Dearly Departed

Dearly departed, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called Spooked. Most of the ghosties and ghoulies we meet on this show have sinister agendas. But sometimes, spirits reach through the veil to send tender messages: I’m here; I miss you; remember me.

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

• 0:04Glynn Washington?

  If one could peel back one's own skin and peer at that which lies within, then one might search and still not see. There is no you, and there is no me.

• 0:20Glynn Washington?

  It's time. You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned.

• 0:31Glynn Washington?

  Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. And sometimes you make great ones, like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage for you, along with 24/7 claim support and great customer service. So when you think about it, that's like four great decisions that more than makes up for the TV debacle. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company, affiliates, and other insurers. Not available in all states.

• 1:14Glynn Washington?

  Spooksters, you have spoken. We want more spook, you said. We want the support to 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.

• 1:58Glynn 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.

• 2:24Glynn Washington?

  Don't turn out the lights.

• 2:34Glynn Washington?

  My mother and I, we don't often see eye to eye. And as the years pass, I feel our chances for reconciliation, for healing, I feel they're slipping away. Like we're missing basic understandings of why our core values so offend the other. And I want to understand my mother, I do. I want to know better from where she came. I have so very few pictures from her younger years, so few. It was a rare thing to aim a camera at a skinny brown girl when she was a child.

• 3:18Glynn Washington?

  But recently, a cousin sent me a gift, a photo. Dammit's water stain. There she is, a teenager beaming, relaxed with her sisters, on the precipice of the unfolding of her life. And I stare at this crumbling picture into a happy space. This person I've never known. Constantly smiling back at the camera. I want people to be nice to that girl. She is so sweet, she has such a big heart. I want to dive into this photo and tell people to, please, please, please,

• 4:03Glynn Washington?

  be kind to this little girl. Treat her gently. I want the world in this picture to give her flowers and sing her songs and make her feel safe. And I know, I know it will do none of those things. It will not. And I want to tell her to run because, girl in the picture, the bad thing is coming and you need to get out of there right now.

• 4:38Glynn Washington?

  The dark thing is coming.

• 4:43Glynn Washington?

  Run away.

• 4:46Glynn Washington?

  Please, mother.

• 4:50Glynn Washington?

  Run away.

• 4:59Glynn Washington?

  It's Luke Stiles.

• 5:35Glynn Washington?

  The dark thing is coming. The dark thing is coming. Our first storyteller, Lynn, takes us up to Canada, a small island city of Victoria, British Columbia. And this Victoria, it's the kind of place that still feels like an old English village. Protecting tea is a popular pastime, but as Lynn learned one night, this curtain, this curtain's more like a veil. I'll let Lynn take it from here.

• 6:08Glynn Washington?

  Split.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  This was in the early 90s. I was with my two friends. It was a Saturday. We decided to go for a drive along Beach Drive in Oak Bay. It was raining a little bit when we left and we were riding in my red Volkswagen Bug. The friend in the front seat was my best girlfriend and the friend in the backseat was another best friend of mine.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  We were wanting to have a bite to eat. And we decided that we would go to Oak Bay for some fish and chips. And by the time we were finished with our fish and chips, it was dark. And we weren't quite ready to go home yet.

• 7:26Speaker 01

  We thought that we would just cruise around a little bit along Beach Drive and try and catch the moonlight. And just sort of kill some time before we went home to watch Star Trek.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Well, Beach Drive is an old drive in Victoria. There's a marina there, an old hotel called the Oak Bay Beach Hotel, which has since been remodeled, and then a golf course.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  We drove past the golf course and we could still see the moon. It was dark. And then we continued on towards the Oak Bay Beach Hotel.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  It was quite dark, but it seemed to get even darker than dark. And it started to rain.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  What I first see is the moonlight coming through the trees.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  And then, we didn't have any music on, but we all just sort of naturally fell silent. Because it just seemed darker than it should be.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  And in that darkness, I saw a shadow.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  I was quite worried because it was so stormy all of a sudden that there was a person caught out in the rain. And I turned on my high beams. And as soon as my high beams hit the object, what we were looking at really was a glowing woman in a white dress.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  And she wasn't walking, she was floating. And she had no face.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  It was like a shifting nothingness, a glowing shifting nothingness. And throughout the car was this sound of, "Oh."

• 9:27Speaker 01

  When we finally realized what we were looking at, my friend in the backseat screamed, "Step on the gas." Because we just needed to get out of there. I didn't know what was going to happen. But I did slow enough where we were able to watch her walk.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  She was walking towards the hotel. And at least that seemed like it was her destination. Like she knew where she was going. Like she knew what her fate was going to be. And she just seemed really sad.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  My friend in the backseat started to cry. And I just kept on saying, "I think we just saw a ghost." "You guys, I think we just saw a ghost." And we were a little nervous about the whole thing. But we were also quite excited that something like that had actually happened with us all in the car and we all saw the same thing.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  When I got home, I called my Auntie Joyce because I used to like sharing exciting things that happened to me in Victoria. And so I called her and I said, "Auntie Joyce, we were driving along Beach Drive. And we saw a ghost." And she paused and she said, "You're very lucky. You saw Doris."

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Well, the story my auntie told me was that in the 1930s, Doris was a nurse. And she had a husband who had an alcohol problem. And they had separated. And on this night, he had invited her to try and reconcile to the Oak Bay Beach Hotel. She had gone there that night to meet with him. And they had had an argument in the hotel. But they decided to take it outside. So they started to walk towards the golf course. And I guess they did make it to the golf course and go quite deep into the golf course because it's quite dark at night.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  So they were there at nighttime and they had an argument and he beat her to death. And the next day, a caddy found her body and they looked into the water and her husband was floating in the water. He killed himself shortly after killing her. She's the most famous ghost in Victoria.

• 12:06Glynn Washington?

  Life is all about making decisions. Sometimes you make questionable ones, like buying a new TV that's too big for the wall because the electronics store employee was a little too good at their job. And sometimes you make great ones, like protecting your home and auto with Progressive. You get customized coverage options so you can be sure you have the right coverage for you, along with 24/7 claim support and great customer service. So when you think about it, that's like four great decisions that more than makes up for the TV debacle. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers, not available in all

• 12:51Glynn Washington?

  states.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  So the question is, why? Why? Why after such a horrible experience, why couldn't she relive some of her better experiences? Why is it that one that she comes back to? And the thought of this person repeating their steps over and over again, probably still trying to figure out what happened and why somebody they love took their life. This woman is still walking and still experiencing these things. It was September that we saw her and it was also September that she was killed.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  And I wonder if she was rewalking her path. Maybe she does it every year, trying to figure out what she could have done differently. Whenever I go back to Victoria, I still drive that road, hoping that I'll see her again.

• 14:07Glynn Washington?

  Thank you Lynn for introducing us to Doris. Folks, Lynn is a spooked listener. She shared her spooky story with us and we want you to do the same thing, spooked, at snapjism.org. The original score for that story was by Andrew Butler, it was produced by Greta Weber.

• 14:46Glynn Washington?

  Now spooksters, you may want to pull up close for this one because we're going up north to Canada with our storyteller Desiree. It's a beautiful summer night. Desiree is sitting around a campfire with her nearest and dearest. They're just settling in. It's around that time when folks start to tell stories. Spooked.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  I'm 28. I've just finished working for the summer as a tree planter and I'm back at my parents' cabin on this beautiful lake called Clearwater Lake. And this is my most happy place. It is starry, it's warm, it's clear. It's just like the perfect summer night. We have a fire every night and the bonus is that my Auntie Carol and my Uncle Ken are visiting.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  I hadn't seen my Auntie Carol in a while. She and my mom have been good friends for well over 40 years. So I was very pleasantly surprised and pleased to sit around the campfire with them after dinner.

• 16:02Speaker 02

  It's getting dark around the campfire so that when you're sitting with everyone, everyone's getting that orange glow. I was sitting at the picnic table. We had scooted it closer to the fire. We were just sitting around chatting.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  Desiree and her family do not usually talk about ghosts. But Aunt Carol is that kind of an aunt, more of a friend of the family, not a blood relative. The rules don't really apply to her. So as the fire dims down, the shadows get longer, and Auntie Carol brings it up.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  So Auntie Carol describes how at night when she's in her bed, she hears footsteps pacing around.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  And she really connected that to loved ones watching over her. And then she said she would, when she was away from her daughter, she would ask those same spirits or people to watch over her daughter. And her daughter would hear footsteps around her bed.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Auntie Carol's daughter is Jen, and Jen doesn't share her mother's love for the spirit realm.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  She says, you know, Jen doesn't like that, so I had to ask the spirits to go away and not bug her so much.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  The back of my neck starts to tingle right when she says this, when she brings in her daughter Jen.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  And I get this memory flood back to me, and I just went, "Ah!" And I just launched into my story.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Desiree was only six, and Jen was just a baby. Auntie Carol dropped Jen off at Desiree's house for the weekend. The two of them slept together in Desiree's bedroom.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  I woke up in the middle of the night. And what woke me up was her crying. This very loud screaming crying. As I was opening my eyes, there was just lightning. There was a thunderstorm and it was just crashing and booming and crashing and booming. That lightning that was happening would just flash and light up the whole room. And a second would go by and it would go dark, dark, dark. And then it would flash and light up the whole room. I was looking at her because she was so upset. She was standing up in her crib towards the door with her arms outreached.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  That's when I looked at the door because I was like, what is she doing? And I could see someone standing in the door. And I just thought it was my mom because that's who would come and get the baby if she was crying. But as I focused in my eyes to like, look closer, like, why isn't my mom moving? So like, why hasn't she gotten the baby? The figure didn't move. And then my attention kind of started slowing down of like, something's happening here. This person was wearing like a long, old fashioned style nightgown. It just seemed very unlike something my mom would wear. But I couldn't see anything on the front. It was just dark.

• 19:23Speaker 02

  The lightning is backlighting this person. It's so dark in my room, but the windows from the living room behind are lighting her up from behind. And that's when I see that there's this white puffy hair on top of this person. And my mom has straight jet black hair. And I just froze. I could feel this weird sense coming over me like, that's not my mom. Who is that? And why is this baby screaming so loud and looking at it? The baby is seeing what I'm seeing.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  I knew I was looking at something that wasn't supposed to be in the house.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Like, everything tensed up and I couldn't move. And when I did move, it was the one movement of diving under my blankets. And I just stayed there, petrified. I wasn't gonna look again, just in case.

• 20:28Speaker 02

  I just didn't know what would happen if I looked again.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  I just remember it going black and dark, and I don't remember anything after that.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  I knew I was scared at night a lot after that, but I think I pushed it so far down.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  And I didn't think of that memory until that night around the campfire.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  And as I'm telling Auntie Carol the story, she turns white. And I look at her, and she just looks at me and says, "That's the weekend I went to my mother's funeral. That had to have been my mother."

• 21:18Speaker 02

  That's why I left Jen with your mom that weekend my mom had passed away. I just excitedly said that had to have been it, had to have been your, it had to have been your mom. And I described her. I said, "She had fluffy, white hair." And Carol said, "Yes." I said, "She was short." And Carol said, "Yes." Hearing that story, she was pretty emotional and she was really happy. "Oh, my mom got to say goodbye. My mom did come and say goodbye." And it was such a full-circle moment of knowing who it was. It wasn't anything I did. It wasn't trying to scare us. It was just this grandma who loved her granddaughter. Kinda like my grandma, right?

• 22:02Speaker 03

  Desiree had never known her own grandma. Six months before Desiree was born, her grandma Daisy passed away. Her mom and dad never showed her pictures or videos. It was too sad for a kid. But when Desiree was just old enough to form her own sentences?

• 22:20Speaker 02

  I started just saying random things about Grandma Daisy. And I would relay these little tidbits of information that my mom would look at me and go like, "How do you know that?" She just knew that it was just such weird information that a little girl would know, like just randomly. It's just, she just always thought it's not something you could absorb from a conversation because we didn't have conversations about Grandma Daisy. And then it came one day when I was about two, two and a half, not quite three, that I came and I was just sobbing and I said, "She's gone." And I cried all day. I just cried and cried and cried. And my mom did not know what to do with me. It's like I grieved her, like, out of nowhere, for no reason.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  Like, it just hit me. And after that, I refused to let anyone speak about her. That was part of my grief. So for my mom, that was a really powerful moment of thinking there was something going on of my grandmother maybe being around me because of this intense day and this intense outburst that she could never explain.

• 23:32Glynn 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. Listening 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.

• 24:15Glynn Washington?

  And I could get a little more room in my closet, you know, for that next jacket.

• 24:22Glynn Washington?

  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.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  As Desiree grew up, the intense emotions faded away, and it became more of a nice idea that she could still feel Grandma Daisy's presence. Then one summer, when she was on break from college, she was up in northern Manitoba, out in the middle of the woods, planting trees.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  It's really hard manual labor. You get up in the morning and you've got to get your clothes on quick because you're chilly. You know, out of your warm sleeping bag into your warm clothes, into the mess tent to get your breakfast and pack your lunch. Tree planting is monotonous. You have bags around your waist that you carry the little saplings in. You just put your shovel straight in the ground, straight up and down, wedge a hole, wiggle, wiggle, throw a tree in, quickly close it, and then take two more steps. You just get into this movement that is, you know, looking for the next spot where you're going to put that tree and then getting there with your two steps. You always have to follow the last line of trees you planted

• 25:38Speaker 02

  because you don't want to have any holes on your land.

• 25:43Speaker 03

  Early one overcast spring morning, Desiree was planting trees out in the woods.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  I could get into the zone, like I could really zone out really quick. And I'm nearing the end of a trench at the back of my land. And I know the tree line's coming up, but I just head down one tree after the other. And probably about three trees away from the end of the trench, I just hear this voice right in my ear that startles me, that says, "You need to look up now." Just like, "You need to look up now." Like, "Just stop what you're doing." Definitely scared me. Where I literally jumped and looked to the left side that I heard it.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  I knew there was no one near me.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  But I saw a bear at the end of my trench. So like, pretty close. I was closer than I'd been to a bear before.

• 26:50Speaker 02

  And I just went, "Ho!" And I stopped.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  You're supposed to really kind of put your eyes down. You don't want to look aggressively at a big animal. And I just waited to see what she would do because she wasn't moving. I could see her whole side and she was just looking at me. And she just took a step forward and behind her was a baby cub.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  And that's when I got really scared for the first time of, now what is she gonna do? Because she's gonna protect her baby.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  My heart was pounding. I've never been scared of being like eaten by a bear. But being mauled by a bear is what I picture. It would take you down with its paws and scratch you too deep, like you'd just be beaten up and really, really hurt. That would be what I would be the most scared of. So I tried to get as small as I could in my trench. I put my shovel kind of back behind me so it didn't look like a weapon. And I just started to back away, keeping an eye on her to make sure she wasn't doing anything to come at me. But give her the out of, you know, you have to just take your baby and go. You don't have to attack me.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  So I just backed away and she, she ran off into the tree line with her baby.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  I was shaken.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  That voice saved me. It was so real. It wasn't in my head. Like, if I didn't look up, I would have been super close to her and she would have just defended herself and defended her baby. Because I was so not paying attention. I just wasn't at all.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  It was an outside source.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  That told me to be careful and it had to have been my grandmother. Like my grandmother saved me.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  I left my piece. I grabbed my bag with my lunch and I walked down the road and I just said to my neighbor who was tree planting, I said, I can't plant alone today. Like I just had an experience. I'm, I'm shaken. I gotta plant with you today. I'm sorry. And I don't even know if I told them what happened. I just said, I saw a bear. I couldn't shake it for the rest of the day.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  I've always thought of my grandma Desiree as my guardian angel. I felt like we had a connection because I was named after her and she just really needed to step it up in that moment.

• 29:44Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Desiree, for sharing your story with Spooked. Spooksters, Desiree is a Spook listener. She wrote in to tell us her story and you better believe I need to hear from you. Reach out. Spooked at snapjudgment.org. Original scores by Nicholas Marks. It was produced by Chris Hambrik.

• 30:26Glynn Washington?

  Now, spooksters, we walked this dark path together. Do you yourself possess an inexplicable power which no one will believe? Tell us. Tell us all about it. Email us your story at [email protected]. Because there is nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener. Let us know. And the best way to let the dark side know that you're spooked is by sporting spook gear, the T-shirt of your dreams, available right now at snapjudgment.org.

• 31:01Glynn Washington?

  And remember, if you like your storytelling under the bright light of day, get the amazing, the stupendous, snap-judged podcast, Storytelling with a Beat It Might Just Change Your Life. Spook was created by the team that knows to come in from the rain. Except, of course, for Mark Ristich, there's Anna Sussman. Our chief spookster is Eliza Smith, Chris Hambrik, Aine Nguyen, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Renzo Goryo, Teo Decat, Doug Stewart, Marissa Dodge, Zoe Farigno, Jacob Winnick, Tiffany DeLiza, Anne Ford. The spook theme songs by Pat McSweeney Miller. My name's from Washington and recall that some mirrors will always reflect back

• 31:46Glynn Washington?

  more than you wish to see. And broken glass is better than the alternative. But before taking any drastic steps, remember, first things first, never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, turn out the lights.