The Waiting Game

A horse-drawn carriage picks up a man, escorting him to a destination unknown. And Georgia’s Lake Lanier seems like the perfect spot to spend a holiday weekend. But beneath the calm blue waters... something’s watching. These supernatural stories come to us from our evil twin, Spooked https://spookedpodcast.org/. Spooked has all new October episodes! Listen to Season 11, "The Spooked Field Guide to the Shadow," and have a Happy Halloween Snappas! STORIES The Death Carriage Since he was a kid, Joe Conrad knows that death is not the end… it’s just a stop on the road. Thank you Joe for sharing your story with us. Produced by Erick Yáñez, scouted by Dan Yashinsky, original score by Lalin St. Juste, art by Teo Ducot. Lady of the Lake Georgia’s Lake Lanier seems like the perfect spot to spend the Fourth of July. But beneath the calm blue waters… something’s watching. Thanks Alyse for sharing your story! Produced by Erick Yáñez, original score by Yari Bundy, scouted by Evan Stern. Season 17 - Episode 49 Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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• 2:48Speaker 00

  Celebrating summer, right after 9th grade at the Dunes, Sagatuck, Michigan. Sunshine, water, sand, good times. And like magic, there she is, Lori.

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  The one that talked to her all year in school, couldn't get up the nerve. But here it tastes, it looks different. I'm feeling good. Icy red soda in my hand, you know, she's sitting on a blanket in the sand, happy crowd with her friends. So I steal up all my courage. I wave casually, stroll over to her groove, and I say, "Hey, Lori."

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  "Hi," she says. And my sweaty, nervous, clumsy fingers spill that icy red soda all over her, and she screams. Her friends scream. And then I scream, battling, trying to wipe it up, trying to apologize, trying to vanish in a cloud of mortified smoke. But it's not enough. It's never enough because instantly, there's the howling, the cackling. Since I was little, a laugh track follows me around and instantly goes off the moment I do something stupid. My brothers, rolling, pointing, laughing.

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  Late at my own graduation, walking across the high school stage, then tripping over my own gown, face-first into the front row of seats, roars of laughter always there. Showing up at an airport on a Friday, proudly handing the agent a ticket, only for her to tell me, "Aha, that plane left Thursday." Peels. My brothers every time, my high moments laughing, my low moments laughing. I lean, I lean on that cackle like a crutch, lets me know I'm never alone.

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  Whatever I do, wherever I go, laughter, always laughing, until the most horrible phone call you can ever receive.

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  Telling me the impossible.

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  And that laugh track stops.

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  I never imagined how empty, how hollow, how cold this journey would feel without that certain sound, the empty, the quiet, the so-so quiet, the staggering on alone.

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  And then one day, at the house, cooking, chopping, cutting, remembering, forgetting what I'm doing, watching a pot of pasta sauce tremble, it explode, an ocean of red droplets all over my kitchen, and as sauce drips from the ceiling, I hear it softly.

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  The laughing, I hear them.

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  Later chasing my fallen luggage as it bounces down an escalator, the laughing so close.

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  Then emptying a tube of eye cream onto my toothbrush and sticking back into my mouth, "Ah!" And from the next room or the other side of the shower curtain, howls.

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  There they are. And in studying the few scraps of the remaining Book of Shadow, it references different ways to determine at the end, the companions that will escort you on your journey.

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  Who will be your guide? And lots of people will draw the lots, will read the runes, will throw the dice and still not know exactly who waits to grasp their hand into the void.

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  But grief, deep sorrow, has given some of us a gift of sorts.

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  Because I know precisely who will meet me when I pass into the void. Who is waiting for me even now? What's more, I know with absolute certainty, they will be laughing.

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  Spooked, Field Guide to the Shadow, Starts Now.

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  Who is waiting?

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  Joe Conrad is a storyteller from Akron, Ohio, and he's seen enough to know that this journey is not the end of the story.

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  Soon.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  When my dad passed, I was 35 years old. My dad was 62. He had cancer.

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  Dad had been on a feeding tube for probably about a month.

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  One day, he was at home, and he just started to bleed.

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  He was probably dead before the ambulance got there.

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  After the initial shock got over, I think mom was relieved right away because dad had been suffering.

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  When the family got together, we were telling jokes and it was it was kind of like dad was still there. Dad would want us to have a good time, and so let's enjoy this.

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  We spent a lot of time after the funeral with my mom until she finally kicked us out of the house and said, "Y'all gotta go home. I got a life to live, and so do you."

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  It was probably 10 days after the funeral. It was the first Friday that my mom would be in the house alone.

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  She was sitting in her chair, and she hears a knock on the hallway door coming up from the stairs.

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  She had a brother-in-law who used to do that all the time. He would knock, but he wouldn't come in.

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  So she went over thinking it was my Uncle Tom, and she opened the door.

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  My dad was standing there.

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  He looked like he was 28, 30 years old, wearing his light blue suit that he had owned. And he was smiling.

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  And he walked right past her, and she could just feel

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  a cold blast coming into the room.

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  He walked through the kitchen into the big room and sat down in his chair.

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  And mom went in and sat down across from him.

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  The cold air filled the entire room. She was shocked. He was grinning, and she was trying to figure out what is he grinning at? Why is he smiling? Why is he so happy?

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  She don't know how long she sat there, waiting for him to say something.

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  She finally said, "Why are you here?"

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  And as soon as she spoke, it's like all of a sudden, there was a warmth in the room.

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  She felt warm and comfortable.

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  It was her realization then that dad was there to tell her that he'd be watching over her and that she shouldn't worry that everything was going to be okay.

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  When she had that realization, that's when he disappeared.

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  She always thought people would think she was crazy, so she never told anybody.

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  It was 10 years later that she told me about it.

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  It was just her and I. We were out on a swing in the backyard, and we were just talking about memories of things. And that's when she opened up about what she had witnessed right after dad had passed away.

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  When she told me that story, I was stunned.

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  I told her, I says, "Nobody, I don't think anybody." I says, "Least of all, any of your kids, none of them would think that you were crazy." And I said, "I think it's something that you should share with them. I think it would give comfort to all of us."

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  In my family, there wasn't much talk about those kinds of things.

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  I am the third of six children. We were raised as cradle Catholic. But I don't think there was much said about spirits and ghosts other than the scary ghost stories and jump stories.

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  But I immediately believed her. There was no even trace of doubt. I know that this is real. I also had something that I never talked about.

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  In the early 1960s, I was 13 years old, and I would always run over to grandma's house after school, and I would have cookies. I would go in, and I'd be in the kitchen having milk and cookies, and grandpa would yell out from his chair. He says, "Are you giving that kid all of my cookies?"

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  We had a good relationship, but he was always teasing. Like my dad, he always teased.

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  My grandfather, his health went up and down. He had emphysema. He had heart problems. There were frequent times my grandmother did not want to leave him alone. And so I was sometimes called to come and sit with him while she would go into grocery shopping.

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  When I would go in, grandpa would end up falling asleep and snoring, and he would have this horrible, horrible, loud snore, like

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  and he would go on and on for long periods of time. He was shaking window panes or, you know. And then it would just stop.

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  And I'm scared to death he's dying. And I would sit there and think, "Breathe, grandpa, breathe." And then, just as suddenly as it stopped, it would start up again.

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  This day, I was asked to stay with him again. My grandmother, she left, and he was in his bed, and I was sitting on a chair right next to him.

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  We had kind of developed a routine. Grandpa would say, "I don't need no damn babysitter. I can take care of myself." And I would say, "Grandpa, I'd rather be here." He said, "No, you should be out playing." Well, at least today, I could say that, "Grandpa, it's raining out. There's not much I can do out there."

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  He had gotten worse, and he was under more heavier medication.

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  Grandpa was sleeping for a while.

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  There wasn't the loud snoring that I had normally experienced. His breathing was quite light. And then he seemed to begin to wake up a little bit.

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  He said something to me and I didn't, I didn't catch what it was. I says, "Grandpa, I didn't hear that. What, what? Do you need help?" And then he roused again. He said, "The death coach is coming for me."

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  And he winked at me.

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  He would always wink when he was teasing me, or he was playing a trick on Grandma. That's just the way Grandpa was.

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  Grandpa stirred a little bit more and said something in pain and I said, "Grandpa, should I, should I get the doctor? Should I call the doctor?"

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  Grandpa said, "No, no, no." He says, "It's too late. It's too late." "The death coach is coming."

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  I'm starting to get concerned.

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  And then it got really, really dark outside. The streetlights came on and it was raining.

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  And then I heard this,

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  like wagon wheels and clip clop, clip clop of horses' hooves.

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  I heard this and I looked out the window.

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  And I was stunned. I couldn't quite believe it, but there was this dark, like coach coming down.

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  The coach looked huge. It was all black. The wheels were all black. Everything was black.

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  There was like some ornate carvings going around the top of the coach and there were like two harnesses. But they were empty.

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  And I can still hear the clip clop of hooves on a, on a red brick. But there were no horses there.

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  I didn't really know what to think of it. This is an unmanned, unhorse coach. It just doesn't make sense.

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  It passed the house next to Grandma's house. And then pulled up and stopped right in front of the gate.

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  I turned back and I look at Grandpa.

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  Grandpa is barely breathing now and he looks at me and says, "Is it here?"

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  And I, I can't even answer.

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  Grandpa grabs hold of my hand and his hand is just like ice cold.

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  He's gasping for breath or something and there's like sweat beads on his forehead and I touch his forehead and he's, he's, he's really, really cold.

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  He takes this great big, kind of like sigh.

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  And then

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  that was it.

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  I held his hand for a few minutes. It, it just ice cold.

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  I kind of looked back out the window to see if the coach, that coach was still there. And then when I turned back, I could see this white, wispy

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  figure of my grandfather, kind of rising up out of his body.

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  It's unreal and it, it can't be happening. But yet it is.

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  This wispy white figure moved toward the door.

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  And then it turned about halfway around.

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  He looks back and he looks at his body. And then it looked at me and and then he gives me that damn wink of his.

• 22:49Speaker 00

  Spook returns right after the break. Stay tuned.

• 22:59Speaker 00

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• 25:08Speaker 00

  Welcome back to the waiting game. Episode. This week, we're featuring stories from our evil twin podcast, Spooked, already in progress.

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  I could see this white wispy figure of my grandfather, kind of rising up out of his body.

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  This wispy white figure moved toward the door.

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  And then it turns about halfway around. He looks back and he looks at his body. And then it looked at me and and then he gives me that damn wink of his.

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  It went out the door.

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  I went over to the window to look out and I actually opened the window to see if I could see better.

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  I heard the front door open and I heard footsteps going across the porch. I'm stretching out to try and see and you can't see the door from there, but Grandpa comes down the steps. And he's no longer this figure. He, he's a real person. And he looks younger than I've ever seen Grandpa.

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  He's wearing this dark gray, double breasted suit. And he walks and opens the gate.

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  He's in front of the carriage.

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  He turns to me and looks up at me and kind of nods his head.

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  He steps inside the carriage and just kind of disappears into the blackness in there.

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  The coach starts up. And it doesn't go very far to the corner.

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  And then as it turns the corner, the coach disappears.

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  Just kind of into the mist.

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  I turned around and, and I look at my Grandpa's body and his eyes are open. Seeing him there really, really scares me and I reached up and I closed his eyes. I don't know, something I guess I had seen on TV maybe.

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  I didn't want to stay in the room, so I went downstairs. I went out, sat on the front steps. They were soaking wet, but I just sat there in the cold and I was waiting for Grandma.

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  It was only two or three minutes before the bus actually showed up and Grandma got off the bus. The driver helped her get the grocery cart off the bus and she started walking toward the house.

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  I wanted to run to her, but it was like I was frozen. I couldn't move.

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  I was crying.

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  When she came through the gate, I didn't have to say anything.

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  She said,

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  "I'm so sorry. You had to be the one that had to be here." She said, "Are you okay?" And I say, "Yes, Grandma." I says, "I says, "I'm okay. Grandpa's okay too."

• 29:00Speaker 01

  My mom, I did not tell her the story. You know, I didn't think that anybody would believe me. One day, we were called to the nursing home because my mom was having a spell. I was scared. This, this, this could be it. We kind of told all the kids, you know, maybe you need to come home and make a visit to your grandmother if you want to have that last visit. When we got there, things had gotten worse and the nursing home had called the ambulance.

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  They were taking her out on a gurney. We went over to the hospital. I could tell mom kept getting a little worse and a little weaker. She was giving up, but at the same time, she was fighting to hang on. I remember my one sister sitting there and said, "Mom, it's okay. You can let go." I just held her hand and, and we prayed and she passed away that night.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  When things settled down and everybody was back at my house, my daughter-in-law was walking down what we call our hallway of fame. Two hallway walls completely filled with pictures of fun times, fishing trips, celebrations. She was looking at all the pictures and she stopped in front of one and it was a picture of my dad and a fishing trip. She calls my son over and she says, "Who's, who's that in that picture?" He says, "Oh, well, that's my grandpa."

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  And she says, "Well, that's the guy that I saw." She said, "When we got to the hospital, she saw this guy just leaning up against the ambulance. His foot propping up against the bumper. He looked like he was about 20 or 30 and had on this light blue suit." When she told him that story, I was stunned. When my dad visited my mom, she said the same thing.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  He was about 30 and wore this light blue suit. My mom had said that she felt like everything was going to be okay, that dad was going to look after her. And so here it was, 20 years later, and he was still looking after her. There is life after death. There's no doubt in my mind. I've seen it myself. So I'm not really afraid of death.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  It's obviously inevitable and as I'm aging, it's, uh, I know that the death coach is coming sooner rather than later. But I want to know what's next. I want to know what's next.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  Thank you, Joe, for sharing your story with Spooked. That piece was scouted by Dan Yashinsky, was scored by Laleen St. Juust, was produced by Eric Yanyas. After the break, the age-old question, dogs or cats? And Snap Judgment continues. Stay tuned.

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• 34:40Speaker 00

  Welcome back to Snap Judgment, the waiting game episode. My name is Tom Washington and this week, we're featuring stories from our evil twin podcast, Spooked. Now, Elise, she's a young girl from Atlanta and wants to celebrate the Fourth of July at one of her favorite places, Lake Lanier. Looks like the perfect long weekend, just swimming and riding jet skis with her dad. But Elise's perfect day is about to take a turn.

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  Spooked.

• 35:34Speaker 03

  So that day, I wake up super excited. Me and my dad are going to go jet skiing with his very good friend Jay. It's my favorite thing in the world. I beg for us to go to the lake all the time. I remember putting on my bathing suit. We packed some snacks. The lake was packed that day. There's other families joking, laughing. There was music going. I could hear the sizzling of the grills, smell like the hot dogs and hamburgers that were going. And the sun was just shining. There was not a cloud in the sky.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  We were in a little bit of like a cove. There's trees just as far as your eye can see. There's an island in the middle of the lake that has one big tree on it. And there's lots of rocks, rocks everywhere. We put the jet skis in the water, my dad and his friend. I was in the water playing, splashing around a little bit with my dad. He was splashing water at me and then he decided to take me around on the jet ski as he'd done multiple times before. I sit down on my knees between my dad's legs as he's standing up, put my hands gripping

• 37:03Speaker 03

  the side of the skis and just like that, we take off. We went around that little island with the big tree. My hair is blowing in the wind. I just feel like a bird, like I'm flying. And I'm thinking, this is the best day ever. It was later in the afternoon, almost time for us to pack up. We're back in the shore after a jet ski ride and I am sitting on the jet ski on my knees.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  My dad is standing in the water. His friend Jay is on my left side. I can hear them talking about plans for the rest of the day, maybe going to get dinner or leave. And I just am thinking, I love the lake. I don't want to leave the lake. The jet ski was turned off at this point and it was starting to sink down a little bit. My dad tells Jay to turn on the ski because it's taking in water. He turns on the ski and the jet ski rumbles so loud, it terrifies me.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  I instinctively turned around and I grabbed the handlebars and in that moment, I grabbed the throttle as well. And all of a sudden, the jet ski takes off so fast.

• 38:53Speaker 03

  The water is going by very quickly. It almost looks like glass. The roar of the engine, it's so loud, it's almost deafening. The wind was whipping so hard that it was, my face hurt. I am bouncing up and down off of the bottom of the jet ski. I'm looking around because I'm by myself. There's no one else on this jet ski. Where's my dad? Where am I going? I look up. I'm going in a straight line directly towards this hill. And the whole hill is covered in rocks, like big boulder rocks, all different sizes,

• 39:37Speaker 03

  all different shapes. I was very scared, but I can't let go of either of the handlebars. My hands are locked. They are so tight that my knuckles are hurting. And I'm getting very close to this rock embankment when I see something blue out of the corner of my eye. I turn my head to the left and there is a lady, maybe about four or five feet away from me. She is not in the water.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  She's above the water, floating right around my eye level. She's sitting on her knees, her hands resting on her kneecaps. When I saw her, time slowed down the moment that she appeared. It was like everything froze. She has on a blue crocheted knit top. She has long blond hair, probably to her belly button, and bluish-greenish eyes. She has a soft smile on her face and it just filled me with like a wave of calm. I remember thinking, wow, she's so beautiful.

• 41:01Speaker 03

  She looks like one of my Barbies. She smiled at me and said, "This may hurt a little bit, but everything will be okay." At that exact moment, she disappears. And I turn, I snap my head back forward and I hit the rocks and I fly through the air. I hit the tree. I can feel like a little sting on my forehead. But as soon as I feel it, I feel my vest get really tight because I'm wearing a life jacket.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  It's like something grabbing me as tight as it could and pulling me back away from the tree. And then whatever it is, lets go of me. That's when time speeds up again and I slam into the water face first. I can see the water and I start to see the red swirls of blood. And I'm so mesmerized by the way that the light's hitting it and it's mixing with the water.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  I thought, huh, that looks so beautiful. All of a sudden, I felt somebody behind me bear hugging me. I feel the wind hitting my face and I was able to breathe. I look at this man, this stranger I've never met. He starts frantically screaming.

• 42:52Speaker 04

  The baby's alive! The baby's alive! She's alive!

• 42:59Speaker 03

  Next thing I know, there is a crowd of people and they're all like gasping and insisting that I lay down. My dad and Jay get up there. They're huffing and puffing. They're saying over and over, "We told you, hit the red button, hit the red button. Oh, my gosh, are you okay?" I was very confused. I tell them I'm okay. Can I just go back to playing in the water? My dad just looks like a deer in headlights. He says, "No, baby, we can see your skull." We get to the hospital. They remove this bandage on my head and I see my mom.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  She's standing right there and she looks horrified. They had to do x-rays, MRIs, you name it, to make sure it didn't have broken bones, swelling. They found nothing. It was just a wound on my forehead. The doctor said, you know, "You're one really lucky and blessed girl. Like, this could have been really bad." And I remember thinking, okay, yeah, I guess so. They gave me a bunch of stitches and that was it.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  After the hospital, I tell my mom in the car about the lady in blue. I say, "The lady in the blue dress, the lady in the blue dress, where is she?" My mom says, "What lady?" And I explain, "The, the nice lady. When I hit the tree, she threw me over her shoulder as she flew away. Who is she?" She whipped her head around and said, "Baby, I don't know who that lady is. Tell me again, what did she do?" She had pulled over at this point. She's looking at me and her eyes get wide and she says, "I believe you saw an angel.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  You should thank her because she saved your life." I was like, okay, I have an angel. The accident left me with a large scar perfectly in the middle of my forehead. For years, every time someone asked me what happened, I would tell them the story. I would tell people I'd seen an angel. I just always called her my guardian angel in the blue dress, my lady in the blue dress.

• 45:46Speaker 03

  Last year, I had gotten on TikTok and I'd seen a lot of videos about Lake Lanier. And I decided to share my story. So I hear we're telling our weird stories about Lake Lanier? Okay, cool. So, hey, I'm an Atlanta native, grew up about 30 years. My video started getting a lot of traction. I started getting a lot of comments. "Have you heard of the lady of the lake? The lady of the lake in blue?" I had never heard of the lady of the lake. After a few hours of having my video up, I received a comment and it said, "Hey, the

• 46:29Speaker 03

  lady in blue is actually Delia Mae Parker. Google her, period." I Googled Delia's name and immediately there's pages upon pages. I'm clicking on one, I'm reading everything on it. I click the next one, I start reading everything on it. I started to try to tell myself it wasn't her until I read an article that had pictures of her. She did have long hair. Her eye color was the same. Her face was very similar.

• 47:06Speaker 03

  I am increasingly getting freaked out, like my whole body is covered in chill bumps. Delia Mae Parker was a woman in her early twenties who in the 50s was working at the Riverside Military Academy. She went out with one of her friends for a night out. They were, I believe, going to go dancing. She borrowed a blue dress and they went missing that night. They were never located. They put a headstone up for her.

• 47:49Speaker 03

  And her body was not found until the early 90s. They unfortunately crashed and they found her friend's car in the lake. The detail that made me the most uncomfortable was her crash site was not far from where my accident happened. I'm sitting there reckoning with myself. I had held on to this image in my mind that this was my guardian angel.

• 48:25Speaker 03

  And I realized that the thing that saved me, it was a ghost. I do believe that Delia is a spirit that does help people. There are so many accidents on that lake. Every single week, I read about one or it's in the news that another person has either drowned or been in a boating accident or a tubing accident. And I've watched multiple videos of people's encounters with her, that they'd had almost like a near-death experience as well and that she'd saved them.

• 49:09Speaker 03

  And so I do believe that Delia is out there trying to protect people from meeting the same fate that she did. I do believe at this point, I owe it to Delia to go back to Lake Lanier to say thank you for saving my life. However, I will not be jet skiing this time. I'll be staying it from the shore.

• 49:46Speaker 00

  Thank you so much, Elise, for sharing your story with Spooked. That piece was scouted by Evan Stern. It was scored by Yari Bundy. It was produced by Eric Yanez.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  What? Do you need even more stories from the dark? Told by people who could scarcely believe it happened themselves? No, that Snap's Evil Twin Podcast, Spooked, serves up stories from the shadow side each and every week. And right now, our deepest dive ever. The Spooked Field Guide to the Shadow. To take this journey, subscribe right now to the Spooked Podcast on any podcast platform.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  KQED in San Francisco has hidden Spooked under the raging waters of the River Styx to preserve you from what emerges on All-Hallowed Eve. Please, please, don't seek to find it, lest it seek to find you. For all the swarms of AI agents attacking our shadow edifice, know this: only those possessing a soul shall be allowed entry. Therefore, no Snap Studios content may be used for training, testing, or developing the soulless machine learning or soulless AI systems without prior written permission on Team Spooked. The union, representative producers, artists, editors, and engineers,

• 51:28Speaker 00

  members of the National Association of Barcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Alliance of America, AFL-CIL Local 51, and...

• 51:38Speaker 00

  Spooked is brought to you by the team that will no longer ride on anybody's stage, Coach. Except, of course, for Mark Ristich. He calls Shotgun. There's David Kim, Zoe Fregno, Eric Yanez, Taylor Decot, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Daniel Shinsky, Su Yi Chu, Evan Stern, Eve Jeffcoat, Ishel Lopez, Jack Darrow, Nicholas Smarts. The Spooked theme song is by Pat Mesiti Miller. My name is Lynn Washington. And the Book of Shadow reveals

• 52:17Speaker 00

  an ancient cosmology where the grim reaper, Death, does not travel alone. In this map, Death only journeys with her twin sorrow. Together, hand in hand, Death and sorrow come for the dying. And when they give the dead their final kiss, only then do they part. Death leads the fallen on their journey, but sorrow... sorrow stays behind, seeking to embrace every person, every creature, every legacy the fallen person loved, searching for those left behind, searching for us.

• 53:01Speaker 00

  But we feel her grasping and we run from her touch, hide ourselves away, chase the memory of our loss into the dark recesses, even to the point of denying our love. But sorrow... sorrow cannot be tricked. Sorrow knows better. Sorrow will find us, but this is her secret. Sorrow is not a goddess of pain. Sorrow is a goddess of healing, of joy, of memory, of laughter. Our pain is just the price of our love,

• 53:43Speaker 00

  and the love far, far, far outweighs the cost. The texts reveal that the greatest tragedy is not sorrow. No. No. The real tragedy is to leave no sorrow behind. Pray that sorrow follows when you fall. Never, ever, never, never, ever, ever. Never, ever. Turn out the lights.