had those security cameras in our lobby that caught her walking in very late at night, but they never saw her leaving the theater. So cops assumed maybe after I saw her and I ran out, she probably ran to another part of the building and just slipped out through a side door. I really don't know how she got out. But if you want to know something sick about this the next morning, after all this happened, my mom got a call from the officer who I met the night before when I gave my interview and asked about something strange that he found in the theater. There was a large rolled up clump of hair found left on the carpet. And he said it looked like it came from that woman and that maybe she had ripped it out of her own head. I have no idea what that could have been, but to me it was scarier to think just how unstable or dangerous that woman actually might have been. Now if I close my eyes to picture her, the only thing that comes up is that silhouette, that frizzy, wild hair and those sunken wild eyes, and that horrible, creepy sound of her crawling in the movie theater on all fours. I will never forget how that sounded. She's with that guy in the tunnel, you know, from the first story. Great minds think alike. Tunnel people. The tunnel people. Wow. Can you like someone crawling after you? That's the thing. Because at first I was like, I think cutting her a little bit of slack, like go, she looks tired. She lost her contacts. She's tired. She's lost her. She's on all four. We've all been there. That's me in the first like six months of postpartum. I feed on my diet. I'm ripping the hair out of my own head. Oh my gosh, but to, because it was like one in the morning when they woke up. Yeah. The theater and she was still there. That's part of that part of what got me to was like, give her that feeling where you're, it's almost like being at school after school is over almost when you're in there and it's just quiet and still and kind of like, ooh, I feel like I shouldn't be in this place. Kind of, that's what it felt like to me. Or like you're doing something wrong. You've overslept and you're like, oh wait, this happened to me actually. I've had a million jobs. I used to work as a pool boy and my hours. Of course you did. I used to work as a pool boy for the department complex and my hours were really short. It was like a summer job. It was like six to nine, but allegedly. Sometimes since I had a skeleton key to everything, if I was done cleaning the pool, I would go into one of the model units because they were furnished and I would take a nap in the bed, like under the sheets and everything. Oh my gosh. So one night I did that. And they get it they used to show other, yeah, it's like the guest room to be like, come to, can you believe this? Come to Altera, the property of the future. Oh my gosh. But I was in that bed and I overslept and I woke up and it was like two a.m. I had almost done an over in the guest unit and I was like, oh my god, the pool's not, I had like a duplicate experience. I was like, the pool's not locked up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm in this unit. All the lights are on. It was crazy. That's really spooky. That is spooky. Okay, I have one more that I'm going to read. Should I hold this cane? You really, now it's kind of taking on a different thing, but the cane, you looked a bit like Willy Wonka for a second. Yes, it does have a Wonka. I mean, it is like Maroon. It is. It really goes, I mean, the color scheme is really working with you. Okay, this is a quick little short one. So this is another one from Reddit posted five years ago by user Big Bull Thunder. And it goes, I think this is from another paranormal thread. I can't remember exactly which one I came from. But it goes, this story sounds crazy, but it's 100% true. At least my narrative. I used to live in a mobile home trailer park growing up. There was a hallway that went from one end of the trailer to the other with the bedrooms coming off of it on one side. My bed was on the wall opposite the hallway. So I could see in to the hallway, but not down either side. But I was about maybe six or seven years old. I stayed awake after my dad went to sleep and stared at the hallway. I would start to be able to make out a hand stretching from beyond the doorway in the hall from the right side of the door to the left. The longer I looked, the more the hand would appear until eventually over the course of a few minutes, I could see a red and white striped shirt or sweater sleeve. If I continued to stare after a longer period, the body of a boy would appear in the doorway. I specifically remember hiding under the covers most nights when this would happen, mostly at the first sight of him. I was never antagonized further than him slowly moving, basing my bed from the right side of the door to the left. And if I continued to stare, he would eventually disappear beyond the left threshold. We moved out of that trailer into a home when I had just turned nine and that was the end of it. I never really thought about it. I never told my dad or anyone else about it because by that time, I had already just chalked it up to seeing things as a kid and I just thought it was my imagination. About 15 or 20 years later, my dad and I were talking about his best friend that had lived next door but had sadly just passed away. We started talking about our trailer and the older lady that had moved in after us and my dad said something like, "Funny enough!" But that friend told me a few years ago that the woman used to see a little boy in a red and white shirt like a ghost or something. I was obviously taken aback and I told him about what I had seen almost every night for a few years and we were both just a bit shocked at what this might mean. Never experienced anything else, but that completely stumps me. It's the confirmation of not one sighting. Something that you think might have been your imagination or like in your head when you were a little kid, but then having the confirmation of no, someone else saw that. Have you had anything like that happen to you? Any kind of confirmation where you're like, maybe that wasn't what I thought it was or maybe I didn't really see that and then somebody was like, "No, no, no, that actually happened." Personally, I don't know. I talk about all the time, but the ghost time that we did with that idea of a two-girls-one ghost. Where did you do that, by the way? We did at the Henry Derby House in Salem. It's the most haunted Airbnb you can rent in Salem, at least. Coincidentally, they're also the most expensive. I know. Don't even get me started. No, but it's a great place. But we did part one on my channel, part two on their channel. - Oh cool. - And while we were there, we had a really confusing experience with what felt like a ghost in the house. We just couldn't figure it out. But there was. - What do you mean? - It led us to the third floor of the house. And it kept, like we kept trying to figure out where the most, where the most, - Fatty. - It was. And the most activity was right outside of this little linen closet. It just kept like nothing in the basement, nothing on the first floor, nothing on the second floor, finally went up to the third floor, started feeling a little bit of movement. The little ghost boxes and stuff that the girls brought, like start going off. And so we're kind of following it around being like, where's the stuff most happening? And it was right outside of, like right when you get to the tops of the stairs, there's a linen closet, one bedroom to the left, and then a hallway to the right. - Oh god, as is this, so clearly my god. - We opened the linen closet, and inside there's a Ouija board. I'm not kidding. And it was, - Why? - I can say a novelty Ouija board. Like someone had stayed in the house and probably bought it in town, and it brought it to use it. So we get the Ouija board out and we start kind of playing with it, and it's really confusing. It feels just from talking to, it feels like it's a woman, feels like she's trapped in the house, and she said like, God can let me out, but like, and that was it. And then she's like really not talking, and like it's moving so slowly, and she's not really communicating. It was like a very strange experience. Like she didn't want to talk to us. And we were like, that was so weird. And even like, Corinne and Sabrina left, and they were thinking that it was like a bad experience, and you know, we didn't really have a lot of activity. How are we gonna cut this video together? But I stayed there overnight. They went home to their homes, 'cause they lived nearby, and I stayed in the Airbnb with my mom. - Oh, whoa. - And the next morning, 'cause my mom works customer service, so she will talk to anyone. But the next morning, there's like a guy cleaning the leaves outside and so she opens the door, and just starts talking to him. And it turns out he's the owner of the Airbnb. - Oh. - And she's chatting with them. She's like, they did a ghost hunt last night. They had, da, da, da. And I started talking to the guy too, and he's like, oh. Like, how did it go last night? You did a ghost hunt. You know, a lot of people do ghost hunts in this house, and they always like see stuff, and I would always see a girl on the third floor. Like, my friends would go over, and my friends would come over and think that my sister was up on the third floor when she wasn't home. Like there was always like a woman, like a girl upstairs on the third floor, and we were like, okay, so I tell him that, you know. - That's literally, that's confirmation. - We did, we did this experience, and we were up on the third floor, and you know, we, a lot of the, it felt like this woman was by this pantry. We opened, or this linen closet, we opened it and there was a Ouija board inside, and he goes, oh my God, thank you so much for telling me, like I really don't like when there's Ouija boards inside, and I don't, I'm the spirit seem to be uncomfortable with it too. They really don't like Ouija boards. Thank you for telling me, I'll throw it out. - What? - The girl, like that ghost in the house was telling us where the Ouija board was, 'cause what are the odds to that he showed up the next day, and I was able to tell him about it. - Sure. - He would have never found it, unless he was opening all the doors in the house. So I think she really was like, there's a Ouija board in here, like the owner's gonna come tomorrow to tell him so that he can throw it out, 'cause I don't like it being in the house. - She's efficient. - She's efficient. She was like, "We're on the kitchen ladies." - She was like, "We're on the kitchen ladies." And I went upstairs, and I used the spirit box app. - Uh-huh. - And I started asking questions, and I literally, it's on the two rules on ghost channel, but I started asking like, was there a reason you wanted me to come here, and she's saying like upstairs, closet, throw out. Like it just like literally started saying that it was crazy. I was like, they have camera, I just start crying. - Yeah, I was gonna say, I was like, I was trying to talk to the spirit box. - I think I probably have to book a hiltet or something. - I'm getting emotional, I'm crying, 'cause I'm scared, but I'm also like, communicating with a ghost, it feels like so it's very emotional. - Well, because I mean, so much of that is, what are the odds, those like, those keywords. I mean, almost the phone is listening, I suppose. But like, what are the odds? - I know, it was really, it was just all of it together, and then I told the girls about it when we did our followup and they couldn't believe it. It just felt like it tied everything up after having a very strange experience the night before. So that was really cool. - Crazy, they didn't say the night with you. They kind of bowed out, you're a real one for really sticking around. - Me and my mom and my mom just like, - Was she not scared? - She wasn't spooked. - No, she believes in ghost too, and she's not scared. She's like, okay, well, just sleep with the spirits tonight. - I was like, she from Fargo, oh my God. (laughing) - That's how she talks. No, she's so funny. I think I also didn't tell her everything we experienced as to not scare her. - Let's go in with the clean slate. I think that's actually better to like keep it after the fact and before, especially if you want someone to go in with the clean slate. So they're not corrupted to be like looking around every corner and at every shadow. - Thank you, here things it, yeah. - Because sometimes in some places you just don't. Like, I forget if this was on the sinister creep time, but I just covered a case, the bottle hell house. Have you heard of that? - No. - And it was apparently like a very, very serious, like more modern haunt up in Washington on a Stafford way, I think, and Zach Began even came, like ghost adventures came to the house, but ironically of all the religious groups, all the independent paranormal researchers, him and his team were the only ones who didn't have a paranormal experience there. - Wow. - And they only stayed for five hours, I guess. Like production was kind of like in and out, but there were the only ones and two things that it's because the ghosts were like, we're not giving you anything. - No, of course. And they're like, we've seen your show, YouTube, I portray us in the best light. - Yeah, they're like, we're not giving you this footage, girl. You think we're gonna help you with the ratings? - Yeah. - Think again. - You pay me. My agent will be reaching out. - The ghosts looking for residuals. That's the kind of ghosts we're gonna be. - I know ghosts that want to get paid. - Is that ghost sag? Is the ghost you again? - Oh my gosh, we're starting ghost sag after this. Well, thank you so much for coming on. - It was my pleasure, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. - We are gonna be back next week. This kind of concludes our October Halloween spooky programming, but we're headed straight into the end of the year. We have a lot more great episodes coming for the rest of the year. So stick around. I'm gonna be here every week with more episodes and I'll see you guys next time. Stay curious. - Woohoo! - Heart Starts Founding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Our socioproducer is Juno Hobbs. Heart Starts Founding is also produced by Matt Brown. Sound Design and Mixed by Red Room Creative. Video editing by Creative Step. Special thanks to Travis Dunlop, Grayson Drining in, the team at WME. Have a heart pounding story or a case request. Check out Heart Starts Founding.com. - Do you want more darkly curious stories in your life? Sign up for our Patreon for free and get access to a rotating shelf of bonus content. Our weekly Rogue Detecting Society newsletter and the HSP Book Club. Paid members also get monthly bonus episodes and archive access, which I think is more than 40 episodes at this point. You also get a cool Jinx sticker after your first three months. And you can check it all out with a free seven day trial. Link in the bio or go to patreon.com/heartstartspounding. But whatever you do, stay curious.