He told me that was the bare room. I was not to go inside. But then we played a game one day and I ran into hide. I didn't know the secret. When I stuck behind the bed, when I heard their whispers, and my heart was filled with dread, the voices they grew louder, as the room began to breathe when I pounded on the door. They promised I'd never leave. You crossed over stooped. Stay tuned. I moved to the Lansing Michigan and I don't know anybody except my roommate. My roommate, who loves to tell me how stupid I am, and because I'm broke, I go to the subway sandwich shop every Tuesday. Because on Tuesdays, they've got the two-for-two-stay special two-foot-long subs $5.5! I order two turkey subs with extra everything and make sure that Trisha takes my order. Not Alan. Not that stupid Alan. Because it's like Trisha understands. This has to last me. She piles it on to turkey to cheese to made us olives. The conversation, the last rules of broken protocols ignored. The sandwich Trisha makes for me. It's like a sandwich your grandmother might make you. Like I love her my packing for a long trip, the best sandwich, and I get home one day. After work, pull out my sub, my roommate looks at me, looks at my sandwich, she's like, "Would you get that?" But to me, subway, you got that at subway? No way. Did a girl make it? Yeah. Is she cute? Yeah. If I were you stupid, I'd go better that subway and ask for a digits. Really? You were so dumb. So, heart pounding, mouth dry, I pull back up to the subway. Trisha is not there. Just Alan. Hey Alan, where's Trisha? Trisha doesn't work here anymore. You want a sub or not? What happened? Somebody had to let the owner know. Let the owner know. And Alan, Alan just sneers at me. Let the owner know what, Alan. You think no one saw your special sandwiches? And maybe I am stupid. Like my roommate thinks. Because it takes me a moment to understand what he's saying. Then I want to murder him. You got a fire? That's sneer. I tried my best not to explode Alan. What is Trisha's last name? It's against company by Adam. What is her last name? Are you threatening me? I leave the store shaking with rage. And I try. I do over weeks and months. But I never see Trisha again. And I never go back to subway either. I still think about Trisha though. Not because I knew her. I never really got the chance because once someone saw me. Saw me trying to make two sandwiches last at the end of the week. And she decided to add a piece of turkey. That's a slice of cheese, a handful of olives. But for that. She paid the price. Snookstar. Now. There are all kinds of friends. The year is 2010. I'm 13-year-old Elyssa Mack. I just moved from Brunner's Ares, Argentina. With the Colsel City. With light kill. With Southern Ecuador. With me embarrassing foreign tour. The heat. The accent. The school. And making new friends. Feels like more than she can handle. But she needs Nicole. Things take a turn. I'll let Elyssa take it from here. I met Nicole through a mutual friend during recess. She had this really shiny butt hair. She had this like energy to her very like enthusiastic. Especially about the Jonas Brothers. That's how we started talking. They told me every single fun fact that they could about the Jonas Brothers. I was like, oh, cool. That's interesting. We would have great conversation. Your typical 13-year-old connection, you know. We had been friends for maybe like a few weeks now. So this one day during recess. A bunch of my friends Nicole was there. The guy that introduced us. We're just talking about what are the weekend plans and what's the cool thing to do. So then it kind of came up that her parents were not going to be there that weekend. She was like, hey, that's all come to my place since they're not going to be there. They're talking about it and I was like, oh, okay. Like nobody had said anything. But then they were like, oh, yeah, no, you're invited too. I was like, oh, yay. The day of the gathering, it was extremely hot. It's Ecuador. Ecuador is hot. It's always hot. It has two seasons. It's either dry heat or just rain with heat. So then me and a bunch of classmates and my friends, we get to Nicole's house. It was probably like around, I want to say, seven. We were in her living room and her TV room playing music from someone's phone. So it was that really crappy quality to the music. And we were just enjoying talking, you know. We had bought some snacks and some drinks. It was a very laid-back, just close friends gathering. We had this other friend, his name is Coco. He was very tall, skinny. He had a sort of like round head and a very big nose. And for some reason, Coco that day decided that I would be the butt of every joke. Not in like a malicious way, but more so in that preteen immature way. He would like make fun of my accent because I have an Argentina accent. And they had their Ecuadorian local accent, you know. And he'd be like, is that what you were trying to say? Like it got to a point where I was like, I got irritated. It wasn't funny anymore. And around like 10 minutes of me being in her house, I started having a headache. But it wasn't one of those headaches that you can kind of just ignore and keep making small talk. It was one of those headaches that get progressively worse.
Your head pulsating. One of our friends had gone upstairs to her room, so then I asked Nicole, I was like, "Hey, Niki, "do you think it's okay if I go lay down on your bed? "I know our friend Yvonne is over there. "Do you think it's okay if I just go and rest for a little bit? "I really have a bad headache." And she was like, "Yeah, no, that's fine. "You can just go upstairs the first door that you see to your right." So I was like, "Okay, sounds good." So I go up the stairs, I find her room, and I open the door, and my other friend Yvonne, she's just laying there on her phone, and I'm like, "Hey, I have a headache." She was like, "Okay." So then I lay next to her. I had left the door open, because I don't want to separate myself so much from our little gathering downstairs. I am facing the wall. I hear them laughing, just chatting, "Go go being annoying, making me cringe so much." I'm trying to relax. I'm trying to get this headache to go away. And I started hearing the creaking of the staircase. I immediately thought, "This is go-go coming up to keep being annoying, right?" And I turn around to face the door to see who's coming in. I'm like, "This guy better not walk through that door, because I'm about to snap at him." So I turn around, and the creaking stops, like immediately. So I'm like, "Okay, fine." I turn my back, back is facing the door right, so I turn around again, and the footsteps continue. I kind of hear what heels sound like when you're walking, and I turn around and I'm like, "Go go, can you please go downstairs?" Like, "I don't feel too good. Just go back down." Nothing, no response. So I turn around again, and I hear like stilettos, right? And I hear them closer and closer. So I'm like, "Oh my God, why is he insisting so much?" And being here with us, right? I was so, so, so annoying. And I turn around, and I go, "Go go, please stop." So as I'm turning, I see this person, definitely not, "Go go." It's a lady. Is this woman with long black hair all the way down to her waist? Kind of like frizzy hair. She's wearing this white wedding gown. One of those old wedding gowns. Those I had like puffy sleeves. Kind of like a corset kind of thing, and a very big gown at the bottom. But all I could see was dark eyes, like very either brown or black eyes. So this lady, I see her reaching towards the door knob, and she looks at me. We locked eyes, and I was like, "What?" It was a split second, and then she retreats. So I see her going back, and her flowy veil and her hair was like the last things that I see of her. [Music] The moment I see this lady, my blood ran cold. I can feel all the blood just rushing to my feet. I was so, so scared. And I turn around to see if maybe Yvonne that was laying next to me saw the same thing that I saw. And I actually ask her. I was like, "Hey, did someone come in?" And she's like, "What?" She was on her blackberry, because that was like the it phone back then. I don't know who, but she did not see any of this. So I'm like, "Oh, okay, okay, no, no, nothing, nothing." And she goes back to her phone. I'm just thinking to myself, "Did I just see that? Was that a ghost? Or was my mind plane games?" An hour, so it goes by, and the boy friends that we had there, they leave because all the girls were going to stay over for a sleepover. I hear them leaving. And then I finally hear my other girlfriends come upstairs. And they're asking me, "Hey, how's your headache?" I'm like, "Oh, it's fine, it's fine." I see all my friends getting their things, unpacking their bags for the sleepover, getting out their pajamas. And I'm trying to find like a little opening, you know, to tell them what I've seen. And then I finally get the courage. And I'm like, "Hey, Nicole." It's a silly question. "By any chance, is there any ghost in your house?" So she turns around and she goes, "Oh, you've seen the bride. No, don't worry. It's okay. It's just a ghost." When she said those words, I felt my heart beating hard. I was like, "What the heck?" She said it in such a nonchalant tone. And she starts laughing because of course she sees my face. And I'm stuttering, right? So I was like, "What are you talking about?" I told her, "Don't worry, this happens to me too. It's the bride." Like, I was trying to calm Melissa down, but really, I felt relieved when she asked me this question. Like, a weight was lifted off my shoulders. We moved here in 2001. My mom, my dad, my younger sister and me. When we first saw the house, it was only halfway built. My parents went and took a look and were like, "All right, we'll buy it." But something strange happened when they were doing the renovations. Every time they would arrange the tiles on the floor, they'd return the next day to find all the tiles removed and placed in a neatly stacked pile. Later on when the house was built, my friends would come over and tell me, It feels like someone is watching you. Something is off. But for me, everything was totally normal. I never felt anything anywhere in my house. One afternoon, it's around two or three pm. My parents aren't home and I'm standing at the kitchen counter, chopping onions. When something catches my eye. And when I look at it, I see the windows of the door. I know that I was alone and I couldn't go home, because I have challenges. I couldn't go home. I know I'm alone and I know I couldn't enter the house because of the metal fence. Right then, I immediately knew this is a ghost.
So, I just see her and I stand there as the woman walks by. Then I remember from horror movies that every kid who goes looking for the monster ends up in trouble. So, I tell myself I'm staying right here in the kitchen, I'll keep cooking, I'll pretend nothing ever happened. When my parents get back that evening, I tell them I saw a woman walking through the house, but they don't believe me. They just tell me, "Oh, you probably saw some reflection. Maybe you're making this up." After the first time I saw her, I never saw her again. But I did keep hearing her, usually at night after 7pm, I'd be in my room and I'd hear someone walking up the stairs and high heels. Every time this happened, I expected someone to open the door. I used to think, "Maybe someone's coming to visit me, maybe I'm about to see this lady again." I better hide under the blanket. No. In the end, the footsteps always stopped at my door and no one ever came in. I wasn't 100% sure what I was hearing, but I always connected it to the lady. So I started calling her the bride. Because in my mind as a child, the only people who wore white dresses and high heels were bright, so that's what I called her. But then again, I never saw her again. The one who did was Lisa. So for the next month of our friendship, I do not bring this up to Nicole. We don't talk about this, just because I feel like the more you talk about things like this, the more you invite other spirits, other ghosts. Also, I didn't know the ghost or the bride's intention, so I didn't want to see her again. After a few months, me and my friends go back to Nicole's house. Around that time, she had broken her leg. She did not like using her crutches, so she would crawl everywhere. And one little system that we had with her is that whenever we wanted to pick her up or get her attention or anything like that, because she was one of those girls that did not have a phone, we would grab little pebbles and throw them at her window to let her know that we were there. So then we're throwing the pebbles and we see someone on the window approaching the window. It's this female figure. We see a woman. And we're like, "Oh, Nicole, come down, come down, come downstairs." And this figure wasn't moving, wasn't doing anything, it was just staring at us. All my friends are like, "Hey, Nicole, they come down, come down." And while we're talking to her window and this lady in the window, her front door, which is in the first floor, opens, and you see her crawling, she's like, "Hey, I'm here." I was downstairs at the TV room. But once I crawl outside, they all tell me, "There's a lady upstairs in your bedroom." I'm like, "What lady? That wasn't me, I'm down here." Someone was up there, so I'm like, "Well, it's probably the bride. Who else could it be?" We all saw this figure in the window. We all just look at each other and we're like, "Okay, that happened." But then we had this one friend that was not okay with any of this, and he was totally freaking out. He started looking at us, all of us, and saying, "Am I the only one seeing this? Why isn't anyone freaking out?" I am right now, and we're all just started laughing. I saw this as normal. This was unusual, sure, but it didn't seem like she was trying to hurt me, so I wasn't scared when my friends told me they'd seen her. But I do remember thinking, "What does she want with us?" Nicole and I remained friends after high school. I went to college in the US, and whenever I had either winter break or summer break, I would go back to Ecuador to catch up with everyone, and this one time I was visiting her and she told me, "Hey, you won't believe what happened." She then tells me she's been dating this guy, right? Things are a little bit more official, they're like actual boyfriend and girlfriend, so she decides to invite him over to her parents. Before he came to our house, I hadn't told him anything at all, nothing. I just invited him over for a barbecue. So they get to her house for this barbecue, he's coming in, she's heading towards the kitchen or somewhere. He starts walking ahead of him, and he stops. And he's looking to the right, which is where the TV room is. He tells me, "I'll be with you in a moment, I just need to use the bathroom first." So I wait for him, and after a while, he comes to the kitchen where I'm cooking. I notice he's acting all weird. He tells me, "I have a really bad headache." He's holding his head and closing his eyes. He looks rattled. I start to worry. I'm like, "What's wrong?" And he says, "I went to the bathroom, but then all of a sudden something called me into that TV room." When I walked over, there was a lady in white. I saw this intense white light all over the room, and I couldn't step inside because she was blocking the door. And then, she spoke. She just says, "I love them like my daughters." And then she was gone. When he tells me this, I was like, "Wow." I don't know if the right word is nostalgia, but something came over me. Even right now, I feel like crying. She felt like family. I don't know how to explain it, but it wasn't scary. It was like, "Oh, she's been looking out for me. She loves my sister, and maybe she's been watching us this whole time." I do feel that she's like some kind of guardian angel because nothing bad ever happened to me while I was in the house. Like growing up, both my parents were always at work. So I was often alone, and I was very mischievous. I used to play on the roof and jump from it into the lawn. I once set the kitchen on fire while cooking, with the flames reaching the ceiling, and still nothing ever happened to me. So when he tells me this, I wanted to cry. I was like, "This is so beautiful. Thank you." So she tells me this, and I'm like, "Oh, wait. makes.
He said that the right told him that she is like a mother to them, that she takes care of them, that she looks after them. So I'm like thinking, "Well, she trying to close the door of the bedroom because I had a headache and she was trying to take care of me, too." I kind of felt like that was my answer and to me that was it. I got my resolution. After all these years, I still don't know who she is. That's like the question of my life. Who is this lady? Nowadays, when I think about this in respect to myself, I would say that this whole experience was definitely one of the biggest ones that I've had, that had kind of like taught me that there's this like spiritual realm. And nowadays, if I do see someone or something because of what happened with the bride, I keep approaching everything with the same ideology of just being respectful. After all these years, I hope she's still around the house looking out for my parents, and hopefully she's still keeping an eye out for me, too. Either way, I just want to say thank you because for me, having another mom looking out for me, that is something I truly appreciate. Alisa, now lives in New York, the Guayaquille, lives in her still. The friends, the stories, the glimpses on the other side, they never left, as for Nicole. She still lives in Ecuador, and every now and then when she visits her childhood home, she finds herself glancing at the old TV room, from anisting and hoping to somehow get one more glimpse of the bride. Thank you, Alisa and Nicole for sharing this story, and thank you, Juan Diego. Juan Diego is a podcast producer from Colombia, who focuses on climate storytelling and the oral tradition, learn more about his work and his podcast and our show notes, and special thanks as well. Toilena, Tinoco, flinting your voice to bring him this story to life. The original score was by Clay Xavier, who's produced and scouted by Juan Diego, Belgrang. Now, do you have a story the world needs to hear about, that you need to get off your chest to reveal? Let us know.
[email protected], because there's nothing better than a Spooked story from a Spooked listener, and there is a secret place, a place behind the places that you know, a place where the person that looks just like you. That acts just like you, where it's the same close you do and loves everything you love, but this person is not you, and this person, which is they were you. And they're waiting in the shadows right now of KQD and San Francisco, and now, they know that you know. Please tell the robot overlords absolutely no snaps reveals content to be used for training, testing and developing machine learning or AI systems that prior written permission, on team Spooked. The union representative producers, artists, editors, engineers, hermers of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, communications work of America, AFLCA, a local 51, Spooked is brought to you. The team that visits our shadow selves on the regular, especially the overblues from Mr. Mark Wistage, in fact, were convinced that a switch occurred sometime last April, and the real Mark Wistage is trapped there now. Oh well, there's David Kim, Zoe Frignot, Eric Janjez, Elliot Lightfoot, Taylor DeCott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Nicholas Marks, the Spooked theme songs by Pat Masetti Miller, my name is Glenn Washington. Where's an idea that if you learn about a thing, say a fancy purse, one day you've never heard of a Burkton bag the next day you see him everywhere. Just like we have to be trained first, for our eyes are open. We travel through life this same way, blind to the things we don't know to look for. Is it any wonder then that so many cultures with different eyes are amazed, but what we cannot see. Most of the world accepts as given that beings, ancestors, spirits, entities, walk amongst us, but often we see through an entirely different type of lens, good for many things, but leaving us blind to others and sometimes I feel that I need a new pair of glasses. I know something is in front of me, but like smoke I can't catch it, can't contain it, trap it, tame it, quest I can't use it, but perhaps wanting all those things is why I can't perceive it in the first place. Never ever, ever, ever, turn on the lights. [Music]
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