Soul Cycle

Everybody kicks ass in Lee’s Spin Class but Cycle 23 is out of this world. And the purrfect storm brings a mysterious cat to a house that is under a spiritual attack.

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

• 0:07Glynn Washington?

  Do you enjoy the bath? She asked.

• 0:13Glynn Washington?

  A glint on her eye.

• 0:16Glynn Washington?

  "Oh, the water's good and hot." I nodded with a sigh.

• 0:22Glynn Washington?

  "It tasted nicely salted, but then it began to boil."

• 0:28Glynn Washington?

  "I saw carrots in the bathtub and onions fried in oil." "I tried to scramble out, but my limbs stayed stuck like glue."

• 0:42Glynn Washington?

  She cackled. "Won't you join me for a hearty bowl of stew?"

• 0:54Glynn Washington?

  "You've crossed over to Spooked." "Stay tuned."

• 1:07Glynn Washington?

  "Spooksters, you have spoken." "We want more Spook," you said. "We want to support the show," you said. "And can we please, for the love of all that is holy, please get rid of those ads?" Well, prayers answered. Spooked Plus has risen. Ad-free Spook. The entire library, no interruptions. Just you and whatever's lurking in the shadows. Exclusive bonus stories every month. Fresh nightmares you won't hear anywhere else. The Spooked Plus community, listen together. Chat in real time because no one should face the darkest alone. And, and, ask me anything for yours truly.

• 1:52Glynn Washington?

  If you've got questions, I've got answers. Maybe. And we're just getting started. Spooksters, we are a small team chasing down the big mystery. Your support keeps this flame burning, so come on in. The door is open. Spooked.supercast.com. That's Spooked.supercast.com. Spooked Plus. Don't turn out the lights.

• 2:36Glynn Washington?

  For the new people, the good people who work here at Spook, it must feel as if they have arrived in the middle of a long-running argument. Because one of the first things I insist upon is not a ghost story, not a demonstration of research chops or ability to create a particular sound. No, first, first, I want to go to lunch. And the veteran spooks just start to groan, and I don't care, I don't. I take this new person up the street, not far, to Oakland's Chinatown,

• 3:18Glynn Washington?

  down 12th Street off Broadway to a nondescript restaurant that's called Spices 3. And inside, the good folk, they hand us the laminated menu. I don't need to see the menu. This is nominally a Szechuan restaurant. It's known for a galactic level of spiciness. Think like mounds and mounds of peppers spicy, but I insist, order whatever you want. Everything is delicious. The stinky tofu, the spicy eel strips, it is tasty. I just want you to try some of what I order. Admittedly, the overdozer at Spook, he starts to holler, "Don't do it!

• 4:03Glynn Washington?

  Don't order it, don't do it!" I smile, he smiles. We both know good and well, I'm going to order it. When the nice lady comes to ask what we'd like at the inn, I add my favorite dish. It's called Gangsta Casserole Murder Style. What is it? Well, I admit, it's not for vegetarians. There's other stuff to eat here if that is your proclivity. No Gangsta Casserole Murder Style. It's a hot pot stew cooked to order at the table. It's made from oaf, from intestine, tripe, from blood, pork stomach, pork skin, bits and parts of, I don't know,

• 4:48Glynn Washington?

  with peppers, lots and lots of peppers and stuff. There's an alchemy.

• 4:54Glynn Washington?

  That only occurs when you let all of this bubble up together in that pot for a while. It's a goodness. And I, I like to see the eyes when I offer some up to the newcomer to watch them peer into this pot, to lean in or recoil away from. This is not a trick.

• 5:16Glynn Washington?

  Is it hazing? Initiation, maybe?

• 5:21Glynn Washington?

  It's an imitation as well, truly, because make no mistake, I love this dish.

• 5:28Glynn Washington?

  I love it. It is home, it's Oakland, it's family, it's warmth, it's memory, it's smiles, it's awe. It is magic.

• 5:40Glynn Washington?

  You may or may not enjoy it, but all I ask is that you try it.

• 5:50Glynn Washington?

  Spookstars. Now.

• 6:36Glynn Washington?

  We sometimes imagine that we're the only ones that are odd, that the mystery doesn't have a sense of humor. And today, we're gonna take a ride with Lee. Lee is a spin class instructor at a gym in Los Gatos, California. Now let Lee take it from here.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Three words that describe my classes. Energetic, challenging, sweaty, very sweaty, soaking wet sweaty. I like to put on music first thing. Usually a house beat, right out of the gate. It's like the energy is there. So when my members come in, they'll set up their bikes, they'll get on the bikes, and they'll start pedaling because the music's on. Once I know that everybody's set up, I'll get on my bike and I'll say, "How is everyone doing? Does everyone feel good? Do you have your water?"

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Once I get the thumbs up, I turn the lights off immediately. So it's very dark, but there's neon lights, like bars along the walls, and there's a spotlight on me. The room just turns into this really colorful space. Then I'll say, "Let's go." "Okay, everybody, I just want you to have a little bit of tension on the bike. Just stay in the blue zone, getting your heart rates up." There's two screens, both behind me, one on the right side, one on the left, and that's where the ride is put up, so you can see everybody's bike

• 8:33Speaker 01

  and the color that that person is pushing. So it'll look like all these little rainbow circles with bike numbers and watts. At this point now, all the indicators should be blue. Blue was easy. And then I'll say, "I want you to push a little harder. I want you to add a gear or speed up. We're gonna ride into the green zone." And then, on the chorus, push into the red.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  And that would go into dark red. You can maybe do it for three minutes, maybe four minutes, and then you're toast. And then there is a purple zone. The purple is the hardest zone you can be in if you're a human being, right? So you have to produce a lot of power to do that into the purple zone. So the whole thing is like this rainbow of music and color and light and intensity. And it's pretty amazing. It's a really fun workout.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  When I was teaching fitness classes at a local gym around 96, 97, the club got some bikes and they said, every fitness instructor has to learn how to teach cycling. And I remember getting on a bike and thinking to myself, why would anybody do this? This is painful. And I was totally convinced that cycling was not going to last. Obviously, I'm wrong. I'll be teaching, it'll be 30 years in a couple of years.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  At this point, I've been teaching at the club at Los Gatos for about four years. On Wednesday morning, I pull up to the gym. It's about 6:45 in the morning. The sun was just coming up. I like to get there early because I want to make sure everything is working. There's a lot of bells and whistles. I walk through these gorgeous glass doors. The club at Los Gatos, it has been around for a long time. It had just been remodeled from the ground up and it's all brand new. I go through the gym and there are some people working out. But it's pretty quiet because it's still relatively early.

• 11:00Speaker 01

  Classes haven't really started yet. And I say hello to the attendant that's taking the towels past me. I go right up the stairs, I go into the cycle room. I walk in and I look up and I see that there is a gauge on the screen against the back wall.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  I'm looking up and I'm thinking, I wonder why there's a gauge on the screen. Someone must have just been in here or something, maybe riding a bike and it's just kinda left over.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  And then I notice that the little arrow, there's a little black arrow that goes around the color wheel. Like if it was your speedometer that tells you what color zone you're in. And it was in the blue zone.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  And it's going up and down.

• 11:55Speaker 01

  Exactly like someone was on the bike just pedaling softly, like warming up.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Which means someone would have to be on a bike.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  And I'm standing there and I'm just staring at it going, uh, like, how's that happening?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Then I hear the door open and a member comes in and he stands next to me and this is Phil and I love Phil. Phil's great. He's got a great attitude. He always is smiling. And I, he stands next to me and he looks up at the gauge that I'm looking at. And I go, Phil, do you see that, Phil? And he's like, hmm, bike 23.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  And we both at the same time look behind us. And we look at bike 23, which is in the back.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  It's not moving, it's not making any noise.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  I walk back there and I'm thinking, there's gotta be some sort of glitch here. Like it's stuck. And so I get on Bike 23 and I pedal it.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  And I get the gauge to move into the different color zones. And I stop the bike and I get off the bike and the gauge is at zero. And it was just kind of like, over.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  So I look at Phil and I go, huh, must be just a tech glitch. And he's like, yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  I get on my instructor bike and more people come in and I teach the class. Finish my class and I change my clothes and I grab a smoothie from the cafe. And I go all the way back to home. And I don't think about it again.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  On Saturday morning, I drop my daughter off at the reservoir because her practice starts at 8 for the Los Gatos Rowing Club. And then I go into town, I go into the gym, I walk down the hall, I walk into the cycle room.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  My members started coming in, they started getting on their bikes and they started pedaling.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  When class was over, I look at my watch and I'm like, okay, I gotta go get my kid because practice is gonna be over at 11. So I open my bag, I put my shoes in the bag, I put my towel in the bag. And I grab my iPad and as I'm turning it, I see a gauge right in the middle of my iPad.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  It's Bike 23.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden, Wednesday morning comes rushing back into my head. And I turn, just like I did when Phil was there, I turn and I look at Bike 23 and nobody's on it. And I look at the gauge and I see that the little black triangle is moving up and down again in the blue.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  And I'm like, no way, what the heck?

• 15:30Speaker 01

  I talk to myself all the time, like I'm always talking to myself. And so I was, look at this gauge and I was like, okay, can you work a little harder? And I was really just playing.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  And the pin moved up to the yellow zone. It just went.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  I couldn't believe it.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Did that just happen?

• 16:05Speaker 01

  This has got to be some sort of coincidence. Something is happening and it just happened to switch over when I said it.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  But I thought to myself, okay, I gotta see if this will happen again.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  And I say, wow, that's pretty good. Can you work as hard as you can?

• 16:31Speaker 01

  And it goes all the way and it goes right into the purple zone.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  No frickin way. No way is this actually happening right now.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  I felt like an adrenaline bolt and it made my heart rate go up and it felt like a heat that went down the core of my body.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Now I'm thinking to myself like, what do I do now? So I went into instructor mode.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  I say, wow, you're working really, really hard. Can you reduce the work, but not all the way? And it, the pin on the gauge reverses all the way down and all the way back around and hangs out in the blue zone again and just bobbles up and down in the blue zone, just like that.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  I'm stunned.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  This was not a tech glitch at all. This was real.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  I want to continue. I really want to continue with this. And then I look at the time and I think to myself, my kid is going to have my head on a platter if she's alone next to the reservoir, all by herself, and I am the last person to come get her. So I decide that I gotta go.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  And I walked out.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Because the the ride home is a little bit longer going southbound on the weekends, I always make sure I get my daughter something to eat. So I go to the cafe that's just out from the the cycle room. It's all light and airy. People are talking and walking. There's people are drinking coffee. You know, it's just a whole nother energy.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  I ordered my smoothie and I was sitting on one of the really nice leather sofas. And I see the general manager. She walks right past me and I say, hey, I need to tell you something weird just happened in the spin room. And she's like, oh, what happened? And I told her about the gauge and the pin and and me talking to whatever was making the pin go up and down. And her eyes got really big. And she just started saying, I don't want to know. And she had her hands up like stop. She's like, I do not want to know. And I said, why?

• 19:07Speaker 01

  And she goes, when they were remodeling, the workers kept saying that something was going on because every single time they'd come to work in the morning, things had been moved. The women's locker room was a mess every single time they came in. It was like someone came and just knocked everything over. And at one point in time, when they were working and putting the floor in or something like that, all of the doors blew open, all of them at the same time, just just all poosh blew open and everyone was like, oh, my gosh, what is happening here? And the workers were convinced that it was paranormal.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  I wanted to see is there any other explanation for this because maybe there's something else that could have happened. There are two of the same exact bikes on the exercise floor that anybody could use. And I said, is there any possible way that anyone on one of those bikes could have made this happen, like randomly Bluetooth and come up as bike 23?

• 20:18Speaker 01

  And she said, no.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  She kind of went on and on and ranted and said she didn't want to know. And then she just walked away and I was still waiting for my smoothie.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  When I confirmed with the general manager that there was no other logical explanations, that's when I knew that I was communicating with somebody.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  I was stoked because I've had friends and family members tell me stories about things that they had experienced where I was just in awe. But nothing like that had ever happened to me ever. And I was always kind of feeling like that's never going to happen. And so I did feel honored.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  And I really wish I would have asked so many more questions.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  So they call up my smoothie order and I get my smoothie. I walk out into the sunshine and I get in my car and I get on the highway. I was thinking about who the spirit could have been and why they'd be showing themselves to me like this. It could be someone who just loves spin class. And if I were to come back, I'd probably choose something a little easier, not so hard on the, on the katush.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  I go wrap around a little bit and go on to Lexington Reservoir and there's my kid waiting, you know, to be picked up. And she's like, Mom, it took you so long. And I said, get in the car. Have I got a story for you.

• 22:17Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Lee, for sharing your stories, spooksters. If you find yourself in California, the Santa Cruz area, and you need to get your spin class fixed, look for Lee on the schedule at your nearest gym. And Lee is just like you. She is a listener. She's a spookster. We love hearing stories from our listeners. The original score for this piece was by Sandra Lawson-Undu. It was produced by Zoe Frigno.

• 22:55Glynn 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. Because 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.

• 23:38Glynn 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.

• 24:12Glynn Washington?

  Now, next storyteller, Jessie, she's in college, living with her friend Nita's family right outside of Chicago.

• 24:21Glynn Washington?

  Jessie feels at home in the house. At least she thought she did.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  This is a home that I often visited as a child.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  My friend and I, we were childhood friends. We went to high school together.

• 24:56Speaker 02

  Nida's mom has always been a very welcoming mom.

• 25:02Speaker 02

  You know, always welcomed kids into the home. Fed us, made sure that we were entertained. You know, really was a true caretaker.

• 25:15Speaker 02

  And so I've always called her mom. Everyone that knew mom called her mom.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  About a year and two, me living there with the family, they go on their annual trip to Florida.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  And this is the first time I'm ever alone in the house.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  When I got out of work, it had already started to rain.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  So I was just trying to get home as soon as possible because I knew the storm was coming.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  I get in,

• 25:55Speaker 02

  get into some PJs, wash my face, and I go down to the family room.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  I'm channel surfing. I landed on Law & Order: SVU Marathon. The storm is really coming down. In the family room, there are skylights so you could see the rain just like really hitting the glass on the skylights.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  And then I see the hallway light come on.

• 26:31Speaker 02

  I didn't think anything of it. There's a thunderstorm happening. I didn't know if the fuse box had tripped, anything like that.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  But it was embedded in me by my parents to turn off all the lights in any of the rooms that you're not in. And so I turned it off and go back to the family room.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  About a few minutes later, I hear the switch.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  And the light comes on again.

• 27:12Speaker 02

  And I was thinking to myself, I gotta find the fuse box. I gotta figure out what this is.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  And then I see the lights downstairs come on.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  And then I start to hear the doors creaking to the downstairs.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  And that's when I started to get uneasy.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Is there someone in the house?

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Then I hear another door upstairs creaking.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  And then things just start spiraling out of control.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  There's lights coming on and off. I can hear the doors opening and closing. And it's storming outside. There's lightning. And so there was just a lot of chaos happening at once. And now I am terrified.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  I just balled up in the couch. I was paralyzed with fear.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  My throat feels very tight.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  And I didn't know what to do.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  I just want it to be over.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  And I started praying.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  And then, as there's like this big flash of lightning and just kind of illuminates the entire sky, then I noticed there's a cat outside of one of the windows.

• 29:02Speaker 02

  It's like dark shades of gray, slightly fluffy, but because it was raining, you could see kind of the fur hanging.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  It had orange eyes, and it's looking in.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  I thought, why is this cat standing out in the middle of the rain?

• 29:22Speaker 02

  And then it gets dark. There's another flash of lightning.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Now I see the cat on the side sliding door.

• 29:34Speaker 02

  And then I don't see it anymore. And then you have another flash of lightning. And then I look up. The cat's on the skylight, looking down. There's lightning behind it. And so there's this electric outline of this cat. And I'm scared because I don't understand how I got there.

• 30:02Speaker 02

  So I tried to close my eyes. I just keep praying. And then I hear one of the pictures from the mantle fall down. It's a metal picture frame, so it made this very loud sound when it hit the floor.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  I open my eyes, I walk over to see the picture. And when I pick up the picture, I see that it's Nida's grandpa's picture.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  It was from the 70s. He's just sitting down on a very ornate chair.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  That first thing that pops into my mind is, oh, my God, it's grandpa.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Mom's dad lived in that house. And I was told that he passed away in that home.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  The running joke of the house is that grandpa's spirit lives there.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  But I really thought it was just like a joke to them.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  But now I wonder if grandpa was aware of the fact that I live there? If he thought I wasn't an intruder? Because I don't think he's ever seen me in the house alone, without any one of his family members. And so I start screaming out loud like, I live here. Grandpa, I live here.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  But there's lights going on and off, there's doors opening and closing. There's this storm. I needed something to just stop.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  And so I felt like I was left with no choice but to call mom.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  And I called mom. It's like midnight Illinois time. It's 1:00 a.m. Florida. And she's, you know, sleepy. She's like, hello? Mom is from Pakistan and she grew up in England. So she has the cutest little like British accent with like a hint of Pakistani underneath.

• 32:16Speaker 02

  And I was like, Mom, what's wrong? What's wrong? I'm almost crying, but I don't want to cry. I'm like, I think it's grandpa. I think he's trying to get me out. So I put her on speaker and I said, I need you to tell him I live here.

• 32:33Speaker 02

  And she's quiet for a moment. She doesn't say anything.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  My internal dialogue is, she's gonna think I'm crazy. She's gonna think I'm on drugs. She's gonna think I'm drunk.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  And then she speaks and she goes, "Dad, she lives there. Stop it. She lives there. Okay? I'll be back soon."

• 32:59Speaker 02

  And then we sat in silence for a little bit.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  The lights then start to not be as fast. They start to slow down. I don't hear the doors creaking anymore.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  And she says, "Call me back if there's any more problems." And I said, "Okay." And I hung up the phone.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  And now I'm just waiting.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  10 minutes, 15 minutes.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  And then I don't hear anything. And so I start to calm down.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  But I was too scared to go upstairs. So I'm trying to just get some rest on the couch in the family room.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  As I'm drifting off, I see this cat walking by the sliding door.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  When I woke up the next day, it was very sunny, I remember that. I start to question myself. Did I dream it? Did it really happen? Then I checked my phone log. Did I call mom? I did call mom. I wasn't sure if there was still grandpa's angry presence. But nothing happens while I'm getting ready for work. And I don't have an experience with grandpa the rest of the weekend.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  But this cat was always a constant presence.

• 34:45Speaker 02

  This house has a lot of windows.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  If I look out the window, I can see the cat outside looking in,

• 34:56Speaker 02

  watching me.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  During the day, I would try to go outside to see if I could catch it or see it. But by the time I would walk outside, it was gone.

• 35:13Speaker 02

  The family gets home on Monday.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Mom walks in and she hugs me. And she sits me down. She says, "Let's talk. What happened?"

• 35:30Speaker 02

  So I'm telling her what happened. And I'm describing the cat to her, right? And she starts to chuckle.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  And I said, "What's so funny?" She goes, "Well, the last cat that Grandpa had before he died was similar to the cat that you are describing to me."

• 35:52Speaker 02

  She goes through her room and she starts digging through the photo albums. And she finds me this picture of Grandpa with the cat that looks exactly like this cat that had been circling the home this entire weekend.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  There's this heart drop to my stomach moment

• 36:17Speaker 02

  because at that point, Grandpa had been dead for over 15 years.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  I didn't want it to be a ghost cat.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  I was still trying to rationalize this being a real-life cat that was outside the home.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  But I never saw that cat again. You know, from the moment that the family got home on Monday and I was still kind of peering, looking out the windows, waiting for this cat to be around the house, I never saw it again.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  I don't know if it was Grandpa's spirit cat. I don't know if it was Grandpa as a cat. But I believe that Grandpa had the cat there to keep an eye on me while I was home alone.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  I'm not really sure why Grandpa did what he did that weekend. I've dwelled with that for a really long time, thinking, what if he was a joker? What if he was a prankster? What if he was just pranking me? Maybe he truly didn't recognize me as somebody that was supposed to be in this house.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  And then I started thinking about conversations that I had with Mom.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Mom spoke very fondly of her father. She talked about what an intelligent man he was and what a hardworking man he was. All the sacrifices he made. She never talked about him as a dad, right? Or like, he was very kind. Then it made me question, was he even nice at all? Was he trying to be malicious?

• 38:16Speaker 02

  It felt like a question that I wasn't going to get an answer to. But after that experience, I never stayed in the house alone again.

• 38:51Glynn Washington?

  A big thank you to Jessie for sharing her story. This piece was scouted by Vero Avina. Digital scores by Nicholas Marks. It was produced by Zoe Frigno.

• 39:10Glynn Washington?

  Now then, often, when we think of the gods, we think of the Creator, the one that made the sun, the moon, the stars. But this God of the universe, this God of everything, this is fairly new. For most of human history, the gods were smaller, more accessible. The God of the valley, the God of the river, the gods would walk with you, talk to you, sometimes in human form and in other forms as well. Some say even today that they still do.

• 39:51Glynn Washington?

  And if you have had one of those conversations, one of those relationships, I would sure love to hear about it. Take us with you into the forest, spooked at snapjudgment.org, because there's nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. The door to Spook Studios lays hidden directly behind you, connecting to the catacombs deep underneath KQED in San Francisco. Please don't seek to find it, lest it seek to find you. We've got the special incantations from Spook Legal,

• 40:34Glynn Washington?

  reading that no Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing, or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission on Team Spooked. The union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Locals of America, AFL-CIL Local 51, and...

• 40:59Glynn Washington?

  Spooked is brought to you by the team that when asked often refuses to pull your finger except for Mark Ristich. He cannot resist. There's David Kim, Zoe Friggnell, Ann Ford, Eric Yanez, Taylor Decot, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Regina Barriaco, Su Yi Chu, Evan Stern, Eves Jeffcoat, Yeshel Lopez, Jack Darrow, Nicholas Marks, Doug Stewart. The Spook theme song is by Pat Massey Miller. My name is Glynn Washington.

• 41:39Glynn Washington?

  In the middle school, I ran track, did the hurdles, the pole vaulting, and before every event, my buddy Carlos would always pour a little bit of Gatorade to the ground. None of us understood exactly why, but pretty soon it became a ritual. Before every track meet, we huddled together and poured liquid to the ground. To seal our bond, to note our commitment, to ask for blessing, I don't know. But later, I saw people pour libations in tearful memory of those who had passed before

• 42:20Glynn Washington?

  a meal in their honor. In Japan, we offered both incense and food to the small gods first before we could partake. They must partake before us them. Before us them, before we even knew what we were doing with that Gatorade. We knew this, we felt this, before us them. Never, ever, ever, turn out the lights.