Smells Like Teen Spirits - Classic

They say that evil forces will sometimes prey on the smartest people in the room. That means, of course, the teenagers.

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  They say that a person's home is their castle. Perhaps. Except when you know that something lives inside that castle. Something patient, something waiting, something angry. Snap Judgments underground layer, you're listening to Spook. Stay tuned.

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  Why have so many crop circles appeared around Britain? How did thousands of people demonstrate powers of telepathy? Can the dead suck the life from the living? Join me, Tim Harford, for a trip into the paranormal throughout Halloween month on Cautionary Tales. Listen to Cautionary Tales on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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  I've never been a violent person. Violence has never been my first response to upset. I didn't go so far as to say that I never understood violence. Didn't understand the desire to want to hurt someone. To physically inflict harm on their person, I could never comprehend it because I'm a man of letters, of conversation, of compromise. It did not compute until 19 years old, moving in with my new roommate, Tommy. Tommy of the backward sneer, Tommy of the easy lie, Tommy of the simple cruelty.

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  I remember seeing him licking my toothbrush. Later, he looked me dead in the eye and told me that I didn't see him do what I saw him do. Once, I picked up my new high-top Jordans, only to discover them drenched in urine. Yeah. Yeah. But when I found the used condom shoved underneath my pillow where I laid my head to sleep, then I knew murder in my heart.

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  I saw myself committing the act. I did. Hot rage pooled from my pores like sweat. I saw myself ending Tommy painfully with my own two hands and smiling while I did it. The thought brought me joy. And if I'm honest, the thought brings me joy even now to think it. And I wonder, I wonder if this impulse, this hate, is something that you can leave behind. Spook starts now.

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  They say that poltergeists, the loud girls, the ghosts that like to throw things, who like to slam doors, they say that poltergeists feed off the envy of young people, the susceptible. And our first guess, wow, he certainly was susceptible when he came up against dark forces.

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  It was 1982. I was 13 years old. My parents had just gotten divorced. So I had a lot of bottled up emotions. And I spent most of the weekends with my aunt and uncle, my uncle Red and Aunt Lois. My aunt, my uncle, and me and my cousin had the opportunity to get out of town and go to Mammoth Lakes, California, which was a nice ski resort up in the mountains. We didn't, I didn't know how to ski, but I thought it would be fun. We were driving up through the Sierra Nevada mountains, you know, there was snow everywhere. Lois and Red were up front talking to each other.

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  I was just sitting in the backseat and I just started to kind of get this feeling of dread. You have these narrow two-lane roads that kind of twist around inside the mountains. And when you looked off to the left, it was just like a sheer drop, like off a cliff. We'd been driving for more than an hour and the hood flew open. My Aunt Lois screamed and my uncle brought the car to a stop. He got out, went to the front, and then he came back into the car. And we were looking at him like, what happened? He goes, I can't explain it. The latch was fine and everything, nothing was broken. Hood just flew up. That scared us pretty bad.

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  Well, when we got to the ski lodge, it was just in a normal, like, housing complex. It was a two-story condominium and it had kind of 70s-style shag rug and the decor was very 70s, kind of out of date. So we spent the first day mostly just settling in and I helped my cousin set up his Atari. Later on that night, as I was trying to go to sleep, I heard the coat hangers in the closet kind of jingle against each other, as if they were blowing in a slight breeze.

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  And then I heard the sound of something dragging across that big, heavy shag carpet at the foot of the bed. And then it just abruptly stopped. And then directly after that, maybe about five seconds after that, I heard the telephone receiver on the nightstand next to the bed pick up and fall back down onto the telephone. It made noise. It was a pretty loud noise. It sent shivers up my spine when I heard it hit. And then I built up enough nerve to look over there and turn my head.

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  I was half expecting to see somebody standing there. There was nothing there. I kind of willed myself to go back to sleep. I woke up the next morning, I felt fine. It was, felt like nothing had happened, like it had all been my imagination. Me, my aunt, my uncle, we all head out to the ski slopes. We go back to the house and when we arrive there, things are out of order. All the beds are now made and we didn't make them when we left. My Aunt Lois called the front office and asked them if there was some kind of a room

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  service that was coming in. And they said, no, no, not at all. We were checking the house out and on the bottom floor, at the very end of the hallway, there was a room that had a bunk bed in it and it had a little nightstand that had a lamp on it. And Lois said, boy, that is an ugly lamp. And we shut the door and walked away. And my uncle Red said, wait a minute, hold on, let's go back and memorize that room. And we walked a few steps back and opened the door and the lamp was now gone. When I went and walked back to that room, I found my uncle on his hands and knees

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  trying to pull on the carpet to see if it's actually attached to the floor or not. And they found the lamp. The lamp was in the closet. And my uncle says, nah, there must be somebody hiding in this house. Maybe somebody was faking it. Maybe there was cameras in there, that the room was rigged up for some kind of special effects. And then he starts, you know, pushing on walls inside the closet to see if there's a false wall there. But there was no other way into the room, you know? And we were, we were standing in the only doorway in and out of that room. There was one window, but the window had been plasticated on the inside because it was winter. Day two, and it's still pretty early, I would say.

• 9:21Speaker 02

  It was probably about three or four in the afternoon. We decided to get out of the house and go get something to eat. We shut off the lights and closed the upstairs drapes and went downstairs and got into the car. And my uncle started the car. And I looked back at the, at the chateau. And I noticed that that top floor window was open and the lights were on. I could see something, like some kind of a weird bluish haze. And I said, Red, look, you turned that light off and shut those shades. And he looked up at it and went, yeah, I sure did. So my uncle just backed out of the parking lot.

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  We left and got some pizza. It was weird, sitting there eating pizza. I'm asking my aunt, my uncle, you know, what is that thing? What is that ghost? You know, how's, I can't believe that. And they're trying to tell me to shut up, to not call it a ghost. We go back to the house, the shades are still open up there and the light's still on. We go upstairs and me and my uncle go directly to that window. And I'm looking down at where our car was parked. And I see something scrawled on the window. And it's in like clear, waxy substance. And it says, go. G O, go.

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  The road to Mammoth Lakes was closed. There was a snowstorm going on, so we couldn't leave. And many things happened over a period of days there. We'd hear furniture in the master bedroom moving slightly, or like it was being drug across the floor. I had found a handprint on the ceiling of the bathroom of the master bedroom. And I said, "Red, look at this handprint up here on the ceiling." And as he was coming towards me, he passed the doorway of the master bedroom, and I saw him just freeze and gasp. And I ran forward to see what it was he was seeing. And in the corner of the room was a rocking chair.

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  And the rocking chair was rocking back and forth violently, and there was nobody there to rock it.

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  I nearly jumped out of my skin.

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  From then on out, nobody wanted to go anywhere on their own. Everybody did things together, especially at night. We were all sleeping on the guest bed in the upstairs living room with the lights on, all our clothes on, everything, just in case anything were to happen. We were ready. I remember Lois didn't sleep all that much at night. She stayed awake and watched over everybody. We were all sleeping, and I heard this sound. Something that happened downstairs. And I heard something that sounded like a chain rattling. Next morning, we woke up, and that chain to the front door downstairs.

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  The base of that chain lock had been ripped out of the door frame. It was hanging by only one screw. And where the chain had been hanging over the door frame, there were three deep gouges that looked like a claw mark. And, you know, he was shaken, and I was shaken.

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  There was kind of a sense of dread, because we were snowed in, and we couldn't get out of there until they cleared the roads. We really didn't have anywhere else to go, so we just had to wait it out. Things happened every moment. You know, it was just constant.

• 13:41Speaker 02

  And by the third night, I guess to us, we got used to it. If this thing wanted to hurt us or to kill us, it would have already. It was just kind of an involving situation. We just noticed that if we talked about something, that would usually be what moved next. We were in the master bedroom, and we took a piece of paper. And my aunt wrote a message to it. I don't remember exactly what she wrote on it. I took that piece of paper and that pen, and I put it on the nightstand next to the bed in the master bedroom. And as I was walking away from it, going to the door, I could picture in my mind that

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  this thing was going to jump up, that this pen would jump up and start writing. It was a Bic pen, clear one.

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  So as I was walking away from it, I kept looking over my shoulder, waiting for that pen to jump up. It never did. I got to the door, and as I'm closing it, the space is getting narrower and narrower as the door is closing. I saw a flicker of light in the middle of the room, in between me and that piece of paper, and then bam, the pen hit me in the chest.

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  It shot at me like a bullet.

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  It startled me so bad, I slammed the door, and I backed up, and I said, "Red, did you see that?" And he went, "Yeah." And I said, "That didn't happen." He goes, "No, that did happen." And I said, "No, no, no, man, that didn't happen." He said, "No, man, that happened."

• 15:18Speaker 02

  We were at the chateau, I think, four or five days. Lois and Red were pretty much at the end of their rope, and they finally cleared the roads. My aunt was just really tired, because I don't think she slept very much during that time. When we got back to Lois's house. I tried to get some sleep on the guest cot in Wesley's bedroom, and I was in a sleeping bag.

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  I heard the dresser drawer open up.

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  And I felt something land on my head on that sleeping bag.

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  And then it drug itself down that sleeping bag, and I heard it make that noise across the nylon, and it drug itself down to my feet. And then it did it again. Something landed on my head, and it drug itself down to my feet.

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  I remember it happening at least three times. I was too scared to look out.

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  I was totally in the sleeping bag. I'd closed even the face of the sleeping bag up. I was like a chrysalis. I didn't even want to know what was happening outside of me.

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  I woke up the next morning, and every drawer of that dresser was open, and it was totally empty. And the foot of my sleeping bag was in about three feet of clothing in a big old stack. That thing had been throwing clothes on me all night.

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  Back at the chateau, I thought that this was some kind of a haunted chateau, but now that it's happening at my aunt's house, I'm thinking there's a lot more to this. And it was just, it scared me. I thought, maybe we couldn't get away from this thing.

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  I started to suspect that maybe it wasn't reading my mind, maybe in some kind of weird way, I'm a part of this, and that I'm moving these things. I was saying to myself, "That's impossible. Human beings can't do this. This is something demons and ghosts do." So then I tried to move an object by the force of will. Took a bottle of cologne, and I said to myself, "I'm gonna make this thing move this bottle of cologne." And that bottle of cologne never moved.

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  I was looking over my shoulder for about a week, wondering if the thing would come back. Days later, it's still, nothing had happened, and I thought, "You know what? That's it, it's over." Kind of felt relieved. That was a close one. You know what I'm talking about? Like when you wipe your forehead, it was a feeling of relief.

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  It was almost kind of like taking responsibility for it somehow diffused it. My aunt and uncle believed it was just some kind of a demonic ghost that was following us around. And I just kind of went along with that explanation. You know, I didn't want to tell them what I really thought it was.

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  Welcome back. Now, we're traveling all the way to the forests of Tennessee, where Alex's family has lived for generations.

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  There's a historical society, not in my town, but in a town over. And they know my family. They know all of them. My great-great-grandpa was a bootlegger called Peg Leg, because he had a peg leg. And he's extremely well-known because he had a... His cart was an ox and a mule. And it's really difficult to make an ox and a mule pull together, but he did. So, he's this, like, huge, well-known person. And so, yeah, one or two generations ago, we had full sway of all of those mountains, and we just kind of died out.

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  Where I'm from, in the height of the Appalachians, the areas where GPS doesn't really work.

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  My dad would put me in the truck, and we would go loafing around in the wilderness, picking up, you know, whatever illegal contraband we could pick up. And so, yeah, that was totally my dad. He was a convict. You know, all his friends were rough and tough, and he was rough and tougher. And I was like Velcroed to him.

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  One of the rare times when he said, "Stop bothering me. You're hindering my work. Go play." I think I was around 10 or 11. I went home, and I was out into the backyard to play with my sister. And I passed this tiny, little back porch area. And it had this big mirror, which faced the woods. And me and my sister were just playing this game. We were running. And every time I would run in a circle past this mirror, I would just look at it, see myself, you know, flashing, and then run around, and flashing, and run around. And then I turned to the left where the mirror was at, and I saw myself really close in the reflection. I just stopped. And in the woods up behind me,

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  I could see this man just standing there. This man was standing kind of over my shoulder, looking down at me. He was maybe 20 feet away. I thought it was my dad, because same stance, same muscly arms, same cutoff shirt. But it was off.

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  He looked just like my dad, except he didn't have tattoos. Since I knew that he was not supposed to be anywhere near that area, that's when I kind of stopped and turned around, looked. Nobody was there. My dad was over in the other direction. So, then I went to dad and said, "I swear, I saw you standing over there. It looked just like you." He looked at me. He looked at the woods. He thought about it for a minute. And then he looked back at me and was like, "Go play."

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  It was super weird, because my dad is the king of his own territory. And, you know, if he thought someone was trespassing, he would go after him with a gun. So, I was pretty conflicted about it for a long time.

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  This cabin is so remote. You always felt really isolated there. We did end up getting a little, tiny TV set. Primitive, but I didn't care, because I love my cartoons. I was sitting there watching cartoons, and like, my nose was at the TV. The TV was facing my dad's chair, which he always sat in. But just an old, blue, broken-down chair. And he had, you know, a blanket over it, and a pillow for his back, and a whiskey bottle behind the pillow that was always there. And I heard him... I heard his boots clomping across the floor. Wears these big, heavy, like, loggung boots. He sat down.

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  He was three feet away from me, with his legs kicked out. It was just totally normal. The only abnormal thing was that he didn't say anything or change the channel. So, I was sitting there watching my cartoon, trying to milk every minute I could.

• 24:58Speaker 03

  I only turned around finally, because it was so quiet. And when I turned around, his chair was just totally empty. I could not believe it. It was like watching somebody disappear. I was so shocked. I immediately got up, and he was nowhere in the house. I glanced outside, and his truck was gone.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  After these things happened, I, you know, I always kind of approached him with a lot more caution. Almost like, "Are you real? Like, are you quantum leap?"

• 25:34Speaker 03

  As time got on, I was like your typical angsty teenager. I didn't have my own room, so I kind of hung out by the counter in the kitchen. And I could draw, and sit at the chair, and listen to my radio. On this day, I was super into what I was doing, and super into the music. I had it blasting. My dad, he was going to walk out the door, but saw me and stopped. He just kind of stood there, face-to-face with me, and was smiling at me. He was clearly looking at what I was doing. And so, I just kind of kept going, until I assumed he would tell me to take my headphones off. He had always supported my artwork, so I thought, "Okay, he sees what I'm doing, and he, you know, he thinks it's cool."

• 26:16Speaker 03

  And so, when he smiled, it was so rare and so genuine. You know, to me, it was like, it made my world better. And so, you know, I didn't kind of want to break the mood. I was really enjoying that silent praise. So, I looked up, and he was gone.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  I actually went back and sat down, put on my music, and started analyzing it. And I saw, like, I could see the face, and it was smiling. And it had, like, no facial hair, and it had no tattoos. It was like there were two versions of my dad. There was the loud, angry, violent version that I knew really well. And then this version that was more calm and gentle and, you know, almost fleeting, that I could never communicate with. He just kind of showed up at certain times.

• 27:20Speaker 03

  My aunt, she was the baby girl. She had all these pictures. She was sentimental. And I had been living with her close to a year, actually. A long time. I was almost 17. So, I finally asked, "Do you have any family pictures? Because I've never seen anybody." We just didn't talk about them at all, growing up. And it was just a big stack of pictures, and I was sitting there, looking through them. And so, I got to this one picture. It was this man, sitting in this chair, just propped way back. It looked just like my dad. The difference was, he didn't have tattoos. It was like, I saw him, and I was like, "That's him. That's the guy." Immediately, I thought about it. The first thing I said was, "Who is that?"

• 28:05Speaker 03

  She was surprised that I didn't know who he was. "That's your grandpa, Alex." I'm like, "Phew." And then I started thinking about, you know, I remember the man in the woods, and I remembered when he came and sat in the chair. It all just kind of came together really fast, and I never questioned it after that.

• 28:22Speaker 03

  And honestly, my first thought was that I wanted to run back home, because it was like he was there. He died 16 years ago, before I was born. And he died in the house that I grew up in. It really touched me, because I really needed that as a kid. I would have loved to have had a grandpa. And the fact that he was there for me in that way, I thought it was really sweet, and I still do.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  Big thanks to Alex for sharing her story. Alex now lives in Utah. The plan is to return to her hometown with her son, and maybe, just maybe, grandpa might visit again.

• 29:36Speaker 00

  Now, if you dig this show on your podcast device, show some Spook love on the social media, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. You are the forces that make this show go. This episode was brought to you by the letters Mark Ristich, Nancy Lopez, Jasmine Aguilera, Anna Sussman, Eliza Smith, Taylor Decot, and Jody Colley. Our original theme music was by Pat Massey Miller. The original soundscaping. All of the music in this episode composed, performed by Pat and David Kim and Leon Morimoto. Best in the business. And understand, while evil forces may conspire to have you believe it's a good idea to just flick the light switch, reject their siren song.

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  Never, ever, never, never, ever, never, turn on the lights.

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  On the next Spooked, just because you can't see it doesn't mean that it can't see you.