Isabelle - Classic

Betsy keeps seeing a young girl at night in her room. She stands at the end of Betsy’s bed and stares at her. She comes back, over and over: night after night; year after year. Betsy knows she wants something, but she has to figure out what.

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

• 0:03Glynn Washington?

  Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant aiden it shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore. It's time. At long last, you've crossed over to Spooked. Stay tuned.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Why have so many crop circles appeared around Britain? How did thousands of people demonstrate powers of telepathy? Can the dead suck the life from the living? Join me, Tim Harford, for a trip into the paranormal throughout Halloween month on Cautionary Tales. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:12Glynn Washington?

  Two years ago, maybe 9:30, 10 o'clock at night, just finishing things up, exhausted. I'm driving my car, bumping tunes to keep my eyes open. I know I'm gonna get home and sleep for days. Why, let's kind of weird. You pull off the road and it's a long wooded driveway. Hidden, secluded. That's our place on the left, and I'm almost there. Driving on autopilot. I've pulled off this highway onto my road a million times. So I pull off the highway. Can't wait to hit these sheets. Speed down the road, past the Mormon temple. Dark night, dark night.

• 1:57Glynn Washington?

  Sharp turn onto our wooded driveway. Blackness. Almost there. Two points reflect back from my headlights. I slam on the brakes and stop. A few inches in front of a baby.

• 2:21Glynn Washington?

  A tiny baby. Crawling on the rocky dirt of my driveway in the gloom. A little baby, seven, eight months old. A baby.

• 2:34Glynn Washington?

  Then people. A mother and father, maybe, they come out, they grab the child, and they're apologizing. "So sorry." Just taking a late night walk through the neighborhood or something. "So sorry."

• 2:50Glynn Washington?

  I actually don't know what they're saying. I'm just staring down at the driveway.

• 2:59Glynn Washington?

  The after-image of that child's eyes burned into my own. What if?

• 3:07Glynn Washington?

  What if?

• 3:12Glynn Washington?

  They walk away. I park.

• 3:17Glynn Washington?

  Like, rack with fever, my body starts shivering, then shaking. I can barely walk from the car to my own porch.

• 3:28Glynn Washington?

  To my front door, to the shower. Even bent under scalding hot water, my lips feel cold to my tongue. A baby.

• 3:41Glynn Washington?

  I start to laugh. I start to cry laugh, big racking sobs. All of it made plain. The line between this side and that, just a few inches. A blink of the eye.

• 3:57Glynn Washington?

  What if?

• 4:00Glynn Washington?

  What if?

• 4:04Glynn Washington?

  What lies on the other shore?

• 4:11Glynn Washington?

  No.

• 4:13Glynn Washington?

  No, no, no. This year? We can't wait until Halloween, no. Stories remain unturned. Answers lie hidden in shadow. You've waited patiently, long enough.

• 4:33Glynn Washington?

  From the creators of Snap Judgment, in partnership with Luminary Media, we proudly present Spook, the season four, our biggest season ever. What if?

• 4:45Glynn Washington?

  Real people. Real stories directly from the mouths of those that can scarcely believe it happened themselves. My name's Tim Washington. Please, please, please, don't leave your baby alone on a dark driveway.

• 5:04Glynn Washington?

  Spook starts now.

• 5:43Glynn Washington?

  Now then. What people say is that the other is the scariest thing. The other, the boogeyman, the vampire, the Bigfoot jumping out from behind the bushes or whatever, the alien. Take you from the forder.

• 6:01Glynn Washington?

  Now, first guest, she has some thoughts on the matter because what if the thing you see in the middle of the night doesn't look so strange? After all.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  I'm Betsy, and this story takes place when I'm seven years old.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  So when I get to go to my grandparents' house, it is a big, huge deal. Mom, not having like a whole lot of money. Plane tickets are expensive. Before I go, my mom always preps me. Now I know they spoil you, and I know that they give you pretty much whatever you want, but don't abuse it. Be a good girl. Don't run around asking them to put themselves out or for a bunch of special stuff because you want to be welcome again.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  So my grandmother's house has these particular guest rooms. One is the dusty rose, and everything in it is like these beautiful muted shades of country, English rose. Everything's so pretty. And then the other one is the blue room. I chose the rose room.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  Before I go to bed, my grandmother wishes me, "Good night, sleep tight." My grandpa always with a bear hug and a kiss on a cheek. "Good night, and we'll see you in the morning."

• 7:52Speaker 02

  It's so beautiful and comfortable and super cozy. And I fall asleep.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  And in the early morning hours, I'm dreaming. And in my dream, a girl walks up to me.

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Kind of reddish light auburn hair, brown eyes like me.

• 8:29Speaker 02

  She's wearing a plain blue turtleneck.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  And her face gets really tight, and her eyes get tense. And it's like her jaw kind of clenches.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  I get the feeling that she wants to tell me something, but she doesn't. And then her lips start to curl into like the sideways kind of snarl.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  And the jaw kind of slings off to the side.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  And the fact that she's still staring at me is absolutely horrific.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  It terrifies me to the point where I wake up out of a dead sleep.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  I sit straight up. It is about 5 o'clock in the morning. The room is completely light.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  I just flopped back down in bed on my back and thought, "This is an awful scary dream."

• 9:50Speaker 02

  And then I turned my head to the right. And she is kneeling on the floor,

• 10:02Speaker 02

  five feet away from the bed, and she's at eye level.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  She looks exactly like she did in the dream.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  But then I realized, "There's a girl in the bedroom

• 10:29Speaker 02

  staring at me."

• 10:42Speaker 02

  Just staring at me.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  The way she's looking at me is angry.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  It's troubled, it's menaced. Her eyes are narrowing, her face is getting tight. Her body is not moving, it is not shifting. And she is just like a flipping statue, which made it scarier somehow.

• 11:12Speaker 02

  I grabbed the comforter. I put it over my head. I closed my eyes tight. And I counted to 10.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  And in my mind, if I do that, it'll be okay.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  And I waited a moment after I counted to 10, and I put the sheets and the comforter back down, and she was gone.

• 12:01Speaker 03

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• 12:51Speaker 02

  I know that breakfast is going to be ready soon. Mom said not to be a pain.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  I don't want my grandparents to think that I am going to be difficult, or homesickness, or whatever. I don't want them to think that because I don't want them to send me back home, and I don't want to not be welcome. I don't want them to think I'm going to be trouble when I come to visit. I'm going to go to the bathroom, wash my face, pull myself together, and go out and have breakfast.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  I left my grandparents' house about six days later. When I got home the next day, the first thing I did was I told my mom.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  She's like, "I know sometimes other girls are mean to you, and won't let you eat lunch with them, and they pick on you in the playground. Do you think that you might have a bully? And maybe you can't, or you're too afraid to talk to her, so I think maybe it's coming out this way. And what I want you to do is, when you go to school, I want you to look around, and not even in your own class, but maybe somebody you see at recess, maybe somebody you see at lunch on the playground. Is this someone that you know?"

• 14:28Speaker 02

  I did not waste any time. The next time I went to school after I left my grandparents, the next time, was when I looked for her on the playground.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  I looked and looked, and I saw a girl who kind of looked like her.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  It wasn't her, but similar features, hair color, you know, hair length. And this girl had never picked on me at all. But I thought, well, maybe if I walk up to her and talk to her, I'll feel better. So I walked up to her and said, "Hi, my name's Betsy. What's your name? Do you want to be friends?" And she was an absolute doll. Sweet and just super and not at all, at all scary. I liked the idea that, okay, I might have some mastery over this. I might have some control. About six months later, I had the dream again.

• 15:43Speaker 02

  This girl walks up to me and she stares at me and it's a blank stare at first and then it becomes more angry and more twisted and more contorted. And I wake up, turn my head and open up my eyes and she's there.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Her position is the same as it was before. This is out of control. I saw her face and the anger and the expression. The kind of anger that it's hard to even imagine. You can give that dirt or that bad of a look.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  I don't want to look, but I can't look away. But then I noticed that she's not wearing the same clothes. Her hair was a little bit longer and her face was a little bit fuller. Her body looked like it might be taller too. And it was then that even in my absolute panic, I realized, we're the same age.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  I have grown and changed in the school year, and she has too. Fear was still the biggest driving factor and biggest emotion I had around this. And I didn't know if this time would be different, if she would hurt me, if something awful would happen. And I wasn't going to take any chances. So I went back to what worked the first time and threw that comforter up over my face, jammed my eyes shut, counted to 10, waited till I could breathe normal, and then put the comforter back down and looked again.

• 17:39Speaker 02

  And she's gone.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  So, being a latchkey kid, I have it drilled into my head that you do not answer the door for anybody. There is no reason you should ever let anybody in the house because if you do, they could hurt you. And once you open up that door, it's out of your hands. And that's what it feels like. I sleep with my door shut. I didn't hear it open, but here she is.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  What did I do? What did I do wrong? This happens every three to six months for the next seven years. I don't know what to do. I am afraid that if I go to school, if I go to my Girl Scout troop, if I do anything like that and say something, I don't want to give anybody any reason at all to pick on me more than what I was already dealing with.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  I figured out pretty quick, if I am with other people, it doesn't happen. So I go on a personal campaign to get invited to as many sleepovers as possible. And it doesn't happen if I'm on a sleepover. It only happens in my bedroom. And so if I can be out in the living room and watch TV and pretend to fall asleep watching TV, and oopsie, I just didn't make it to my bedroom, it was okay. We got a puppy, not housebroken. And Mom doesn't want the puppy on the carpet. Carpet's really super nice. It's very clean.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  And Mom says, "Put him in the laundry room and put some papers down and some water and he'll be fine." He starts whining a lot the moment I put him in there. And the light bulb goes off. And I say, "Hey, he seems like he's scared. And he's just a little baby. How about I sleep in the laundry room with him to keep him company?" And she's like, "Oh, God, you're gonna be uncomfortable. The floor's tiled, it's cold, you're not gonna wanna be in there." And I'm like, "No, no, no. I really wanna be with him and I don't want him to be scared." So she's like, "Okay." Oh, my God. I about let the skid marks running back down the hallway to get my bedding and my pillows

• 20:48Speaker 02

  and everything and drag it in the laundry room so I could sleep on a cold tile floor with the puppy because I knew it wouldn't happen if I did that.

• 21:10Glynn Washington?

  This episode is sponsored by Vinted. Imagine opening my closet, looking for a shirt, and I see that jacket. That jacket, that jacket I got for that party I never went to three years ago. That jacket, it's still there. It's still mocking me. Well, it was still there. Then I stopped and I reached for my phone because Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes that you no longer wear. Listing on Vinted is quick and simple. Once an item sells, Vinted creates the prepaid shipping label for you. And Vinted has no seller fees, meaning you keep every dollar you earn.

• 21:51Glynn Washington?

  And I could get a little more room in my closet, you know, for that next jacket. Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing. No seller fees, so you keep everything you earn.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  When I was 10 years old, my mom put a chair in my room next to my closet. I was not organized and she wanted me to be better organized. She told me that I was to sit in that chair and that was supposed to be my base of operations for getting dressed and undressed and keeping track of my closet and everything else. That night was like any other night and I had the same nightmare.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  And when I turned and opened up my eyes and looked, she was sitting in the chair. That had never happened before. I didn't know that was even an option. I didn't know she could even do that. I'm looking at her and her face is angry. Her jaw is stiff. The longer I stare at her, the more her eyes narrow and her lips tighten. But yeah, she again had grown up like me and all my friends.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  I rolled over onto my right side, put the covers over my head, clenched my eyes shut really tight, count to 10, try to take deep breaths, bring the covers back down, and she's gone.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  So I always made sure that the chair in the room was loaded up. And when my mom, you know, when she'd come in in the morning or whatever, on the times that she did and she'd see the chair loaded up, I'd just come up with an excuse every time.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  As terrified as I was,

• 24:43Speaker 02

  I was fascinated because when I was 11, she was 11. And when I was 12, she was 12. And it was never a different person. It was always the same person, but she got a little taller. Her face filled out a little bit more. Her hair grew. But none of it is out of place for that time, for that year, that kind of thing.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  So it's late summer. This is like the precipice of 13, 14.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  We have a family reunion at my grandparents' house. I get the dusty rose-colored room again, which was my favorite.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  It happens again, only this time, the dream is different.

• 25:50Speaker 02

  In the dream, I wake up and I walk into the parlor area of my grandparents' house.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  And it's cold, frosty, like when you open up a freezer and the cold steam kind of hits you in the face.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  And I'm looking around, wondering where everybody is. And all of a sudden, a little girl in a prairie dress with long hair runs past me in the parlor room and she runs straight to my grandpa's gun cabinet.

• 26:27Speaker 02

  "And you are not allowed to touch the gun cabinet by the door, ever." And she runs the gun cabinet and she's staring at it and I start yelling at her.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  "Get away from that move. Don't grab it. No, he says no." "Grandpa Ike says you cannot touch the gun cabinet."

• 26:44Speaker 02

  I'm screaming at her. And she turns and looks at me and there's a staircase that goes down to the basement, right next to the gun cabinet.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  And all of a sudden, this huge, like sucking wind comes up from the basement,

• 27:05Speaker 02

  grabs her and pulls her down and I see her body start to twist and turn and I hear her hitting the stairs as she's falling down the basement.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  This really distorted, distorted, awful, like this organ music starts playing.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  And there's heavy thud, thud, thud, footsteps coming up the wooden staircase.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  And into the light, there's a man. He's dead and decaying, and his flesh is kind of grayish, and it's kind of hanging off of him. And he has his arms curled up towards him, and the girl is in his arms, and she's dead.

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Her body is limp. And he turns to face me and walks closer and closer to me, and goes to hand her to me. And in that moment, it popped into my head, "This is your sister, and she's dead."

• 28:21Speaker 02

  I open my eyes, and she's there in the room.

• 28:36Speaker 02

  And she's staring at me. And this time, she's just staring.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  She's not really even angry. She doesn't look happy, but she's just staring.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  And I did the usual. I put my comforter back up over my head, I closed my eyes tight, and I counted. And I waited.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  And when I took the covers down, she was gone.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  I didn't know how I was gonna do it, but I knew I needed to talk to my mom.

• 29:22Speaker 02

  My mom and I used to go for walks for exercise and just kind of talk and hang out. It's very scenic, it's very pretty, rolling hills, it's a great place to go walking.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  So she's like, "Hey, you wanna go on a walk?" I'm like, "Yeah, sure, I'm all down for a walk."

• 29:46Speaker 02

  So we're walking and we get to this one point on this one hill and it just escaped my mouth. I mean, it just came out of my face. I blurted out to her, "Mom, did you ever have any kids before me?"

• 30:04Speaker 02

  And she stopped walking and turned and looked at me and it was like this mixture of confusion and concern and a little bit of panic.

• 30:13Speaker 02

  And she said, "Why would you ask me that?"

• 30:17Speaker 02

  I told her about the dream when we had been at my grandparents' house. I said to her, what it meant for me was that there had been a child before me who had died and I wanted to know what happened.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  She said, "Do you remember when you came home from 7th grade and you were so excited because you were in Spanish class and the teacher gave you your Spanish name and wanted me to call you by your Spanish name when we were doing homework and he wanted you to be in character and your Spanish name was Isabel?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I remember that." And she's like, "You remember that? I was upset and I refused to call you that." I'm like, "Yeah, I remember. That was kind of weird."

• 31:11Speaker 02

  And she said, "Well," she said, "I never told you this because I didn't want you to be afraid that there would be something wrong with you or something bad would happen." But she said, "I did have a daughter before you and her name was Isabel."

• 31:41Speaker 02

  And she said she was born with a heart defect. And at the time, they couldn't really do anything about it. And she was basically told, "Take your daughter home and enjoy her for as long as you can. And she will either grow up to be very weakened, or she will not live very long." And she did not live very long. My mom decided, when she got pregnant with me, that I would never know. I would never know. And she was never going to tell me. And there were never any pictures.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  And no one ever said anything. At some point in the conversation, she told me that I could ask her whatever I wanted, but only for that time. And that it wasn't going to be a topic of conversation. Even though she told me that I could ask her anything that I wanted, I didn't. I was so relieved to know the truth and to have an answer, that I was just stunned by that. After that conversation with my mom, I never saw her again.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  If she came back, oh my god, the stuff I'd want to know and the stuff I'd say to her. And I'd love it. It wouldn't scare me. And I would apologize. I would tell her that I'm sorry. Even though I couldn't do anything about it at the time, I would say I'm sorry. That, that I was never able to talk to you. I don't think that's going to happen. And only for the reason that, from what I can piece together, after I knew the truth, she went away.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  So, I don't know how this works. I don't know how any of this works. I don't have a religion, I don't have a spirituality, I don't. But, like, I've gotta feel like because she never did come back, that wherever she is, since it never happened again, she probably is gone.

• 34:18Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Betsy, for sharing your story with the Spooked. Now, I need to let you know that Betsy, Betsy's a Spook listener, and she reached out to us to share her story. And I want to let you know that we here at Spook, we love listener's stories. Want to hear more of what you've got, send them to us. Spooked, that's snapjudgment.org. The original score for that story was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Annie Nguyen.

• 34:59Glynn Washington?

  Aw, now, it's that time. But this is just the beginning, the beginning of the beginning. Be afraid, be terrified, be quick, but be here to see it go down. And remember, if you like your storytelling, under the warmth of the noonday sunshine, get the amazing, stupendous, incredible Snap Judgment Podcast storytelling with the beat, Spooked was created by the team whose ghosts look exactly like they do, if you hear them coming. Running High, from Mark Ristich, Anna Sussman, our chief spookster is Eliza Smith, Chris Hamburg, Annie Nguyen, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Renzo Goryo, Taylor Decot, Marissa Dodge,

• 35:42Glynn Washington?

  Greta Weber, Sena Khan, Tiffany Delisa, Anne Ford, and Fernando Hernandez. The Spook theme song is by Pat Mercedes Miller. My name is from Washington, and even though the magic eight ball might advise otherwise, know this.

• 35:59Glynn Washington?

  Your Magic 8-Ball has ulterior motives. Listen to me when I say never, ever. Never, ever, never, never, ever. Turn out the lights.