157. "Something Is Mimicking My Sister" and Other Terrifying True Stories From Listeners

Can listening to Heart Starts Pounding attract paranormal activity to your home? Today I'm reading the spooky stories YOU sent me, and they're absolutely terrifying. From haunted houses with dark figures and hidden tunnels, to roads that exist outside of time, to something that can perfectly mimic the people you love...these listener tales will make you question every shadow in your hallway. Music provided by: YouTube @copyrightfreehorrormusic Subscribe on⁠ Patreon⁠ https://www.patreon.com/heartstartspounding to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society and enjoy ad-free listening, monthly bonus content, merch discounts and more. Members of our High Council on Patreon also have access to our weekly after-show, Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. You can also enjoy many of these same perks, including ad-free listening and bonus content when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts . Follow on⁠ Tik Tok⁠ https://www.tiktok.com/@heartstartspounding?lang=en and⁠ Instagram⁠ https://www.instagram.com/heartstartspounding/ for a daily dose of horror.

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

• 0:00Kaelyn Moore?

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• 0:43Kaelyn Moore?

  To learn more about Prenuvo and get $300 off your whole body MRI, go to prenuvo.com/hsp and use code HSP. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O dot com slash HSP. Terms and conditions apply. 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.

• 1:26Kaelyn Moore?

  And with so many hybrid and plug-in hybrid models available across the lineup, plus efficient all-electrics like the BZ, BZ Woodlands, 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, 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.

• 2:02Kaelyn Moore?

  Welcome back to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your ghost for this very haunted episode, Kaelyn Moore. It's that time of year, once again, everyone, the time where we follow the age-old Victorian era tradition of telling ghost stories around the holidays. And I am so excited to share with you the scary ghost stories of Christmases long, long ago. Maybe you're new here this year, and this is your first time partaking in this tradition with us. I actually just looked at our Spotify Wrapped numbers for the year, and I was honestly shocked to see how many of you are, in fact, new this year. Well, each year, we all gather around inside of the Rogue Detecting Society headquarters, the very old and very haunted mansion where

• 2:43Kaelyn Moore?

  I tell these stories from, and we light a fire and listen to some ghost stories. And this year, these stories are coming directly from our community, you guys. Now, we have a very darkly curious community here, people who work in morgues and hospitals, people who like to spend their free time walking through cemeteries. So it makes sense that a lot of very scary and supernatural things happen around you all. So to start, I want to tell you a story from a listener named Skye that stopped me in my tracks. I had heard that paranormal activity can pick up if you spend a lot of time talking about ghosts. You can attract a certain kind of energy, they say. But Skye suggests that

• 3:24Kaelyn Moore?

  even the mere act of listening to Heart Starts Pounding can increase the paranormal activity in your home. So you might want to listen to this one with care. Skye writes, "So I think my house might have been haunted from the start. For some context to my ghostly encounters, me and my family live in a three-bed, three-bath, two-story home and have for a while now. My father's office is on the second story, and he has this window cut out that lets you peer down onto the first floor where my mom's office and the front door is. For a while now, my mom has said that late at night, she's been hearing footsteps from upstairs." She usually sits in the dining room scrolling through Facebook where my bedroom is located

• 4:06Kaelyn Moore?

  directly above her. She just chalked it up to my creaky bed frame, but I know it's not that. My brother also told me that one night during December, he peered downstairs through the window cutout that I told you about earlier, and he claimed he saw a red figure that he didn't recognize. It looked like it was almost rummaging under our Christmas tree. He joked that it was probably Santa Claus. It never really left my mind. Then, about a year ago, I found your podcast, and I started to binge your episodes. And that's when it started.

• 4:41Kaelyn Moore?

  Imagine the sound your nail would make tapping on the circular doorknobs most houses have on interior doors. Well, almost weekly, that would happen to my bedroom door. I'd be laying down when I would hear a handful of nail taps on the doorknob coming from outside my room before stopping. And then I wouldn't hear any footsteps indicating that someone was doing it on purpose or actually standing outside of my door. It could happen at 5:00 AM, 5:00 PM, noon, or midnight, but it would always happen. Then, one night after using the restroom, I paused by my dad's office and heard the front door's locks being fiddled with down below. It was like someone was trying to get inside. With my heart in my chest, I peered downstairs, and there was

• 5:25Kaelyn Moore?

  nobody there. Freaked out, I went back to my bedroom and I tried to go back to sleep. Eventually, I got busy with life stuff and stopped watching your podcast as much. I'm sorry. I opted instead just to listen to music. And lo and behold, the nail taps stopped, and the late night footsteps vanished. It surprised me, but I just thought the ghosts had their fun and left us alone. But I was wrong. Last month, I was working on a project, and I got hooked back onto your podcast. I started binging episodes again while I worked on stuff. And then last week, I heard it again. Three taps on my bedroom doorknob. And no footsteps walking away. It was like something was outside of my door waiting for

• 6:08Kaelyn Moore?

  me, but I never went to check on what it was. I haven't stopped thinking about it since then, and I think your podcast might be a ghost magnet. Up to you if that's good or bad. Anyways, yeah, that's about it. Have a good day or night, Kaelyn and the Heart's Art Pounded community. Ooh, what do you guys think about that one? Have you ever heard a tap at your door or heard footsteps in your hallway while listening to our show? Maybe you've felt the sensation of someone watching you. Well, it might be that this very podcast is the thing that's driving the hauntings around you. How exciting. Please let me know if that's the case. As always, you can send me your very scary, personal stories either via Raven or by using the form on our website, heartsartspounding.com. I personally prefer when you send me Ravens.

• 6:53Kaelyn Moore?

  They make incredible companions, but the website works just fine as well. Okay. Our next story comes from a listener named Abe. Abe writes to us from Texas with the story of a house that may have held on to some of the dark energy from a former tenant. Abe writes, "In 2014, I had bought a 1900 square foot home in the Fort Worth, Texas area. I knew it was too big for me, but I loved the original design and architecture of the house, especially the spiral staircase that led up to the second floor. The second floor was more like a studio apartment with its own living room, bedroom, and bathroom. I thought things were fine when I first moved in. Well, mostly.

• 7:34Kaelyn Moore?

  I did notice that occasionally up on the second story, it looked like there was someone in the window looking down at me. It would be just a flash out of the corner of my eye. And at the time, I thought that it was maybe my reflection in the window in the dark evening. Sure, the angles didn't really make any sense, but I didn't think much more into it. If only I knew then what I know now.

• 7:58Kaelyn Moore?

  After about three years, I moved to the Houston, Texas area to be closer to my family, and I rented the house out to a couple. After about six months, I got a really strange message from them. They contacted me to ask if anyone had died in the house. I responded, 'No, I don't think so, but I can check for you.' I went to go ask the Realtor if there had been any, let's just say, incidents within the house in the past. And that's when she told me that several years ago, there had been a fire. She didn't know a lot of the details about the event, and when I pressed harder, she let me know that no one had been injured. Later, I would question that, but I took that new information back to the renter in the hopes that it would make them feel a little bit better.

• 8:44Kaelyn Moore?

  It didn't. After a little while, the renter texted me a photo. She had just finished installing a flat screen TV above the fireplace and took a photo of it to show to her husband. In the picture, you can see the freshly mounted TV, but if you look closer, that's when you can see something you shouldn't. There, in the center of the black screen is her reflection, centered in the middle. You can see her clearly holding up her phone. But behind her is what I can only describe as a tall, dark figure. It seemed to lean in behind her a bit. There was no face, but the head and shoulders were clearly visible.

• 9:26Kaelyn Moore?

  And the second I saw it, I recognized it. It looked just like the dark figure peeking into the upstairs window years earlier. About two months later, she informed me that she and her husband had another experience. This time, they were laying in bed when she heard her husband get up. She watched as her husband walked by and entered the attached bathroom, only to roll over and see that her husband was still in bed with her. They quickly moved out afterwards. Not long after that, I had to move back into the place, though I admit I was a little freaked out. I adopted a dog named Suzie, a mix of a golden retriever and something else. She was a very loving dog.

• 10:09Kaelyn Moore?

  After about a week of us being there, though, I took her out for a walk and we went to the back of the house. She looked up at the second floor and constantly barked at it. No matter how much I tried to get her attention, she wouldn't stop barking at the second-story window. I took her back to the front, and she did not want to go back inside of that house. Every time after that, I would have to drag her back inside. She did not want to go in there. And then, about a month after that, I was resting in bed in the master bedroom downstairs. It was about 10:00 PM. I was relaxing and watching TV. Over the TV sounds, I heard noises not belonging to the show I was watching.

• 10:51Kaelyn Moore?

  They sounded like squirrels or raccoons in the attic at first. And then I realized, there's no attic in the part of the house I was in. I turned off the TV, and to my horror, I heard fingers scratching on the roof. Human fingers. This was not an animal. That was my final straw. Something had to be done. Two weeks later, I had a pastor and church members come and bless the house. I mean, I was that desperate. They prayed, sprinkled holy water around each room and along all of the doors and windows. They told me that this should help, that the space should finally be cleansed. I shouldn't have believed them. I think this only made the dark figure even more angry.

• 11:35Kaelyn Moore?

  Because a week later, I was laying in bed, and I began to hear the footsteps of someone walking above me. It sounded as if they were wearing dress shoes. I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep. Whatever was happening was outside. I was safe, I told myself. But no, the shoes were not on the roof. They were on the ceiling. Whatever was there was in the room with me, and it was walking right above me. A month later, I decided to move to another town and never return to this house. No other incidents have ever occurred around me, so whatever it was, it definitely was attached to that house.

• 12:19Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by Sejo. A new season always makes me want to reset things: my space, my routine, how my mornings feel. And honestly, upgrading my bedding has made a big difference, and that's why I have been loving Sejo Home. I have the Airyweight Eucalyptus Sheets from Sejo. They have a lightweight feel, cool-to-the-touch texture, and now my bed feels like a real reset at the end of a long day. I know that every little bit of improvement I can do with my sleep routine makes a huge difference, and so I'm so happy I was able to get Sejo Sheets. The airy weight sheets are made with Tencel Liocell. They're doctor recommended, Ecotec certified, and even HSA and FSA eligible, which I genuinely did not know was a thing for bedding. And if you're someone who prefers a more lived in texture,

• 13:02Kaelyn Moore?

  their Luxe Weave French Linen Sheets are stone washed and get softer with every wash. Really beautiful for a bedroom refresh. Go to sijohome.com and use code HSP to get 20% off your first order. That's S I J O H O M E dot com and use code HSP for 20% off at checkout. Did you know that you may have to disclose your house is haunted if you're selling it? The Ghostbusters ruling, which was a 1991 New York Supreme Court case, ruled that a house in upstate New York was legally haunted. A man that bought the 18 room Victorian mansion and only learned it was haunted after he bought it. And now, unlike some of you, he was not very excited to learn this and he wanted to back out of the purchase.

• 13:46Kaelyn Moore?

  So the New York Supreme Court rules that he could because the house was, by all intents and purposes, haunted. On a side note, if any financier listening to this wants to go in on an 18 room Victorian mansion in upstate New York, heartsidespounding.com or send me a raven. But Abe, I feel for you. Clearly, most people would not voluntarily live in a haunted house. And I'm glad you were able to get out safely because whatever was in that house was not a friend. I can tell you that much. Okay, our next story is a wild ride, and I mean that quite literally. It comes from a listener named Sinny, and she titled this email, "A Road That Only Appeared Once." She writes,

• 14:29Kaelyn Moore?

  "When my daughter was five or six years old, I worked a lot. Four jobs, actually. So on my only day off, I would take her to go see her father. We would have lunch, they would play and hang out a little bit. And then, on the way home, the two of us would play a game. I would be driving along, coming to an intersection, and I would ask her which way she would want to go. She'd pick a direction, we would explore a little bit, and then we'd go home." This particular Sunday afternoon at around 4:00 PM as we were driving, I got to an intersection that even though I had driven this way at least twice a month, I did not recognize. My daughter said to go to the left, and so we did. I didn't recognize the road at all, and it was somewhat incongruous to the area.

• 15:13Kaelyn Moore?

  We were smack dab in the heart of the suburbs with housing developments and stores everywhere, but this was just a long, long stretch of farmland, pastures and fields, no houses or stores. Even though it was still the early spring, still muddy and small piles of snow, the color of dirty laundry everywhere, along this road, it almost appeared to be late summer. Tall grass stood in clumps alongside the road. The trees were deep green and fully leafed out, not the timid green of spring, but robust summer colors. And in the fields, it looked like wheat was growing tall and golden. I found myself wondering if I had ever seen a field of wheat near here,

• 15:56Kaelyn Moore?

  when all of a sudden, the steering wheel tried to jump out of my grip, and I realized I had blown out the front passenger side tire. I managed to pull well off the road, checking on my daughter in the backseat in her car seat. She was fine, but she was a little bit shaky, so I was reassuring her that everything was okay. Cell phones weren't really a thing yet, not for people like us anyways, but I did have a spare tire in the back. Now, there were no houses in this strange unfamiliar area. I don't think I had passed one since I had turned onto this road, nor any traffic at all, really, so no one was going to help us. I opened the trunk to get out the jack and the spare. I took my daughter out of the car seat and set her up near the fence line away from the road and the car.

• 16:38Kaelyn Moore?

  She asked me to take her coat off because it was really warm where we were. Then I went back to the car to get her a book and a snack. And when I turned around, I nearly jumped out of my skin. A tall, very tall, like six foot, six inch tall man was standing right behind me. He was big, well muscled, blonde as could be, and right behind me on a gravel road. I hadn't heard a thing, no footsteps approaching, nothing. I looked up at him, but my eyes were having a hard time focusing, though I noticed how strikingly blue his eyes were. It was like they were translucent. The man wore what I thought of as farmer's clothing, overalls and a plaid shirt, heavy

• 17:23Kaelyn Moore?

  work boots. But before I could say anything, he offered to help me change the tire. I glanced over at my daughter, she was reading her book, but she was watching us too. A really grown up expression on her face, far too weary for her age. I could tell that she was getting a strange vibe from this man, as well as waiting to see how I would respond to him. He, however, did not wait for me to respond. He just got to work. My car was jacked up before I knew it, and all of it seemed to be happening so quickly. It was too much, everything was too much. The sun was too bright, it was too warm for March. And why was everything so green and so golden here? It was like the colors were all off. I tried to tell him that I appreciated his help, but I could change the tire myself,

• 18:08Kaelyn Moore?

  though he just continued on, working so quickly. The tire was changed and the flat stowed in the trunk along with the jack and the tire iron before I could protest too loudly. And when the man looked at me again, this time, I swore his eyes were hazel, like a golden brown almost. His jaw also seemed softer, like the features of his face had been slightly changed since he first appeared behind me. And that's when he said something to me that really freaked me out. He said that I could stay here forever. Wouldn't that be nice? I don't really remember the context in which he said that. I was having trouble processing what was going on by that point. But I remember he reached out his hand to me, and I had the overwhelming feeling that I should take it.

• 18:54Kaelyn Moore?

  But then, through the fog in my brain, I heard the voice of my dead grandmother telling me to pick up my kid and get the hell out of there. That fully snapped me out of whatever trance I was in. I called my daughter and she was on her feet, coming towards me in one second. I scooped her up, I threw her in the back of the car. Her car seat straps were being impossible, but I got her buckled, fearing the whole time that he would grab me from behind. I could feel him behind me and I swore I heard him hiss. But when I turned around, he was gone. There was absolutely no place to hide, just fields and a road. I could see for miles, quite literally, but he was gone. I got in the car and made the worst three-point turn in history. If a driving

• 19:39Kaelyn Moore?

  instructor had seen me, they would have taken my license. But I just drove. I didn't turn off that road. In fact, I have no idea how I ended up on the road that I knew, and I was never able to find that road again. I swear, I knew where it was, but it was just never there. After we got home, I stopped freaking out a little bit, and I asked my daughter if she had seen where the man had gone, and she pointed up and shrugged. That story reminds me so much of the Backrooms episode that we did earlier this year, where people seem to accidentally slip out of this reality and into another one, a liminal space that seems devoid of all other people. And pop quiz, but what does each level of

• 20:21Kaelyn Moore?

  the Backrooms have? An entity, something evil that lives in that corner of the Backrooms and wants you out. Cinni, it almost sounds like you found yourself in a liminal space with its own evil entity, and you're lucky that you can change attire on your own, because, to my father's dismay, I would have been toast. All right. Next up, I have a story sent in from a listener who I'll call CJ. CJ also lived in a house where strange things went bump in the night. But what is scarier? When the thing that lives in your home with you is a ghost, or when it's something alive? CJ writes,

• 21:02Kaelyn Moore?

  I grew up in the Niagara region of Canada. It's a hugely haunted area and it also has a lot of strange folk in the smaller towns. This is by far the craziest thing that happened to me, though. When I was around 16 years old, my mother, brother, and I moved into an old house. For context, my brother is four years older than me and he was working at a kitchen job. My mother was staying over at her boyfriend's house most days of the week, so my brother and I were often left home alone. Now, the house. Upstairs was a living room, two bedrooms at each end of a hall, with a bathroom and a den in between them. Then there was the kitchen with a door to the backyard opposite of the doorway to the basement, which had no door. The basement was bizarre,

• 21:46Kaelyn Moore?

  as it was apparently built by the previous homeowner, who was a carpenter and a construction worker. It immediately opened into a room made of white cinder block walls, a white concrete floor, and a white concrete ceiling. There were a series of closet doors at the bottom of the stairs for storage and a workbench with a large overhead cabinet. The wall that jutted out between the cabinet and storage doors had a small gap between the ceiling and cinder block wall that was pitch black. It then led to a small carpeted space with a door to the laundry room. And then that opened into a large basement room that was carpeted with office ceiling tiles. Finally, the backyard was a large brick patio area

• 22:29Kaelyn Moore?

  and then it led down a hill full of dirt and trees into a ravine. Apparently, my mother told me, this ravine was right along the old route that Paul Bernardo, yes, of the Kenan Barbie serial killers, would walk along when he was a peeping tom. Creepy. When we first moved in, the owners told us they would be unreachable for three months as they were going on vacation. They left a number for a handyman if anything happened. And all we were told about the previous owner was that he had worked as a carpenter and then as a construction worker, was reclusive, and that he had sold the house to a company and moved away in his old age. The day we moved in, my mother left to return a key to the previous landlord's,

• 23:11Kaelyn Moore?

  and it was my first time seeing the space, and I was exploring. When I went down into the basement, I noticed the laundry room had this wooden cellar door. It opened into a dingy tiled bathroom. There was only a toilet, a bare bulb overhead, and a cubby with hooks on the wall. But then I noticed something that made my heart drop. The back of the door had claw marks on it. They were too high up to be a dog, and the landlords had never mentioned any pets. This weirded me out, but I just told myself it must have been a very big dog. But upon closing the door, I noticed the lock. It was on the outside of the bathroom door. It was just an old hook lock, but it freaked me out.

• 23:55Kaelyn Moore?

  I ran upstairs and told my brother, and he just shrugged it off, saying that the previous owner was probably just a jerk who locked up his dog in there. Didn't really make it much better. I continued exploring into my bedroom at the end of the hall, and I looked in the closet. It had these wooden walls, but it also had a large wooden ledge, sort of like an outhouse without the hole. But the ceiling of my closet had a hole in the ceiling. I got my flashlight and poked my head up there, and the attic was unfinished. I got my brother to come and see, and we quickly went to the other bedroom. The ceiling looked normal in that closet, but my brother pushed on it and it lifted. It had a false tile, and the other side had a handle on it, as if it could be lifted from the attic. When my mother got home, I told her about all the weird stuff we had found, and she

• 24:40Kaelyn Moore?

  just laughed it off. I had a pretty wild imagination as a kid, running around doing ghost hunting and stuff, but this was tangible. I had proof that something was weird here. This was not just me ghost hunting. This felt way more sinister. Now, the town we lived in was incredibly old, and there were a number of battles fought in the Niagara region of Canada where we were. It was highly regarded as a very haunted region in Canada. But anyways, I digress. Time went on, and over the next few months, my brother and I experienced a lot of weird stuff. We would hear each other in another room, but then see each other in a different room than where we heard them. The storage doors in the basement had a habit of drifting open, you know, the usual weird stuff.

• 25:26Kaelyn Moore?

  One day, while I was playing Xbox, I heard what sounded like someone run up the basement stairs at full speed and right out of the back door. Nobody came past the window, which would have meant that they went into the backyard, but no one was back there either. So I figured that I had just imagined it, but it took a while for me to calm down. And when my brother came home, I was in the middle of telling him about it when all of a sudden, there was a loud banging from the basement. We froze. And then we looked at each other and my brother mouthed, "What the hell?" I grabbed a hockey stick nearby. My brother went into the closet and grabbed a metal pole for the vacuum. All the while, the banging was continually coming from the basement. When we got to the top of the stairs to the basement, though, it stopped.

• 26:11Kaelyn Moore?

  My brother and I slowly descended and all of the doors were open along the wall of storage closets. We checked the whole basement and couldn't find anything or anyone. But then this next thing that happened was even worse. So whenever I went into the basement room, which was my brother's, I always felt uneasy about that pitch black gap on the cinder block wall. It just always felt like someone was watching me from it. I think my brain put it all together. And I walked over to the overhead cabinet above the workbench. I pulled on the corner and it was not fully secured to the wall like we had assumed. It lifted away and was only secured at the top.

• 26:54Kaelyn Moore?

  I let go of it and it made the exact noise that we had heard, that banging sound. I lifted the cabinet again and we looked behind it to see that there was a huge hole in the wall. My brother then opened the cabinet doors and pushed on the back of the cabinet, which was another false backing. It fell and there was a long tunnel. We shined a flashlight down into the hole and could not see the end. We sat around for a little bit, trying to decide what to do. My brother's girlfriend had come over and she freaked out when we showed her. Eventually, my brother, being the madman that he is, decided that he wanted to go inside. So I gave him my hunting knife and he got up onto the workbench and crawled in with a knife and a flashlight.

• 27:38Kaelyn Moore?

  His girlfriend and I watched as he crawled in. A few feet inside, he found these baking sheets on the ground full of white powder and what looked like weird rubble, not really from the tunnel, but he couldn't tell exactly what it was. He then moved around those baking sheets and went even deeper into the tunnel. It got to the point where we could barely hear him and we were begging him to come back. Eventually, he emerged and he said it was a series of tunnels back there, big enough to crawl on his hands and knees, but they branched off in multiple ways and went further back than he could even get. We pulled the powder sheets out and we waited for our mom to get home. In the meantime, we put the metal pole and the

• 28:19Kaelyn Moore?

  handles of the cabinet so that they couldn't open anymore. Our mother called our family friend, Jim, who knew a lot about construction, and he said that the sheets did look like they were covered in baking soda, likely to mask a really musty smell. And furthermore, the tunnels were likely old rum-running tunnels. We'd always heard the legend that there were old abandoned tunnels under our neighborhood, but I definitely never thought they were real. Jim said that the previous owner likely busted into one by accident and just covered it up rather than put work into rebuilding the wall, and that the very bizarre banging was likely strong wind gusts as it had been pretty windy that day. All of this was still

• 29:00Kaelyn Moore?

  very strange, but it seemed to put everyone's mind at ease at least. Everyone except for me, because I was still adding everything up. The basement bathroom, the weird hidden attic path, the tunnels in the basement. A few months went by, no more major events. My mother and brother shrugged me off and said that it was just wind gusts opening the doors and moving the cabinets that day. But the more I looked in the house, the more weird things I found. There were a couple of little hidden cupboard spaces within the actual cupboards. We still heard some weird things here and there. I still got a really scary feeling from that gap in the wall. My brother eventually moved out,

• 29:44Kaelyn Moore?

  and being alone in that house at 17 was really freaky. But being a huge horror fan, I tried telling myself that I was making a mountain out of a molehill. Soon, before moving, we only lived there for a little over a year, I was digging in the backyard. I was trying to even a part of a hill to make a little spot to read and hang out in nature. And as I was digging, I uncovered clothes.

• 30:10Kaelyn Moore?

  Children's clothes, a little girl's shirt and shorts. I went pale and I felt sick. I ran inside, I called my mom, who just happens to work in criminology. And she agreed that it was incredibly disturbing. But when she got home, she argued that I hadn't dug very deep. It was likely just garbage that had blown into the backyard and gotten covered. I argued with her for a bit, trying to get her to call the police, but she waved me off again. But my suspicions were validated at least a little bit. The only backyard we could see from our house was our direct neighbor. She was a sweet old lady and she would often sit out back on her deck. And she said that she didn't mind when I would smoke on the porch. So we would talk every now and again.

• 30:54Kaelyn Moore?

  All she had to say when I asked her about the previous owner was,

• 30:58Speaker 01

  "Oh, I did not like that man. He was a bad, bad man."

• 31:03Kaelyn Moore?

  When I asked her to elaborate, all she said was,

• 31:07Speaker 01

  "Some men are just evil. Good riddance."

• 31:10Kaelyn Moore?

  We moved out of that house soon after, and I thought the nightmare was over. Over time, I had started convincing myself that what I had seen was not that bad. It was just a weird house. That was all. But the last realization came years later, when I was watching TV. Remember those sheets of baking powder my brother found with the weird rubble? Well, on the true crime TV show I was watching, the person described finding the cremated remains of someone in their basement. It was like a weird rubble and baking powder. It was described the exact way that my brother described what he found in one of those tunnels. I have no idea what happened in that house. But I think the man that lived there before me was a serial killer.

• 31:58Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by Primally Pure. I feel like every time I run out of a product in my bathroom, I have this moment where I go, okay, do I just order the same thing? Or do I finally make a better swap? And that thinking is exactly what got me into Primally Pure. They're a female founded brand that keeps it really simple. Fewer, better ingredients, and nothing you can't pronounce. I just got an order from Primally Pure and I am obsessed with their lip oil. I also got eucalyptus and lavender body butter, which has spa vibes for sure. If you want an easy starting point, their Clean Start bundle is a great place to start. For under $50, you get three everyday essentials, their best-selling aluminum-free deodorant, a mini body butter, and the lip oil that I love. It's also a really thoughtful gift if you know someone

• 32:43Kaelyn Moore?

  who's been wanting to clean up their routine. Use code HSP to get 15% off your Primally Pure purchase. That's www.p r i m a l l y p u r e dot com and use code HSP at checkout for 15% off your order.

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• 33:58Kaelyn Moore?

  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've 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. The best way I can describe it is it's like Christmas. And 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.

• 34:41Kaelyn Moore?

  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. CJ, I regret to inform you that I do agree with your assessment. I also think that something really dark happened in that house. And as a side note, that is absolutely wild that Paul Bernardo used to live in that area as well. Is there something in the water over there? Paul is one of the most depraved people that I've ever read about. And after his peeping Tom days, he would go on to kill three people with his wife Carla. They were known as the Kenan Barbie killers.

• 35:27Kaelyn Moore?

  All right, I have one more story for you all. A story from a listener that really begs the question. Even when you're looking at someone with your own eyes, can you trust that it's actually them? This listener writes. These events took place when I was back in college. Our class was traveling for a team building offsite a few hours away from Mumbai in India. We were staying at this old, slightly spooky dormitory that was attached to a church. It seemed like the perfect setting for sharing ghost stories. That night, all of the girls gathered in the common area, huddled together, sharing their experiences with the paranormal. And that's when my best friend, let's call her Kay, began to share hers.

• 36:09Kaelyn Moore?

  Kay had experienced quite a few strange things in her life, far more than most people I knew. But one particular story she told me that night really stuck with me. I didn't realize it then, but it would later connect to something that happened to me too. When Kay was younger, she used to share a bed with her little sister, who was about three or four years old at the time. One night Kay was fast asleep when her sister woke her up and asked for an extra blanket because she felt cold. Kay handed it over, tucked her little sister back in, and turned to face the other side toward the open bedroom door that looked out onto a long hallway. In India, it's quite common for kids to sleep with their doors open. And that is when she saw it.

• 36:54Kaelyn Moore?

  At the far end of the hallway stood a figure, the figure of a young girl who looked exactly like her little sister. Kay couldn't see the girl's face clearly, but everything else matched. The same height, the same small frame, the same short dress, and even the same two pigtails that her sister wore every day. The figure then began walking slowly towards the bedroom. Panicked, Kay grabbed her actual sister, who was still asleep next to her, and they ran straight into her parents' room, which was right next door. And as she did this, she saw the figure stop, turn, and walk into the kitchen instead. That's where it crouched underneath the dining table. Her parents were alarmed by her panic, and they immediately searched the entire house.

• 37:39Kaelyn Moore?

  But there was no sign of anyone being there. Now, when I first heard that story, I'll be honest, I brushed it off. She was a kid, maybe she had imagined it, or she dreamt it. Kids see strange things all the time. But a few months later, something happened that made me question everything. So Kay's parents were traveling, and she had the apartment all to herself. So she decided to throw a small party. It was just a few friends, her boyfriend, and me. Her parents knew about the party and who was going to be there, and they were okay with it, since we were all adults. Before I go further, let me explain the layout of her apartment, because it's really important. When you enter through the main door, there's a narrow corridor with Kay's bedroom on the right.

• 38:22Kaelyn Moore?

  The corridor then opens up into a large living room with an attached balcony that runs the entire length of the apartment, from Kay's bedroom at one end, through the living room, and ending at her parents' bedroom. At the end of Kay's balcony, near her bedroom, there's a door that leads directly into the building's stairwell. It's always locked from the inside for safety. Kay's bedroom also has a small window that opens out onto that same balcony. As a rebellious teenager, Kay used to use that setup to sneak out late at night and meet her boyfriend. She would climb out of the window, walk onto the balcony, and slip out through the stairwell door. This way, she avoided the security cameras outside of her main door, which her dad had installed. It sent alerts to his phone whenever there was any movement outside.

• 39:06Kaelyn Moore?

  Kay's room didn't have regular beds, either. Instead, there was a large mattress on the floor, where she and her sister used to sleep. To reach the window, you had to walk right across that mattress. Now, back to the party.

• 39:20Kaelyn Moore?

  Eventually, after an intense game night, most people left. Only Kay, her boyfriend, and I stayed behind. I was pretty tired, so I decided to turn in for the night. And Kay offered me her room to sleep in since she and her boyfriend wanted to stay up a little bit longer. Sometime later, I woke up to the feeling of someone walking across the mattress I was sleeping on. You know that distinct sinking motion that you can feel even with your eyes closed? I opened my eyes just in time to see Kay opening the window, climbing out onto the balcony, and walking toward the stairwell door. I asked her where she was going, but she didn't respond. She just kept walking and then disappeared from view. The next morning, I questioned her why she had snuck out that night.

• 40:05Kaelyn Moore?

  And Kay looked at me completely confused. She said she never left the house. After I went to bed, she and her boyfriend stayed up talking in her parents' room, and then they had fallen asleep there. She swore she hadn't even gone near her bedroom that night. To this day, I can still picture what I saw so clearly. The figure looked exactly like her, the same height, the same build, even the same pajamas that she was wearing that evening. And I couldn't help but think back to the story she had told me about her sister. Was there really something in that apartment that could take their shape? Well, now I turn it back to you guys. What do you think?

• 40:47Kaelyn Moore?

  Was there really something in that apartment that could take the shape of another person? And was it the same thing that Kay saw all those years ago, pretending to be her little sister? You can leave a comment wherever you listen, because I'm just dying to hear your thoughts. Double gangers are something that interests me so deeply, and every now and then I get stories from you all who have experienced them. But that is all I have for you on this very wintery evening. If you have a bizarre, creepy, or strange story that you would like to share with me, you can do so at heartstarts pounding dot com. And if you want more, our bonus episode for this month is actually going to be an old-timey Victorian fiction ghost story. You can join me over on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to listen to that. And if you would like to take part in voting for our

• 41:32Kaelyn Moore?

  bonus episode every month, you can join me on the high council tier on Patreon. We will be back next week with another haunted tour, this time of some of the most haunted castles from around the world, the dark history of them and the ghosts that still reside inside. It's another great one for us to gather by the fire for. I will see you there. And until then, stay curious.

• 42:01Kaelyn Moore?

  Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kayla Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Sound design and mix by Peastery Sound. Special thanks to Travis Unlap, Grayson Trennigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com.

• 42:17Kaelyn Moore?

  This episode is brought to you by our partner, Vistaprint. If you run a small business, you know that there's a moment where you go from just doing the thing you love to realizing you need stuff, like physical stuff. Custom merch for an event, branded apparel for your team, business cards that actually look professional. That was definitely me with Heart Starts Pounding. What started as a podcast I made in my closet turned into something that had merch, had mugs, had stickers, had all of this stuff that I needed to get made. And Vistaprint made it so much less overwhelming. They are a true print expert. Premium quality products, fast turnaround, and design tools that actually make sense. I actually got custom mugs made from Vistaprint and they are gorgeous and very, very good quality.

• 42:59Kaelyn Moore?

  The quality feels expensive without having an expensive price tag. There's a reason over 17 million businesses trust Vistaprint with their print needs. Vistaprint, print your possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code NEW20 at Vistaprint.com. That's 20% off at Vistaprint.com using code NEW20. 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/hartstartspounding. Well, whatever you do, stay curious.