Sharp Tooth Boy - Classic

Bonnie Blagg and her two friends call for Bloody Mary in the mirror on her dresser during a middle school sleepover. Bonnie thinks nothing of it until a ghost boy with long, sharp, bloody teeth appears in her bedroom every single night after that.

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

• 0:06Glynn Washington?

  Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord, my soul to keep. But if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul to take. You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned.

• 0:30Speaker 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.

• 1:04Glynn Washington?

  Now, um, we didn't celebrate traditional holidays growing up. Easter, Valentine's Day, Christmas, those were something other people did. Later on, thankfully, I had friends and I finally did get to celebrate these holidays that I always heard about. I spent my first Christmas at my buddy's house. In such good times. So warm, so happy, such love. These were the things missing for my home at the time. And the food. Good Lord.

• 1:44Glynn Washington?

  My buddy's family, they're Hindu, so on top of their tree in their family home rested a figurine of Ganesha, the elephant-headed god. And seeing Ganesha, golden, serene, looking down at us, blessing us, it made me feel warm inside, loved, safe.

• 2:13Glynn Washington?

  I'm not Hindu. I'm not, but since then in my own home, with my own kids, Ganesha sits on top of my tree. He still makes me feel safe, warm and happy, like in my surrogate home when I was younger. And I know how lucky I am because I, I still remember an older figurine.

• 2:41Glynn Washington?

  It was silver. Two masks. Halawad, one mask grinned, but his twin sneered and sat near the lamp in my grandmother's TV room.

• 2:58Glynn Washington?

  And it felt like both pairs of eyes stared, stared at us while we watched cartoons, as we ate cornflakes and we played hide-and-go-seek to the point where we would retreat to the kitchen or to the porch. We'd tell Granny that we didn't want to watch TV anymore.

• 3:22Glynn Washington?

  And I don't know that that figurine, that it caused the sadness of that place,

• 3:29Glynn Washington?

  or if it just reflected what was already there. I just remember how those empty eyes burned.

• 3:39Glynn Washington?

  My name is Glynn Washington.

• 3:42Glynn Washington?

  I told you what's in my home.

• 3:45Glynn Washington?

  Tell me what's in yours. Spook starts now.

• 4:05Glynn Washington?

  Now then, slumber parties, they should be all about friendship. Standing up too late, making soda come out of your nose, right? What if someone shows up with a book of spells and starts invoking spirits? Wow. You'd run the other way, right? But this is Spooked. And we've got to tell you, what happens when you stand right in front of the mirror, you chant someone's name three times and wait to see what happens? Bonnie Blagg lets us know her tale.

• 4:40Glynn Washington?

  Spooked.

• 5:05Speaker 02

  My name is Bonnie Blagg. I grew up in Lunenburg, Massachusetts, and I lived with my mom, my dad, and my two brothers.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  I was 11 years old. I was having a sleepover with my friends Amanda and Sarah. We were sitting in the living room, which was right outside of my bedroom. And we were sitting in a circle.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  We thought it was really cool that, you know, my friend had got this book of spells.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  The last thing I wanted was for my mom to find out what we were doing because I know that she does not approve of messing around with the spiritual world. She wouldn't let us have a Ouija board. She didn't want any of that in the house.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  My mom told us that it was 11 o'clock and it was time to go to bed, so we went into my room, but nobody was really ready to go to bed. So we turned off all the lights, turned on a lamp, and my friend put a scarf on top of it.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  There was just kind of a red hue and a dark room full of shadows. That's when my friend Amanda decided that she would try and do Bloody Mary into one of the mirrors on my furniture.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  My friend Amanda stood in front of the mirror on the vanity that was next to my bed. My friend Sarah and I stood behind her, not sure if we should be in the reflection of the mirror or not, because we weren't sure if we wanted to be involved. Amanda said, "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary."

• 6:59Speaker 02

  My friend Sarah, who was taking it really seriously, you know, was like, "You guys need to, you know, quit messing around."

• 7:08Speaker 02

  She thought that this was, you know, sacrilegious, or that it wasn't what God would have wanted.

• 7:19Speaker 02

  And we all panicked that something might happen, but nothing did happen.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  And Amanda was so sure that it was going to work, and she was really disappointed. So at that point, I think we gave up and just went to bed.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  Two nights later, it had to at least have been, you know, 11 or midnight. I was just laying there, trying to fall asleep.

• 7:56Speaker 02

  And I felt uneasy. And I don't know why, but I turned to look at my nightstand, the vanity, which was right next to my bed. And in the reflection of the mirror, I could see a small child standing next to my bed in front of the vanity, picking up all these little bottles that were on the vanity.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  They were full of like, you know, bath salts and, you know, little crystals and just, you know, sand from different beaches I'd traveled to, just different things that I'd collected in these little glass bottles. And he was picking them all up and smelling them one at a time, and then putting them back down.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  He existed like a hologram that was being projected out of the mirror.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  He was being really quiet and very delicate. So the only sound that he was making was just a little bit of, you know, like,

• 9:05Speaker 02

  that much noise, just picking something up and putting it down.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  My initial feeling when I saw this little kid was complete confusion.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  Because he looked like he was from American Victorian era.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  He had a hat on. It looked like it was a hand me down. It looked like it was too big for his head. He was wearing rags and he was kind of dirty and he had a kind of soft face.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  He's standing facing the mirror and I'm basically looking at him in the face.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  But he doesn't seem to notice me.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  When he noticed me, that's when he turned and smiled like the Cheshire Cat.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  It was so wide and unhuman looking. It was much too wide.

• 10:25Speaker 02

  His eyes went from being kind of a dullish gray to almost an intense black cherry jello color.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  As he smiled, his teeth grew into daggers.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  And he unclenched his jaw and they started dripping with blood.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  I panicked.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  I felt completely immobilized and I had no idea what to do.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  I was trying not to breathe. I was trying not to make any sort of visible signs that I was alive or there.

• 11:48Speaker 02

  All I thought about was, if he doesn't notice me, he'll go back to leaving me alone.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  I pulled the blankets over my head and I stayed like that, motionless, for pretty much the whole night.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  I woke up for school the next morning extremely tired.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  The first gut reaction that I had the next morning was, well, I hope that that wasn't real.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  I wanted to talk about it, but I also didn't want to sound insane.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  I didn't mention it to my friends either because, you know, I had been making fun of my friend who was taking it seriously. And then I was also making fun of my friend who thought it was religiously wrong to be messing around with ghosts. So I just didn't say anything.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  The second night, I'm laying in bed and I'm reading my book and every page or two, I glance over at the mirror.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  That's when the uneasy feeling hit me.

• 13:17Speaker 02

  And I looked over and the boy was there again.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  He's wearing the same outfit. He's picking up things off of the vanity. He's just inspecting them. And as soon as he notices that I can see him, he turns, his eyes get angry, he does the evil smile.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  And his teeth turn into bloody knives.

• 13:58Speaker 02

  I pulled the covers over my head and pretended like it didn't exist. Now it's real. So now this seems more of like a problem that I need to solve because I don't want to get in trouble for there being ghosts in my mom's house.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  I don't know if I fell asleep or if I managed to stay awake the entire night, but eventually

• 14:24Speaker 02

  I could hear my mom making coffee and I knew it was safe to take the blankets off of my face and get up.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  And so I thought maybe if I could figure out a little bit more about this kid, I could, you know, make him go away by figuring out what it is that he needed.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  So I got up and immediately started inspecting the vanity to see if I could tell

• 14:53Speaker 02

  what the boy had touched, you know, if there was any fingerprints, anything that would help me figure out who he was or what he was doing, or even just to prove that it had happened. And as far as I could tell, there wasn't.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  When I got ready to go to bed the following night, I do normal bedtime routine, brush my teeth. And I hoped maybe, you know, maybe get it out of his system the first two nights, maybe he's over it.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  I was only sleeping on my back.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Because I didn't want to sleep on my side facing away from him.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Because what if he was gonna do something?

• 15:53Speaker 02

  I didn't want to sleep on my side facing him, because then I'd just be staring at him.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  So I was just sleeping on my back, like staring at the ceiling.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Trying not to look either direction.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  So after about an hour of laying in my bed, I looked over.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  And he was there.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Again.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Instead of pulling the covers over my head, I looked to the other side of my room. And

• 16:37Speaker 02

  in the streetlights coming through the windows. In the reflections of the two mirrors that were on the opposite walls from each other.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  There was a whole party going on in my room.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  It was the same time period, but these people were much better dressed.

• 17:06Speaker 02

  And I could only see the portion of them that was being projected from the mirrors.

• 17:14Speaker 02

  I couldn't see anything that was below the mirror line.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  And there were probably, I would say about 12, 12 people in the room. And it looked like they were having a tea party or a dance or something.

• 17:32Speaker 02

  And they were all having a very good time. Until they noticed that I could see them.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  And then they stopped. They all turned, looked at me, and did the exact same thing that the boy did.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Where their eyes got dark.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  And their mouths sort of curled up and they smiled and their teeth all turned into these sharp, pointy daggers that were dripping with blood.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  I was absolutely terrified. Now I'm outnumbered. And then I did start chanting, "Just go away, this isn't real, this isn't real, this isn't real, you're not real. Dear God, if you fix this, I'll never screw around with supernatural ever again. Like, please just make this go away."

• 18:43Speaker 02

  So I stayed under the covers until I could see the sun coming up through the blinds, and then I got up.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Day four was a little bit harder for me because it was very hard to ignore the fact that that happened, and I very desperately wanted to tell someone, but at this point, this is sounding like a crazier and crazier thing to tell someone. So it's getting harder and harder to talk about because it's not just, "Oh, I saw a ghost once." Now it's, "Well, now I'm being haunted."

• 19:25Speaker 02

  I didn't want to drag anybody else into this with me. The last thing my mom needed was more stress in her life. At the same time, even if I told her and she was really receptive to the concept, what is she gonna do about it?

• 19:41Speaker 02

  I went to school and everything seemed fine.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  The fourth night was terrifying.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  So my plan actually that night was I was gonna try and like talk to them. Because at this point, they're clearly not going away. They're clearly not getting any less aggressive. And after these three nights, I absolutely had not been getting very much sleep.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  I was gonna say whatever came to my mind when I saw whoever appeared that night. I was basically going through my mind like, "Hi, I'm Bonnie. Who are you?" It's like, "That's weird. Do you introduce yourself to a ghost? Is that better or worse if they know my name?

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Like, what do they already know? I don't know." You know, it was like, "Should I be formal? Should I try and shake hands? Do you shake hands with a ghost? Do I want to touch a ghost?"

• 21:17Speaker 02

  But I was like, "I'll try and talk to them tonight, and then we'll figure out what the problem is, and then we'll fix it."

• 21:27Speaker 02

  And then, nothing happened. The boy didn't show up. The people didn't show up. Nothing happened.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  I just stayed in bed, not moving, waiting for them to show up.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  I woke up the next morning and I wanted the mirrors gone.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  The mirrors are heavy, so I had to move all three of the pieces of furniture away from the wall, and then unmount them. And I wanted to get rid of them.

• 22:02Speaker 02

  My mom didn't want to get rid of them, so we wrapped them up in cardboard and shoved them in the back of the closet with the water heater or something.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  The first night that the mirrors were off the furniture, I felt so relieved. I just felt like that eerie creepy lingering feeling was gone. Whatever realm had been opened was closed. That I felt like I could go to sleep. I just felt like a weight was lifted off of my chest, like physically lifted off of my chest. I felt like I could breathe.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  I never talked to anybody about the ghosts, but they were always there in the back of my mind.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  And every time we moved, the mirrors came with us.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  So the next time I had to make a decision about the mirrors was when I moved to Chicago when I was 18.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  They were still in cardboard in the back of my parents laundry room. And when I packed up my stuff to move to Chicago, my dad asked if I wanted to take them with me and I said, no.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  My mom asks why I don't want to bring the mirrors with me when I move. We were sitting in the kitchen. And so I finally told her about the visions, about the boy, about the other people. And that it freaked me out and that I didn't want to have them anymore.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  And she didn't seem surprised. I mean, I think everyone's mom has, you know, different faces that they make that you know what that emotion means. Like, oh, I've known about this the whole time. It's, it's nice that you finally fessed up. Like that kind of a face? She told me that she already knew about it.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  I was kind of stunned that she already knew about it. Not only that she already knew about it, but that she wanted me to take them with me. She felt comfortable keeping the mirrors in the house and why she felt comfortable like telling me to move them is because she, she had done something about it.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  She had been visited by the devil at the same point.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  And the devil told my mom that I had been messing around with the spirit world and shouldn't have been, and that I had invited an evil element into our home.

• 24:54Speaker 02

  She believes that the devil is a fallen angel whose job is to take care of the souls of the dead and the damned, and not that he's trying to lure people into a life of sin, as much as he's been charged with taking care of them.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  It seemed that he was concerned about my soul's future and that she needed to do something about this.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  And so while I was at school that fourth day, she exorcised my room and had cleansed all of the evil spirits.

• 25:37Speaker 02

  So I have no idea what she did, but it seems to have worked. It was the most matter-of-fact thing I think I've ever heard. I was like, oh, okay, that makes a lot more sense than that, like, through my complete inaction, this stopped. It makes a lot more sense that something was actually done, and that's why it stopped.

• 26:03Speaker 02

  When I was 28, and I had moved into a condo in Chicago that had, you know, basement storage space and extra closets. My parents end up bringing the mirrors up to Chicago.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Why do these mirrors keep following me? I don't want them. I told my friend Beth the story about the ghosts many years before this, when we first met, when I moved to Chicago. So she's kind of always known that this was, you know, a part of my life. And she got really excited and was like, oh, my God. Can I have them? She was like, you don't want them? Can I have them? Can I make them into art? And so I said, absolutely, yes, please take them away.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  So I'm not an artist. So I'm probably going to tell you the wrong method of whatever she's doing. But when you make something into a mirror, you use some sort of process that puts a silver glaze onto it. And she basically did the exact opposite, where she pulled the glaze off and then superimposed old photos that she got at thrift stores.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Like vintage photos of people that she thought looked like the people that I was telling her about.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  So it's still a mirror, but there's also, it looks like sort of a window with these pictures of people in them.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  So when I saw them in the gallery, the pictures are of real people and they were the wrong era.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  They didn't look like the ghosts that I saw. It was actually kind of refreshing. Like making a joke at their expense, like, oh, we've reimagined you and now you're these people. And you can't scare me anymore.

• 28:32Glynn Washington?

  Thank you Bonnie Blagg for sharing your stories to Spooked. We are so glad, so very happy to hear that you got rid of that dresser. The original score was by Leon Morimoto. That piece was produced by Chris Hambrick.

• 29:00Glynn Washington?

  You've been listening to Spooked. And if you dig stories that were not born in the dark of the nighttime, check out our sister podcast. It's amazing storytelling. Snap Judgment, storytelling with a beat. Snap Judgment, the ORG. My name is Glynn Washington. Spooked is produced by Mark Ristich, by Anna Sussman. Our chief spookster, Eliza Smith, Chris Hambrick, Annie Nguyen, Tiffany Elisa, Anne Ford, and Eric Yanez.

• 29:28Glynn Washington?

  Our sound team is Lauren Newsom, Renzo Gorio, and Leon Morimoto.

• 29:35Glynn Washington?

  Now mistakes, we all make a few. Some big, some small. I just request as a favor to me,

• 29:44Glynn Washington?

  one misstep you do not wish to make. Friends believe me when I say never, ever. Never, never, ever, never, ever, never, ever turn out the lights.