Cabin 4

Have you ever had that instant connection with someone where you know you are somehow part of their story? When Connie meets “Geneva” at an old retreat center in California their lives start to become "entangled."

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

• 0:04Glynn Washington?

  To ask for aid, it's hard to do. Hat in hand to go to you and beg for change or crust of bread, I said, "I'd rather die instead of let me fall into your debt." But somehow still, I'm not dead yet. My beaten, shriveled silhouette, you witch, as if I pose a threat, then turn.

• 0:30Glynn Washington?

  Just like...

• 0:32Glynn Washington?

  We've never met.

• 0:42Glynn Washington?

  You're listening to Spooked. Stay.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Do you like scary stories? Think you've heard it all? Well, you've never heard it like this.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  Radio Rental is a horror podcast featuring true scary stories told by real people.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  He's tapping, tap, tap, tap. He's tapping on the door. He wants us to open the door.

• 1:15Speaker 03

  Then the narrow light turns on, and then the narrow light turns on in the shape of a triangle. And I'd say it's probably about the length of a school bus, you know, right above my head.

• 1:23Speaker 04

  She had long, ratted hair. She was wearing a dress. Her ribs were showing, her fingers were long, she looked shriveled, partially decayed.

• 1:35Speaker 05

  I'm starting to freak out a little bit. I'm pleading with them to just please let me out.

• 1:40Speaker 06

  Dee's eyes started opening. They were pure white, and I lose it.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  Radio Rental returns October 23rd. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:08Glynn Washington?

  I am not old, yet. I'm older. It turns out there's a big difference. I've grown old enough to recall finally that magical time when bad things couldn't happen to me. That time when I had no care for a sudden pain in my chest. The time I joyfully answered the unexpected midnight phone call without the slightest hint of terror in my voice. Hello? Since then, I've learned my lesson. Every smile does not come from a friend. Some knives, you only see after they have drawn blood.

• 2:51Glynn Washington?

  And if I could whisper a few words to the younger me, I wouldn't warn him of what I've learned, no. No. Because it is so very important that I never see it coming.

• 3:21Glynn Washington?

  Spook Starts.

• 3:26Glynn Washington?

  Now.

• 4:14Glynn Washington?

  Lessons learned. We're about to hear from Connie. And I want to let sensitive listeners know, this story contains talk of drug use, graphic imagery, and maternal mortality. Now Connie, she's just 22 years old, working odd jobs to stay afloat. And we begin with Connie in the middle of a catering gig with her best friend Susan at this fancy retreat center out in the woods. And up until now, it's felt like just another job. But Connie, Connie's about to meet someone who will change her life.

• 5:04Speaker 07

  One of the things that happens with people in the service industry is that when the day is done, it's basically understood that everyone is just going to sit around and kind of get to know each other.

• 5:23Speaker 07

  So we all pour a glass of wine and we go sit outside, which is on the side of this beautiful lake.

• 5:34Speaker 07

  And there's a little fire pit. So we spend the next probably two or three hours sitting around and telling stories and talking about the day.

• 5:53Speaker 07

  This woman, let's call her Geneva, begins to tell us stories about her life. She spent a decade or so as a midwife, then became a counselor. For the last few years, she had been working with hospice patients. I begin to warm up to Geneva pretty quickly. And she starts warming up to me as well. We actually look alike. She's about 20 years older than I am, but we have the same kind of coloring

• 6:35Speaker 07

  and, you know, we're sort of built the same. Susan and I have a day or two more of this catering job. Geneva and I, throughout those next couple of days, just continued to get closer. You know, would get lost in conversation with each other. It just felt like we already knew each other. We just had kind of this connection.

• 7:12Speaker 07

  When we had to leave, it was actually really sad because she lived in a town in Northern California that is about nine hours away. It was a big, almost tearful hug at the very end. And she says to me, "I will see you again soon." One way or the other.

• 7:37Speaker 07

  It was about two months later. Susan got an offer to cater a retreat up in Northern California. And she says, "Connie, you've got to go with me." We quickly realized by looking at the map that this retreat center is very near to where Geneva lives.

• 8:03Speaker 07

  So we get in touch with her and she says, "Come a day early, you can stay with us at our house. The next day I can help you guys get situated and show you around. I'm really familiar with this retreat center." We finally arrive at Geneva's house around sunset. She welcomes us in and shows us around, shows us where we're going to be sleeping for the night. We sit down around this gigantic table and start eating and she starts telling us a little bit about this retreat center that we'll be going to in the morning. It originally began as basically a hippie commune back in the 60s and 70s.

• 8:48Speaker 07

  Eventually, it kind of degenerated into more of a drug commune. There was a culture of just hard drug use and that's what it became for quite a while.

• 9:11Speaker 07

  In the morning, we drive to the center and it's about a 30-minute drive and it just kind of gets a little more and more remote as we get closer.

• 9:29Speaker 07

  The trees start even looking a little larger and the forest gets a bit thicker. And then we arrive at the entrance. It's beautiful, it's lovely. There's a huge, beautiful main lodge. It looks like a log cabin and there's a little garden and a gazebo with a couple of picnic tables.

• 9:58Speaker 07

  But there was nothing warm or welcoming about it. Just the general vibe is not very warm and fuzzy.

• 10:10Speaker 07

  But I just try to ignore it because we are here to work. There's no way out of it. So I just kind of put it in the back of my mind.

• 10:27Speaker 07

  We parked the cars and Geneva takes us on a little tour. She shows us this big, beautiful main lodge. Just down from there are several cabins. She tells us about the cabins, that, you know, back in the day, they were all basically tiny houses.

• 10:50Speaker 07

  We make a final stop at the main office. We introduce ourselves to a woman running that office. And she says, "Okay, great. Susan and Connie, I have you assigned to Cabin 4."

• 11:05Speaker 07

  Geneva freezes momentarily.

• 11:09Speaker 07

  Her face fell a little bit, and I noticed it.

• 11:16Speaker 07

  She didn't say anything about it, though. She basically said, "Okay, all right, let's go bring your stuff into Cabin 4."

• 11:36Speaker 07

  After loading our stuff in, Geneva says, "I can't stay. I've gotta go. I've gotta go."

• 11:44Speaker 07

  She basically rushes off, a little more quickly than I was expecting. It seemed like she just wanted nothing more than to get out of there, and it was odd. I did wonder what it was about, but there wasn't really much time to dwell on that at all. We just had to unload everything into the kitchen and get right to work.

• 12:16Speaker 07

  Anyone who's done this kind of catering work knows that the days are absolutely brutal. You have to be up by about 5:30 in the morning, and usually you're done around 10:00 PM.

• 12:37Speaker 07

  Maybe you get around five hours of sleep or so, and then you get up the next day and do everything all over again.

• 12:45Speaker 07

  So on the second to last day, I am completely exhausted.

• 12:58Speaker 07

  We had cleaned up from lunch and we were doing some light prep for dinner. There is a sheet pan of roasted vegetables in the oven, and I open the oven door. I reach in.

• 13:16Speaker 07

  I feel just the searing pain.

• 13:22Speaker 07

  Somehow, I managed to burn my forearm on one of the racks.

• 13:29Speaker 07

  It was absolutely the straw that broke the camel's back.

• 13:39Speaker 07

  I melted down into a puddle of tears, and poor Susan looks at me and she says, "Connie, it's okay. Go take a nap. It's okay. I got this. You've got about an hour and a half. Please go get some rest."

• 13:57Speaker 07

  So I take off my apron. I go outside. I walk across the little garden.

• 14:04Speaker 07

  I'm gonna go have a cigarette by myself and get some air, and then I'll go back to the cabin to sleep.

• 14:18Speaker 07

  I'm sitting in this gazebo, and I'm trying to calm myself down.

• 14:25Speaker 07

  I'm breathing and closing my eyes.

• 14:33Speaker 07

  I open up my eyes, and I am pretty startled by what I see.

• 14:47Speaker 07

  I see a bunch of lights.

• 14:53Speaker 07

  In a grid. It was as if someone had thrown a blanket over the ground. And this blanket was made up of a grid of lights.

• 15:09Speaker 07

  And it was just glowing. A greenish-blueish glow.

• 15:21Speaker 07

  And it was pulsating.

• 15:26Speaker 07

  I could not understand what the heck I was seeing.

• 15:36Speaker 07

  I'm rubbing my eyes. I'm blinking as hard as I can. I'm shaking my head around, you know, thinking, maybe there's something in my eyes that's messing with my vision. And no matter what I do, every time I open my eyes back up, these lights are still there. And they traverse the entire property. Any direction that I look, they're everywhere.

• 16:02Speaker 07

  I say to myself, Connie, you're losing your marbles. You are so tired that now you are seeing things. Get yourself together, go to bed. This is ridiculous.

• 16:24Speaker 07

  So I'm walking to the cabin, looking down at these lights. And it's like my legs are cutting through them. They're still there.

• 16:37Speaker 07

  I open the door and I walk straight into my bedroom. Walk those two feet over to my tiny little bed. But I'm blocked by something.

• 16:57Speaker 07

  I cannot physically get onto my bed.

• 17:05Speaker 07

  It was like coming up against an invisible wall.

• 17:10Speaker 07

  I try a few times to push against it, and it still wouldn't happen.

• 17:17Speaker 07

  There's nothing in front of me but bed, so I cannot comprehend what is going on.

• 17:27Speaker 07

  All of a sudden, I just get the distinct sense that someone is in the room with me.

• 17:44Speaker 07

  I start to see something on the bed, a faint outline of a woman.

• 17:54Speaker 07

  It was made of light. And slowly, it begins to take more solid shape.

• 18:07Speaker 07

  She's not clear enough for me to make out any distinct physical features, but I could see that she was crying. She was just sobbing.

• 18:32Speaker 07

  This feeling is emanating from her of just the deepest grief I've ever felt in my life.

• 18:46Speaker 07

  There aren't even words for how sad it was. And it filled every corner of this room, and it was coming directly from this woman in front of me.

• 19:05Speaker 07

  As I'm standing there, looking at her, all of a sudden, I get the name Bridget.

• 19:16Speaker 07

  In my head.

• 19:19Speaker 07

  Out of nowhere. And I say to myself, okay, her name is Bridget.

• 19:26Speaker 07

  And I feel like I need to help her.

• 19:37Speaker 07

  I don't actually touch her. I raise my hands, probably about a foot, foot and a half, above where her head would be. And very, very slowly,

• 19:52Speaker 07

  I run my hands down the length of her body, down to where her feet would be.

• 20:01Speaker 07

  It just instinctively, automatically felt like the right thing to do.

• 20:13Speaker 07

  And I can feel sort of a vibration coming from her body.

• 20:20Speaker 07

  I'm sweeping my hands over her. But when I reach her abdomen, I'm not able to move with such ease. It's like tangled hair that you just can't move your hands through.

• 20:37Speaker 07

  There was something very obviously there.

• 20:47Speaker 07

  I'm looking at her abdomen, and at first I don't see anything there, but something slowly begins to take shape.

• 21:02Speaker 07

  It looks like all of these threads, just thousands of threads, are wrapped around each other.

• 21:12Speaker 07

  It was just this wrapped up mess.

• 21:20Speaker 07

  These threads are glowing the same blue-green color as the lines that I could see outside.

• 21:29Speaker 07

  It's just my impulse to want to start to untangle what's happening here. I just know that I have to unravel these threads.

• 21:49Glynn Washington?

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• 22:32Glynn Washington?

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• 22:59Speaker 07

  I start using my fingers to kind of tease them away from each other, tease them free.

• 23:11Speaker 07

  It's not like I'm touching a solid thread, but I can still feel it. I can still feel them on my fingers. There is definitely warmth to it and there is texture.

• 23:28Speaker 07

  She seemed completely unaware of me.

• 23:34Speaker 07

  She's still crying. Her body is just kind of heaving with these just deep sobs. But I just felt like I had to keep going.

• 23:50Speaker 07

  It all kind of started to unfold and make sense. You know, she's here and whatever this tangled mass of grief was is why she was here.

• 24:04Speaker 07

  As I make progress with untangling these threads, the grief in the room begins to dissipate a bit.

• 24:24Speaker 07

  Once I had untangled this whole thick ball, they were all standing up.

• 24:38Speaker 07

  Like grass in a river or something like that. They were kind of swaying.

• 24:46Speaker 07

  They were still attached to her form,

• 24:50Speaker 07

  but they were all finally just standing straight up and untangled.

• 24:59Speaker 07

  And so I began to cut them with my fingers, just by moving my fingers through them.

• 25:10Speaker 07

  As I'm severing these threads of light, the feeling in the room is getting lighter and less sad.

• 25:30Speaker 07

  And when it's actually complete, it was filled. Instead of with sorrow and grief, it was filled with the most beautiful feeling of peace.

• 25:49Speaker 07

  Just utter peace.

• 25:56Speaker 07

  I just stood there, taking it all in.

• 26:01Speaker 07

  And this woman, she began to disappear. Her form just disintegrates.

• 26:19Speaker 07

  There's no more blockage on the bed.

• 26:30Speaker 07

  I look outside, and I see that this rain had begun to fall.

• 26:42Speaker 07

  And I couldn't see the lights outside anymore.

• 26:48Speaker 07

  I look at the clock and realize I still got about a half hour before I have to be back in the kitchen. I still was absolutely bone tired and completely spent.

• 27:04Speaker 07

  I got into bed. I'm laying there, about to take my nap. And there is a part of me that questions if that just actually happened.

• 27:24Speaker 07

  So my alarm goes off and I head back into the kitchen.

• 27:38Speaker 07

  I immediately tell Susan, "You're never gonna believe what just happened."

• 27:45Speaker 07

  She definitely responds with a little bit of disbelief, just kind of in awe that I'm relaying this kind of story.

• 27:56Speaker 07

  She just keeps stopping what she's doing, going, "What? That's crazy."

• 28:07Speaker 07

  So we finish out the evening. In the morning, we do breakfast service and pack everything back up into the car. And we head back to Ginny's house.

• 28:26Speaker 07

  We all sat around and ate a delicious meal. It's getting later into the night. Susan says to me, "Hey Connie, tell Ginny what happened. You gotta tell her that story." And I was like, "Oh, yeah, okay."

• 28:49Speaker 07

  So I go into this whole story, tell her all of the details.

• 28:56Speaker 07

  She's just staring at me with alternating kind of disbelief. And sometimes I would look over at her and she's got tears streaming down her face.

• 29:11Speaker 07

  I kept stopping myself and going, "Ginny, what's up? What's happening right now?" And she says, "No, no, no. Finish your story."

• 29:21Speaker 07

  And so I do.

• 29:23Speaker 07

  I tell her exactly what happens.

• 29:27Speaker 07

  When I'm finally done, she says, Connie, I have something to tell you.

• 29:34Speaker 07

  And she begins her own story.

• 29:39Speaker 07

  Twenty-two years prior, and it was exactly at the same time, in midsummer, Geneva was about seven and a half months pregnant with her first son. At this time, she is still a practicing midwife. And in California at that time, it was illegal to be a midwife. You could be thrown in jail. She got a phone call from someone that she knew at this retreat center, when it was still the hippie commune.

• 30:22Speaker 07

  And they said to her, Geneva, you have to come quick.

• 30:27Speaker 07

  There's a woman here, and she's in heavy labor, and she is not doing well. And Jenny says to them, well, just take her to the hospital. And they said, we can't. She's high. This young woman was on heroin.

• 30:45Speaker 07

  She was terrified of going to the hospital because her baby would be taken away, and she would be thrown in jail.

• 30:53Speaker 07

  So they said, we can't take her in. You have to come. She showed up, and they immediately pointed her toward Cabin Four.

• 31:12Speaker 07

  She walks in, and the woman is hemorrhaging.

• 31:18Speaker 07

  They pick up this woman, and they bring her into the kitchen, which is what became the bedroom that I stayed in. And they put her on the kitchen table, and she ends up delivering the child, but the woman passes away during the birth.

• 31:48Speaker 07

  Geneva couldn't stay.

• 31:51Speaker 07

  She had to get out of there. Because not only was she an illegal midwife, now this woman has died. She thought to herself, "I can't have my baby in jail. I can't, I can't do that." She hands this brand-new newborn over to someone and says, "Take it to the hospital. I have to leave." And so she left.

• 32:23Speaker 07

  As Geneva is telling me this story, she's just sobbing.

• 32:29Speaker 07

  She says, "Connie, I've carried that with me for 22 years."

• 32:38Speaker 07

  I feel it all the time that I wasn't able to be there for this woman. I wasn't able to close it for her.

• 32:53Speaker 07

  And I always have felt so guilty and horrible that I had to leave her there.

• 33:01Speaker 07

  She says, "You finally closed it. You completed what I could not."

• 33:09Speaker 07

  Then she looks me dead in the eye and she says, "Do you know what her name was?" And I said, "No." And she said, "Bridget."

• 33:33Speaker 07

  It was sort of like a gut punch, that feeling when your stomach drops out. I was in disbelief.

• 33:43Speaker 07

  There was a slight sense of relief as well. I felt validated, that, you know, I wasn't making this up.

• 33:56Speaker 07

  We just sat there staring at each other, both of us in disbelief, and trying to digest what all of that meant.

• 34:09Speaker 07

  We both kind of wonder, you know, if this is the reason that she and I were brought together.

• 34:20Speaker 07

  I have many, many, many times in my life, you know, questioned if I've ever had an impact or if I've ever done anything truly important.

• 34:32Speaker 07

  Sometimes I remember what happened and it brings me a lot of comfort.

• 34:47Speaker 07

  Because I know that I touched somebody's life,

• 34:53Speaker 07

  not just in this physical world, but on a whole other level that goes beyond time and space.

• 35:23Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Connie, for sharing your story with the Spook. And people, please understand Connie is our favorite kind of storyteller, a Spooked listener. If you have a story of your own to share, send it to [email protected]. The original score for that story was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Zoe Frigno.

• 36:02Glynn Washington?

  So you've heard people say, "This feels like déjà vu." Or, "I'm sure I've been here before, but I know I've never been here before." That feeling of the familiar is something that we all experience from time to time. Like we're walking through an echo of something that has already occurred. But are there those that really do know what's gonna happen next? Who can tell you clearly the next person to walk through the door? Who do in fact shout warning of the car crash? Tornado, the lightning strike before it ever happens? Do you know someone who straddles this world? And a slightly different one?

• 36:45Glynn Washington?

  Where all these things have already occurred? Are you yourself that person? If so, I desperately wanna know all about it. I promise, I only share your story with the most amazing community the world has ever known. Tell us your story. Spooked at SnapJudgment.org. Because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener. Spooked at SnapJudgment.org. Warn the other side not to make any sudden moves with spooked gear that lets them know you mean business. A spook t-shirt, stuff available right now at SnapJudgment.org. And remember, if you like your storytelling under the bright light of day, get the amazing

• 37:29Glynn Washington?

  stupendous sister podcast, Snap Judgment. It is storytelling with a beat.

• 37:45Glynn Washington?

  Spook was created by the team cursed never to grow a single day older. But Father Time will not be mocked as Mark Rysich takes one on the chin for the entire crew. There's Davy Kim, Chris Hambrick, Leon Morimoto, Teo de Cott, Marissa Dodd, Zoe Frigno, Ann Ford, Eric Yanez, Lola Abraha, Cody Harjo, Doug Stewart, Miles Lassie, and Yari Bundy. The Spook theme song is by Pat Massey Miller, "My Name's in Washington." And it's not that sage doesn't work to ward off dark spirits. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that sage is just one small part of a much longer spell that has largely been forgotten.

• 38:30Glynn Washington?

  So much knowledge, lost. So many answers buried, secrets burned, but some things, some things we still remember, even now. And the most important remnant of the vast library of mislaid protections is this: Never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, turn out the lies.