The Empty Chair

Max’s mom is a seamstress. Most nights, she stays up late working. The buzz of her sewing machine can be heard all throughout the house. Max is used to the sound, and when he wakes up in the night, he likes knowing that his mom is there… But then one night he discovers that she may not be alone.

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

• 0:04Glynn Washington?

  As I prepare my instruments, I tell the person lying on the gurney that I have done this procedure several times. "Doctor?" "Doctor?" she asks. "Will I be OK?" I turn on the gas and pull the anesthesia mask over her face. "Oh, I'm not a doctor."

• 0:34Glynn Washington?

  You've crossed over to Spooked. Stay tuned.

• 0:46Glynn 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. Then 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.

• 1:28Glynn Washington?

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

• 1:36Glynn Washington?

  Radio Rant was a horror podcast featuring true scary stories told by real people.

• 1:41Speaker 01

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

• 1:48Speaker 02

  Then an air light turns on, and then an air 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.

• 1:56Speaker 03

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

• 2:07Speaker 02

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

• 2:13Speaker 04

  These eyes started opening. They were pure white. And I lose it.

• 2:20Speaker 05

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

• 2:41Glynn Washington?

  It's crazy to recall, but in another life, before I spooked, I went to law school, walked the halls of power. And at this law school, there's a list. If you fight your way to the top of the list, doors are open, tables set, futures are promised. But laying further down the list, these same doors slam shut. Understand, the profession of law does not embrace people like me. I hear their whispers.

• 3:21Glynn Washington?

  To even have a chance, I must land on the top of their list. Yet I know pretending to belong here is a lie, a make-believe mask. Still, I need this. My grandparents picked cotton. My parents picked cotton for this chance. So against my better angels, against my weeping inner voice, I make a bargain with darkness. In exchange, older than time, I gamble that I can touch the shadow and remain unharmed.

• 4:04Glynn Washington?

  So instead of ignoring their barbs, I feed on every slight, every dismissal, every sneer, stoking the heat of rage. I hear them. How'd he get in here? Black bastard, stupid, that smug laughter from those of the man I born. I stoke the storm because in the anger, in the fury, there is power. What? Chad, you think you can best me? Beat me? You don't know where I'm from.

• 4:46Glynn Washington?

  I will skate next to madness, will you?

• 4:52Glynn Washington?

  My rage reads their books again and again, Rage whispers. They said, "You don't belong here."

• 5:02Glynn Washington?

  Rage does not sleep. Rage burns the midnight oil. Rage checks and rechecks. Rage knows each and every person is my enemy and treats them accordingly.

• 5:16Glynn Washington?

  Because each and every person wants what must be mine.

• 5:23Glynn Washington?

  The terrible, awful, really bad thing is in the end, when I finally forced myself to walk alone, step by step, over to the judgment wall, to see the final grades. I look up and find my name high, unbare list.

• 5:48Glynn Washington?

  Not the very top, but high enough.

• 5:54Glynn Washington?

  Because Rage works. Rage was right. Rage is a truth teller, a problem solver, but not a deed done.

• 6:12Glynn Washington?

  I need to put Rage back in the bottle.

• 6:16Glynn Washington?

  Because I want light, companionship, laughter again, to feel something, to feel anything besides fury.

• 6:28Glynn Washington?

  But this Rage, this new self refuses to go. The broken, vanquished, better part of me wails,

• 6:41Glynn Washington?

  shrieking, screaming. "I told you.

• 6:48Glynn Washington?

  I told you we should never have let this monster in."

• 7:01Glynn Washington?

  Stoxxa

• 7:06Glynn Washington?

  Nah

• 7:54Glynn Washington?

  What? Who? Did you let in? Max is just 8 years old. Lives in Santiago, Chile. Lives with 3 sisters. His dad, his mom, and his mom's oppression. I'll let Max take it from here. Spooked.

• 8:30Speaker 06

  My mom, she's a seamstress.

• 8:34Speaker 06

  It was mostly for the community. If kids had to have costumes for a specific tradition or like musical theatre sometimes.

• 8:46Speaker 06

  She would also fix clothes for us. And other moms in the neighbourhood, if they needed something for their kids, she would, you know, do those things. So she was very good at that.

• 9:03Speaker 06

  She would stay up late sewing. Since it was a small house and the walls between each room, they were not very thick. In the dead of night, we would hear the sewing machine going off.

• 9:20Speaker 06

  It was a very old machine, very good quality, but very noisy, especially at 3 a.m., 4 a.m.

• 9:30Speaker 06

  It became a bit frustrating if I had to get up early the next day, but at some point it also became a bit comforting.

• 9:41Speaker 06

  The sound of the machine, it was telling me that she was there, she was present.

• 9:53Speaker 06

  So it was probably around fall. Me and my family were having lunch. We were just having some small talk.

• 10:05Speaker 06

  We heard that the garden's gate was open,

• 10:11Speaker 06

  which is very unusual because someone would need the keys to get in.

• 10:18Speaker 06

  But we didn't give any extra set of keys to any uncles or family friends, so that was weird.

• 10:30Speaker 06

  We looked at each other, and after a couple of seconds, we heard a knocking on the door.

• 10:39Speaker 06

  My older sister, Soledad, she made a joke about how it's probably the Mormons handing off, you know, bibles or their little pamphlets.

• 10:53Speaker 06

  My dad got up and walked to the door, opened it, and there was no one there.

• 11:03Speaker 06

  So he comes back to the table and he says, "Oh, it's probably just a ghost."

• 11:11Speaker 06

  We laughed about it because from where I come from, it's what you usually say when you cannot really find the reason why something happened.

• 11:28Speaker 06

  So a week or two later, we're having lunch again on a weekend. We're all sitting down and small talking, and then it happened again. We heard the garden gate open, and then we heard the knocking on the door.

• 11:48Speaker 06

  I thought it was pretty weird, and I noticed that my sisters were a bit concerned, because they exchanged looks. But my dad, he just distracted us, talking about things about the news that he didn't really agree with, to just focus our attention away from that thing that we cannot really explain.

• 12:33Speaker 06

  One night, the sound of her machine woke me up.

• 12:39Speaker 06

  And I felt the need to go to the bathroom, so I just went out of my room. And I saw my mother's room. I saw the door open.

• 12:52Speaker 06

  And I can see her from behind. She's looming over the machine. She didn't even notice that I was there, looking at her. She was just completely 100% focused on her sewing.

• 13:07Speaker 06

  And next to her, she has this old wooden chair, placed as if someone was next to her, looking at her work.

• 13:18Speaker 06

  I thought to myself, "Why is she working with an empty chair next to her?"

• 13:25Speaker 06

  But I just brushed it off, went to the bathroom, did my thing, and then went back to bed.

• 13:34Speaker 06

  I remember a couple times, a couple nights, doing the same route, you know, needing to go to the bathroom at 3, 4, 5 a.m. And my mom would never close her door. It was always open. So every time I would walk outside of her room, I would see her and the chair.

• 13:58Speaker 06

  On Sundays, we all do a general cleaning of the house. She would usually be on a weird mood when she would like to do things the way that she does it and in a very specific way, or she didn't want to be bothered. But this Sunday, I noticed that she was playing music very loudly because she's in a good mood. She was sweeping kind of to the rhythm of the song. We have two dogs that would try to play with the broom, and she would usually tell them to piss off. But that day, she didn't. And she was laughing with the dogs, like playing with the dogs,

• 14:43Speaker 06

  which made a big difference to me. It was curious to see her like that because I've been used to seeing her very depressed for so long. We all noticed it. My older sister, Soledad, she asks my mom, "Hey, like, you seem in a very mood. Like, did something happen? Did something in particular happen?" She just looks at us and she says, "Well, lately, I've been missing my mom a lot. And for the past couple nights,

• 15:22Speaker 06

  she's actually coming to visit me." I felt surprised because by this point, my grandmother had died eight years ago.

• 15:42Speaker 06

  She says that when she's sewing, she can feel that someone is behind her and that she can feel someone softly breathing next to her ear.

• 15:56Speaker 06

  And that somehow, she knew that it was her mom.

• 16:04Speaker 06

  I felt like a tingle through my spine. I personally thought it was scary to even picture that, that you would be doing something at night by yourself and you would feel someone breathing next to you. But she said that she was not afraid.

• 16:25Speaker 06

  And then she said that, "So for her not to get tired, I would put a seat next to me so she can sit with me, so she doesn't have to stand up."

• 16:42Speaker 06

  So after my mom says this out loud, I can see that my sisters are as shocked as I am, my dad as well.

• 16:53Speaker 06

  This awkward silence takes over.

• 17:01Speaker 06

  I think we all felt a bit bad for her.

• 17:05Speaker 06

  I thought that she was getting better and it was actually just that she thought that her mom would come visit.

• 17:15Speaker 06

  No one really challenged her views. I think we all felt more comfortable with her having these moments of happiness than just plain old depression.

• 17:30Speaker 06

  My older sister, Solida, she comments on how good the food is. She's, "Oh yeah, the food is very good. Like, thank you for making this." And changed the topic.

• 17:45Speaker 06

  So it's a few weeks later. I came back home from the mall with my dad and my sisters are in the living room. I asked my sisters, "Where's mom?" and they tell me that she's in her room. She spent in her room all day sewing, so I shouldn't go bother her. We turned on the TV. We were watching something.

• 18:14Speaker 06

  Then we hear her bedroom door open and she comes crying.

• 18:23Speaker 06

  Like completely hyperventilating. She's freaking out, so she couldn't speak very clearly.

• 18:33Speaker 06

  I remember my dad grabbed her and hugged her and we sat her on the couch.

• 18:42Speaker 06

  We put on some water to boil and we made her a tea. And when she comes down, she tells us that she heard the phone ringing.

• 18:56Speaker 06

  My mom had a phone of her own in her room, in her studio. And when she picked it up, she said, "Hello, is anyone there?"

• 19:12Speaker 06

  She cannot hear anything from the other side of the line.

• 19:18Speaker 06

  But then, before she decides to hang up, she starts hearing a breathing, a very soft breathing.

• 19:30Speaker 06

  And then that breathing becomes louder and raspy

• 19:39Speaker 06

  and more labored.

• 19:43Speaker 06

  And that's when she tells us that it sounded exactly the way that her mom would sound like at her last stage of her cancer.

• 19:56Speaker 06

  And then my mom asks, "Mom, are you there? Like, is it you?"

• 20:03Speaker 06

  And then the breathing becomes louder and louder.

• 20:07Speaker 06

  It becomes very, very deep and loud and calls for her name.

• 20:13Speaker 06

  Orieta. Orieta.

• 20:19Speaker 06

  That's when my mom freaks out and throws the phone and leaves the room and comes to us.

• 20:28Speaker 06

  I'm petrified.

• 20:31Speaker 06

  I feel like my heart is racing because I can see my mom freaking out in front of me.

• 20:39Speaker 06

  I saw on her face a very special mixture of sadness and fear that I have never seen in anyone else.

• 20:55Speaker 06

  I also saw that my sisters and my dad were freaking out.

• 21:01Speaker 06

  He was walking back and forth in the living room, trying to get close to my mom, but also taking a step back because he knew that she was very upset.

• 21:15Speaker 06

  So after this episode, my mom, that night she didn't sew. She went to bed pretty early. She was very exhausted. It was one of the few nights in which I didn't hear the sewing machine that made me very uncomfortable.

• 21:41Speaker 06

  The following days, my mom became very depressed again. She was not interacting with us as much. She isolated herself again.

• 21:54Speaker 06

  It was early in the morning, I would say 10 or 11 a.m. I was on the couch in the living room, reading a book about dinosaurs, because I was obsessed with them. I hear my sisters talking in the dining room, and when I go to meet them, they are starting to burn the Palo Santo. My older sister, Soledad, tells me, "Oh, this is just a little ceremony." I thought it was exciting. So they start burning the Palo Santo, and a lot of smoke is coming out of it.

• 22:38Speaker 06

  Like, a lot. I've never seen so much smoke. They were walking around the house, slowly, burning the Palo Santo, and I got a bit scared, because I thought, maybe the house is going to catch a fire. But then, when I was just surrounded by smoke, I felt very safe, as if it was a screen to protect me and protect us from this thing, from this spirit. They start reciting these passages. We waited for the Palo Santo to consume itself. Nothing happens right away after this ceremony.

• 23:23Speaker 06

  We do our things, as usual. I don't remember that we even talked about it, but I instantly felt safer. To me, that was enough.

• 24:02Speaker 06

  Après que la cérémonie a lieu, nous étions assis sur la salle de bain, sur le chaise. Nous étions tous coincés l'un contre l'autre, en regardant cette show de télé réalité.

• 24:16Speaker 06

  Sur le côté droit du chaise, il y a la porte pour entrer dans la maison. Et les lumières étaient offertes. La seule lumière qui était allumée venait de la télé.

• 24:30Speaker 06

  J'ai senti cet vent froid et froid passer devant nous.

• 24:37Speaker 06

  Je me suis dit peut-être que j'ai ouvert la fenêtre. Mais puis je me suis immédiatement rappelé que j'ai fermé toutes les fenêtres plus tôt.

• 24:47Speaker 06

  C'était très étrange.

• 24:51Speaker 06

  Après que le vent passait, après quelques secondes, je vois cette ombre passer entre nous et la lumière de la télé.

• 25:06Speaker 06

  Elle a environ un mètre et demi de hauteur.

• 25:11Speaker 06

  Et elle n'a pas vraiment une forme définitive. Et quand elle passe entre nous et la télé, elle ne bloque complètement pas la lumière. Elle est toujours semi transparente.

• 25:28Speaker 06

  Qu'est-ce que c'est ?

• 25:31Speaker 06

  Et j'ai remarqué que mes sœurs et ma mère ont aussi réagi à ça. Nous l'avons vu. Nous sommes tous comme si nous sommes assis.

• 25:43Speaker 06

  Et puis nous avons vu la porte ouverte.

• 25:50Speaker 06

  C'est une vieille porte qui fait beaucoup de bruit. Mais cette fois, elle ne l'est pas. Elle s'ouvre très doucement.

• 26:03Speaker 06

  I felt goosebumps all over my skin.

• 26:08Speaker 06

  We were all looking at each other.

• 26:11Speaker 06

  And before it even closed, we heard the garden gate open.

• 26:18Speaker 06

  And after a couple of seconds of just silence and tension, the door closed very strongly. And then we heard the garden gate close again.

• 26:33Speaker 06

  My sister kind of jumped and screamed, and my mom was just shocked.

• 26:43Speaker 06

  My sister turned to my mom,

• 26:47Speaker 06

  and they said at almost the same time, "Did it leave?"

• 26:54Speaker 06

  And to me, that was what gave away that we were all thinking the same thing.

• 27:07Speaker 06

  After all that, I went to bed, and I heard my mom get into her studio.

• 27:16Speaker 06

  She turned on the sewing machine, and after a couple of seconds, she started playing music again.

• 27:25Speaker 06

  I heard that specific blend of the buzzing of the sewing machine and the music, and it made me feel safer.

• 27:37Speaker 06

  I woke up again around 4:00 a.m. and walked up to her room, and the seat was not there anymore.

• 27:48Speaker 06

  It was only her sitting by herself.

• 27:53Speaker 06

  To me, that also felt safe, because I felt like my mom was coming back from where she was before.

• 28:02Speaker 06

  Nothing ever happens again.

• 28:15Speaker 06

  I personally think that there was this spirit. And that was the thing that was opening the garden's gate and then knocking on the door.

• 28:29Speaker 06

  To me, what made this spirit evil was that it slowly came close to my mom, pretending it was my grandmother.

• 28:42Speaker 06

  This spirit, this entity, is scaring everyone on purpose. And my grandma, being the sweet lady that she was, she would never do that. She would never scare us.

• 28:59Speaker 06

  It wasn't till my mid-twenties that I came up with the theory that maybe my mom let in this spirit to our house.

• 29:12Speaker 06

  My grandmother, when she started to get sick, my mom developed some sort of avoidance to, you know, the painful reality of what it's like to have a mom with a cancer. So she started going to their family house much less. And when her mother died, she started feeling these very strong feelings of guilt and shame.

• 29:47Speaker 06

  I can see my mom just sewing for hours in the middle of the night.

• 29:57Speaker 06

  I always pictured her just thinking about her mom, ruminating about their relationship,

• 30:04Speaker 06

  hearing the door,

• 30:08Speaker 06

  and inviting it.

• 30:12Speaker 06

  She was hoping that it was her mother coming to visit her.

• 30:20Speaker 06

  It was almost a promise of making peace with her past.

• 30:38Glynn Washington?

  Thank you Max for sharing your story with the Spooked that people scouted by. Elizabeth Z. Pardue was scored by LaLene St. Juice was produced by Zoe Frignot.

• 31:05Glynn Washington?

  Now then, sages have long told us that we share this place with entities that are not us. Not angels, not demons, neither good nor bad, but other, and other wants, other needs. Sometimes every once in a while, other wants what we have, and this is a very dangerous place to find yourself, and I wonder if I know someone who's interacting with the other. Perhaps that someone is you. If so, I'd love to know about it. Please send a message,

• 31:49Glynn Washington?

  a picture, a passenger pigeon, [email protected], because understand, there is nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener. Spooked is brought to you by the team that doesn't need to touch the fire to know that it is hot, except for Mark Ristich, because to Mark, every day is a brand new adventure. There's David Kim, Zoe Frignot, Ann Ford, Eric Yanez, Taylor Decot, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Kriki,

• 32:29Glynn Washington?

  Elizabeth Z. Pardue, Aditya Matu, Lulu Jemima. The Spook theme song is by Pat Mercedes Miller. My name's from Washington.

• 32:40Glynn Washington?

  And you know Arthur C. Clarke, the brilliant writer, futurist thinker. He once said that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

• 32:54Glynn Washington?

  And he's kinda right. You flip a switch, light appears. Tap an app, food arrives, magic. But what about when you're lying in bed? And you know with 100% certainty that someone is watching you from the corner of your room? What about when your three-year-old daughter points to an empty chair and she asks daddy?

• 33:21Glynn Washington?

  Why is that man crying?

• 33:25Glynn Washington?

  Technology doesn't explain the handprints that appear on the insides of your windows, doesn't postulate why your dog growls at empty doorways.

• 33:36Glynn Washington?

  Doesn't suppose how sometimes you can smell your grandfather's cologne years after he's passed, right when you need him most. No.

• 33:48Glynn Washington?

  Mystery doesn't care about our algorithms because Clarke had it backward.

• 33:54Glynn Washington?

  Magic isn't what happens when technology advances.

• 33:59Glynn Washington?

  Magic is what happens when technology fails.

• 34:04Glynn Washington?

  When we need to know someone else has walked this valley, someone else sees through this illusion, and it might be a candle.

• 34:14Glynn Washington?

  It might be a torch.

• 34:17Glynn Washington?

  It might be just the strike of a match. But whatever you do, however you do it,

• 34:26Glynn Washington?

  never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never,

• 34:33Glynn Washington?

  never,

• 34:35Glynn Washington?

  turn out the lights.