Hiding Spot

Growing up in Mumbai, Rashi knew money didn't grow on trees. But when times got really tough and the family was on the brink, their house began to reveal its secrets.

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

• 0:08Glynn Washington?

  See, one of these is poison. And one brings cursed luck. Take one and you'll spout feathers, the other run amok. One's said to cause the scurvy. But one might make me rich. The trouble that I'm facing is... I'm not sure which is which.

• 0:32Glynn Washington?

  You've crossed over the spooked. Stay tuned.

• 0:46Glynn Washington?

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

• 0:54Glynn Washington?

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

• 0:59Speaker 01

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

• 1:06Speaker 02

  Then the mirror light turns on. And then the mirror 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.

• 1:14Speaker 03

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

• 1:26Speaker 04

  I'm starting to freak out a little bit. I'm pleading with them to just please let me out. Dee's eyes started opening. They were pure white. And I lose it.

• 1:38Glynn Washington?

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

• 2:04Glynn Washington?

  My grandmother had bad knees. Which may be the only reason I survived childhood. Always a close thing. We have a routine, a pattern. First she catches me doing the bad stuff. Lighting her bible on fire with a magnifying glass. Dumping her syrup on the ground to watch the ants. Forgetting that I locked my little brother in attic. Next she narrows her eyes. She surveys the catastrophe. Then, like in a western, she snatches up something to beat me with. A spatula, extension cord, whatever's handy. Gets to swinging. I run lickety-split from the rain of flows. And if I'm lucky, very, very lucky,

• 2:47Glynn Washington?

  I sprint, leap, dive, tuck, roll. Straight underneath the dining room table, safe. Just in time. And as granny rages there, I sit. "Boy, come out for me to there." Uh-uh. Her bad knees won't let her bend down and snatch me up. "Boy, you hear me?" I already got snacks and a pile of book stash to wait out the storms. While the world outside the table shakes. "Boy!"

• 3:20Glynn Washington?

  I gonna love this time alone. Encyclopedia Brown, The Chronicles of Narnia, Vanilla Wafers. "You asking for it now?" But I know better. Because no matter how loud she sputters, no matter how towering the rage, the danger will end at 3pm on the dot. Not 2:55, not 3:10, at 3pm exactly. Why? Because on ABC Detroit, Channel 7, that's what time General Hospital comes on. And then granny time, General Hospital time is sacred time. All debts forgiven, all slates wiped clean.

• 4:04Glynn Washington?

  Just don't you disturb her and don't get in the way of her stories. Crawl up under the table, bring granny something cold to drink, and get back to doing bad stuff. And so many years later, it strikes me that right now in my world... In your world as well, a storm rages.

• 4:28Glynn Washington?

  The world shakes. And is right there, right there. And I find myself scared, fearful, reaching for a box of vanilla wafers in the Chronicles of Narnia.

• 4:42Glynn Washington?

  For some peace. Some respite.

• 4:48Glynn Washington?

  And I'm hoping it's soon.

• 4:51Glynn Washington?

  Once the panic, the terror has passed, I will crawl out from under this table.

• 5:03Glynn Washington?

  And get back to doing bad things.

• 5:12Glynn Washington?

  Spook starts.

• 5:17Glynn Washington?

  Now.

• 5:50Glynn Washington?

  You see, there are many different types of hiding spaces. Now we're gonna take you to India to meet Rashi. Rashi's a teenager and she lives in Mumbai. She's just graduated and wants to throw a party to celebrate.

• 6:08Glynn Washington?

  Naturally, Rashi has just one small problem.

• 6:14Glynn Washington?

  Spooked.

• 6:30Speaker 05

  One day, all of his cousins, we've gathered at this Mumbai house. And we're planning to do this amazing huge party that we have never had before in our household.

• 6:44Speaker 05

  We just had our major results in school. Some of us are growing up and going to college.

• 6:52Speaker 05

  So we planned to get some booze of course. Then we have to buy some paper hats and some decoration.

• 7:01Speaker 05

  So me being the eldest child in the family, I decide that I should be contributing more money. But I had no money.

• 7:10Speaker 05

  So my mum's in the kitchen. And I go to her and I very sweetly start to wash the utensils. So she knows that I've come there to ask her for something.

• 7:23Speaker 05

  She stops me and she's like, "Just tell me what you want already, don't try to act sweet."

• 7:29Speaker 05

  I look into her eyes and I'm like, "Mum, please, can you give me some more money because we're planning a party?"

• 7:38Speaker 05

  And then there was silence for about 20 seconds.

• 7:43Speaker 05

  She just smiled and she said, "Okay, fine, but have you had your breakfast?" And in my head, I'm like, "She's changing the topic. I know I'm not getting money for that party."

• 7:57Speaker 05

  I used to have chocolate cereal for breakfast. So I walk to the cabinet in the other dining area.

• 8:05Speaker 05

  Take out the box. And while I'm pouring the cereal out, there's a whole lot of cash that just falls out on the table.

• 8:16Speaker 05

  5 rupees, 10 rupees, 50 rupees.

• 8:21Speaker 05

  In my head, I'm like, "Hmm, I have no idea where this money's come from." But now I don't need to ask my mother, which is so great.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  My mother comes to me in the evening, she said, "The 200 rupees that you took, what are you gonna buy from it?"

• 8:42Speaker 05

  I go like, "Oh, so it was you who put that money in that box in the first place?" She said, "No, it's magic, it can appear from anywhere in the house." "If you ever find money again in the house, you have to tell me, you cannot just steal it without telling me."

• 9:02Speaker 05

  I suddenly realized that, "Oh, my mother hides money around the house."

• 9:11Speaker 05

  And when I think about it, my dad is a spendthrift, so it actually made sense that my mum hid money around the house.

• 9:19Speaker 05

  The party was a blast. And I remember the next morning, none of us were sober enough to go home.

• 9:32Speaker 05

  One night, I was waiting for my parents to come back from this doctor's appointment.

• 9:39Speaker 05

  My parents had regularly started going to the doctors because my mother started feeling sick. She constantly had pain and aches.

• 9:52Speaker 05

  I was standing in the balcony and I saw their car approach and I just ran downstairs to greet my mum.

• 10:01Speaker 05

  And I see her come out of the car and she has this, you know, expression about her that she's going to cry.

• 10:08Speaker 05

  She runs up the stairs, goes to the bed, lies down, and she just puts her head between her hands and she bursts out crying. Never in my life, my mother had cried like that. Not even when she lost her best friend.

• 10:26Speaker 05

  So I kept asking her, "What happened? What happened? Why are you crying?"

• 10:31Speaker 05

  And she just looked at me and she said, "I'm gonna lose all my hair."

• 10:37Speaker 05

  My mum had this luscious, long hair which went right down to her knees.

• 10:44Speaker 05

  And she loved her hair so much.

• 10:49Speaker 05

  I asked her if there's something wrong or why would it happen?

• 10:54Speaker 05

  And in between her sobs and crying, she just somehow told me, "I have cancer."

• 11:04Speaker 05

  I couldn't speak for the next, I think, thirty, forty minutes.

• 11:08Speaker 05

  My head just straight away went to what would happen if we lose our mom.

• 11:48Speaker 05

  So after my mother's diagnosis for the next two years, we had to regularly visit the hospital. And each treatment was quite expensive. So it was getting difficult for us money-wise.

• 12:04Speaker 05

  She started teaching us different things as a family. She would give us instructions on how to take care of the garden, what, who likes to eat, how do you go about a set routine, how do you not spend too much.

• 12:23Speaker 05

  Initially, I thought my mother was teaching us those things because she couldn't do them herself. But eventually, I realized that maybe she was trying to teach us the ways of life because she knew she is not going to live with us for very long.

• 12:40Speaker 05

  On the thirty-first of August, we were at home. My mom felt just fine. She was doing good. But towards the evening later on, she started to feel sick.

• 12:53Speaker 05

  She suddenly started to have a lot of pain in her back. She started to feel breathless. And I think a couple of hours later in the morning at four o'clock,

• 13:06Speaker 05

  she just went silent.

• 13:09Speaker 05

  We just knew that my mother had gone, she was no more with us.

• 13:18Speaker 05

  The next few months were very difficult.

• 13:24Speaker 05

  For every small thing, we used to miss our mother a lot. None of us knew how to cook properly. We couldn't find our clothes in place. There was no routine in the house, everything was chaotic. And financially, we did not have enough.

• 13:44Speaker 05

  I was very depressed. So my grandmum, she gives me this metal bangle, which is like a bracelet.

• 13:53Speaker 05

  And she puts it on my left hand.

• 13:57Speaker 05

  And I'm thinking, okay, maybe, you know, it's for good luck or maybe it's to calm me down.

• 14:04Speaker 05

  Somewhere, there's this belief that if you wear something metal, it keeps you calm and protected. So I just put it on and I never took it off.

• 14:16Speaker 05

  Obviously, we couldn't tend to ourselves, so forget about tending to the garden or the plants.

• 14:23Speaker 05

  This particular plant, it started to die eventually.

• 14:29Speaker 05

  It was one of our very favorite plants. It was a money plant. That climbed all the way up to my window grille in my bedroom and almost covered half of it. It had nice, beautiful, round leaves. But it suddenly started to wilt.

• 14:49Speaker 05

  After a week, it was completely dead.

• 14:55Speaker 05

  We try everything we know and we can to save it. Make another cutting from it, prune it, grow another plant from it, nothing works.

• 15:07Speaker 05

  It almost felt like the plants knew that my mum was not around to take care of them anymore, that she was gone.

• 15:16Speaker 05

  After, almost an year after my mom passed away, I was sitting in my living room and my dad comes to me and says, "Why do you keep waking up at 3am?"

• 15:30Speaker 05

  And I immediately looked at him confused and I said, "I was not up at 3am. What happened?" And he said, "I woke up to get some water and I passed by your room and I saw that you were sitting in your bed."

• 15:46Speaker 05

  I was like, "Oh, maybe I would have just woken up randomly."

• 15:52Speaker 05

  After two, three days, my grandmom told me the same thing. She said, "You do wake up at 3am. Why do you keep sitting in your bed? Is something wrong?"

• 16:04Speaker 05

  The first thing that went into my head was, "Maybe I'm still not used to the fact that my mother is not around anymore. Maybe I'm depressed and maybe my brain is making me do things." Sometimes people also go into sleepwalking problems because of stress and all of that. So we went to the doctor.

• 16:28Speaker 05

  The doctor said that it could be just stress and I don't think there's something serious that you need to worry about but if you think you're waking up at the same time and if your family is saying it's the same time, put an alarm clock just to see how you respond to it. You will know if you've been sleepwalking.

• 16:45Speaker 05

  So we come back and my father puts an alarm clock for I think 3:15am and I just dozed off to sleep.

• 17:00Speaker 05

  Next thing I remember is the alarm clock started ringing.

• 17:07Speaker 05

  So I wake up and I realise that I'm sitting up. And I'm staring at that plant. The plant that was already dead in my window.

• 17:21Speaker 05

  I'm thinking, oh, I have been actually sitting up and doing this. But also, what are these little green things coming out of the plant?

• 17:33Speaker 05

  There are three new branches that are sprouting out. It had small leaves. It was almost as if it was a fresh new plant.

• 17:47Speaker 05

  I was just plain confused.

• 17:51Speaker 05

  Because the same plant had been dead for almost an year. It was impossible to revive.

• 17:58Speaker 05

  So in my head, I'm thinking,

• 18:01Speaker 05

  you know, maybe I'm just imagining it.

• 18:05Speaker 05

  And I went back to sleep.

• 18:10Speaker 05

  The next night, I go to sleep. And then once again, I wake up at 3 a.m.

• 18:18Speaker 05

  I'm sitting up and I'm staring at that plant.

• 18:24Speaker 05

  The plant had grown a little more. One of its branches had actually coiled around the grill.

• 18:32Speaker 05

  It's almost like it's coming alive right in front of me at that moment.

• 18:38Speaker 05

  And this goes on for about 20 days.

• 18:43Speaker 05

  In the span of 20 days, it came back to life. And there's no bloody explanation for it.

• 18:53Speaker 05

  I remember thinking that, maybe this is something supernatural?

• 18:59Speaker 05

  Maybe there is some sort of energies passing or something that has remained of my mother, which she's come to tell us through the plant?

• 19:11Speaker 05

  A couple of times, the thought did cross my head, but I never took it seriously.

• 19:21Speaker 05

  One night, I go to sleep on my usual time.

• 19:28Speaker 05

  In the middle of the night, I remember feeling a soft touch on my head.

• 19:37Speaker 05

  Like somebody carousing my hair, somebody massaging my eyes. And the touch is very, very peculiar because it's just like my mum's. She would usually massage our eyes, massage our heads before waking us up.

• 20:00Speaker 05

  And that touch is so strong that I open my eyes. And I look to the right side of my bed and I see my mum standing there.

• 20:14Speaker 05

  She's wearing a sari and she's wearing her hair in a braid, a long braid.

• 20:20Speaker 05

  She just looks like she's there in person, alive.

• 20:26Speaker 05

  She's smiling and I'm confused.

• 20:33Speaker 05

  I want to ask her out aloud, "Mum, if it's you and if you've come back", but I can't get myself to speak.

• 20:44Speaker 05

  She's not saying anything, she's just pointing at me. And she's pointing towards the other room where my father's asleep.

• 20:55Speaker 05

  I get down from the bed and I follow her to that room.

• 21:03Speaker 05

  I enter the room and I see my father sleeping very peacefully.

• 21:10Speaker 05

  And my mother's standing there and she just constantly is pointing at the bed.

• 21:18Speaker 05

  I'm looking at the bed and the very next thing I remember is I wake up.

• 22:01Speaker 05

  I'm in my bed and I see my father, my grandmother and a couple of other family members sitting in my room looking at me. Something is probably wrong because I'm also feeling very heavy. I'm exhausted, I have a body ache.

• 22:18Speaker 05

  My family has this weird expression on their face and I realise that I have woken up almost five hours later than I would usually wake up at.

• 22:30Speaker 05

  So I instantly ask my father, "What's happening?" And the first thing he asks me is, "Do you remember anything?" And I tell him, "No", and I also tell him that I'm extremely tired.

• 22:46Speaker 05

  Then my father tells me, he says, "Do you remember seeing a lot of money?" I instantly ask him, I said, "What do you mean by a lot of money?"

• 22:57Speaker 05

  Then my grandmom says,

• 23:00Speaker 05

  "Do you remember waking up last night? I think you woke up. Didn't you? Think hard." I said, "No, of course I don't remember."

• 23:10Speaker 05

  At this point, I sort of snap at them and I said, "Can you guys just please tell me what's happening because it's really irritating me." And that's when my father says, "You woke up in the night, you came to my room,

• 23:28Speaker 05

  and you first lifted me, you put me on the floor, and you pulled the mattress off the bed."

• 23:41Speaker 05

  And I'm wondering how are you picking that mattress up because it's very heavy.

• 23:47Speaker 05

  At this point, I'm legit thinking that my family is just, you know, they're just joking around with me.

• 23:54Speaker 05

  I said, maybe I was sleepwalking, maybe I was doing something out in my sleep.

• 24:01Speaker 05

  He said, the moment you lifted that mattress, it was so scary to look at and we did not have the courage to come and touch you.

• 24:12Speaker 05

  We called out your name a couple of times, but you did not respond.

• 24:18Speaker 05

  And then my father says, underneath the mattress, there were four compartments. One of the compartments had a secret locker that none of us knew about. No one in our family knew that these locker existed.

• 24:35Speaker 05

  You opened the locker and then you pulled out this plastic bags with a lot of cash and jewelry.

• 24:42Speaker 05

  And you pulled them out one by one.

• 24:45Speaker 05

  You just took everything out and you just put it on the floor.

• 24:51Speaker 05

  And then you closed the compartment and you put the mattress back and then you went back to your room.

• 25:02Speaker 05

  My family is scared. They sound like they don't know who I am or who I was last night.

• 25:11Speaker 05

  And while my father is saying this, my grandmom comes from behind. She takes me to the room and I see there on the floor, five or six big cloth bags with jewelry in them.

• 25:26Speaker 05

  Wads of fifty rupees, hundred rupees.

• 25:30Speaker 05

  I have never seen this amount of cash or jewelry before in my life.

• 25:38Speaker 05

  I was so pissed at my own family.

• 25:42Speaker 05

  You know, it almost felt like, like my family wanted to prove that I'm mentally unstable, that I've gone mad.

• 25:50Speaker 05

  I straight off told my father, if this is a joke, it's a very cruel joke to pull on anybody. And my dad said, listen, you're my daughter and I have no reason to put you through this.

• 26:06Speaker 05

  We found the jewellery that I thought had gotten stolen. The jewellery that was there was stolen long ago, even before I was born. And we found it at a time when we actually needed this cash.

• 26:21Speaker 05

  And then he tells me that my grandmum was due for a surgery. She had a hole in her heart and she was due for a surgery for which we really needed money first.

• 26:34Speaker 05

  After being angry, I felt that sense of relief. Like something was lifted off my shoulder and it just, everything just made sense. It almost felt like my mum was still trying to protect us from the afterlife by trying to keep the plants alive, by trying to make sure that we had enough money to get us by in our rainy days when we actually needed it the most.

• 27:04Speaker 05

  Maybe it was my mother coming to see us for one last time and ensuring our well-being.

• 27:14Speaker 05

  My grandmum's treatment was started.

• 27:19Speaker 05

  I was already in college, so I had a huge college fee to pay. All of that was paid off. My brother's tuition fee was paid off. Some of the jewellery we still have for my brother's, uh, would-be-wife.

• 27:35Speaker 05

  And after about a week, I went to the seaside and I sat there for some time, trying to recollect everything that had happened.

• 27:48Speaker 05

  That metal bangle was still in my hand. And so whenever I looked at the bangle or that bracelet, it reminded me that it was given to me right, right on the next day of my mother's passing.

• 28:03Speaker 05

  And I wanted to move on in life and I was ready to let go.

• 28:10Speaker 05

  I put the bangle in the water, saying this to my mother. If it was you who had come back,

• 28:20Speaker 05

  I hope I've done whatever it is that you wanted me to do. I've fulfilled your last wish.

• 28:28Speaker 05

  And I love you more than anything else in this world.

• 28:34Speaker 05

  As I let go of that bangle, I saw it disappear and then slowly sink into the water.

• 29:19Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Rashi, for sharing your story with the Spoot. We are so glad you and your family are in a much better place now. Rashi's a DJ for Big FM, one of India's largest radio networks. You can check her out on bigfmindia.com. That story was scouted by Idithya Matu. Original score by Lauren Newsom. It was produced by Eric Yanez.

• 29:57Glynn Washington?

  Spooksters know that monsters come in all shapes and sizes. We are a team of monster hunters who will leave no dark closet unopened, no stone unturned, no towels untouched. That's why I ask, if you know where a monster lurks, please, please, please, please, please, tell me about it. [email protected] because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener. [email protected] and we've got big news, the biggest news. Did you know that right now you can see Spook brought to life a whole new way?

• 30:39Glynn Washington?

  Subscribe to Spook on YouTube, on Instagram, on TikTok, even Facebook. Do not watch it alone. Spooked is brought to you by the team that goes by the motto, "Leave no trace" wherever they travel. Except of course for Mark Ristich, who always leaves a trace of peanut butter, bits of glass, licks of goo. There's David Kim, Zoe Fergno, Anne Ford, Eric Yanez, Taylor DeCopp, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Kriki, Elizabeth Z. Pardue, Aditya Mathu, and Lulu Jamima. On Team Spook, the union representative producers, artists, editors, and engineers,

• 31:24Glynn Washington?

  are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO Local 51. The Spook theme song is by Pat Massey Miller. My name is from Washington, and I've mentioned here that I've been struggling my best through a very physically active form of hot yoga the past few months. I am the worst student in every class, but I try my best. Flopping, sweating, straining next to the beautiful people. There's lots of words and terminology tossed about I don't understand at the end of each and every class.

• 32:04Glynn Washington?

  The final pose is to lie on your back and to relax, to be still. Shavasana.

• 32:14Glynn Washington?

  And I don't do well lying still. I feel like with my performance, I don't really deserve to just rest. So as everyone lies there, I try to get a few final poses in. And one day, my teacher asks if I know what shavasana is supposed to teach.

• 32:37Glynn Washington?

  No.

• 32:39Glynn Washington?

  Shavasana, she says, means corpse pose. It is a sacred pose, a practice that allows you to prepare for your final breaths. What? That's scary to me, prepare for my final breaths. She sees me recoil and she laughs. Do you want to fight that which is sure to come, or do you wish to embrace it? Put down your burden.

• 33:08Glynn Washington?

  And since she said it, I've tried to be still then in shavasana, to actually envision my final breaths.

• 33:27Glynn Washington?

  And I've found that instead of bringing fear, it's given me a type of joy, a type of gratitude, a type of hope. I've discovered, much to my surprise, that I don't want to fight the shadow.

• 33:44Glynn Washington?

  Since I know full well how this will end. If I'm very, very lucky, I want to smile when the shadows embrace. That's the work of living, and it puts it in front of mind that while I can still hold the candle, my job is to raise it high, to let it shine as brightly as it may. Yes. It will fall in time.

• 34:13Glynn Washington?

  That will come.

• 34:17Glynn Washington?

  But at this hour, right now,

• 34:22Glynn Washington?

  my promise is to never, ever, never, never, never, ever, never, ever, never turn out the lights.