The Intruders - Classic

If you are feeling unnerved, if you have a sinking feeling that something is not right, take our advice, turn and run. Do not go back and investigate.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  When you go to bed at night, you lock the door for a reason. But what if whomever is trying to get in doesn't need a key?

• 0:16Speaker 00

  You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:05Speaker 00

  I remember when he came to our house. I hear him say he can fix the septic system or something. And my mother tells him that he should maybe come back when my father's home. From the hallway, I see him tall, wiry, red-faced, red-haired. And he says, "Sure, he can come back later, of course. He just wants you to know, I never had no problems with coloreds living here. No matter what the neighbors say, I always thought colored women were the most beautiful women on the earth. And you know, you know, I'd be willing to cut a deal. Cut a deal to get some of this work done

• 1:50Speaker 00

  you need around here. Cut a deal to find colored women like yourself, if you know what I mean. If you know what I mean."

• 2:04Speaker 00

  I step out then from the hallway. He draws back, surprised. I walk past both him and my mother into the kitchen. I open the silverware drawer and I pull out a knife. I will it to be sharper than the butter knife it is, but it is steel. And I will stab this red-headed man with it. I am only nine, but I will stab this man. Or I will break glass. Or I will find fire. I know this, like I know the sky is blue, like I know the taste of a summer peach.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  I know I will kill this person.

• 2:53Speaker 00

  I had just been drinking a glass of milk, washing the Flintstones, but I know with utter certainty that I will kill him or perish in the process. Almost as if it has already happened, I know it. I walk back into the living room, clutching the knife tight in my fist. Maybe he's already decided to take his leave. Or maybe he sees the cold rage in a nine-year-old boy's eyes. He places his cap back on his head, nods to my mother, and backs out the front door.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  From the window, I see him get into his truck and pull off. I throw the knife into the sink, walk past my mother, go back into my room. But the anger doesn't subside. The rage doesn't leak away. Instead, it builds. My skin feels hot. My jaw clutched tight. I see myself ending the red-faced man in different ways, with knives and guns and scarves and sticks and shards. And I wonder if in another world

• 4:22Speaker 00

  there waits another me sitting in his room, not clenched, not furious, but relaxed, sitting in the same chair after washing the blood from a butter knife.

• 4:48Speaker 00

  Spook starts now.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  Now then, our first story takes us to New Mexico, which, because it was the land of many, many battles, is now a land of many, many spirits. But there's one ghost in particular. She's not a ghost of a war battle. She's a ghost of a 19th-century Jewish immigrant mother. And she's made one hell of a name for herself: Spooked.

• 5:59Speaker 02

  So the ghost is named Julia Staub, and she's my great-great-grandmother. We started hearing stories about a pale woman in a black Victorian gown who kept being seen by guests at the hotel that had once been her home. And the hotel is called La Pasada. I wanted to know just what she was like. So I went on a quest to find all the information I possibly could about my great-great-grandmother. I think the idea was just anything and everything and trying to approach it from any angle I could, which included newspaper, reading old newspapers,

• 6:42Speaker 02

  doing oral histories with family members. I tried very hard to interact with her. I started with a tarot card reader, then a phone psychic. I went to a psychic colony in Florida. I met with a clairvoyant in the library of her house. I even ate a marijuana cookie, hoping to open myself up to communing with the beyond. And that didn't go well at all. I never had the encounter with Julia's ghost that I so wanted to have. She never spoke to me. But I've spoken to a lot of people who've had interactions with her. And the one that struck me the most was a man named Jonathan,

• 7:26Speaker 02

  who had worked as a concierge there.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Well, a concierge is essentially the ambassador of the hotel. What we do is, many people think we just make dinner reservations for people, but we don't. We do a whole bunch of things. I considered it an honor. La Pasada has such a good reputation in town. It was considered a badge of honor to work at La Pasada. I was hesitant at first. Everyone knew about Julia Staub and how she was still there in the house. And I was just hesitant.

• 8:02Speaker 02

  Julia's house, that's now La Pasada Hotel, was built by her husband Abraham in 1883. And it was an elegant Victorian with a mansard roof, ornate brasswork, beautiful mahogany woodwork. It's all still there. Abraham was the richest man in the territory at that point. So the family always hosted lots of events in the house. They had salons and lectures, sewing circles. According to newspapers from the time, Julia was often a hostess at those events.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  That house was the center of the social scene. And her entire focus was on the house, keeping it up, entertaining. That was her life.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  She was a very busy woman. She had seven kids, and all of them survived to adulthood. But she then had an eighth baby, who died at three weeks old.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  They say that after Julia lost her baby, her hair turned white overnight. I found a bunch of newspaper articles showing that for a few years after the baby died, Julia was still out in Santa Fe doing things, going to parties. But then she spiraled into a severe depression. In 1893, after years of trying to get better, she went into her room, and there's no evidence that she was ever seen in public after that. And one thing that really struck me was her daughter got married in 1894. And the newspaper article says that Julia wasn't able to come because of her health. So she was in her room at the top of the stairs, and her daughter was getting married, and she was unable to come down to be there.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  She died in that room in 1896.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  I think I was working there, hmm, three or six months, or something like that. "John, would you take these people up to see Julia's room?" And I said, "Oh, no, please, no. I don't want to go up." And as I go up the stairs, about halfway up, it's like I hit this wall of, well, actually like magnets, two magnets of the same pole trying to, and you're trying to make them attach, but they won't. There was like that pushback that I felt. And I felt, and I said, "Well, it's just me." Because I said to myself, I set myself up with a fear. But as I continued to walk up, I started getting dizzy.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  I started sweating. My ears clogged up. And so we get to the top landing. And we're walking over toward Julia's room, which was, from the landing, you go to the left. I had to stand against the wall because I was starting to really get dizzy, and my knees were starting to buckle. And I'm talking to them, telling them a bit about Julia and the haunts from the stories that I had heard, you know, the legend of Julia Staub. But by this time, I was really starting to slide down the wall. And I said to myself, "I gotta get them out of here, because I have to get out of here." And by the time I got down to the bottom of the steps, everything just went away.

• 11:17Speaker 03

  All of that feeling just left me, like, immediately. And I said to myself, "Whoa, she was there. I really felt her."

• 11:44Speaker 02

  There's bartenders who said that she would, like, throw glasses across the room. I was told that the cleaning staff would not go into the room alone, because at one point, a cleaner got locked in there by Julia, apparently.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  The second time I went up, which was, I think, a little later that week, I went up, same thing happened again, a little bit stronger this time. It was almost like I couldn't breathe properly, because everything seemed so tight. "I gotta cut this one really short, because I am not wanted up here." And then I realized, I said to myself, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. I know exactly what's going on." I got up from my desk, and I walked over to the bottom of the stairs. And I looked up, and I just said, "Julia, I know that was you. I will make this deal with you, Julia. And I will keep this promise to you. Anytime I have to come up to tell people and show people about you and your room,

• 12:46Speaker 03

  and I will let you know in advance." I walked, I think I took two steps up, and I said, "This is the other thing I will do, Julia. I have a pin, it's a brooch, actually, that I had bought for my mother to give my mother. And it's a Rosetta design. It's mother of pearl with silver. Julia liked roses." And I said, "I will wear this brooch on my lapel, and you still hold roost over the house. And that'll be an introduction to really talking about you. But I promise you, Julia, I will wear this every single day I come to work." And I did.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  All the ghost stories said that she was fond of roses and flowers. And all the psychics and mediums I spoke with, when I was trying to learn more about her, also mentioned that she loved flowers. Perhaps that was just a Victorian thing. I don't know.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  Husband and wife with their two kids had come. They just stayed, I think they were there for two days. They had heard about Julia. And the son had a little rose in his hand. One of those little inexpensive 99-cent roses that you get at the convenience stores, at the service stations, or wherever. And the poor thing looked like it was on its last gasp of breath. And he wanted to put it in Julia's room. And I told him to go put it in the corner on the nightstand. So he did, and the poor rose, when he put it down, it just turned. And the butt of the rose just turned into the corner, like it was being a punished child.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  I said, "But you know, Julia's gonna love it, because it's from you." Well, that was in the afternoon. The next day, they were having breakfast. The boy came over, running over, and he says, "Can we see the rose? Can we see the rose?" I went into the room.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  I wasn't expecting much of that rose, not much at all. It turned out to be the most gorgeous crimson red, healthy rose I had ever seen in my life. And I've still, not to this day, ever seen a rose like that. I went down, and I told the mother, I said, "You've got to come up and see this. You've got to come up and see this. I'll tell them to just leave your food where it is, and heat it up when you come back." They all came up, dad, mom, and the kids. The mother's expression on her face was like, "Oh, no, impossible." And the son was just so happy, he was bouncing with her, and so was the daughter. I said, "That's Julia."

• 15:28Speaker 02

  There's been lots of stories about Julia, you know, chandeliers swaying, lights flickering. And a few people have described her ripping the covers off of them while they're sleeping. But I haven't met anybody who actually said they had conversations with her. In terms of having ongoing relationships and conversations, Jonathan's the only person that I have found.

• 15:53Speaker 03

  The night that I did see Julia, or she allowed me to experience her, it was Halloween. I never liked Halloween when I was a kid. I still don't care for Halloween. But it was Halloween, I was sitting at my concierge desk, and because people were coming in and out, wanting to know, "Julia, Julia, Julia, Julia." And I was getting more and more anxious. The anxiety was just building, and the tension was building up in me. And I'm thinking, "Why is this going on? I don't understand it." And then I realized it was because of Julia. And I went over to the stairs, and I said, "Julia, I know, I'm feeling your anxiety about this. You don't like this. It happens year after year after year.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  And nobody pays any attention to how you might feel about this. Well, I care. You don't have to show yourself to anybody, because everybody's expecting her to show herself. You don't have to show yourself to anyone." I could feel that she was present there, and she was on the stairs. But I just talked to her, focusing my energies in my mind toward her, talking to her. And, you know, "I adore you, Julia. I love you much. And I just want you to rest. I want your spirit to rest." But as I started to walk down, I looked at the window,

• 17:20Speaker 03

  and the reflection was Julia standing right behind me in the corner, in her dark robe, her Victorian black cloak. I could see that there was a face under there, but I couldn't see, because it was dark. But I did see her paper-white hair just coming out from underneath the cloak's hood. And I smiled, and I just said, "Thank you, Julia. Thank you so much."

• 17:50Speaker 03

  I got down to the bottom of the stairs, and there was no one in the bar. The bartender was there, and there was a cocktail waitress there. And they looked at me, and they said, "No," because I haven't said this, but I'm an African-American or a black person. And the cocktail waitress said, "Oh, my God, I've never seen a black person look so pale in my life." The bartender looked at me, says, "Yeah, you OK?" And then they both looked at each other, and they said, "Julia, oh, Julia." And they dashed out of there. She lets herself be known when she wants herself to be known. Julia was a very, very caring person, very caring, very alone person. I'm not gonna say lonely, but she was very much alone.

• 18:35Speaker 03

  And the fact that I took the time to talk to her on many occasions, and just be with her, with her spirit, Julia and I became very close.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  I felt sad for her. In her family, there was a lot of depression. Her children, two of them took their lives. Of course, I would like Julia to be happy and at rest. So the fact that she's found a friend in Jonathan, I mean, I guess it makes me feel better that Julia has a friend.

• 19:13Speaker 03

  Well, as I said, Julia and I became, we had started to become very close, so that I could more or less read the mood that her spirit was in. There was the one time, when they did the most recent remodeling, that was where I could feel the anxiety starting to build. It's her home. And would you like some strangers coming into your home and just start moving things around and changing things? I don't think so. And that's the same thing with Julia. She's holding on to what she knows.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  I could feel the anxiety starting to build. And it was building over a few days until one day when the operations manager came into the lobby with two of the interior designers. And I looked at them and it was like a red flag in front of a bull. And I was like, I don't even know, I don't even remember coming out from behind my desk. And I went over there and I just more or less verbally attacked them. And I could hear myself talking. And I'm saying to myself, what am I saying? Why am I talking? What's going on? Why am I so angry at these people? For that moment in time, I was essentially possessed.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  I was possessed. It scared me a bit. It really scared me a bit because it just happened so quickly. It came over so fast. And I had to fight it. And then I realized my fist was in a clinch. And I'm going, I backed off. I had to force myself to back off. Because I remember turning around and sitting back down on the desk and I was absolutely exhausted. And I realized when I started clearing, my head started clearing. And I said, Julia, Julia, no, Julia, this was wrong. Julia, this was wrong. I understand why you did it. I know why you did it.

• 21:15Speaker 03

  And I understand, no, this is wrong. No, we have to, Julia, I have to cut ties with you. This has to stop. And it will stop. I can't do this anymore. I love you dearly. I'm stopping this right now. And I did. Because ironically, the very next day, I got a call from another hotel. Jonathan, we'd like to have you up here with us. Would you mind coming up and talking to us? And see if you'd like to come work with us? And I said, yes.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  I recognize I'm not the kind of person who's able to open herself up to these kinds of communication with the dead or with what we think are the dead. And I wish in some ways that I was. But finally, when I was ready, I decided I would spend the night in Julia's room. And went and put my bags up there, went out to dinner, came back and got ready for bed.

• 22:28Speaker 00

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• 23:10Speaker 00

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• 23:41Speaker 02

  I was really nervous. And I, at one point, I did, I thought I was still awake and I dreamt that Julia was pulling the covers off of me. And I, you know, sat straight up and the covers were still on me. So I had fallen asleep. And right before dawn, I opened my eyes. And on the wall in front of me, there were green lights. They were moving. I first thought they were like smoke detector lights or movement sensors. But they kept moving around, sort of in a weird way. And then they went faster and faster. And just as I was about to sit up and look closer, they turned red and orange and zipped off to the right and disappeared.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  When I checked out, the woman at reception asked me if I'd seen anything or had any experiences in Julia's room. And I told her what happened. And she told me that a woman in room 310 had also woken in the night to dancing lights in her room. That was it. That was all I saw. That was my only encounter with Julia Staub. There were no conversations like Jonathan had. I saw no visions. I didn't see a sad lady in a Victorian dress. I didn't feel scared at all. I felt touched, if that makes any sense. It felt very real to me. And it really did feel to me as if Julia had come to say hi.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  I still have that brooch. But every time I do look at it in my jewelry box, I do touch it and I offer a prayer to Julia that she's content and I ask that her spirit be resting.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  Thank you, Jonathan Mason and Hannah Nordhaus, for sharing your story at The Spooked. And if you want to know more about the life and times of Julia Staub, check out Hannah's book, American Ghost. We have a link on our website, spookpodcast.org.

• 26:08Speaker 00

  Now, when we return, some young people discover that just because a place looks kinky, doesn't mean it's necessarily so. In just a moment, stay tuned.

• 26:43Speaker 00

  Welcome back to Spooked. Now, our next story comes from our friends at Endless Thread, a podcast from WBUR and Reddit that tells stories of the so-called front page of the internet. And on Halloween time, they dive deep into the scary stories that folks share. And this story, this one, comes to us from a redditor named Alex. When Alex was a kid, he and his best friend Ryan, yeah, they liked to make trouble. Spooked.

• 27:32Speaker 04

  Ryan, I met him when I was in third grade, actually. We met riding bikes. He was outside riding his bike. I was outside riding my bike. So we just grew up just trying to make huge fireworks, shooting fireworks out of pipes and graffiti on the light poles, trying to climb up them and throwing ropes over them, making swings. And then eventually, we got into exploring abandoned homes.

• 28:00Speaker 05

  My name's Ryan Date. I used to go around the old neighborhoods of, I don't know, urban exploring is what they call it now.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  So the story takes place in Modesto, California, the city I grew up in during the housing crisis. Here and there, you'd see abandoned houses.

• 28:17Speaker 05

  New houses or houses that they were fixing or pretty much like abandoned houses, stuff like that.

• 28:24Speaker 04

  Some of them looked like they were hit pretty hard. Other kids and gang members would tag it up and break into it and just smash it to pieces.

• 28:41Speaker 05

  That place wasn't too far from school over there. We walked by a lot. We finally went there and then just curiosity kind of drug us that way, I guess.

• 28:57Speaker 04

  So the house looked like it still hadn't been mowed in a little while. Grass was pretty tall. Why not? Let's go inside. I had this really crappy flip phone. That was our only source of light. And I set the thing to full brightness. We reached the other side of the house and we could hear a bunch of banging in the other room. There was definitely someone in the house. Like, there had to be someone else in there with us. So me and Ryan kind of just sat there staring at each other, kind of scared, because we didn't know what the hell that was and maybe there was someone squatting in the house.

• 29:42Speaker 05

  We thought some homeless person might have been in there trying to scare us out.

• 29:46Speaker 04

  And we were gonna find him, because he's scaring us. So we did a full search of the house.

• 29:55Speaker 05

  So we went, we looked around, we didn't see anything. We checked every room, every little space, nothing there.

• 30:02Speaker 04

  So after we did a full round through the house, we found ourselves back in the kitchen. And we were just too scared to go any further. So we left through that back door and we started to make our way home.

• 30:21Speaker 06

  My name's AJ. Alex is a friend and Ryan, Ryan's my brother. Ryan and Alex came back one night with a story and was like, dude, this crazy stuff happened. You know, of course, I'm like, yeah, right. But, and they're like, yeah, dude, let's go, let's go look at it, we'll show you. And it's like, okay, so I go and look, just hang out with them and, you know, walk over there to the house and...

• 30:41Speaker 05

  I don't know why we were attracted to that place, but we decided to go back. You tell a kid not to poke a beehive and what's the kid gonna go do? He's gonna go poke a beehive. At that point, then we were actually looking for something, you know, wanted to see what we might see.

• 31:01Speaker 04

  We make our way to the kitchen and we're all just sitting there chatting.

• 31:07Speaker 06

  I feel like a tugging on the back of my shirt and just like, you know, just like thinking it's one of the guys, I'm like, hey dude, knock it off. Well, there's nobody behind me, I'm realizing that everybody's in front of me. And then it like pulls the back of my shirt and I fall down.

• 31:23Speaker 05

  At first I thought he tripped, but you know, there's nothing on the floor. I just remember him going right through the, right through those doors, like the doors opened and he just kind of went into the room.

• 31:39Speaker 04

  To me, it looked like someone pulled him into the room, like they wrapped a rope around his waist and whatever it was, just yanked him into the room.

• 31:52Speaker 04

  He was so scared, like he was hanging onto the walls for dear life. Like, he was just smacking everything, just trying to hold on to something, but it pulled him hard and he couldn't hold on to the door frame. So he fell on his butt and as soon as he fell on his butt, he jumped up. And I'm like, okay, that's, that's when I was like, yeah, it's time to go.

• 32:14Speaker 05

  As we were leaving, I just had this burning pain in my back. I lifted up my shirt and I guess there was three long scratch marks from like the top of my neck all the way down to my lower back.

• 32:29Speaker 06

  It looked like somebody with like three fingers or a claw or something. Well, I'm gonna say it looked like somebody with three fingers just like scratched him from his shoulder all the way down to like his hip.

• 32:40Speaker 04

  They were pretty deep, but they were really thin. It drew blood.

• 32:46Speaker 05

  Honestly, at that point, I did think it was something like paranormal, something ghostly. Because no one else was there, no one else did. I mean, if someone does that, you know, you're gonna notice.

• 33:00Speaker 06

  At that moment, honestly, we were like really scared and, you know, kind of pretty much just like telling ourselves we're not gonna go back there.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  And then we started making our way home further and then Ryan notices his pocket knife is missing. And he was like, I gotta go back for that. And, you know, I'm kind of, I was pissed off. I was like, dude, how did you, how did you lose that?

• 33:23Speaker 06

  You know, at first, we were just like, we'll come back in the morning or it's gone. He was just like, no, dude, that's my favorite knife.

• 33:30Speaker 05

  It was a fold out, it was about, I'm gonna say five inches long. It was a fold out knife. It had a round tilt with little brass end, with a little brass or gold end on each side. It was sentimental to me, it was something that was given to me and I cared about at the time.

• 33:48Speaker 04

  So of course I'm not gonna let him go back in there alone, so we both go back.

• 33:56Speaker 04

  That's when the banging got really loud. It just sounded like someone was thrashing inside the walls.

• 34:03Speaker 04

  And we could hear it all throughout the house.

• 34:09Speaker 06

  And then every room we looked in, like there was no, I mean, there was nothing, no evidence of his knife anywhere, like, no hallway, no bedroom, it was gone.

• 34:24Speaker 04

  And then finally, we make our way to the back room. And as we're going down the hall, you have to pass the front door. And as we creep up on the front door, you could see the big ass knife, like someone with all their might shoved it into the door.

• 34:44Speaker 04

  And the knife was just sticking in the door.

• 34:47Speaker 05

  And, you know, it was just stuck in the wood. We thought, okay, yeah, that's malicious.

• 34:57Speaker 05

  Could have been something evil or something we were just annoying.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  So we grabbed the knife and I, we went home and I never went back after that.

• 35:13Speaker 05

  At one point, I think it was used as like a paranormal or something like that.

• 35:20Speaker 04

  It was vacant for a while, until, I'm not sure who moved in, but they had some old lady there and she was creepy. Like, her hair was really thin and she kind of looked always like she was in a daze, sitting on her porch. And I'm not sure if I found her creepy as hell because I knew what was going on in the house, or if she was just genuinely creepy. But I, every time I walked by the house, I always stared at it. And sometimes she'd be outside staring back at me.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Thank you, Alex, AJ and Ryan for sharing your story at the Spook. And thanks to Ben Brock Johnson and the folks at Endless Thread for sending that tale our way. Check out their show for incredible stories from Reddit.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  Please understand, no apologies, good lord, we're ripping apart the curtains, separating the living from the dead, and if you dig it, let somebody know. spookpodcast.org. And if you love storytelling from the bright light of day, check out our sister podcast, snapjudgment.org, that's storytelling of the beat. Spook was brought to you by that cold touch in the middle of the night. And Mark Ristich, Anna Sussman, Eliza Smith, the magical musical soundscape. Through this journey was created by Renzo Goryeo, by Leon Morimoto and Pat Macidi Miller. Remember this, temptation lurps.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  There are those who have you taste this, touch that, smell this, and that's all well and good. Till if their intoxicants and seductions and reversities lead you astray, but whatever you do, wherever you go, never, ever, never, ever, never, never, ever turn out the lights.