Ghosted: The Moth Podcast

In this special Halloween episode, three stories of ghosts and getting ghosted. This episode was hosted by Emily Couch. Storytellers: Emily Richmond has to make peace with a ghost. Jen Klee risks becoming a ‘chalice chaser.’ Stina Griffin goes back to a haunted hotel.

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• 2:02Speaker 02

  Welcome to The Moth. I'm Emily Couch. An absence, an unearthly longing, a knowledge that there should be something there, but there isn't. The feeling's gone, vanished, like mist into the ether. Am I talking about ghosts, or am I talking about getting ghosted? I mean, both can be horrifying. Both can feel like they come from hell, and both can leave you feeling haunted. And whichever one you're talking about, they can lead to some terrifying tales, either around a campfire or at a bar with friends. So on this special Halloween episode, we've got stories about ghosts and getting ghosted. First up, a haunted house. Emily Richmond told this at a Story Slam in Detroit. Here's Emily, live at the

• 2:47Speaker 02

  Moth.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  10 years ago, I was a blissfully clueless newlywed until I discovered the secret in my husband's basement. He bought the house. I met him a year later. We got married and I moved in. It was an old house, and the basement was divided into two areas. The front, at some point, had been renovated into kind of a recreation room, and the back half was where we had the washer and dryer and where we had storage. And I hated going into this basement. It wasn't just that it was inconvenient for laundry, but whenever I went down the stairs and into that back room, I had, I believe the clinical term is the heebie-jeebies. So the hair on my neck would stand up, I would get clammy and

• 3:35Speaker 03

  cold and nauseated, and just icy cold sweat would come over me. And it didn't seem to bother my husband very much, but I had another very important witness, and that was our Wheaton terrier. Already kind of a squirrely dog, but he didn't like going in the basement anyway. He would follow me down and kind of be my wingman when I was down there, and protecting me. So I would go down and do the laundry, and I noticed when he would walk across the cement floor, he was leaving these little wet paw prints in his wake. And that's when I learned that dogs don't sweat through their skin the way that people do. They sweat through their noses and through their paw pads. So there we are, me with the heebie-jeebies, a sweaty Wheaton terrier during the laundry. Came upstairs, and when

• 4:19Speaker 03

  we decided eventually that we were going to renovate this house and make it a little more comfortable for this family of three, it attracted a lot of attention in the neighborhood, and it wasn't unusual for people to pull up outside the house and take a look at the work in progress. One night, I was out at the mailbox, and this SUV pulled up to the curb and rolled down the windows. And there was a man and a woman in the front, and two teenagers in the backseat, and they were looking at their phones. And they saw me at the mailbox, and they waved, and I was like, "Hi." And we started chatting, and they said, "We're sorry to bother you," but this was actually the first house we lived in together when we met and were living in Ann Arbor. And we know, such a happy place, and we wanted our kids to see it. "We hope you don't mind." I said, "Oh, no, no, that's great. Nice to meet you." And we're chatting, and the wife turns to the husband and says,

• 5:02Speaker 03

  "Hey, remember Ken?" And the husband says, "Oh, yeah, Ken." And I said, "Who's Ken?" And they started to talk over each other, the way that married couples do, and they said, "Oh, Ken was the ghost. We only ever saw him in the basement when we were doing the laundry. Enjoy the house." And they drive away. I'm left out there, and I'm like, "What?" I run back inside to tell my husband about this insane couple that has pulled up outside the house, and I said, "You're just not going to believe it. They pulled up. They said they lived here. They said there's a ghost in the basement when they did the laundry." And my husband says, "Oh, yeah, Ken."

• 5:44Speaker 03

  At this point, I'm like, "I'm sorry?" And he then proceeds to tell me the story that maybe he should have told me before the wedding vows, which he got from the realtor in the interest of full disclosure, that yes, Ken had died in the house in the basement, and some people who lived there might have said they saw Ken's ghost when they were doing the laundry. My first thought, of course, after trying to decide if this is grounds for an annulment, is to find out more about Ken. So I went to our neighbor, who had lived next door for more than 30 years, and I said, "Tell me about Ken." And he said, "Yes, it's true, and it's a sad story, but, you know, he was married for more than 60 years, and he had just moved his wife to an assisted living facility up the road, and he came

• 6:27Speaker 03

  home." And we all just thought, you know, he was probably just so sad to be without her. And he did pass. It did happen. But listen, Ken was a really nice guy. And if he is a ghost in your basement, I'm sure he's a benevolent one, and you don't have to worry about Ken. Ken will mean you no harm. Ken was a great guy. We're processing all this information, and not long after that, our contractor is down in the basement, and he called up the stairs, and he says, "You gotta come down and see what we found. We took off one of the walls in the rec room. You gotta see this." And I was like, "Okay, if it's the bones of Ken's wife, I really don't want to see it." And, you know, my contractor's like, "Yeah, this is not the Cascrota Montolato. Good O. Henry story, but

• 7:09Speaker 03

  that's not what's happening down here." I go down the stairs, and there is what looks like an old index card taped to a support beam with this beautiful, old-fashioned cursive writing. And it says, "This recreation room was built by Mr. Kenneth Schlantz, Esther Schlantz Helper, and signed it in 1962." And that's when I realized that this space was probably a very happy space for Ken, and that this wasn't necessarily like a malevolent ghost story. This was actually a love story. And if I could see it that way, I could maybe calm some of the cold sweat and the heebie-jeebies. So we made three important decisions. First of all, we put the wall back up. We left the card where it was. We didn't touch it.

• 7:54Speaker 03

  We said, "Ken, this is your space. You can have that space in the wall. That's yours. All good." We moved the washer and dryer up to the bedroom.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  And then, most important of all, I told my dog, "You don't ever have to go in that basement again. Thank you."

• 8:23Speaker 02

  That was Emily Richmond. Emily is an education writer and editor who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband. She's working on her first book, Inside the Gate, a nonfiction history focused on military families and public schools in the 1950s. Emily tells us that Ken remains a benevolent presence in her home, but she still spends as little time in the basement as possible, particularly after dark.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  Now, I have yet to make the acquaintance of any ghosts, but I'm proud to say that I lived just a few blocks from the first legally haunted house in America. Yes, really. I grew up in Nyack, New York, which is a lovely town on the Hudson River and boasts a plethora of old, ornate homes. The haunted house in question was a beautiful Victorian owned by the Ackley family. Growing up, every Nyack kid heard stories about the Ackley House. The ghosts were reportedly friendly and lived in harmony with the Ackleys. I'd even heard stories about them leaving gifts for the Ackley children on special occasions, and of Mrs. Ackley asking for one of the ghosts' opinions on a wall collar. He approved. Eventually, the Ackleys sold the house. When the would-be new owners found out about the haunting,

• 9:30Speaker 02

  they were displeased, not because they believed in ghosts, or so they claimed, but because the legend of the house was so well-known that they worried it would affect the home's value. After several legal battles, the New York Supreme Court ruled in favor of the buyers, basically saying that because the previous owners spoke so publicly about the haunting, they couldn't legally deny that there were, in fact, ghosts, and that should have been more clearly disclosed to potential buyers because of the stigma. According to the judge, quote, "As a matter of law, the house is haunted," which, to this day, I find hilarious and extremely cool. Moving on from ghosts to getting ghosted, well, sort of. Jen Cle told this at a Story Slam in Detroit. Here's Jen, live at The Moth.

• 10:17Speaker 04

  When I was a freshman in college, I fell hard for this guy named Matt. Matt was a senior at Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. He was funny and sweet, and best of all, guys, he liked me. The only downside was, he was about to graduate, and the next semester, I was fortunate enough to be studying abroad. But we decided to keep in touch over the summer. He would write me letters, send me gifts. But then, when I left to study abroad,

• 10:58Speaker 04

  I stopped hearing from him. And I blamed it on the Italian mail system and the fact that we students didn't have access to email. This is in the 1900s.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  But when I got back to the States, there was a message waiting for me. Matt said he had good news. He was coming back to South Bend, and my heart leapt. But then he continued. He was coming back to join the seminary to become a Catholic priest.

• 11:38Speaker 04

  And my heart sank. All that time not hearing from him, he hadn't just ghosted me. He had holy ghosted me.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  And I don't know if you have had the experience of falling in love with someone who leaves you for someone else. But when that someone else is God, it's just a different kind of breakup. You can't sit around asking yourself, what does he even see in this person?

• 12:16Speaker 04

  You cannot... You can't sit around with girlfriends and talk about, what a jerk. Because if anything, they're just gonna say he's a really great guy. You cannot feel morally superior to someone who leaves you for Jesus.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  And then there's the weirdness of going from calling someone something like babe to father.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  And so when Matt broke up with me, I acted happy, for both of us. I told him, good luck. And I told myself, we need more good priests.

• 13:06Speaker 04

  14 years later, I met Danny. Danny was funny and sweet. He would buy me gifts. He wrote to me by email. We're in the 2000s now. I fell hard. We dated a couple of weeks, and then he sat me down. And he said, I think I need to discern the priesthood.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  Once is a coincidence. Twice, you have to ask yourself, what is it about dating me that makes celibacy so attractive?

• 14:04Speaker 04

  I have a good priest friend, not when I dated, who tells me that there is a name for women who chase after priests and seminarians. They're called chalice chasers. Now, it's true. Some women are into this. I knew that I was not a chalice chaser, but I started wondering, is there a name for a woman like me who has the opposite effect on men? Someone who drives men into the priesthood? Someone who puts the men in seminary, so to speak?

• 14:45Speaker 04

  So when Danny broke up with me to discern the priesthood, I did not act happy. I did not tell him good luck. I did not tell myself, we need more good priests. I said a lot of other things. And by the end of our conversation, or if I'm being honest, it was more of a tirade monologue situation. He was done discerning the priesthood. We were married the next year

• 15:24Speaker 04

  by a very good priest. Thank you.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  That was Jen Cle. Jen is a writer/actor turned high school teacher, turned stay-at-home mom, turned storyteller. Jen tells stories about finding love, raising children, growing in faith, and generally embarrassing herself. She lives in Indianapolis with her husband Danny and their two sons. After the break, another spooky tale for Halloween. Stay tuned if you dare. Back in a moment.

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• 18:00Speaker 02

  Welcome back. Our final story is from Stina Griffin, who told this at a Burlington store. Here's Stina live at the mall.

• 18:14Speaker 07

  Hi.

• 18:18Speaker 07

  So I've always been a logical decision-maker, pretty evidence-based person. I explain things clinically to people for my work.

• 18:29Speaker 07

  That is until one night in 2022. I'm at the Equinox Resort in Manchester, Vermont.

• 18:38Speaker 07

  It's that in-between week before Thanksgiving. In Vermont, we call it stick season. The foliage is gone. The tourists are gone. I'm there midweek, traveling for work. I check in. I have a great dinner. I go up to my room. I get in bed. I'm scrolling on my phone. And I notice that the room has gotten cold, like really cold, like lying in bed. If I exhale, I feel like I can see my breath. So I'm about to get up and turn the heat up in the room when I see something. You know that feeling when you have an eye floater? It's like that, but not exactly like that.

• 19:23Speaker 07

  So I blink. I rub my eyes. And I look again. And it's still there. And I also realize it's not moving with my eyes. And that's when I realized there's actually nothing wrong with my eyes. There's something standing there in my room.

• 19:42Speaker 07

  So it's human-like, not detailed, not transparent like in the movies, just present. And I don't believe in ghosts, so I don't know what to do. And in that moment, I would like to think that I would react with a little bit of openness or curiosity. Nope.

• 20:05Speaker 07

  Zero bravery, total terror. I pull the covers over my head like a Victorian child, and I immediately start Googling. Because that's what we do when we're faced with the supernatural. We fact-check it, right? And so Google says, oh, yeah, Equinox Hotel famously haunted.

• 20:28Speaker 07

  One of the most haunted hotels in New England, and I'm like, not want to be here. So here I am, under the covers, overheating, fully spiraling, reading about how the hotel dates, you know, like I'm going, doing a full history lesson, reading about how the hotel dates back to the late 1700s, has hosted dignitaries and presidents, even frequent guests like Abraham Lincoln and his wife Mary Todd Lincoln and their children. So I'm trying to decide between my options, and I don't have a good option. On the one hand, I can lie frozen in fear all night, braising in, you know, braising in my own terror.

• 21:10Speaker 07

  Or I can get up, face this thing that I'm terrified of, and leave. So as the capsule of oxygen in my thousand-thread count sheets is evaporating, I make my choice: flight. So I jump out of bed and start packing, fast, aggressively. Like, I'm not even looking. I don't even want to see if it's, whatever it is, is there. But, you know, I'm packing like it's judging my folding technique. And I'm thinking, like, do I offer it my room for the rest of the night? Like, help yourself to my breakfast in the morning, because I'm out of here. So I get out to the front desk. And as I'm checking out,

• 21:54Speaker 07

  the night manager very kindly asks, like, "So, you know, I noticed you just checked in earlier. You had dinner with us. You're supposed to be with us for another couple nights. Was everything okay with your room?" And I say, "Well, I wasn't going to say anything because it's going to sound a little wacky, which is how every reassuring story begins, right?" And I proceed to tell him what happened. And he, his face lights up. And he says, "Oh, no, that's a thing here." And I'm like, "Oh, great." And he goes on to explain that for years, guests and staff have reported sightings. And I'm like, "Hmm, you probably want to have that in your marketing materials or on your website."

• 22:39Speaker 07

  And then he asks, you know, "Can I ask what room you were in?" And I said, you know, "323, 323." And he goes, "Yeah, that's in the historic wing of the hotel." And I'm like, "Of course it was." So I leave, vowing never to return until last summer. So I'm traveling through southern Vermont for work, and I get a great rate midweek at The Equinox. And the property is so beautiful. And I think, what are the chances of a repeat? So I get to the hotel, I check in. And when I made the reservation, I was, I was very clear. I'd like a room in the newer wing of the hotel.

• 23:20Speaker 07

  Modern, not haunted, ideally built after electricity was invented. So I get there, I check in. They're having a little bit of trouble finding my reservation, but they find it, they give me my key. I, you know, I go up to my room. And as I approach the door, my stomach drops because it's the same room. And I think, I'm a reasonable person, be an adult. I take my key card, put it to the door. And as the door swings open, the room is again freezing cold. So I don't even bother settling in at this point. I just back out.

• 24:04Speaker 07

  I go back down to the front desk. Again, I'm checking out. And the person at the front desk says, "Hey, was everything okay with your room?" And once again, I say, "I wasn't going to say anything because it's going to sound a little wacky, but proceed to tell, proceed to tell her what happened." The full story, 2022, present day. And her face, she smiles, not confused, not concerned. And she says, "Oh, my, they're being mischievous." So it's in that moment that I realize that either I've witnessed something I can't logically reasonably explain,

• 24:47Speaker 07

  or this is the most suspicious hospitality prank in history. Thank you.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  That was Stina Griffin. Stina is a healthcare sales executive based in Vermont. She began storytelling in 2026, when she entered her first Moth Slam on a whim, and won. She's continued writing and telling stories ever since. Stina says what struck her most about telling this was how many people asked her for the room number so they could stay there. Props to all those brave ghost hunters. I, for one, prefer my haunts confined to stories. That brings us to the end of our episode. From all of us at The Moth, we hope that this Halloween, you stay away from both the ghosts of the dead and the ghosts of past relationships.

• 25:38Speaker 05

  Emily Couch is a producer on The Moth's artistic team. She loves to work behind the scenes to spread the beauty of true, personal stories to listeners around the world. This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin Jenness, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Sollinger. The rest of The Moth's leadership team includes Gina Duncan, Marina Kluchay, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardenale, Caledonia Cairns, Kate Tellers, Suzanne Rust, and Patricia Uranya. The Moth Podcast is presented by Odyssey. Special thanks to their executive producer, Leah Reese Dennis. All Moth stories are true, as remembered by their storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story, and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.

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