The Lady

Stacy knows that her daughter, Mabry, is seeing “a lady” in her room at night. But she doesn’t know just how terrifying that lady is.

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

• 0:06Glynn Washington?

  Merry, merry, quite contrary. Tell us what you know. Her husband, Jack, might just get whacked. And granny's next to go.

• 0:22Glynn Washington?

  Listen to Spooked. Say two.

• 0:30Glynn Washington?

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• 1:13Glynn 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.

• 1:58Glynn 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.

• 2:23Glynn Washington?

  Don't turn out the lights.

• 2:41Glynn Washington?

  Okay, so Facebook is only good for three things. Number one is birthdays. It's great, birthdays. Number two, of course, is seeing how poorly your ex's decisions turned out. And number three, I don't know what that is, but a little while ago, a Facebook request pops up and makes me laugh out loud from someone I used to kick it with hard back in the day, hanging at her house. We'd eat these Swanson's Hungry Man Microwave dinners on actual TV trays. She loved them, loved them. Get all excited about Salisbury steak with a home-style meatloaf, the Swanson Fried Chicken. Act like it was all tasty, delicious.

• 3:25Glynn Washington?

  I'd help her chase her dog, Sherbert, always trying to get run over in the street. She had a rule that we could only play board games that we made together. We were tight, tight.

• 3:40Glynn Washington?

  And one night, finally, watching The Muppets, she loved The Muppets, watching The Muppets, I'd reach over and hold her hand.

• 3:50Glynn Washington?

  For two hours, we'd just hold hands. Then after I leave her place that night,

• 3:57Glynn Washington?

  I never see her again.

• 4:01Glynn Washington?

  I just figure, life, different schools, different states, finally, different countries. But no one knew where she went, like, like she was swallowed up. I was actually scared that maybe something terrible had happened. I'd Google every so often, since Google became a thing, but no luck. And long last, Facebook.

• 4:26Glynn Washington?

  So we'd trade numbers, I'd call, and it's like old times, giggling on the phone like back in high school, talking about who did what, when, arguing over the official rules of this game we made called Tim Tuck 3, gossiping about people I haven't seen in decades. And when the conversation finally slows down, she says...

• 4:48Glynn Washington?

  I think I owe you an explanation.

• 4:51Glynn Washington?

  Huh?

• 4:53Glynn Washington?

  For hiding from you. Hiding? I just thought, no, no, no.

• 5:00Glynn Washington?

  I knew you were looking for me. My mom told me whenever you left a message. But back then, the closer we got, the more afraid I became.

• 5:11Glynn Washington?

  The more terrified I would drown you under my own darkness. I felt empty and I knew I would hollow you out too.

• 5:19Glynn Washington?

  Like a ghost.

• 5:25Glynn Washington?

  We stay quiet then.

• 5:28Glynn Washington?

  Both of us on either side of the line, not having any more words to say, but neither of us wanting to stop talking.

• 5:37Glynn Washington?

  I ask her, "Hey, hey, stay in the line, okay? I'm gonna walk to the store. You go to the store too, all right? All right?"

• 5:47Glynn Washington?

  We both go to our respective grocery stores.

• 5:52Glynn Washington?

  I get the Salisbury steak.

• 5:56Glynn Washington?

  She gets the fried chicken.

• 6:09Glynn Washington?

  Spook starts.

• 6:12Glynn Washington?

  Now.

• 7:02Glynn Washington?

  Now.

• 7:04Glynn Washington?

  What if someone you love, someone you care about, can't give words to what they experience? How do you help them? Our next story takes us down south to Little Rock, Arkansas. Stacy Kinsler is a photographer. She and her husband, their three-year-old daughter Mabry, they're looking for a new house to call home. A place where they can make memories as a family. But some houses, they have memories of their own.

• 7:34Glynn Washington?

  It's food.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  We reached a point where we kind of felt like we outgrew our little house that we got as a starter home and started looking around and saw the cutest little house.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  It was built in 1941 and it's just very much a cottage home. Has a cute little screened-in porch off to the side. It has the cutest front door that's arched and original hardwood floors. I loved it immediately, but it didn't feel like mine. When we were walking through the house, it just sort of hit me in my gut, like this just isn't my house. It was a very clear feeling to me.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  And so we left it alone and kind of waited patiently for something else to come up. And not a lot came up during that time. And the summer passed. And we went back and decided we would go ahead and make an offer on it. And so we did, and it became ours.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  When it came time for us to move into the house, I was just really excited because the street was so cute and the house was so cute. And that gut feeling of this house isn't mine, I kind of pushed it aside and was just really focused on being excited.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  So Mayberry, she started school early. She started when she was two years old, which was not necessarily in our plan, but it's what happened.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Mayberry was diagnosed with autism and she had a profound speech delay.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Her communication was very limited. And we got her into speech therapy and she started to go to school full-time.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  So a lot of time at home, just being there alone, just me in the house.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  So I am at home working, editing photos, and just decided I would come out into the living room to check on the dog and see what he was doing. He has a little bed in front of the fireplace, so I walked in to the living room and we have an old cuckoo clock that was over the fireplace and the pendulum had broken.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  And for the first time in years, saw that the pendulum on it was swinging.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  It hadn't done that. I can't remember the last time that it worked. So I noticed that and thought it was really odd. What on earth made it swing? I pulled out my phone and took a video of it and sent it to my husband and he had no answer for that either.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  As time goes on, I start to see lights flickering and hear floorboards creaking.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  It was little things like that that were odd and strange. It was just something that makes you go, huh, okay, that was weird.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  There's one night when I'm going to bed and I crawl into bed after a long day and was about to fall asleep and heard the latch on the door hit up against the door frame.

• 12:06Speaker 01

  As if something has pushed against the door, but it catches. And I feel a presence.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Like something has come into the room.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  It's that feeling that, you know, you know when someone's looking at you or you know when someone's entered the room.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  I feel anxious and panicked. My adrenaline starts rushing.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  I turn on the light to see if there's anything there and there's nothing there.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  So Wendell and I are sitting on the couch. We got Mayberry to bed. And we would sit down, watch TV.

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Just relax, enjoy our evening together after she had gone to bed.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  As we're sitting there on the couch, I heard the door open.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  And I thought, okay, so she's getting up. She's going to come out here and talk to us or try to get us to come back in there and get her back to sleep. But she never does. So I got up and went to her room and found her just standing in the doorway. And I say to her, "What's going on? What's wrong?" And she says, "It's the lady."

• 14:08Speaker 01

  And I say, "What lady?" "The lady on the dresser."

• 14:18Speaker 01

  My first instinct was to say, "Was it somebody outside, like in the window? Was it the neighbor?" And it was a no. And that was very unnerving because Mayberry wasn't telling stories at that time.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  The information that she shared with us was always with a purpose. She was communicating in a way of like communicating needs. So when she said that she sees a lady in her room, and I had been experiencing the things that I had experienced in the home, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  But my mother instincts kicked in and I just wanted to help her get back to sleep and comfort her. And so I was like, "Okay, well, that, you know, that sounds scary, but you're okay. And Mom and Dad are here. We're just in the next room. We can leave the door open. I'll lie back down with you for a little while and help you get back to sleep." And so that's what I did.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  It happens about once a week. Other nights when she wakes up, she comes to us. She comes to us and, you know, tells us whatever it is that she needs, or gets a drink, or whatever. But on the nights when it was the lady, she would never come. She would just stand in the doorway. And so I would get up and say to her, "What's going on?" And she would say, "It's the lady."

• 16:17Speaker 01

  At that point, I was scared.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  It made me reach out to the former owner of the house on Facebook and just say, "Did you ever have anything odd happen here?" And she wrote me back and said, "You know, I hate I hate that I didn't say anything to you about it at the time, but yeah, we did. We had weird stuff happen there."

• 16:46Speaker 01

  They would hear noises around the house, creaking in the floors, similar things to what we had experienced.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  She was in the kitchen and the sink came on.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  And no one turned it on.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  She had a baby, and the baby had the same room that Mayberry has. And she said that she would be changing the baby's diaper and pick up the baby, and the baby would be looking over her shoulder, making eye contact just a few feet behind her. But nobody was there.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  I wasn't angry at her. Honestly, I felt validated because it was like, okay, so it's not Mayberry having dreams, it's not me just walking into a room and seeing random things happen. It's, we're not the only ones here that this has happened to.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  So of course, I'm sharing all this with my friends, my close friends, because it was also bizarre and scary.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Jordan, one of my best friends, grew up on that street that we live on. And she lived a few houses down. I was on the phone with Jordan, and I was telling her about the things that we had been experiencing in the house and that Mayberry was seeing the lady. She immediately thought of Miss Kelly,

• 18:25Speaker 01

  the lady that lived in my home back in the 90s.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  And so, I was very intrigued. And I said, "Well, tell me about Ms. Kelly. Like, what was she like? Who was she? You know, did you know her well?" And she said, "Yeah. My mom and I would make dinners for her because she was elderly. She had lost her vision. And she was unable to do that for herself. And so, she would pack up a plate of food and take it down to Ms. Kelly. Jordan would bring her meals until Ms. Kelly passed away. And our home was the last home that Ms. Kelly lived in.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  And of course, we both wondered, is the lady Ms. Kelly?

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Having a name and an idea of who this person was that was in my house, I started to feel compassion towards her. However, I did not want her scaring my daughter. I wanted that to stop. That had to stop.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  So, Mayberry, as she was in school, it changed our lives. It was like, once she understood what communication was about, it started to really take off for her. And now, she's able to explain what she's feeling and all those things that I wondered about when she was little.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  And so, every so often, after things had calmed down, I would say, "Do you remember the lady?" I was just so curious. And she would just shut it down. She was like, "Yep, I don't want to talk about that."

• 20:36Speaker 01

  It was a couple of years ago and I just felt like I would ask her again to see if she was ready to talk about it. Because it was something that was unresolved for me with her. And I said, "Do you remember the lady?" And she was like, "Yeah." And I said, "Do you feel like talking about that?" And she said, "Yeah." And so, I just said, "Well, just tell me what you remember."

• 21:13Speaker 02

  So, I remember my mom would put me to bed. She would read me a story. Then she would like tell me goodnight, turn off the lights, and then close the door. And I would fall asleep not too long after that. But then there's one night where I would wake up and there's this woman sitting on my dresser across from my bed.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  She looked pale, to the point where she just looked like a sheet of paper. And she had like old scraggly hair. It was like gray, dirty, you know?

• 22:01Speaker 02

  She was wearing this black hood type of dress.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  She looked kind of upset, like she was disappointed. My mind was racing. I could feel the adrenaline like kick in. Because I was like, "Oh, what do I need to do next?" Or like, "What's going to happen?" Or like, "Is she mean? Is she nice?"

• 23:04Speaker 02

  I kinda sat there for a moment and just kept watching her. And that's when I decided I should just get up and go try to talk to my parents about it. But I didn't really know exactly how to talk to them about what happened. I've always kind of, I've been like an internal person. So I don't love to like, be like, "Oh my gosh, there's like someone in my room." I don't want to scare them, because I thought that'd make it worse. I thought waiting by the door would be better than to just go tell them. So I kinda felt more safer like just being like right outside my bedroom.

• 23:50Speaker 02

  Whenever my mom did see me by my door, we went back in my room. But the woman is gone. She's disappeared.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  I want to say like maybe a week or two later, my mom is putting me to bed. And she tells me goodnight, turns out the lights, and then shuts the door, and then I fall asleep.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  But I wake up, and then she was on the ceiling, stretched out like an X.

• 24:35Speaker 02

  She looked the same. She was wearing the same clothes. But I could see her face better. I could see all the details of her face.

• 24:45Speaker 02

  Pale, dark eyes. She was looking at me, and she had this like huge creepy looking smile on her face. It was a way bigger smile than like a normal person would smile, and it looked way too big for her face.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Almost like up to her, like, nose.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  It just looked evil. I kind of felt like I wanted to vomit because it was just like that disturbing.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  I was scared she was gonna fall off the ceiling and fall on, fall on me.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  And then after that, she would be in my room everywhere. Like, she could be like, you know, sitting on my bed, sitting on the dresser, which I feel like is common for her. Or she would be on the ceiling.

• 25:48Speaker 02

  One night, I woke up. The lady was inches from my face.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  And she was screaming so loud, like, on the top of her lungs, and it was like a blood-curdling scream.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  I could see her mouth, like, the inside of her mouth really well because she was so close.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  Her teeth looked rotten. It's like she hadn't brushed them in like several years. And she had this smell, like, from every part of her body. Kind of like something was decaying.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  I just bawled for the door. I could still hear the screaming as I was running towards the door, but then as soon as I opened the door and I stepped out of my room,

• 26:56Speaker 02

  the screaming stopped. So I was like, she's gone. But I felt like she was still around, like, I could still feel her presence. I just didn't feel safe anywhere.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  So one night, we're watching TV and Mayberry's in bed and we hear the door open.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  I get up, knowing we're gonna have a lady conversation. And I go back and I get her in bed and I say, "Okay, so what's going on?" She said, "It's the lady." And I said, "Well, what happened?"

• 27:38Speaker 02

  So I was asleep and I woke up and I could feel her sitting on my bed.

• 27:54Speaker 02

  She looked at me and she just told me that she didn't like my mom. Like she was kind of announcing it to me.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  I don't like your mom.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  I was extremely terrified at this point. Because I'm like, "Is she going to hurt my mom?"

• 28:23Speaker 01

  I did go back into the living room and sat down and told my husband what Mayberry had said. And of course, he thought that was scary. We just tried to go back to watching TV and go on about our night. It's very hard to focus on the show. It's hard to go to the bathroom alone or lie down in bed and go to sleep and have that feeling of, "There's something in my house and whatever it is doesn't like me."

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Not long after that, Jordan, my friend Lori, came over. We were gonna watch a movie. So we're all sitting on the couch and I was giving them the latest update on the lady.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Jordan just said out loud to the house, "Ms. Kelly, it's Jordan. Remember me? I used to bring you dinner." And it's like, "This is my friend Stacy, and she's a good person, and her daughter's a sweet girl, and her husband's a good man, and these are my friends."

• 29:33Speaker 01

  I wasn't ready for that, and I got really uncomfortable. I thought, "Please don't do that. Just stop." Like, you're either gonna make her mad, or you're gonna stir her up. But the opposite happened.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Things changed after Jordan talked to Ms. Kelly. I would say that the atmosphere in the house, it felt more like my home, you know? The coziness of the house became cozier. It all just felt a little bit calmer and more peaceful. And Mabry no longer saw the lady. It stopped after that.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Like, I had the anticipation of her showing up. I felt like if I would say anything about her, it would somehow, like, bring her spirit back. So that's why I never really talked about it. As 10 years went by, I was like, "Oh, it is official. She isn't coming back." Which is what made me think, "Oh, I feel safe talking about it now." Like, a weight has been lifted off of my body. Like, that's kind of how it felt, you know?

• 31:06Speaker 01

  To hear her tell it now, I think it brought up different emotions. One was...

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Amazement at her and what she's been able to overcome and her ability to communicate. That part of it is cool. The other part of it was, that's really scary. And that was heartbreaking. You don't want your daughter to have to see those kinds of things. But her ability to talk about it and not be afraid, that was what gave me peace about it. The story was complete, kind of, you know? The holes were filled in and it did feel like closure. Scary closure, but closure nonetheless.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  So it was the spring and I had gotten in bed and was about to fall asleep and heard the door press against the latch.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  And felt just a presence in the room. And I picked up my phone and turned on the flashlight and shined it around and nothing was there.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  This didn't feel scary the way that it used to. It didn't feel threatening. So I just turned the flashlight off and went to sleep.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  The next morning, Maybury said, "I think I saw the lady again."

• 32:47Speaker 02

  So I was asleep and I woke up. I turned towards the doorway and I see this figure in a white dress. And now looking at her, I realize it is the lady.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  And she actually had, I think, a little bit of makeup on. Like, her face looked a lot better. It didn't look as pale. And then, like, her hair looked better, too. And it looked pretty.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  It looked like someone actually took care of her.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  So I saw her, and she was just looking at me, but she would kind of, like, slowly fade away, but then slowly appear again. Like headlights flashing on a car. But like, really, really slowly. She didn't really have, like, a smile on her face, but she didn't look upset either. She just kind of had like a neutral expression on her face. It definitely seemed a lot kinder. I was confused, but I wasn't scared. I was just kind of laying there, like, that's so strange, like, that she's there, and it's been 10 years.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  And then I went back to sleep after that.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  I think that the lady appeared again to let us know that she is at peace.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  It's been a long road.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  She knows the family that we are. And I think that she has made peace with us being there. But even though things have calmed down in the house, we still feel her around. We still have lights flicker. We still have footsteps in the hall.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  I feel like it's just sort of become like a thing to us now. Like it's not new. We don't feel like we need to like hide from anything. Like we feel more safe, like it's our home.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Wendell gets a little more scared now than he used to, which is funny to me. He'll just kind of make a noise like, "Oh, I don't like, I just don't like it." I'll just look at him and like shrug my shoulders, like, "There she goes again."

• 35:40Speaker 01

  At some point during all of this, I decided to sage the house. It felt like housekeeping almost.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  We've reached a new point in all of this and saging any negative energy just feels like one good last step.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  I walked all through the house and prayed over it and just, you know, put my energy into it and as soon as I was done, as soon as I put it out, I laid down on my bed and the air conditioner is right outside of the bedroom window and it just, it exploded.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Big, huge bang, sparks. I do think it was Ms. Kelly telling me to back off.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  I think to me, at that point, it was like, "I've made peace with y'all, living in my home, but I'm still gonna be here and, and don't try to push me out."

• 36:51Speaker 01

  I almost had to laugh of like, "Okay, okay. Sorry, I'm sorry, I won't do that again.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  We'll make peace with you if you make peace with us, I'm sorry."

• 37:20Glynn Washington?

  Thank you Stacy and thank you Mabry for sharing your story with the Spook. Make no mistake Stacy and Mabry are listeners to this show. We love stories from listeners. Original score was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Zoe Frigino.

• 38:10Glynn Washington?

  Spooksters, Spooksters, Spooksters, we walk this dark path together. Spooked Season 6 and understand we are searching for monsters. If you've encountered a creature, a specter, a thing that defies the expectations we have of the universe, I want to know all about it. Spook at snapjudgment.org. Because there is nothing better than a spook story from a spooked listener. Spook at snapjudgment.org. Warn the dark side that you spooked with some spook gear, the hat, the t-shirt of your dreams. Available right now at snapjudgment.org.

• 38:50Glynn Washington?

  And remember, if you like your stories told under the glorious light of the midday sun, get the amazing stupendous Snap Judgment Podcast with storytelling with a beat.

• 39:15Glynn Washington?

  Spook was created by the team that keeps their promises, each and every one, except for Mark Ristich. He always has his fingers crossed. Anna Sussman, Eliza Smith, Chris Hambrick, Annie Nguyen, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Davy Kim, Renzo Goryo, Tayo Decot, Marissa Dodge, Zoe Frigno, Tiffany Eliza, Anne Ford, Doug Stewart, and Isaiah Sims. The Spook theme song is by Pat Massey Miller. My name is Tim Washington. We're told, as children, that great wisdom comes with great age. Perhaps, mostly, but I have witnessed many an old fool.

• 39:58Glynn Washington?

  And while some small children, they display the understanding of the ancients. They know not to mistake simplicity for banality. They appreciate that the most basic understanding can be the most powerful, that first things should always be first. And when warding off that born of darkness, the first thing, the very first thing, is to never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never, never, ever, turn out the light.