Spooked
Original podcast
On Kevin’s night shift at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, things get wet, wild, and very very weird.
2,943 words · 3 speakers
Row, row, row your boat, there's nothing left to do. In the water sinks the wreck. And what's left of the crew?
You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned.
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.
My brother, sloppy, lacks about any kind of standard. If a corner needs cutting, he's gonna cut that corner. Except for one weird thing. Aquariums. This guy, Mr. Slipshod, Mr. Dreamy, is super meticulous about his aquariums. Temperatures calibrated within half a degree. pH levels checked, rechecked, salinity monitored. He loves aquariums, often keeping four or five enormous tanks at a time. Saltwater, freshwater, even brackish tanks, mimicking areas that churn fresh and saltwater together. Every tank, a work of art.
Brightly colored fish swimming through fluorescent coral, seaweed, floating plants, ground cover. This riot of life.
He says he's trying to create the perfect ecosystem.
Looking at him, bent over his reverse osmosis water dual filtration machine like a proud papa, you see, he loves these fish like he birthed them himself. Some even swim to his hand as he strokes their belly. It's wild. And that's why, helping him clean his prized freshwater tank, I ask him, "Why? Why? Why you gonna put this crazy, ugly Oscar fish into the tank? This glorious, beautiful tank? You know it's aggressive. You know it's gonna eat all the pretty fish."
He looks at me, almost like he's sad. And he says, "You know, there is no perfect ecosystem without a killer." Stook starts.
Now.
Each and every aquarium is its own contained world. And one of the best aquariums is in Monterey Bay, California. Years ago, Kevin Wright, he worked as a security guard there. But it was years before that when he was just a little kid, when he fell in love with the place, on his very first visit.
I was a little giddy.
The light bouncing off the fish and the kelp.
Seeing the octopus glide across the windows, almost like it was flying underwater.
You get the sense that you're swimming in the ocean.
How cool is that?
I remember going in to see the kelp forest. The entire ecosystem, from the bottom of the ocean, all the way to the surface where the canopy is. That thing looks like it's as big as a skyscraper.
I had the same awe that you would have standing in front of the giant trees and cliffs in Yosemite.
I've been at the aquarium 21 years now. Little kid me would not believe that I get paid to look at this kelp forest.
My job was to patrol this giant place.
The building is huge. It's three and a half acres.
The property that the aquarium sits on, people have been on that land for thousands of years. 50,000 years ago, indigenous tribes were following the kelp forests that hugged the west coast of North America. And they migrated south and settled in the Monterey Bay. Then there was a Chinese fishing village. It was actually burnt down. There was the Sicilians who came here and overfished sardines. Overnight, the canning industry shut down. The aquarium is sitting in the footprint of one of the last canneries to close. Certain parts of it still hold that same footprint and look and feel.
My first night, working a night shift, I was super excited. Walking around through the splash zone and the tropical fish. I stood and watched the mola mola for a while. It's the largest bony fish in the world. Looks like a giant floating head. They're like missiles in the water. And then I watched the white shark glide around this million gallon tank for several minutes. And the other fish moved out of the way and kept distance. I felt so lucky to be working here. Of course, everyone else like, "Okay, man, you got seven more hours of this.
You gotta calm down." Pretty soon after I started, the security officers that had been there for a while loved to start chiming in with little ghost stories that they had heard or things that they had experienced. There are stories of a woman in a wedding dress swimming across the Kell Forest like she's a scuba diver. There are stories of a woman in a black evening gown as if the person didn't leave the event that was there that night. You go to escort her out of the building and then she's gone.
Stories of footprints, wet footprints, leaving the building. And when you get to the threshold of the door, the footprints stop. So I just kind of passed it off as, "Man, this is just folklore that people are passing down from year to year."
One night, I was going over to where our vault was. And I pulled on the door, just like any other night.
Shake the handle. Handle's locked. Door's locked, door's latched. Moving on to the next door.
A couple minutes later, I get a call from the dispatcher. Who said, Hey, can you go back and check the vault? The door just swung open.
I knew I had latched it.
I was just really uneasy.
So I go back, I check the door. Sure enough, it's wide open.
I called dispatch and asked, Hey, who else proxxed into the door? And the dispatcher relayed back, No one's buzzed into that door. We looked at the video, it was just you.
I didn't believe him.
I go back to the dispatch office, I play the tape.
You see me check the door, you see me grab the handle, shake it and pull pretty hard on the door and walk on.
And in a couple minutes,
sure as can be, you see the door slowly swing open.
I got goosebumps on my arms.
It was like that moment when you go over the little hill too fast and your stomach kind of gets that wobble. I don't like this.
I had two theories. Someone was either inside and hiding on a camera site. Or when the air conditioner turned on, it changed the pressure in the room. And it forced the door open.
But when I went to the room, no one was inside. We watched the video, no one was in the room before or after.
And when we went to the room, the air handlers were not on.
I didn't cast off people's ghost stories as easily after that. I would take any creak and odd noise with a little more suspicion and spend some more time with my flashlight in those areas. I wanted to find something that was tangible that I could prove that it was not a ghost. It was one of the other staff playing a trick or a door that just is faulty.
One night I was coming across the bridge into the dark. The bridge links the two ends of the building together.
Behind me, I could hear someone jingling their keys.
I turned around. No one was there.
Probably just me hearing something.
As you turn into the drifter's gallery where all the jellies are,
there's zero windows and zero light.
I could hear keys jingling behind me again.
This sound was very distinct and right behind me.
Someone was walking up behind me.
I turned around, turned the flashlight on.
Nobody's there.
I was like Essex, is that you?
Essex was a big, big guy. He had a deep baritone voice.
I look around the exhibits to see if he's hiding behind one of the signs or something. Nothing.
Figured I'm gonna play along with this stupid game. Do my rounds.
About three or four minutes later, I hear the keys behind me. I spun around.
Essex, come on. It's not funny. I got things to do.
No Essex.
So I get on the radio.
Where's Essex?
Essex answers the radio. I just got back from my lunch. What are you talking about?
I'm like, I've had enough of this. I'm going back to the office. Because I don't feel comfortable. There was just this sense that I shouldn't be here.
I shouldn't be out here right now.
This could be the night I'm gonna see the woman in the evening gown at the Open Sea exhibit.
I needed to go back to the office. Back to where the light is and where other people are.
It was the longest walk I've ever taken back to the office. And it's probably only about
300 feet.
I was coming across the bridge. I had to walk by this life-size model of an orca.
This model, it's a little creepy because I remember looking at this large whale with an open-toothed mouth. Kind of smiling at you.
And I can feel this cold breeze brushing against my arm as though something was walking past me.
Every ounce of me did not want to be on the bridge anymore.
I remember coming into the office.
Flinging the door open pretty hard to get inside the lit room.
I tried to explain the sound of the keys. And the feeling of someone moving past me on the bridge.
The dispatcher thought I was just being goofy.
And everyone else is like, I'm not buying the story.
I'm like, nah.
I know what I felt and heard.
After that, when I knew there was other people that were working shifts. I was very clear when I'd go to do rounds. Okay, where is Chris working? Or where's Sandrine working tonight?
I didn't want to bump into them thinking it was something else. But I also wanted to know exactly where they were.
I was morbidly afraid of the woman in the evening gown.
About three months later, I'm at the aquarium in the dark. We have this giant rotunda-shaped room that has a ring of sardines in the ceiling.
Thousands of sardines swimming together, all in one direction at the same time.
Imagine looking up to see a shimmering silver and blue ring swimming around your head.
You'll often see guests in this area lay down and stare up because it's so relaxing and mellow.
I was coming across the bridge and I could see Essex at the other end of the bridge. I couldn't see details, but the way that they walked stood the size, it was Essex.
He walked over and lied down on the ground.
I shouted at him, "Essex, what are you doing?"
I get up to him and as I start to say again, "Essex, what are you doing?" Essex, from behind me, goes, "What are you talking about?"
I turn around and Essex is standing behind me.
I whipped my head back around and the figure on the ground was gone.
He's like, "What's your problem?" I just saw you in front of me, laying down in front of the sardines.
He's like, "How can I... I'm standing right here."
"I just saw you lay down like you're taking a nap." He looked at me, "Are you serious?" I'm like, "Yes."
And he's like, "I'm not doing rounds anymore tonight."
He refused to go back out on the floor.
I was a believer after that.
I think I saw a ghost.
About a year went by.
Strange things started to happen at the Look Down exhibit.
It's where you look down at the shale reef from above.
And it's got these floating magnifying glasses.
So you can look at the cup corals and the anemones and the scallops and little clams that would live in this habitat in the wild.
The person in charge of the exhibit started to notice that things were missing.
She would put in smaller crabs and some scallops and clams and things like that.
And over a short period of time, they would disappear.
It was a little frustrating because we have special permits to collect these things. We don't have unlimited supply.
She couldn't figure out why, things just kept disappearing.
So around this time, it was one of my turns to do training for the grave shift. And Claire was the trainee that we had just hired.
We always do an orientation walk after we close. She and I were coming around the corner. And it goes from a very well-lit area to pretty dark.
Now I was pointing out this exhibit on the right.
You always want to make sure you're listening for water overflowing the top.
And we're shining our lights at the base of the exhibits.
So you don't let the light startle the fish.
Claire sees something on the carpet. There's something over there.
Six, seven feet away from the closest exhibit.
We shine our lights on it. It looks slimy and wet.
Just sitting there like this cold, wet lump.
My heart jumped. Something's not right.
This thing was round and at the end, kind of moving ever so slightly, like tickling the air.
Putting feelers out. So as we walked up to it and shined the light on it, we both realized,
this octopus.
It took me a couple of seconds to get the heart rate to back down.
I didn't want to go home and say I got bit by an octopus today. That beak is pretty sharp. It can crush shells. I called animal care to pick it up. They put it in the exhibit. Once it got into the water, it sat there for a couple of seconds and then scurried over underneath some of the shale, like octopus do.
The next morning, we get a radio call from the animal handler that takes care of that exhibit. Barb was like, "We don't put octopus in that exhibit."
I swear, I'm telling you, there's an octopus in there. Sure enough, she takes apart the exhibit, she finds it, and she comes back and she's like,
you know, it's funny, I was thinking about it. That octopus probably came in on one of the shale rocks that we installed a little while ago as a stowaway and has been eating all the things that I've been putting in because that's what it does at night. It comes out and forages and hunts. And then got to a size where it was too big for it and decided it would go to the next tide pool, not knowing that the tide pool was actually inside a building.
I thought, how funny is that, that this little stowaway octopus has probably been in there for a month or two? Just living its best life.
And no one knew.
I'm in a different job now. Now I'm in charge of the public programs. And thank God, I don't have to patrol at night anymore.
The mystery of the octopus and the missing clams and scallops, that got solved. I'm still working on the other mysteries.
Thanks so much to Kevin Wright and to the magical Monterey Bay Aquarium. And thanks as well to KAZU Radio in Monterey, California for all your assistance. The original score for that story was by Yari Bundy and Renzo Goryo. It was produced by Ann Ford.
Ooh, behind the veil. Thank you for going behind the veil. And Spooksters, I have a question for you. Have you ever experienced something odd? Something strange? Something that shouldn't have happened? Something unnatural that made you think that perhaps, maybe you were the victim of something outside the bounds of what is supposed to occur? That there's a curse afoot? Or perhaps you have powerful enemies? And they put something on you? Place something around you? Or maybe even you've placed a curse on them?
And then ran into some unexpected consequences? If this is you? And most importantly, if you've done something to change how this generally works? If you've had something occur that is a little bit off? Please tell me all about it. I promise I'll only reveal your story to the legions of spooksters walking this path of shadow. Let me know. [email protected]. Because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener.
Spooked is brought to you by the team that knows well the difference between a saltwater fish tank and a freshwater fish tank, except for Smirk Ristic. He just tops off the tank with tap water and hope for the best. There's Davy Kim, Zoe Frigno, Ann Ford, Eric Yanez, Taylor Decot, Marissa Dodge, Leon Morimoto, Miles Lassie, Yari Bundy, Doug Stewart, Paulina Crekey, Elizabeth Z. Pardue, Aditya Matu, and Lulu Tumama. The Spook theme song is by Pat Massey and Miller. My name is from Washington, and make no mistake, you're looking for something.
Right now, right this moment, you are seeking something, even if you don't know what it is, and that something is slippery. It's elusive, because nothing ever stays the same. Not you, and not what you're looking for. And in this stew, this cauldron of mystery and shadow and lies and sand, it helps to have a north star. Something that remains constant even as the world around us boils. So something very small, something very trivial, can help you find that which you seek.
So I offer you the advice once offered to me. Never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never turn out the lights.
Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated