194. True Haunted House Stories: Ghost Children, Mimics, and Premonitions

Open your SoFi Checking & Savings account today - head to https://sofi.com/HeartStarts to get started. Today I’m telling you some true scary stories of people living in haunted houses, including my own! These are stories that will make you question: is your house cursed, or are you? Please join me, cozy up, and get a little scare for the start of Spooky Season! (Although for most of us, it’s a year-round affair 👻) If you have some of your own spooky stories, submit them at: https://www.heartstartspounding.com/stories and maybe I will tell your tale next! Love true crime, horror, folklore, and the unexplained? Join us in the Rogue Detecting Society on Patreon. Start for free to stay up to date on all things HSP with our newsletter, bonus content, and more. If you want to dive deeper into a community of fellow darkly curious listeners, upgrade for ad-free listening, monthly bonus episodes with topics voted on by members, merch perks, and Patreon-only group chats. High Council members also get Footnotes, our weekly after-show where Kaelyn dives deeper into the episode, recent true crime news, theories, and other scary stories from around the internet. Join free or go paid: https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by Toyota. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal from your local Toyota dealer. Make a smart buy on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or get a Corolla sedan packed with the latest features, advanced tech, and head-turning style. Take a test drive in two of Toyota's most popular SUVs, the spacious, family-friendly Grand Highlander and adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid and plug-in hybrid models available across the lineup, plus efficient all-electrics like the BZ, BZ Woodland, and all-wheel-drive CHR, you can drive your way and skip the pump. And long after you leave the lot, your Toyota keeps delivering with legendary resale value,

• 0:44Kaelyn Moore?

  built on a reputation for quality and reliability. So when it's time for your next Toyota, you could trade in for more. From a great deal today to a great value tomorrow, a Toyota is right for you. Shop toyota.com for deals and details, or stop by your local Toyota dealer today. Toyota, let's go places. This episode is brought to you by Bigelow Tea. By now, you should all know that I'm obviously a very curious person, and I'm also a big tea drinker. So I have always heard about this tea called Bigelow Constant Comment. It's been around forever, and people absolutely love it. I realized I had no idea what it actually tasted like. Obviously, I had to investigate, and now I'm obsessed. Constant Comment is this incredible black tea with real orange rind, cold-pressed orange oil, and sweet spices.

• 1:29Kaelyn Moore?

  The best way I can describe it is it's like Christmas in a cup, except you get to drink it all year long. Then I learned the story behind it, which made me love it even more. Constant Comment was created by Ruth Campbell Bigelow and her New York City kitchen in 1945. She shared it with her friends, and everyone kept talking about it. And all of those "constant comments" actually gave it its name. The recipe is still a Bigelow family secret over 80 years later. So this one is a mystery worth investigating for yourself. Bigelow Constant Comment. Curiously different, impossible to forget. Welcome back to another episode of Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. As always, I'm your ghost, Kaelyn Moore. So now that we're headed straight into spooky season,

• 2:14Kaelyn Moore?

  I wanted to compile a list of terrifying, but true spooky scary stories from people who lived inside of haunted houses. Some of these stories are from listeners, others are from Reddit, and some I just found on old message boards where people used to write their unexplainable stories. It's a big scary list. I'm excited to dig into it with you all. But before we dive in, I just want to say thank you to everyone who has checked out Last Trace with Kaelyn Moore on Netflix. My Netflix original true crime podcast launched on Monday, and I have gotten a lot of lovely comments from a bunch of you guys. Episodes are going to be dropping weekly for the next 26 weeks over on Netflix, so please check it out if you haven't. Our first episode is actually on the Connecticut case of Jennifer Dulles,

• 2:56Kaelyn Moore?

  who disappeared in 2019 during a custody dispute with her husband. And it's about the trail that was left behind. Again, thank you to everyone who already checked it out. And for now, let's get into it.

• 3:10Kaelyn Moore?

  I've always been fascinated if a place is haunted or if a person is. Like, let me tell you about this creepy thing that just happened to me the other day. So a couple of days ago, I was playing with my son at like 6:30 in the morning. It's his favorite time to be awake for some ungodly reason. But all of a sudden, he just started staring into the corner of the room, like he was looking at something. And he made this face. It was the same face that he makes now when he sees a stranger, like someone he doesn't recognize, skeptical, but kind of interested. And then he just stared into the corner with that look on his face for a good five minutes. Now, that's longer than he'll look at any inanimate object, even if it's lighting up. And I look over at the corner. It's where my computer is set up. It's where my chair is. And there's nothing there.

• 3:54Kaelyn Moore?

  There's nothing that would have caught his attention like this. But then he starts making sounds while he's staring at something. He goes, "Da, da, da, da, da, da, da." Now, that's a noise that he pretty much only does if we prompt him these days. So it made me wonder if he was interacting with something that I just couldn't see. And he was so locked on this thing, until all of a sudden, his trance broke, and he started looking at me, and we just kept playing. So it got me wondering. Is the place I live haunted? Or was it something about my son? Was there something or someone specific that was trying to visit him? It's something to think about as we get into our haunted house scary story episode today. And I want to tell you this one story first. So this comes from someone who had a pretty horrifying

• 4:39Kaelyn Moore?

  interaction with their mother in the middle of the night. This person writes, "When I was around 11 years old, my whole family went on a long holiday out of the city, leaving only me, my mom, and my dad at home. We have a huge house with a joint family of 15 members living together under the same roof, so you can imagine how empty it felt with only three of us there. I've always experienced nightmares and some paranormal stuff. I was so scared in this house that I refused to sleep alone, and I started sleeping with my mother while my dad slept alone in another room. One night, while I was sleeping with my mom, we were talking, and she was sharing childhood stories with me. And suddenly, she looked at the slightly open door of our room,

• 5:23Kaelyn Moore?

  and she asked in a frightened voice, 'Who's there?' I clearly remember how terrified she looked. I asked her what happened, and she told me that she saw someone with big, round eyes peeking through the door. Later, she dismissed it as her imagination or her eyes playing tricks on her in the dark. We both forgot about it, and eventually, we fell asleep. But then I woke up at around 2:00 to 3:00 a.m. after I had a nightmare. I was pretty scared, so I asked my mother, who was sleeping beside me, to recite a prayer for me. This used to happen pretty frequently. I would wake up from nightmares, and my mother would recite prayers to ward off any negative energy. But when I asked her to pray,

• 6:07Kaelyn Moore?

  she replied in a weirdly nasally voice, 'I'm sleepy.' Now, this was in a completely different accent from the way we speak at home. I turned around to look at her, and she appeared to be sleeping with her eyes wide open and her mouth open, too. It was dark in the room, so I couldn't see her clearly. I got terrified, and I asked her again to pray for me. But she replied one more time in the same strange, nasally voice, 'I'm sleepy. Let me sleep.' At first, I thought she was trying to prank me, but I was scared as all hell. I asked her to take me to my dad's room, because I didn't want to stay there with her anymore. She refused, again in that same creepy voice.

• 6:52Kaelyn Moore?

  I started begging her, and I was crying. And then she finally said to me, 'Yes, but I won't go anywhere near him.' But what was weird about this was she said it in the regional language of the city where we live. We do not speak that language in our household. My mother was born and raised in a completely different part of the country, so she neither spoke nor understood that language. Now, hearing that made my whole body go cold, and I ran out of the room crying loudly towards my dad's room. As I was running, I heard my mother shout, 'Why are you running?' But this time, it was in her normal voice and her normal accent. I still ignored it, and I just kept running. I climbed into my dad's bed crying.

• 7:36Kaelyn Moore?

  He assumed I had another nightmare and cuddled me until I fell asleep. The next morning, I told my dad about how my mom was scaring me during the night. And that's when my mother told us her account of what happened that night. She wasn't even in the room when all of that happened. She had gone to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and when she was returning to our room, she saw me running out crying. So she shouted out at me, 'Why are you running?' Which I heard, but I ignored. All three of us were so frightened by this incident that we started sleeping together in the hall until the rest of our family returned. Mind you, I'm pretty sure I was not dreaming or hallucinating.

• 8:18Kaelyn Moore?

  I was completely awake, and I even pushed that entity away from me before I ran out of the room. I remember still the feeling of touching it. To this day, I still don't know what it was. I don't think it was a ghost, since I don't know if we can touch ghosts. But I definitely felt like it was some kind of entity I can't explain. I know some people may not believe this experience, and honestly, I still don't fully understand what happened myself. I'm only sharing it because it has stayed with me for years and remains unexplained to me. So was it the house that was haunted? Or was it something with the mother? Was something inside of that house pretending to be her?

• 9:00Kaelyn Moore?

  I get so many stories from listeners who have strange mimic and doppelganger stories. They're honestly some of the most common ones that I get. And each time, I wonder what that entity is and what it wants. Now, this next story that I have for you comes from a snowy cabin where something was not quite right. This poster writes, "I used to think I've only had one paranormal experience, which happened recently. But thinking back, I actually had two. So back in the 1990s, my parents owned a cabin out in the Virginia woods. My mother and sister would go there and stay. My mother and sister said the cabin was haunted, but I never believed it. They claimed that in the middle of the night, something would open the locked doors,

• 9:45Kaelyn Moore?

  and they would wake up to the doors being wide open. My mother said either someone had the keys to the place and was tormenting them, or the cabin was haunted. I just laughed this off. I never believed in the supernatural." Then, one winter, I had bought a four-wheel drive and it was supposed to snow that night, so I thought it would be cool to drive out to the cabin and camp there during the winter snowstorm. I got there and it was so cold that I lit a fire, but it wasn't really warming the cabin at all. Remembering the stories my mother told me, I locked the doors and I double-checked them. I went to bed with my clothes on, under a heavy blanket, fell asleep, and I had this terrible nightmare. I dreamt that I woke up

• 10:29Kaelyn Moore?

  and there was wind blowing in the bedroom, so I walked to the main room and the door was wide open with snow on the floor. As I walked into that room, I turned, and there was a tall, demonic creature with shiny black skin and glowing red eyes standing to my right. And then I woke up. I laid in bed for a few minutes and realized that it seemed like it had gotten colder inside, so I decided to go and just check if the fire had gone out. I walked into the main room, and the door was wide open, and the outside porch light was shining, illuminating the snow that had blown in on the floor. Suddenly, I realized that the dream was coming true, and I panicked. I turned to my right, but

• 11:12Kaelyn Moore?

  it was pitch black, and I couldn't see anything. I fumbled for the light switch like a crazy person, and when the light came on, there was nothing there. I walked over to the open door and looked out, and there were about two inches of snow on the ground. There were no footprints to be seen. The fire was out, so I decided to pack up and go home. I never spent another night there. Now, I'm a big believer in predictive dreams. You've probably heard me talk about them on this show before, but I am always surprised at how many people have dreams that ended up playing out in real life. If you've ever had this happen to you, you can always reach out to me, heartsidespending.com. I have a forum there where you can

• 11:56Kaelyn Moore?

  send in your scary story for me to read and maybe read on the show. And speaking of that, next for you, I have a story from one of our listeners, Sable, who shares a story they titled "The Boy in the Photograph." Sable writes, "This story began in the summer, when I was around eight or nine years old. I was spending most of my days at my then babysitter, now stepmom's house. The neighborhood my stepmom's house was in was directly across the street from a historic antebellum plantation house called Wheatlands, and the land the neighborhood had been built on was once a part of the plantation's property. It was beautiful. It was perfectly preserved, and it was protected by the local government

• 12:37Kaelyn Moore?

  as a historic landmark. However, I always felt very unsettled whenever I looked at the house, or if I got too close to it. During my summer here, I had several spooky, hard-to-explain experiences. For example, one day while I was playing outside, I saw a man in old, tattered clothes digging a hole in the yard of one of the nearby houses. It seemed normal enough at first, but when I went inside to get something to drink and came back out, I found that the man was gone, and the ground where I had seen him digging was completely undisturbed, with grass growing as if nothing had happened. But none of those experiences compared to the one that I had the night I spent in my

• 13:20Kaelyn Moore?

  oldest stepsister's bedroom while she was away on vacation. In the night, I was woken up by the feeling of the blanket being moved on top of me, as if it was being tugged by someone. I remember waking up bleary-eyed and sitting up in bed. When my eyes finally focused, I saw a young boy, younger than me, standing at the foot of the bed. He had blond hair, a soft face, and he wore a blue pinstripe shirt with dark pants. I've never really been fearful when it comes to paranormal experiences, so although I immediately believed the boy to be some kind of apparition, my first instinct was not fear. I remember scolding him, "Quit that. It's not nice to pull the covers off people while they're sleeping."

• 14:03Kaelyn Moore?

  I watched as he looked at me, then turned his back to me, and walked to the corner of the bedroom near the door. He sat on the floor then, facing the wall, and he hugged his knees to his chest like he had been put in timeout. I looked at the clock on the bedside table. If I remember correctly, it was around 2:00 AM, and when I looked back, he was gone. I went back to sleep, and nothing else happened that night. Days later, when my stepsister returned from vacation, I told her about what had happened. And before I could even describe the boy to her, she told me that she had seen him too. She had been seeing the same little boy several times over the years, always in her bedroom in the middle of the night. I remember asking her what he looked like, baffled that we could have

• 14:48Kaelyn Moore?

  seen the same boy, and her description matched what I had seen exactly, right down to the blond hair and the color and pattern of his clothes. She told me that he would often mess with her in similar ways as well, tugging at her blankets, messing with the lights in her room, one time even turning on her CD player in the night. For the rest of the summer, I never saw him again, and I'm unsure whether my stepsister did either. Not long after, my dad and my stepmom officially got together, and she and my stepsisters moved in with us. I never went back to that house after that, and I thought that the story ended there. That is, until years later, when I was 18 years old and in my first year of college. I was volunteering at my local library, earning community service

• 15:33Kaelyn Moore?

  hours for one of my scholarships. I was working in the library's history department, sorting through and cataloging donated historical artifacts. Among the boxes, I came across one that was labeled as having come from that plantation house. I was fascinated. The house had always unsettled and intrigued me, and now I was being allowed to sift through physical pieces of its history. And inside were all kinds of photographs and drawn portraits of family members spanning generations, pictures of the house itself, financial documents, letters, and artifacts. Among them, I even found what appeared to be human teeth still connected to part of a jawbone, covered in remnants of dirt, as if it had once been

• 16:16Kaelyn Moore?

  buried and later unearthed. I immediately alerted the library employee supervising me, who took it to be further inspected. I never learned what became of it, but somehow, that wasn't even the most interesting thing I found that day. As I continued, I happened upon another of the family photos. This one showed the family standing in the yard in front of the house as they posed for the photograph, and there he was, undoubtedly the same little boy that I had seen in my stepsister's room that night. He appeared to be about the same age as he did when I saw him, and he had the same height and build, the same features, and the same blond hair. The only difference was his clothes. I immediately

• 16:57Kaelyn Moore?

  felt a chill shoot up my spine. Through other photographs and documents, I was eventually able to identify everyone else shown in the picture, but I could not find anything about the boy. No name, no other photographs I could identify him in, and no mention of him in any other documents. I even tried to look through online archives after going home that day, but I was still not able to find anything about him. I never found out who he was, what happened to him, or why he seemed to be hanging around my stepsister's bedroom all those years later. In fact, I never found another trace of him after that day. The only thing I know for sure is that years before I ever saw his photo in that

• 17:38Kaelyn Moore?

  donation box, I had met him standing at the foot of my stepsister's bed, tugging at my blankets, and sitting in the corner when I scolded him for it. That story gives me chills, but perhaps the most surprising part of that story is seeing someone just out there digging a hole in front of their yard in the middle of the day and thinking nothing of it. I don't know why that part stopped me in my tracks, but I think I would have maybe thought it was strange if I just saw my neighbor digging a hole in their front yard. I don't know. Regardless, this next one that I want to share with you is a short one, but if you ever hear a random knocking sound in your house, you might think twice. This author writes, "When I was little, I had a loft bed with a desk underneath. I've

• 18:20Kaelyn Moore?

  always been a pretty heavy sleeper. I could fall asleep at a concert, so it was strange when I began waking up at 3:00 in the morning, every morning. What was even more strange were the noises coming from the attic. Shuffling, knocking, sounded like boxes moving. My nine-year-old brain rationalized it as an animal or a bird that had gotten in. After a few weeks of not sleeping well, I decided to knock back on my ceiling, that shave-and-haircut pattern you hear sometimes. I did this because I was bored, and I hadn't interacted with whatever was in the attic. I waited in silence for a few minutes until I was about to fall

• 18:58Kaelyn Moore?

  back asleep, and then I heard it. From the ceiling, one foot away from my face, it knocked back the pattern. Every night after that when I woke up, I would knock, and sometimes I would get a response. It gradually stopped over the years, but I still wake up at 3:00 AM every single night. It's weird, but it only happens in that room. I sleep fine in hotels and other houses. 13 years later, and now I get weird vibes around the entire house. I feel like I'm being watched. I sometimes hear someone saying my name, most notably before bed, and whatever said it is very close to my ear. I can feel their breath

• 19:42Kaelyn Moore?

  as they whisper, and it freaks me out so much that it takes hours to get back to sleep. The shuffling in the attic also started back up again, but I don't want to knock back anymore. There's a lot of weird things that happen in my house now. Things get moved, dogs and cats stare at the same blank spot, but these are just what's been currently happening. I don't really know what to do anymore." Now, when I first read that story, I wanted to knock on something here in the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters to see if I would hear a knock back. We have a couple of haunted objects in here, like Gordy, my monkey, and also a doll that my grandma gave me. I think we should try it.

• 20:25Kaelyn Moore?

  Okay, I think we're good. But if you hear anything, comment wherever you listen. If I hear anything weird around my house, I'll definitely let you guys know, but I'm starting to get nervous.

• 20:36Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by Stitch Fix. I'm going to be honest, there are mornings where I do try on four different outfits, decide I hate all of them, and then I walk out and basically the same thing that I wore yesterday. I do have comfort clothes that I find myself wearing six days in a row. That was usually fine when no one was looking at me, but now I'm on camera. I'm trying to be a real person again now that I've had a baby. That is why I'm excited to tell you about Stitch Fix. Here's how it works. You take a style quiz, you share your size, your style, your budget, and you get matched with a real, human stylist who just gets your vibe. They send a fix to your door and you can try on everything at home. Shipping and returns are also always free. There's no subscription required, and you get a free try on for your first fix. One thing I also

• 21:19Kaelyn Moore?

  love about Stitch Fix is you can swap out pieces. So they'll send you a list of the things that are going to show up in your box, and if there's one or two things you want to switch out, you can hit that and then your stylist will find something that works even better for your wardrobe. You can get started today at stitchfix.com/heart. That is stitchfix.com/heart. This episode is brought to you by Minky Couture, the original blanket company. September is National NICU Awareness Month, and I want to talk about something that is really special. Through their Heart of Minky program, Minky Couture partners with over 300 hospitals and provides more than 6,000 mini Minkies every month to NICU babies and their families. And as a mom, that's something that's really, really special to me. Knowing that a soft

• 22:02Kaelyn Moore?

  little blanket is telling a family that they're not alone, that really, really makes a difference. Minky Couture was founded by a mom who wanted to bring comfort to her daughter in the hospital, and that mission has not changed. Their original hugs blanket is stretchy, plush, double-sided, and is genuinely the best blanket ever. And we've partnered with Minky Couture to bring our listeners an exclusive 50% off discount. That is right, 50% off. You can use code HSP at checkout for 50% off all full-priced items. Head to minkycouture.com, use code HSP, and get into the best blanket ever. Follow them on Instagram for even more deals and cozy inspiration, @MinkyCouture. Now I want to read another story that comes from a listener, and it kind of ties into

• 22:46Kaelyn Moore?

  a theme of a couple of these stories, which is why it might be worth looking into the history of the place where you live, because you never know what you're going to find. So Catherine writes, "Hello, Kalen. I would like to start by saying that my house is haunted, or I guess it would be more accurate to say that I am. I grew up in a, once was a small, but is now quite large town in the valleys of Southern California. Nestled halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego, my town was established back in 1873 by Spanish immigrants who were horse and sheep ranchers. Back in 2002, when I was 13 going on 14, my family moved to the older part of town that still had those old ranches on it. While we moved into track

• 23:29Kaelyn Moore?

  housing, the property was right on the edge of this living remnant to the past. Soon after we moved in, I went into full, 'nobody understands me' mode, upset teenager-type stuff. I didn't want to go to school. I didn't want to meet new people. I had basically decided that I wasn't going to be happy. Each morning, I would ignore my alarm and wake up in an attempt to be late for school. Only each and every time I did that, a hand would touch my shoulder and would gently shake me awake, and my blinds would open, letting the sunlight shine right on my bed. And when I would open my eyes, I could make out this youthful masculine figure standing over me. Think late teens, early twenties. Oddly enough, I never felt frightened by this presence. It was comforting, in a way.

• 24:15Kaelyn Moore?

  If I came home crying about something, I could feel a hand stroking my hair. You could catch glimpses on the stairs or in the hallway of a figure who never came into full focus. A few years after this started, I had a dream of a finger writing on a glass that was all fogged up, and it said, "Hello, my name is A." I woke up before the name was able to be completed, though. A? A what? There's like a billion names that start with A. So I started to call him Alex, short for Alexander. I continued to call this entity Alex for the next year. I told my mom about Alex as well. She used to assure me that her house was not haunted. About two years after these events started happening, and

• 24:57Kaelyn Moore?

  about a year after I had named the entity Alex, I woke up one winter morning to my window being all fogged up, which is odd, because even in winter, Southern California does not get that cold. And written on my fogged-up glass was the sentence, "My name is not Alex." That's it. Being the sassy, now 15-year-old that I was, I took to calling the entity "not Alex." Later that year, I was wandering around our local cemetery. Teenagers are moody and strange in that way, and I felt drawn to this one particular grave. This was in the original section of the cemetery, which actually had stone tombstones rather than

• 25:36Kaelyn Moore?

  that flat grave plate that we have now. On it, there was no birth date, no death date, just a name. Alan Pierce. With no explanation as to why, I came to visit that grave many times over the coming years. My mother loves history, in particular, US history, so people were always gifting her things that spoke of historical details. Someone gifted her a book that had the history of our town, and it spoke about the original families of settlers and the families that came soon after to set up here as well. In this book, there was a picture of a map that had been drawn in the early 1900s, which outlined each family's property boundaries. What we found out when we looked at the map was that

• 26:21Kaelyn Moore?

  our home and all of the homes around us were built on what used to be the ranch property of the Pierce family. In the portion of the book that had a small excerpt about the Pierce's, it was mentioned that the family's 20-year-old son, not named in the book, died in a barn fire. I felt in my gut, it must have been Alan. They never said his name in the book. Most likely, it was lost to time, but I knew it was Alan and that he had never left the property. I got older, and I moved away for a few years to Las Vegas for work. While I was gone, my mom told me that the strange happenings and sightings had completely stopped. After only two years of being away, I moved back to town at the request of my father.

• 27:05Kaelyn Moore?

  I got married and had three kids. I also got a job working in town. In the house that I had with my now-husband and children, I noticed that I was seeing a male figure in the hallways and doorways or on the stairs. My office used to listen to a local radio station, 101.3 KTY, and each Friday, they would have a psychic medium come on and answer callers' questions. You could, of course, contact her later on her hotline if you had any other questions for a fee. And despite what I grew up with my whole life, I was still skeptic. I had told my whole office about "not Alex," which is what I still called him. So at their encouragement, I called the radio station to speak with the psychic. I got through on my first try. All I said to her, in front of an office of witnesses,

• 27:50Kaelyn Moore?

  was the following, "Is my mother's house haunted, or am I?" And she replied quickly with, "You are. There's a young man who is with you. He means you no harm, but I can't get much else off him. Just something to do with a fire." My whole office went silent. To this day, 20 years later, I still see "not Alex." I'll still see him in reflections or in hallways. He remains a gentle and soothing presence, the feeling of calm in a difficult situation. I'm not sure how he feels about being with me rather than at his family's property. I didn't get a home within his family's property

• 28:31Kaelyn Moore?

  lines, but I somehow know he could find his way back if he wanted to. So I firmly believe that not everything that goes bump in the night is trying to hurt you or even scare you. However, you should always be wary of what you invite inside, both into your home and into yourself. Now, I think that is very good advice. Be wary of what you invite inside. In some ways, we are kind of like houses. We can invite energy in. What takes up our energy and our thoughts becomes our reality, and in a sense, those things can haunt us as well. I really do believe that. All right. Now I have some stories of things I feel

• 29:12Kaelyn Moore?

  very relevant in my life, at least, of children seeing scary things. This is now probably my favorite topic. I will be trying to get to the bottom of what the heck my son saw in our house, but this brings me to the next story I have. And this author writes, "Weird stuff happens in my house, though weird stuff has always followed me my entire life, so maybe I'm the haunted one. Anyways, my house was built in 2004, and I bought it in 2008. As far as I know, nothing bad has ever happened there. The first year we lived in the house, one night with my wife, myself, and both cats, we were sitting on the couch within about four feet of one another. Suddenly, I heard a loud bang on the ceiling, like

• 29:55Kaelyn Moore?

  someone in the bedroom directly above me stomped on the floor as hard as they could. Weirdest part was that I was the only one that heard it. The cats didn't even pick their heads up, and my wife had no idea what I was talking about. The bang happened two more times over the next few weeks. Once, when I was in the garage late at night, there was a bang on the garage door, like someone had run up and kicked it, which, you know, I guess is possible, but would really be out of the ordinary for our neighborhood. Another time, again, with everyone on the couch, there was a bang on the wall right behind us. This time, everyone heard that one, though. Years passed, and my oldest was born and started school. I had a day off in the middle

• 30:38Kaelyn Moore?

  of the week, so I was home alone. I was on the couch watching my laptop, and I saw in my peripheral vision my daughter stick her head out from behind the wall that separates the stairs from the living room. I smiled, and I heard her giggle and pull back behind the wall. It took a few seconds for me to realize that it was the middle of the day on a Wednesday, and my daughter was in school. I searched the whole house, and there was no one. Later, I was telling her about what I saw, and she told me she sometimes sees the shadow of a person moving in her window, which is on the second floor. So it goes. Years will pass with no activity to mention, then a knock or something out of the corner

• 31:18Kaelyn Moore?

  of your eye. A few weeks ago, my now-two daughters, both cats, and myself were in the kitchen talking, and my wife walks in, fresh out of the shower, wrapped in a towel with her hair still wet. She looks at us annoyed and asks, "Well, what do you want?" Confused, we all just looked at her and she explained that one of us knocked on her bathroom door. Nope, we were all right here. My wife told us that she was drying her hair and heard three distinct knocks on her bathroom door. And when she opened it, no one was there.

• 31:56Kaelyn Moore?

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• 32:38Kaelyn Moore?

  services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's banking partners. Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC. Cash App Visa debit flex card issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, and the Bancorp Bank, N.A. pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Cash App green features, savings, direct deposit, roundups, overdraft coverages, and discounts provided by Cash App, a Block Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures. This episode is brought to you by Merit Beauty. Fall has always felt like more of a reset to me than New Year's. It's also a lot darker in the mornings, and that's why I love Merit and their five-minute makeup routine. Using Merit is great. Usually, I'll do their Great Skin Serum, which just makes my skin look so glowy and refreshed. Then they have

• 33:19Kaelyn Moore?

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• 34:02Kaelyn Moore?

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• 34:45Kaelyn Moore?

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• 34:52Kaelyn Moore?

  All right, our final story comes from Reddit, the Paranormal sub eight months ago. It's another one about a child seeing something horrifying, and it also comes with an update I'm going to read for you guys. I'm curious what you all think about this situation and what you would do. This author writes, "We recently bought our house about two months ago now, and I started to notice little things. Nothing that was sounding any alarm bells. I've lived in haunted houses before, so I would just go on with my day and essentially ignore it. Until one night. Around 11:30 PM, I heard whistling. Now, I live in the Appalachians, so whistling at night is a big no-no in my house, so I call out to my fiance and tell

• 35:34Kaelyn Moore?

  him to stop whistling in the house because he's going to invite spirits in. He comes into our bedroom, and I said to him, 'Why the hell are you whistling at night?' And he goes pale and says, 'I wasn't whistling.' And I'm thinking he's messing with me, so I just say, 'Yeah, okay,' and I go to bed. The next morning, I'm in the shower, and he comes in and he says, 'Be honest with me. Were you pranking me last night?' And I, of course, tell him everything that happened, and I assured him that I was not pranking him. And again, he goes pale, and he just says, 'Okay,' and he drops it. Nothing happened for the next two weeks, until three nights ago. I was on a phone call with my cousin, and I heard a loud crash.

• 36:17Kaelyn Moore?

  My fiance works night shift, so I immediately go into protector mode, and I assumed that someone was breaking into my house. I mean, that's how loud it was. I'm still on the phone with my cousin, and she's witnessing everything that's happening. I call out and I ask if anyone's there. Now, I know that I'd be the first one killed in a horror movie, but if someone's in my house, I wanted them to know that I was coming and not afraid, even though I was afraid. I get to the bottom of my stairs, and at first, I don't see anything, so I'm starting to feel less on edge, until I walk into my kitchen. I notice a candle, the three wick ones that you can buy at Walmart. It's halfway across the room. I look at the entry table where I had it sitting, and a painting that I also have there was knocked

• 36:58Kaelyn Moore?

  over. So my first thought was, okay, maybe the house was just settling and just knocked the candle over, no big deal. So I pick it all up and get it set back to where it was, and I had this thought that it was strange that it just mysteriously fell over, especially because I have a four-year-old who runs all over the house all of the time, and the vibration of that hasn't knocked it off. So I decide to test it and see what it would take to make it fall. I run around, I jump, I do everything to try and make this candle fall over the way it did, and it's not budging. I even hit the table, and it still didn't fall. So of course, I'm a little spooked, but I just decide to go to bed. Last night, as I'm falling asleep,

• 37:40Kaelyn Moore?

  I heard loud banging coming from downstairs. Of course, my fiance is working again, so I have to go down and check it out by myself. I go all the way down, and I get this unsettling feeling. All of the hairs on my body are standing, and I feel like I'm being watched. I don't know what came over me, but I said out loud, 'I don't care that you're here, but please stop doing things when I'm home alone.' And I turned to walk back up the stairs. You know that feeling where you have to run up the stairs because it feels like something's chasing you? That's the feeling I get. I turn around and say, 'That's enough. I'm not going to be scared of my own home,' and I walk to my bedroom. I continue to hear things during the night, and my cat is very on edge, and she's acting as if she's guarding my bedroom

• 38:24Kaelyn Moore?

  door. My son, about an hour later, at 1:00 AM, wakes up and he asks if I'll turn a movie on for him so that he can fall back asleep. So I go ahead and do that. Instead, I hear him mumbling in his room, as if he's talking to someone. This is not abnormal for him. He has a very big imagination, and he loves playing and coming up with his own worlds, and he creates stories for them as he goes. About an hour later, he's sitting with me, and he looks at me with a straight face and he says, 'Mommy, my ghost brother says I have to kill you, but I would never do that because I love you so much.' Now, I'm completely in shock, and I say to him, 'What did you just say?' And he repeated what he said. Then I

• 39:08Kaelyn Moore?

  prodded, and I asked him for more information. He has been going through a phase where he's been more defiant, but again, he's four, so I don't really think anything of it. But he tells me that his ghost brother tells him to break toys, hurt animals, stomp on flowers he wants to pick for me, et cetera. My son is a very kind and very empathetic little boy, and him saying all of this to me is so out of character for him. He's the child who wouldn't even kill a bug because he wonders if they have a family and if they'll miss him. So I'm in complete shock. I'm not sure if this is a made-up fantasy for him, or if I should really be concerned. I come from a long line of people who are sensitive to

• 39:49Kaelyn Moore?

  the paranormal, so experiences are something I'm familiar with, but never like this. I'm worried for my son's safety and well-being, especially if it's something I cannot see to protect him from. If anyone has any advice, please tell me. And then, we do have an update from this poster. It reads, "Hi, everyone. I've tried to read everyone's comments and concerns. The amount of you concerned for my son's well-being and giving me advice, I am very appreciative and grateful. I'm going to start off by stating that I've seen all the comments about schizophrenia, and I do take mental health very seriously. It's definitely a consideration. I will say, knowing my son, and if you knew him personally, him saying outlandish things is not out of the normal.

• 40:33Kaelyn Moore?

  This just shook me, especially since the verbiage he used was not in his normal vocabulary. He's not a neurotypical child. He's very intelligent. He's way beyond his years. I know, every mom says this, but I swear it's true in this case. He unfortunately had to experience loss at a young age when I lost one of my best friends, so he's familiar with the concept. But again, he's four. After talking with him more, I did explain to him what hurting or killing me meant, and he seemed visibly very upset. I also told him that if his ghost brother came back, he did not have to talk to him. Now, with the entity, demon, or whatever it may be, it seems like it does not like to show itself or do any

• 41:18Kaelyn Moore?

  sort of activity when my fiance is home. Last night was quiet, no new activity to report, so I'm assuming it could potentially be threatened by a male presence in the house. My fiance is off work again tonight, so Wednesday, I could potentially have more of an update. I did try to search up my house and the history, and the only things that I'm finding is that it was built in 1900, which around here in the area I live could mean that it was built way before that, and there's just no record of it dating back. So I'm going to dig deeper into the area rather than the house itself. I want to thank all of you again for your concerns about my son. I know there are skeptics out there, and I'm not offended by those comments. I really do appreciate all of the advice and hearing all of your own experiences, paranormal or mental health-related. It's given me different

• 42:03Kaelyn Moore?

  perspectives to view this from, and if anything changes, I'm going to do my best to update you all. That is the last update that we have from that poster, so I don't know what became of her son's visions or whatever was happening in her house. But now I turn it over to all you guys. Do you have any haunted house stories yourselves? You can always reach out to me, heartstartspounding.com. I have a form on my website where you can submit your stories and have a chance for them to be read here. I'm going to be back next week as we kick off into spooky season. I'm so excited. We have more haunted episodes. We have episodes on curses of horror movies. We have episodes on haunted houses gone wrong, scare attractions like McKamie Manor that just had disastrous outcomes. We're going

• 42:46Kaelyn Moore?

  to be digging into all of it this October. I'm really excited to get into it with all of you. I'll see you here next week for another episode, and until then, stay curious.

• 43:02Kaelyn Moore?

  Hearts Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Hearts Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Sound design and mix by Red Rome Creative. Video editing by Creative Step. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jordan again, the team at WME. Have a heart pounding story or a case request, check out heartstartspounding.com.

• 43:23Kaelyn Moore?

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• 44:05Kaelyn Moore?

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