Husky

When a dark shadow keeps appearing around Milton’s house, he knows what he must do… fight to protect one of the people he loves most in the world.

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

• 0:02Glynn Washington?

  Don't let this chance just pass you by.

• 0:07Glynn Washington?

  Big, big winnings, that's no lie, but if you miss, well, at least you tried.

• 0:15Glynn Washington?

  So pick a number. Roll the die.

• 0:26Glynn Washington?

  You're walking the dark path of spook.

• 0:33Glynn Washington?

  Stay tuned.

• 0:39Glynn Washington?

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• 1:21Glynn 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.

• 2:06Glynn Washington?

  If you've got questions, I've got answers.

• 2:10Glynn Washington?

  Maybe. And we're just getting started. Spook says, "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. Don't turn out the lights.

• 2:43Glynn Washington?

  It was a good day. A really, really good day. Hanging on my knees in Sacramento, California, eating turkey sandwiches, drinking lemonade in the sunshine. But I need to get home early before the darkness falls. So I tell her goodbye, get my hugs, drive the car down Highway 80 back to Oakland. Four o'clock in the afternoon. Turn on some James Brown because I feel good driving down the road. I blink my eyes.

• 3:24Glynn Washington?

  And I wake up gripping the steering wheel of a car. Speeding down the road at 80 miles an hour in a panic. Wha- wha- wha- what? Where am I? Pull over, pull over, pull over right now. Swerve the car over to the shoulder of the road and I'm shaking. Did I fall asleep driving? How long? One second, two? How close to the unimaginable?

• 4:06Glynn Washington?

  To never coming home to my babies, to stealing someone else from their family? Seatbelt strapped on the side of the road? I weep. Terrified.

• 4:23Glynn Washington?

  Three months before, I told the doctor that I can't sleep at night. He tells me, "You're fine." "No, no, you're not understanding. I never sleep." "He tells me that everything checks out, there's nothing wrong." "But that he can give me some pills if I promise to be careful."

• 4:50Glynn Washington?

  "I don't need pills, doc." "I need rest, I need to not stare at the ceiling for hours every night, I need to dream." "I don't dream."

• 5:01Glynn Washington?

  "I need this shadow to go away."

• 5:16Glynn Washington?

  "A little later, I get to take my kids on a trip, a wonderful trip." "We rent a house on the beach." "A beautiful home." "And they squeal." "They say it's even better than the house we rented last time."

• 5:38Glynn Washington?

  "Last time?" "Here?" "You know daddy, the place, right down the street, the big one, where our friends stay."

• 5:49Glynn Washington?

  "Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right."

• 5:55Glynn Washington?

  "Smiling, fighting that deep horror because..."

• 6:02Glynn Washington?

  "I don't remember that house."

• 6:10Glynn Washington?

  "I don't remember those friends, I don't remember any of it, and I know why, I think..."

• 6:16Glynn Washington?

  "I think I know why."

• 6:21Glynn Washington?

  "I read that people who sleep less than three hours a night, that they lose the ability to recall their own lives."

• 6:32Glynn Washington?

  "This shadow, it's stealing away my memories."

• 6:41Glynn Washington?

  It's stealing me away from myself and as hard as I try,

• 6:47Glynn Washington?

  nothing works.

• 6:50Glynn Washington?

  Nothing works by itself, so I decided to do it all.

• 6:57Glynn Washington?

  All of it at the same time. The machines, the teas, the blackout mirrors, the neti pot, the weighted blanket, the meditation tape, the blue light filter, aromatherapy, sleep music, stretch sequences, plant-based diet, ergonomic pillow, face masks. I do everything but the drugs. Because I tried that too.

• 7:20Glynn Washington?

  And learned that there is no drug for this. Not one that works.

• 7:34Glynn Washington?

  And slowly,

• 7:37Glynn Washington?

  very slowly,

• 7:39Glynn Washington?

  color seeps back into the world. It's glorious, like I'm basking in the sunrise for the very first time, like I'm shedding this terrible weight. Light returns to my children's eyes when they see me.

• 7:58Glynn Washington?

  I understand then that I haven't born this shadow, this darkness, this madness alone, that everything I've lost,

• 8:08Glynn Washington?

  those who carried me through this valley,

• 8:12Glynn Washington?

  they suffered as well.

• 8:20Glynn Washington?

  So much time. So long.

• 8:27Glynn Washington?

  And I fear that no matter how hard I fight back now,

• 8:33Glynn Washington?

  that everything this shadow stole,

• 8:39Glynn Washington?

  I will never get back.

• 8:55Glynn Washington?

  My name is Van Washington.

• 8:58Glynn Washington?

  Spook starts. Now.

• 9:23Glynn Washington?

  The shadow, the shadow, the shadow, the shadow, the shadow waits. The shadow lurks. And when you least expect it.

• 9:33Glynn Washington?

  Our guest, Milton. He's about to fight the shadow. Fight it for one of the people that he loves most in the world.

• 9:43Glynn Washington?

  Spooked.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  So when I was 23, I had graduated college. I want to say maybe 2010.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  My mother got breast cancer. It was recurring. And she got really sick, really quick.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  She had three months left to live.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  My two siblings, who are both college age, we both just moved back home. We were just making sure that we were there for her. And, you know, my dad was there as well, but that was the main reason why we all moved back home. We were just kind of taking care of her in shifts throughout the night. If she would get up, one of us would have to get her her medicine or give her a shot.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  We had a little chair set up in the room, so we were just sitting there. And watch movies with her while we took care of her.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  It was pretty aggressive, so it had already entered her spinal cord and it kind of made her kind of spacey. Like she would get me and my little brother mixed up. Sometimes she would get our ages mixed up. She would get our names mixed up.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  You know, it was definitely hard seeing her go through that, but it's almost like you compartmentalize the pain.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  I would say maybe a month after we moved back, strange things would happen.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Like taps on the window on the second floor. The basement windows would tap.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  We would be upstairs taking care of mama and we would be like, what was that?

• 11:57Speaker 01

  And we were here like doors slammed throughout the house.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Or like someone was just walking really loud, like a loud footstep, just like one loud footstep.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  And we'd be like, someone downstairs.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  And we would go with a baseball bat, just in case.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  You know, because that's what it sounded like. It sounded like there was somebody in the house.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  It sounded like it had a lot of weight to it.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  And we'd go down this check and there would be nothing going on. And this happened like multiple times.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  We just sort of wrote it off as house noises. You know, like, okay, this is, this is normal. We really don't have the energy to investigate this further or even be scared. So let's just make this something that we can make sense of.

• 13:07Glynn Washington?

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• 13:50Glynn Washington?

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• 14:16Speaker 01

  One night, it wasn't my shift and I was sleeping and I just randomly woke up. I would wake up all the time during the night.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  So I wake up at 2:00 AM and I check my phone and I remember being awake because I was checking my text messages and responding to a friend. So I was like wide awake.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  I'm checking my phone and then I just look in the middle of the room.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  And there's like just this head.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  It was kind of like bluish gray, kind of like glowing.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  Flickering like a movie projector.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  And it's just staring straight ahead.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  It was definitely a man because the features were very masculine.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  And I remember just sort of looking at it, not really sure like, is this what I'm seeing?

• 15:27Speaker 01

  And I speak to it and I go, hello?

• 15:31Speaker 01

  And it just sort of looks at me.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Like, its eyes move, the head doesn't move, but just the eyes sort of like shift and just looks straight at me.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  And as it's looking at me, we make eye contact.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  Sort of just gave me a, okay, you see me type look, and it just flickers out slowly.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  And the entire room just goes pitch black and I just started screaming my head off.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  I had no idea what was going on. I was completely freaked out. You know, I had just seen a ghost. I was very, very scared. I turned on the light and I couldn't sleep for the rest of the night.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  All night until 7:00 AM, this happened at 2:00 AM.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  It just felt like it wanted to be seen.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  It just felt like it just wanted to be noticed, like it wanted me to know that it was there.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, the next morning, I'm so freaked out, you know, I go downstairs.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  We're having breakfast.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  I tell everyone what I've seen. Um, I think my sister was like, oh, was that that scream in the middle of the night? And I go, yeah, you know, and I'm trying to tell them I've seen a ghost in our room. And my sister goes, okay, well ghosts aren't real, Milton, you know, you were probably hallucinating. You've been up all night taking care of mom. You know, there's an explanation.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  And that's when my little brother goes, Husky, which is my nickname. You know, I've seen a man and the poster on the back of our door.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  I've seen a floating head.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  And he says, "Yeah, one night I was just looking at the door and there was just a man, you know, staring out the poster, looking back at me." And that's when my dad was just like, "You know what? Sometimes this happens when people we love are close to death. Sometimes they just get visitors, you know, the doors opened a little bit more." He said that it was my grandfather, his father, who has the experiences with ghosts. Sometimes he would get night terrors. And he would just sort of wake up and he would see a shadowy figure sitting in his chair.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  And this happened to my granddad a lot, apparently, where he would just see figures. And that's how my father, I guess, kind of became familiar with ghosts and educated about it because of what his father was experiencing. It made me feel, "Okay, maybe I'm not crazy. Maybe this is really happening." But I was really scared, too. So we don't really tell my mom was happening. We just want to keep her calm, you know, she can't really, she wouldn't even be able to understand what was happening anyway, to be honest. So we just keep things on the low, we don't talk to her about it.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  We just kind of keep it between ourselves and just go about taking care of her as normal. So, a few nights after I was taking care of my mom, it was my shift. It was pretty late, maybe around midnight or 1:00.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  She was laying in her hospital bed and I was sitting in the chair next to her. And I'm reading her a book, even though she's asleep. And keep in mind that at this point, my mom was like really infantile, you know? Forming complete sentences were just so difficult.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Her eyes were always kind of foggy and glassy.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  So I'm sitting there.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  And suddenly she opens her eyes and her eyes go from like foggy to just completely clear.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  I hadn't seen her eyes that clear in a long time. And she just sits straight up.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Without any assistance, which was really weird because she needed help to get out, you know, to go to the bathroom.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  So she just sits straight up. Eyes are completely clear and she looks behind me.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  And she goes, Husky.

• 20:50Speaker 02

  Look how tall that man is behind you.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Every hair on the back of my neck just stood straight up. I got chills. I was cold. It just felt like there was this really, really tall man standing behind me.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Bending down over my shoulder from the ceiling.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  And I'm like scared out of my mind.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  I was so scared my eyes started watering. Because it just felt like there was somebody behind me.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  It felt like this intense darkness.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Everything in me wanted to turn around.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  But something in me was just very defiant. And I was like, you know what? I'm not going to give this any of my energy. I'm going to ignore it. This is my house. This is my mom, and I'm taking care of her right now. And you can just buzz off.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  It just really messed with my head to see her get up and do that.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  And I felt like maybe whatever it was had a hand in it. And I didn't like the fact that it may have been manipulating her in any way.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Even though I was scared, I kind of just came back to myself. And I was like, Mama, there's nobody behind me. You're safe. It's OK. It's fine. She closes her eyes again, and then I just start reading, like nothing is happening.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  And whatever it was just disappeared. And it just felt like normal again. It felt like the pressure in the room became normal.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  I don't even know what just happened. My mind is just blank. And all I can think about is just comforting her. You know what I mean? Just making sure that she's OK, making sure she's not scared. Because I was really scared.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Well, the next day, I thought about what my dad had said, about her getting visitors. And it just felt as though it was there for her.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  It felt like this man behind me was some sort of Grim Reaper.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  It felt like it had a purpose. And the purpose was my mother.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  It was there to take her. It was there to help her pass over. It was there to take her soul to the other side.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  That sounds very dramatic, but I don't know how else to put it.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Literally, a week later, my mom passed away after this experience.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Everything that had been happening in the house kind of accumulated in this moment of this dark creature behind me bending over my mother's bed.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Almost like checking in.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Waiting.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Waiting for her to just

• 24:39Speaker 01

  pass away.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  I think that if I was not there, you know, if I wasn't in that room with her at that moment, I think she might have passed away because she was, we were kind of just waiting for the day at this point.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  So I think that it came expecting to take her and then saw that I was there and it wasn't expecting me. I'm not sure if my defiance played a hand in it, but I know that just me being there played a hand in it, definitely.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  It was good to not see her suffer anymore. And after she passed away, it felt like whatever was in the house lifted, you know?

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Like whatever presence was in the house was just gone.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Like, the tap stopped, the loud noises in the middle of the night stopped. I didn't see a ghost again. My little brother, he never mentioned that he saw another ghost, at least to me. So, as soon as she passed away, all the activities stopped, and it made sense.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  You know, whatever it was, this Grim Reaper figure had finally done what it had come to do, which was take my mother. As soon as it did its job and my mother passed on,

• 26:16Speaker 01

  you know, it was gone.

• 26:34Glynn Washington?

  Big, big love to you, Melvin. And love to your beautiful family, from all of us here at The Spooked.

• 26:45Glynn Washington?

  The original score for that story was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Greta Weber.

• 27:07Glynn Washington?

  Real people, real stories from the dark side. Spooked, Season 6. Have you ever seen a monster? Have you ever displayed a power that no one will believe, or seen something that shouldn't be there? Don't toy with me, spooksters, because I need to know. Tell us your story. [email protected], because there is nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener. Let us know. Spooked at SnapJudgment.org. Spooked is a community. And the best way to let folk know that you walk this dark path is by sporting some Spook gear. The T-shirt of your dreams available right now at SnapJudgment.org.

• 27:49Glynn Washington?

  And remember, if you like your storytelling under the bright light of day, subscribe to our amazing sister podcast, Snap Judgment, it's storytelling with a beat.

• 28:14Glynn Washington?

  Spook is created by the team that always, always, always, always buckles up for safety. Even Mark Wistich, whoever drives without wearing his galoshes, I don't know why. Anna Sussman, our chief spookster is Eliza Smith, Greta Weber, Chris Hamburg, Annie Nguyen, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Renzo Goria, Theo Decott, Versa Dodge, Zoe Fridno, Tiffany Delisa, Ann Ford, Doug Stewart, and Isaiah Sims. The Spook theme song is by Pat McCity Miller. My name is from Washington. They say there are no truly random encounters. They say everything happens for a reason. They say that you will never face a challenge that you cannot surmount.

• 28:56Glynn Washington?

  Perhaps, perhaps that's true, but as for me, I don't like taking chances, which is why I always advise anyone who will listen to never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, ever, never, ever, turn out the lights.