Boxes

Ghosts come and go as they please. Sometimes they stick around. Often, you’re stuck with them whether you like it or not… unless you do something to get them out.

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

• 0:05Glynn Washington?

  I peeped inside the coffin to see what I could see. Then what was in the coffin? It peeped right back at me. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Mr. Spooked, stay tuned. 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.

• 0:49Glynn Washington?

  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.

• 1:06Glynn 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.

• 1:51Glynn 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. Don't turn out the lights.

• 2:26Glynn Washington?

  Okay, so I have a friend

• 2:29Glynn Washington?

  who always has the most wacky, ridiculous stories. Stories where, okay, something like this might happen once, but it seems like every time he checks the mail or picks up a box of cereal, something crazy happens. Fires, car crashes, mysterious acquaintances from decades ago pop up, and it's gotten so that lots of people, they think he's full of crap. They don't believe his little tales. And I didn't believe his stories at first, but I liked hearing them anyway. Every blue moon, we hang out. Once we go to shoot some pool, just chilling, couple of brews, then just like in the movies, a bar fight breaks out around us.

• 3:12Glynn Washington?

  He doesn't even blink, just misses the eight ball in the corner pocket as we scramble out, ducking punches, trying to find the exit. Outside, I'm tripping. That was crazy, yo! And he's like, "Yeah."

• 3:27Glynn Washington?

  Another time, walking around Lake Merritt in Oakland, and this huge, gigantic wolf dog thing comes bounding at us, top speed, snarling like I made a pork chop. Goddamn! And right before it tears a chunk out of my hind parts, it just flops down in front of my buddy,

• 3:47Glynn Washington?

  who reaches down and scratches this monster between the ears. "Dude, you know this dog?" "No, man, but we should probably try to figure out where he belongs."

• 4:01Glynn Washington?

  He takes off for a weekend trip, ends up saving some random kid from drowning. It's always something. And that would be one thing if he ran around poking bears or juggling fireworks, but that's not what's going on.

• 4:19Glynn Washington?

  Around him,

• 4:23Glynn Washington?

  the universe bends.

• 4:28Glynn Washington?

  And I wanna say, "Stop doing that." But I don't know what he's doing. And part of his magic seems to be that he always emerges unscathed.

• 4:40Glynn Washington?

  And that's great.

• 4:43Glynn Washington?

  I'm just not sure if that same magic applies to whoever's standing next to him.

• 4:58Glynn Washington?

  This story starts now.

• 5:49Glynn Washington?

  Now, our next story comes to us from the Caribbean island of Montserrat. In 1995, a volcano erupted on Montserrat and destroyed its capital city. But many years before that, Michelle was growing up on the island, in her grandparents' house. And Michelle, Michelle was living through her own kind of disaster.

• 6:52Speaker 01

  The house that I grew up in was called the Gearbox because it had been owned by a Mr. and Mrs. Gear. My grandparents were part of the upper class, so it was quite lavish.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  The house was filled with beautiful antique furniture, some of it 17th century.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  The dining room was massive. It was an open plan between the dining room area and the drawing room area. So whenever they would have cocktail parties, everything was taken out and they would have just a huge room where people could dance and mingle.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  We had a chef, a housekeeper, a chauffeur, and a gardener. When my grandparents would have cocktail parties, they would be offered extra hours to help to cater, but none of them ever wanted to stay once it got dark. They always left long before dark. I never understood why.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Soon after my mother, brother, and I moved in with my grandparents,

• 8:10Speaker 01

  I was playing with my dolls. It was around maybe 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Nobody else was home except for our household staff, and I heard a woman's voice calling me. She called my name very, very slowly, with a very posh British accent. Me, she.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Innocent sounding, sweet, lovely, almost playful. I dropped what I was doing and I went running straight to our cook to ask her, "Yes?" She said, "Yes, what?" I said, "You called me just now." She said, "No, I didn't." So I went running to the housekeeper. She said the same thing. "No, I didn't call you. I'm busy. Run, run, run, play."

• 9:04Speaker 01

  And that was just the beginning.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  I would hear it so often, at least three, four times a week. "Michelle."

• 9:23Speaker 01

  That is what life was like back then in the Gearbox. Strange things happened in that house and nobody spoke about it.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  There were glass windows all around the house. The wind would come roaring down the hills, straight through our house, through all the open windows, howling to the point where it sounds like a thousand women screaming. There would be the shadows of trees all along the wall, this wind howling.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  One night, I woke up. I was on my way to the bathroom, which is down a long passage. I had to pass by the drawing room and there were glass doors. I happened to glance to my right and the room was filled with all these different couples, eight to 10 couples, all dancing and whirling around, all just gliding silently.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  No music, no nothing, except the sound of the wind.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  I just stopped and I stared.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  I was in awe.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  It took my breath away. Because the women were so beautiful. They were all dressed in very old-fashioned clothes. Everything was muted, almost like one of these old-fashioned photographs that you see.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  I couldn't understand why there was no music, or talking, or laughing.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  I knew that there was something not quite right. I can't tell you how long I was there for. It seems as if I was there for hours. When I got tired, I just went to the bathroom. When I came back from the bathroom, nobody, just the sound of the wind.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  I never told my mom what I witnessed, because I knew that I was not supposed to be out of bed at that hour. I never told my grandparents, or my aunts and uncles. I never even told my brother.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  On another night, I went to use the bathroom again, and I saw them again. This time, I opened the glass door. I wanted to see them clearer. Nobody turned to look at me. Nobody said anything. They just kept dancing on.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Then an older gentleman came up to me. He had gray hair, and it was long and swept back. He had a mustache and a goatee kind of beard. And he was dressing up the same style as the men, very formal. He held his hand out to me. And I took his hand, and he held out his other hand, put my hand in his. They were very soft for a man's hands. And then he lifted me so that my little feet were on top of his shoes. They were beautiful, black, shiny, well polished.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  He put one arm around my waist, and he had the other hand in his. And then he started whirling me around, in and out, all around the couples. I was laughing. I loved it.

• 13:05Glynn Washington?

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• 13:50Glynn Washington?

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• 14:31Speaker 01

  Little by little, I started to get tired. And then I noticed his hands started to get colder and colder and colder, until they were almost like ice. Till there was almost this frigid air coming off of him. I didn't like it. It was uncomfortable. It was making my hands cold.

• 14:54Speaker 01

  I just took my hands out of his. As I broke away from him and I turned, just out of my peripheral vision, for a second, I could still see them whirling around. And then I ran, and I never looked back. And I just ran, straight through glass doors.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  I don't know for sure who he was, but I can only imagine that it was Mr. Gere. I had a lovely time dancing with all these strange people, because it made me feel like an adult. And I fell asleep very, very happy. I knew this wasn't a dream, because I saw it more than once. I saw the other couples dancing several times after that night, but I never danced with Mr. Gere ever again, because I didn't like his cold hands.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  My mother had a queen-size bed, and then my brother and I shared a twin bed.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  One night, there was a massive thunder and lightning storm. It woke my brother and I up. We got scared, and we jumped into bed with my mother.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  I fell asleep. I had a dream that I was in a small wooden house. There was something chasing me. All I could hear was the sound of very heavy footsteps following me.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  I ran into this room. I scampered under the bed. I saw a black boot came walking over to the bed, and they just stood there. I was almost holding my breath, and I was petrified. But then, the feet all of a sudden turned around, and they just walked out of the door.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  I figured, okay, it's safe. All of a sudden, just as I was about to slide out from the bed, the entire bed was just lifted and thrown in the air. Then, two hands were reaching down at me. That woke me up immediately.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  The minute I woke up, I was lying on my back. There was thunder and lightning, heavy rain, wind howling. The windows were open, just a little bit, but it was enough for there to be a breeze. I could feel the wind on my face.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  I could see my mother on my left side, sleeping. I could see my brother on my right. I looked up, directly above me. The first thing I saw was a figure floating against the ceiling.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  The first thing I saw was their shoes.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  The exact same shoes I were imagining, black boots. The pants were flapping from the wind.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  My eyes traveled to the face. It was a man. He had long, stringy gray hair. One half of his face looked as if it had been melted. It was just completely melted. Very similar to burn victims. I had never, ever seen someone burnt to that degree.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  And on the other side, scowling, sneering, very, very cruel smile. And the second that my eyes saw his face, this thing launched itself at me. And the two hands circled my neck. And just as it started to squeeze, I screamed as loud as I could, and he was gone.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Immediately, my brother woke up, my mother jumped up. "What? What? What's going on? What's going on?" And I was screaming and screaming and screaming. And then I started crying and I would not stop. I was hysterical. I couldn't even speak for quite a few minutes, because I just could not get the words out. All I had a chance was to tell her about, "There was something up there, there was a man up there, and he rushed down, and he put his hands around me, and his face, and..." But I was probably not making much sense.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  I knew it was not Mr. Gere, because I knew what Mr. Gere looked like, and he did not look like this man. And also, Mr. Gere had never tried to hurt me when we danced together.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  My mom had to be up early and she just didn't have time for it. So she was like, "No, no, it's just a dream, it's just a dream, nonsense." I was really, really upset for a very long time that my mom didn't believe me.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  From that night onwards, I grew to hate the sound of wind howling. I was terrified of that house, especially when it got dark. I became so clingy, I had to be with somebody. And I never went to the bathroom once everybody was asleep. I always made sure I did what I had to do before I had to sleep.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  So how did you feel when you moved out of that house?

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Relieved, so happy, so happy, so happy to leave. Because I lived in a constant state of terror.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  But I still heard the voices calling, I still heard the voice calling my name. I was never afraid of that.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  Have you ever been back to the gearbox since then?

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Yes. My mother and I had to sing or perform at a recital.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  And our pianist, he said that there's a beautiful grand piano and it's at the gearbox. And we had understood years before that they had renovated the gearbox into a music school.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  And so he said, "I would like you all to come up there so that we can practice." And that was the first time in years that I had been back. But because I knew they had renovated it, I wasn't, I didn't feel, anyway, completely renovated.

• 21:25Speaker 02

  And then what state is the Gear box in these days?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  It's probably buried under several feet of ash. Because that entire half of the island was completely destroyed and buried under several feet of ash because of the pyroclastic flows. So there's no trace of that house or anything around it.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  It's just rubble.

• 22:12Glynn Washington?

  Oh no, ghosts don't care about geography, we're sure. But somewhere down there, underneath all that volcanic ash, Mr. Gear is still dancing, waiting for his partner. Big thanks to Michelle for sharing her story. Michelle still lives in Montserrat and she's got plenty more to say about the freaky things she's seen. So if you're ever on the island, stop by as long as you're ready to be spooked. Original score for that piece was by Doug Stewart. It was produced by Anne Ford.

• 23:03Glynn Washington?

  You see, some people are attractors. Events, even people. A few years ago, Ryan Andrews, he was down on his luck. And that's when the weird stuff started happening. Fortunately for Ryan, a San Francisco legend was around to help him out.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  I had broken my back and it was a pretty rough injury.

• 23:51Speaker 03

  I had sciatic nerve damage in my right leg and up my whole right side. A lot of muscle spasms and involuntary muscle movement. Though it kind of left me in limbo as far as employment and a place to live.

• 24:11Speaker 03

  I had the chance to stay in an SRO. Single-room occupancy, it's a hotel room for long-term stays of a month or more.

• 24:27Speaker 03

  I had never stayed in an SRO. I was just thankful I wasn't sleeping in my vehicle. The SRO I went to was an old hotel that went back over 100 years.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  It had three or four stories, probably 20 units in it. Kind of place that you would find people passed out in the hallway and not really want to bother them.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  When I went up to the front desk, there was a gentleman that was the manager. You pay for the room, I think at the time it was $160 or something like that for the week.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  My room is on the second floor.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  The building itself had this weird feeling to it. It felt like there was a lot of past energy built up and you were walking into its world.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  There wasn't much room in the room. Everything is just big enough. Like the sink is a triangle sink that fits into a corner. You put a bed in there and just enough room to turn around.

• 26:05Glynn Washington?

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• 26:46Glynn Washington?

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

• 27:04Speaker 04

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• 28:19Speaker 03

  Shortly after I had checked in and was getting settled in, I was watching TV. It was about eight or nine o'clock in the evening. And I heard this knocking on the door.

• 28:38Speaker 03

  There was no urgency to the knocking. I thought it was somebody who was looking for somebody that was staying in the room previously.

• 28:48Speaker 03

  It's a pretty small room, so all you had to do is turn around and open the door.

• 28:55Speaker 03

  And there was no one there.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  And I looked down the hallway and there was no one there.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  I thought, that's pretty fast to get down the hallway or get into another room without me seeing. That was my first heads up that there was something strange in the building.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  The second night, I'd shut off the lights. I had just laid down in bed. And all of a sudden, there was knocking at the door.

• 29:36Speaker 03

  I wasn't expecting anybody.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  And again, there was nobody at the door. It was really unnerving. But, you know, it's also an old building. So maybe it was upstairs, or maybe it was the guy in the next room banging on something. I don't know.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  I went back to sleep.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  The third night, I had been out with friends of mine. I came back to the room and I just went straight to sleep. I was pretty tired.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  I woke up somewhere around 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. The first thing I can remember was this, this shaking. It kind of felt like I was having a muscle spasm.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  As I'm becoming more awake, I realized the metal-framed twin bed that I was in was banging against the wall, swaying around.

• 30:54Speaker 03

  It was like the whole room was rolling. I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, we're having an earthquake." At the same time, there was somebody pounding on the door, just bang, bang, bang, like the building was on fire. I didn't know what was happening. And then I feel two hands grab my ankles. I felt the fingers around my ankles pull me out of bed.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  As soon as my butt hit the floor, I was standing up. I thought there was someone in my room and I was ready to fight. I flip on the light and I open the door and there's nobody at the door and I'm standing in my room and there's nothing happening.

• 31:44Speaker 03

  I looked down and I had a glass of water sitting on my nightstand. There wasn't any water spilled, so we couldn't have been having an earthquake. But there's dents from the knobs at the top of the bed frame that had dented into the plaster walls.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  I was shaking to my core at that point. That wasn't benign.

• 32:12Speaker 03

  That wasn't just somebody walking the hallway or something like that. That was personal. That was trying to get my attention. It put its hands on me.

• 32:27Speaker 03

  I went back to sleep. I mean, I was working 12-hour days. I wanted sleep more than I wanted answers. I woke up and went to work in the morning. I didn't say anything to the manager because I had to be to work really early. I needed the money, you know, I was saving up for an apartment. After work, I don't want to go back to this room. I went out to this bar called The Phoenix Bar on Valencia Street. It's a nice, quiet place where you can go in and maybe have a good conversation with somebody else, but watch some sports too.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  I think it was about 10:00, 10:30. The bartender's doing her rounds till start closing up the bar. I'm sitting there just watching the game, drinking my pint, and a guy, wearing a hoodie and his hands in his front pockets, comes walking out from where the restroom was. He's walking towards me, and I can't really even see his face because his hood's pulled down so far. He's walking right along the back of the bar stools, probably about 10 feet away from me, and he goes to lean in to ask the bartender for something.

• 33:56Speaker 03

  I saw this guy just disappear. I went to the bartender and said, "Where did that guy go?" And she said, "What guy?" And I said, "The guy that leaned in and asked for something." And she said, "I don't know what you're talking about." I was in disbelief at what I had just seen.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  Before going into that hotel, none of that kind of thing had happened.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  What is this building up to?

• 34:30Speaker 03

  I didn't know. I didn't know, but it gave me the feeling like I was playing in the middle of a freeway, and it was only a matter of time before something bad was gonna happen.

• 34:42Speaker 03

  It's a little disheartening, because I was really trying hard, I was pushing hard to rebuild my life again. And I felt like there were forces that were trying to prevent me from doing that.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  San Francisco can be very difficult. There's a lot of runaways that come here, a lot of people that don't necessarily want to remember where they came from. I really don't have a spiritual leader who is there for guidance. So that's why I asked my friend, Virginia.

• 35:24Speaker 03

  She was kind of like a mother, but a lot of people might know her as the tamale lady. She was a quintessential part of San Francisco for a really long time. She had coolers that she would wheel around on a cart that were full of tamales. A dollar tamale or a two-dollar tamale was pretty hot stuff, home-cooked food, you know?

• 35:52Speaker 03

  I would always buy her tamales, because I loved them. That was kind of the way we became friends. She was more than happy to lend you some solid advice if you asked for it. By going to her, I was hoping to better understand what it was that I was experiencing.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  We had known each other for probably about 10 years at that point. I went to go see her at a bar that I like to go to called Zeitgeist.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  I just went up and said, "Virginia, I'm really having a problem. I'm experiencing things that are kind of on another realm." I described the guy that I had seen, and she said, "Was there anything bright about them? Was there anything that illuminated from them?" I said, "No, if anything, it was kind of the opposite. It seemed like it was dark." She said, "What you're dealing with is something that's really bad." She knew it was a ghost. She said, "When you go home tonight, somebody's gonna give you something,

• 37:09Speaker 03

  and I need you to put this underneath your bed. It will keep those spirits from bothering you." When she told me that, I took it with a grain of salt, like, "Yeah, right, whatever. That's not very helpful. None of this is making any sense."

• 37:31Speaker 03

  I'm walking down the street, straighten going back to the room because I didn't want to. I come up to this traffic signal, and there's this lady that's walking across the street, a short, little lady with a lot of clothes on her. She had a sweater and a scarf and a bonnet or something on her head. She's wandering across the street. I'm waiting for the signal, and she runs right into me.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  I turned around and I go, "Excuse me." She thrusts this box into my hands. It's a Plexiglas box. Probably a foot by a foot that has a bunch of marbles in it. They weren't marbles like you played with when you were a kid. They had tiger stripes and stuff. They were all solid marbles, probably over 100. My first thought was, "I've never seen anything like this in my whole life." The bottom was a mirror that reflected the marbles back up.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  So it looks like there's more marbles than what's actually in the case. There was no opening in the box. No way to get the marbles in or the marbles out. She said, "Put this underneath your bed and I'll leave you alone." She said it really forcefully, like I was bothering her. I just said, "Okay." What else do you say to somebody? Now I have this Plexiglas box that was full of a bunch of different colored marbles. I didn't have a feeling of relief.

• 39:29Speaker 03

  I didn't have a feeling of joy that I had found something that was gonna fix it. But I took it home and put it underneath the bed. I went to sleep and nobody knocked on my door that night.

• 39:54Speaker 03

  The next morning, it was like waking up in an old country house with the window open and the breeze is blowing in and it just smells so fresh and sweet. It was like a whole new, fresh breath of air. I got up and got ready for work and thought, "Hey, maybe I'm having a good day." The manager was in his front area and he said, "What happened?" I can feel it, something's happening. And I just went to work and I had a good day at work. Everything was like normal.

• 40:36Speaker 03

  A couple of days after, I ran into Virginia and told her about the experience. I asked why the marbles would help, and she told me it was to distract spirits. It confuses them, gives them something to do rather than bother you. I was like, well, okay. Two or three days after I put the box in there, I found an apartment and moved out. I left the box of marbles underneath the bed. I felt like it was specific to that location, to those spirits.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  As I was leaving, I had to get my deposit back from the manager. I said, "There's a box of marbles in that room. Leave it in that room." She said, "Why?" I said, "Ghosts." And he goes, "Oh, that's what the feeling was." I said, "Yeah, I made them go away." And I left. Left it in a better place than where I found it.

• 41:57Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Ryan, for sharing your story with the Spooked. Now, Virginia Ramos, the tamale lady, has since passed away, but we're sure she is still listening and lending a hand from the other side. Original score for that piece by Dirk Swartzoff was produced by Ann Ford.

• 42:30Glynn Washington?

  Now, they want us to believe that we have explored this earth and uncovered all of her mysteries, the hidden secrets of the stuff of myth and legend now. Not so fast. Because here at Spooked, we're hunting for monsters. And understand, this show is about relationships. It's about connections. So I'm asking if you have a relationship with the creature. With providence far different from our own. If you have such a thing, I'd love to hear all about it. Millions of Spooked listeners would love to hear about it as well. Spooked at SnapJudgment.org. Because there's nothing better than a Spooked story from a Spooked listener.

• 43:15Glynn Washington?

  Spooked at SnapJudgment.org. And if you need that Spooked gear, know the T-shirt of your dreams is available right now at SnapJudgment.org. And remember, if you like your storytelling under the bright light of day, get the amazing Stupendious Sister podcast called Snap Judgment. It is storytelling with a beat.

• 43:50Glynn Washington?

  Spooked was created by a team that always locks up the house each and every night before bed, except of course, for Mark Ristich. His door is wide open. There's Davy Kim, Chris Hamrick, Leon Morimoto, Taylor Decot, Marissa Dodge, Zoe Frigno, Anne Ford, Eric Ganes, Tessa Paoli, Cody Harjo, Lola Abraha, Miles Lassie, Yari Bundy, Doug Stor. The Spooked theme song is by Pat Massey Miller. My name is Glen Washington, and we like to pretend that life is fair, that everyone plays by the same rules when life tells us all the time that she plays favorites.

• 44:34Glynn Washington?

  Riches, beauty, genius, power are unevenly distributed commodities.

• 44:41Glynn Washington?

  Some she smiles upon, others she does not. And it's the winners of this lottery that tell you, things are the way they should be, that they deserve their ill-gotten gains, while you, you just need to work a little bit harder. And perhaps, perhaps they even believe their own lies. And maybe that's why they're so surprised that in certain realms, in certain paths, the different rules apply. The guardians here care not for your goals, or your learning, or your expectations.

• 45:20Glynn Washington?

  Everything on this path is a glimpse into another plane, another world, where privilege cannot protect you, where beauty cannot protect you, where power cannot protect you. Few things will protect you. But one thing we all have access to is a simple piece of advice that goes like this: Never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never, never, never, never, ever, ever, turn out the lights.