The Kids Aren't Alright

It’s said that kids are more sensitive to spirits than adults, that they can see them, even talk to them. But how can kids protect themselves from forces they can’t see or control?

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

• 0:05Speaker 00

  Little Jack Horner sat in a corner and Jack began to cry. When asked what's wrong, he said forlorn, "I know who's next to die."

• 0:20Speaker 00

  You're listening to Spooked. Stay tuned.

• 0:27Glynn Washington?

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• 1:09Speaker 00

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

• 1:17Speaker 00

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

• 1:22Speaker 02

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

• 1:29Speaker 03

  Then another light turns on, and then another light turns on in the shape of a triangle. And I'd say it's probably about the length of a school bus, you know, right above my head.

• 1:37Speaker 04

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

• 1:48Speaker 05

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

• 2:01Speaker 00

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

• 2:15Glynn Washington?

  I have a little nephew. Seven months old, he's beautiful, grinning, chubby, chuckling little guy. You can't help but wanna squeeze on him. I get all up in his face, and he looks straight at me, his full attention. And he's smiling, laughing, reaching, grasping, like he's never seen anything more delightful in all his short life than my roundy head, lips, my ears. He's got plenty to say, too, to say to me that he wants me to know. I want to know, but then, somebody always has to come talking about, "It's time for the babies now."

• 2:59Glynn Washington?

  Okay, fine. They lay him down in the other room, turn the lights back, be quiet for the baby, all right? All right, I'm quiet for the baby. But I sneak into that other room. I see him in his crib, there he is. And he's still talking to someone.

• 3:21Glynn Washington?

  Smiling, laughing, reaching, grasping, focusing like whoever he's looking at, whoever he's babbling to is looking right back at him. And I can't help but wonder what he sees, who he sees.

• 3:39Glynn Washington?

  My mother says that I used to do the exact same thing. She wondered who it was I was talking to. Who was I looking at? The same way I wonder, who is it he's looking at? Who is it he's talking to? And if maybe, a long time ago, perhaps, I spoke to them as well.

• 4:11Glynn Washington?

  This all starts now.

• 4:43Glynn Washington?

  Now, I never played any of those games that you learn from other kids in school. I didn't play Candyman. I didn't step on any cracks. I wasn't gonna break my mama's back, no way. No way, no matter how much my friends dared me to do what I knew better. But some people, some foe, they need to see it, to believe it. Spooked.

• 5:20Speaker 06

  Growing up, I was never afraid of anything. I remember when Thriller came out. I was little and all the little kids were terrified of it. I would just be like, what are you scared of? That's crazy. This is make believe. It's no different than anything else we watch. I was very logical. I always looked for an explanation.

• 5:45Speaker 06

  It's the beginning of the year. I'm in the fifth grade and I start to hear about this game. Everyone is talking about Bloody Mary.

• 6:00Speaker 06

  They're talking about it on the playground. They're talking about it at the bus stop. They're talking about it in our class when our teacher turns our head.

• 6:11Speaker 06

  My friends tell me that to play this game,

• 6:18Speaker 06

  you have to go into the bathroom and you have to say her name, Bloody Mary, multiple times in the mirror.

• 6:30Speaker 06

  And she would appear. And if you were too afraid, you shouldn't say her name because she'll show herself and then she'll kill you.

• 6:45Speaker 06

  We're waiting at the bus stop. And these boys won't stop talking about how Bloody Mary said she was gonna come after them after they played the game at their house. We played Bloody Mary yesterday. And she appeared, we saw her. She said that she was gonna come after us and she wanted payback.

• 7:08Speaker 06

  They're scaring my friends behind me. My friends are sitting here terrified. I'm so annoyed with this whole thing. My friends are all scared. These boys are tormenting us. And I just feel like everyone is lying. I feel like no one's seeing anything. And they just keep talking about Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary. And meanwhile, I just really wanna talk about something else. I wanna talk about Janet Jackson because I'm obsessed with her.

• 7:44Speaker 06

  And I just wanna talk about dancing and singing and playing and just anything else besides Bloody Mary.

• 7:57Speaker 06

  My friend starts crying at the bus stop because these boys won't stop and they threaten to say it again. I tell them that Bloody Mary's not real.

• 8:09Speaker 06

  And I'm gonna prove it.

• 8:16Speaker 06

  Later in class, I'm doing my schoolwork and chatting with my friends who I sit beside. Our desks are all lined up in this U shape and our teacher stands in the middle. Our teacher turns her back and the boys whisper to me, "You're scared. You're not gonna do anything." And I want this over with and I want this over with now. I say to them, "Watch this." I raise my hand to go to the bathroom. I get a pass from the teacher. I march my way down the hall.

• 8:53Speaker 06

  I walk into the bathroom and I can see the cement brick walls and the dirty dingy dirty white paint. And then I turn to the right where there's three stationary porcelain sinks and three mirrors. And at that point, I gather up any kind of determination in me and I decide that I'm gonna go ahead and play this game. I hope nobody comes in here and sees me doing this. This is so embarrassing. This is such a stupid game. I just wanna see something or have this be over with and prove to them that this isn't

• 9:38Speaker 06

  real. So if there is something that's gonna come out of this game, it better happen now. So I put my bathroom pass on the side of the sink. I stand in the mirror. I go ahead and run the water a little bit and I take my hand out of the water and I sprinkle it on the mirror and then I proceed to look into the mirror and I start chanting, "Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary."

• 10:14Speaker 06

  And then the lights go out in the bathroom. It's pitch black in the room and the only thing you could see is the reflection of the mirror. That's really all you can see. The room starts shaking as if it's an earthquake. Everything starts shaking, the sink, the mirrors, everything. I felt like the walls were shaking. It's not a normal shaking.

• 10:49Speaker 06

  It's, it's literally hearing the rattling against the cement and seeing the sink shake that's firmly inside of the ground. I'm terrified and hysterical all at the same time of what's going on. I look up in the mirror and behind me I see a white figure start to appear.

• 11:19Speaker 06

  It doesn't come all at once.

• 11:23Speaker 06

  It's about six inches, seven inches above the floor.

• 11:29Speaker 06

  And it starts appearing at the toes.

• 11:36Speaker 06

  The feet are like kinda dangling as if they're just hanging there.

• 11:43Speaker 06

  They're not standing, they're just hanging and drifting there. I try to shut my eyes and tune it out and I'm like, this isn't happening. This isn't real. Open your eyes, get a hold of yourself. And I open my eyes again, then it more starts to reveal itself. It's a white dress, a long white dress, but it wasn't, it wasn't like a wedding dress. It was just a gown, almost clear. I see her black hair draped on her dress. Her hands are dangling, her feet are dangling, but there's no face. Like, I don't see a face.

• 12:23Speaker 06

  And I see some blood on her dress, as if she was hurt.

• 12:29Speaker 06

  So I'm like, I don't wanna see it. I don't wanna see it.

• 12:33Speaker 06

  I run into the bathroom stall. Everything's still shaking. I tried to keep the door shut, but it's shaking and everything's moving. I still see the white light in her nightgown. I'm terrified and I'm crying. And I just don't wanna see this anymore. I don't wanna see, I don't wanna see, I don't wanna see, I don't wanna see, I don't wanna see. Make it stop, make it stop, please, God, make it stop, make it stop. And then all of a sudden, everything stops.

• 13:21Speaker 06

  As I'm running out, even though the lights come on, I feel like, out of the corner of my eye, the figure's still there. Not saying anything, not doing anything, just dangling. The feeling I got, and it just, it just comes over me. And it's almost like, I have, an energy just flows from the top of my head and it's just like, it's like a wind burst down to my toes. She just wants to be seen.

• 13:53Speaker 06

  I run out of the bathroom and I see the janitor in the hallway.

• 13:59Speaker 06

  I run to the janitor and I'm like, "Why did the lights cut out? Is there an earthquake? Why did the power go out?" The janitor says to me, "What's going on, honey? What's going on? What is, what's wrong?" And I keep pleading with this janitor to tell me anything, anything that makes sense of what just happened in the bathroom, because nothing makes sense at this point. And he says to me, "Everything's on. Look around you. The lights are on. They never went off. Nothing was ever shaking." So he takes me and I go into the classroom. I, I can't stop crying.

• 14:40Speaker 06

  And the janitor says to my teacher, she's so upset, "I'm gonna go check out the bathroom."

• 14:51Speaker 06

  And so he runs. I can hear his keys slamming against his leg, back and forth. I'm in front of my teacher and she's consoling me and she's hugging me and she's like, "What's going on? Are you okay? What's the matter?" The janitor comes back and he says, "Everything is fine in there."

• 15:17Speaker 06

  I didn't answer the boys when they asked, "What's going on?" I didn't try to tell them what I saw. I didn't want to brag about it. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to... I just... I want to forget. I was always a need to see it to believe it type of person. So that was my for sure. Okay, you need to see it to believe it? Well, here's your proof. Something I said, something I did in my actions, maybe it was asking to see it. I don't know, but it opened up some kind of... It opened up something bigger than myself.

• 16:01Speaker 06

  I asked to see. I got what I asked for.

• 16:16Speaker 06

  Years later, my daughter comes home and she said some kid was at school talking about it. And the only thing I said to her is, "Do not play that game. Do not try it. Don't do it. Never ask to see a spirit. Never ask." She looks at me and she just kind of pulls back like, "Whoa, Mom." Like, "Why?" I just said this, like, "You don't mess with things you don't understand."

• 17:01Glynn Washington?

  Thank you, Danielle Addison, for sharing your story with the Spooked. Danielle thinks a lot about the supernatural, even when she's not on her show. And if you want to get to know her a little better, we'll have a link to her Instagram on luminary.link/spooked. The original score for this story was by Stanley Ipkis. It was produced by Zoe Fergno.

• 17:43Glynn Washington?

  So when I was a kid, I'd go and play with my friends in the woods. We'd play hide and seek in the trees, jump in the lakes, swim. See, these woods were our playground. And our next storyteller, Maggie, she used to do the same thing. Until one day, her world changed forever. Spooked.

• 18:35Speaker 07

  I grew up in a small town in central Wisconsin. But it was always pretty quiet. It's mostly just potato fields kind of out in the back. And I've got, you know, a nice wooded lot behind me. And pretty much there was woods and trees all over the place. Imagine there's some houses, but multiple, like hundreds of thousands of trees. Mainly these really big, tall pine trees that just kind of tower over you. And you just sit there and marvel at it. The thing I probably liked most about living where I grew up was being able to sort of have that freedom to, you know, go out and do those things I wanted. You know, I could climb trees over into the neighbor's yard.

• 19:18Speaker 07

  I could go biking and we could find some abandoned trailers or like an abandoned ditch and like some water areas. Maybe there's a little hidden creek, like a couple of miles down on this dirt path. Our parents weren't really in the picture all the time when it came to, you know, us playing around and stuff like that. It was considered sort of a safe country neighborhood. So kids could go out and stay out for long periods of time.

• 19:46Speaker 07

  It was around late October. Halloween was right around the corner, so all the leaves were on the ground. Everything was cold, old country land. I went over to Brandon's house and typically his parents would normally be there, but they weren't tonight, so his older brother Aaron was supposed to be watching us. It was me, Megan, Brandon, and then Nate and Gage. I was around 12 or 13 at the time and everybody else was in that 9 to 10 range. It was getting dark outside. Everything starts to settle down a bit and we're like, okay, now it's time to start playing, you know, our hide and seek game. So we decided to play Ghost in the Graveyard.

• 20:29Speaker 07

  So essentially how this game works is there's one person who's a seeker and the other people who go out and hide. And there's this sort of central point that you have to get to as a person who's hiding to be able to be quote unquote "safe" once you're in the game. And that's how you win as somebody who's hiding. Brandon is, he's a seeker and I'm getting ready to, you know, go to my typical hiding zone. Down the lane, there's this edge of a property line sort of in the back and that's where there's this really big cusp of trees that have a lot of things that sort of fall in the bottom. I'm a minority, so I've got this bigger bushy sort of head on me and got tan skin,

• 21:14Speaker 07

  so it's easier for me to hide in the woods. So I'm going over there and I see, you know, there's this little ditch. And little ditches are good places for me to hide. So I'm laying down and I'm just waiting. And I hear rustling over to my left. I'm thinking like, alright, somebody else joined in my hiding spot. Like, they're climbing up my tree, so I'm gonna look up and I'm gonna say like, "Hey, get your own spot." So... I look up and it's, it's not any of the kids. It's not anybody like that.

• 21:57Speaker 07

  And there's instead these two huge tall beings. And they had to have been like six to eight feet tall. They're just these huge, tall, shadow type creatures that are just standing there and staring. It was almost like the shadow that was their body also connected onto their faces like a hood. These tall sort of oblong shapes that are just coming straight up, almost like plants from the ground. And then it's just the white face. Rob, it's just part of it. It's not like attached coming out of it.

• 22:39Speaker 07

  And they're just standing there with these black holes for eyes and a mouth, but like it's, they're not breathing. It's like when you look at a, you know, somebody who's just passed and then you suddenly realize like, oh my gosh, they're so still. And it was that same sort of feeling like this isn't something that's moving. This isn't something that's alive, that's living. There's no presence, there's no form. It's just standing there.

• 23:21Speaker 07

  The first thing I did when I saw these things was I like hesitantly asked like hello. And there's no response. I asked again, hello. And then it was suddenly just like a weird energy sort of was like in the air and it was this kind of heaviness.

• 23:47Speaker 07

  When you're getting ready for like a storm to come over, you know, you feel that amount of pressure and that's what it was like. It was like, oh my gosh, suddenly there's a storm here. What, what am I gonna do? I could feel and I could sense that they were talking. It wasn't like talking, you know, like how you and I would talk. It was this weird, abstract form of communication and I couldn't discern what they were saying. I just knew they were talking about me. I don't know about what, I don't know why, I just know that they are. Then I look up and then all of a sudden, they just go at each other.

• 24:31Speaker 07

  It was just like at that moment, there was like some sort of snap between them where it was like they just suddenly came together. So it was like two halves of a magnet just suddenly stick together. And it was like, I don't know what's gonna happen, like they're fighting about me, they're fighting something related to me. So then at that point, I finally like, I'm, I'm booking it. So I'm running, I'm tearing up ground as I go. I'm crying, I'm almost hyperventilating and I'm running out to like, I need to get back to the yard, I need to get back to the yard.

• 25:12Speaker 07

  So I run over to the back of the yard and there's Brandon and Nate at this point and they're like, what's wrong? Like, why are you crying? Suddenly out of the woods, then here comes Megan and she's screaming. So then we're all panicking, we're running towards the deck and then here comes Gage and he's holding his arm out of the other side of the brush on the other side of the house and it's bleeding. We're all panicking, crying, and then here's Aaron who just got woken up. So he's like, what's going on? What do you want? And I'm like putting through breaths, trying to explain what's going on. I don't even really have the vocabulary to explain, you know, what's going on, what I just saw. I'm just like, there's, there was two people, there was people out there.

• 25:58Speaker 07

  So he and Brandon both played baseball, so they grabbed their bats from the garage. And Aaron's like, Maggie, you need to take us to where you saw these things. And I'm like, I'm not doing that. And Brandon's like, I'll stay right behind you and we'll go. We finally go back to that lot line where they just were and they're not there anymore. And I'm like relieved, but also very much not relieved. Cause that means that they're not there anymore. So then where are they? So then we head back to the house and we pulled Megan and Gage and Nate out from the basement. And we're like, okay, like trying to sort of debrief essentially.

• 26:43Speaker 07

  Gage is saying like, you know, they tried to grab me. And so he's got these arms around his arm and he pulls away and he's running and panicking back into the woods. Megan, her experience was similar. So she had like a group that came in and were trying to sort of get at her. And that's when she booked it back towards us. It was just a bunch of experiences, just all at the same time. Having other people there to experience it, it's a minor relief. Feeling like you're not alone with it, but it's really, it's kind of, that relief is overshadowed by the fact that, okay,

• 27:23Speaker 07

  if it's not just me, then that means that I actually have to face the fact that this is a thing that happened. And then we head back to the house. So then we're just sitting there and then we look outside of this little back porch window. And you know, we look at the tree line and there's like, there's had to have been probably like eight to 10 of these same types of beings just standing there at the tree line, poking out their heads from it and just staring. You can tell that they're just watching and waiting and they're just waiting to see what we do. And then feeling that panic wash over you when you're like, oh my God, like, what are we gonna do?

• 28:08Speaker 07

  We ended up in the basement again, and then I got the call from Megan's mom that we had to go, I had to get her back home. And since I was the one who brought her, I'm also the one who has to get her home. So it's like a mile and a half down the road, just right past another huge series of lots of trees. And so I just, I grabbed the bat and we book it essentially down and I get her home. And then I have to go back by myself with this bat in the middle of the night. So I, I run back and like, I swear, like I feel eyes on me in the woods, like as I'm running back.

• 28:52Speaker 07

  And then I rush back home myself.

• 28:56Speaker 07

  And then it's just, it's really just like a blur. It's like a car crash and then once it happens, it's over. And then what do you do with yourself?

• 29:09Speaker 07

  So none of us really ever went and played Ghost in the Graveyard again. We never got together and just played in the woods. And it was this white elephant in the room where it's like, okay, nobody's going to talk about this. Nobody's going to mention it. Nobody's going to say anything. But it was sort of this weird experience, like with limited information to go on to be like, okay, what were these things? I think that the best way to describe them is they were interdimensional beings. I don't think that they were from our universe. I just think it was just some sort of break in the matrix between this world and the next.

• 29:49Speaker 07

  And then there was something that wanted to see it, wanted to see our side of things.

• 29:58Speaker 07

  I was over at my grandparents' house. It was in winter, so it was around Christmas. So it was like a month or two after this happened.

• 30:08Speaker 07

  So then I'm going out to the car because it's our Christmas party. So family's all there. So I have to go out to the car to put the gifts in the trunk and you know, as you do, or leftovers. Because we're Midwestern people, so you always have like eight things of leftovers of stuffing and turkey and whatever. So I'm putting it back in the trunk and I see them. I see. Those two white faces again, just poking out from the woods, like halfway at the tree and I just freeze and try to, you know, accept like, okay, this is, this is what's happening now.

• 30:47Speaker 07

  I think they were really just looking to see like if anything was going to happen with us after we had encountered them. I don't think they intended for it to happen at all. And I think after it did, I think they needed to keep tabs to make sure that it wasn't gonna go anywhere. I think if we had spoken out, done something, I don't know, I might've disappeared.

• 31:12Speaker 07

  I still feel like if I were to go in the woods, that I could see one of them again. So I don't go in the woods and that's how I live my life.

• 31:37Glynn Washington?

  Thank you Maggie for sharing your story with the Spooked. Remember, you never know what's waiting for you in the dark forest. That story comes to us from Spook correspondent, Greta Weber.

• 31:52Glynn Washington?

  Original score was by Da Kim.

• 32:14Glynn Washington?

  Oh, yes, yes, yes, it is that time. Now, you've heard from other folk, but if you have a personal story that spooked you, where you touched a force, a power, a being that was not supposed to be there, where you had a relationship with the mystery, send us your story. [email protected]. There is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener, but don't tell me you saw a ghost. Everybody saw a ghost. If you have a real story though, let us know. [email protected]. And if you like your storytelling in the bright light of day, subscribe to the amazing Snap Judgment Podcast, cuz it might just change your life.

• 32:59Glynn Washington?

  Spook was brought to you by the amazing team that says grace before each and every meal. Everyone except for Mark Ristich, he just throws salt over his left shoulder. There's Anna Sussman. Our chief spookster is Eliza Smith. Chris Hambrick, Amy Nguyen, Lauren Newsom, Liam Morioto, Renzo Goryo, Teo DeCott, Marissa Dodge, Lea Yates, Zoe Fregno, Greta Weber, Jacob Winnick, Sonak Khan, Tiffany Deliza, Anne Ford, Fernando Hernandez, and Flo Wiley. The Spook theme song is by Pat Massey Miller. My name's Lynn Washington, and it's an old trick. Don't be fooled.

• 33:41Glynn Washington?

  Even if they offer you candy, even then, remember, never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, turn out the lights.