Mysterious knocking, flying objects and Clarence the poltergeist (Sn. 18 Ep. 32)
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Good evening and welcome to Monsters Among Us. I am your guide, Derek Hayes. I hope wherever you are, you have the lights on, because tonight's subject is a bit unsettling. They call it a poltergeist, stemming from a German word meaning noisy or rapping ghost.

And it won't take you long tonight to learn how I got that fitting moniker. So sit back, relax, and ignore those sounds in the other row. Because tonight's episode is chock full of poltergeist stories. Stories like Elford's out of the state of Oklahoma.

Hello, Derek. Long-time listener, first-time caller. Well, my story is in response to Lisa's from Season 17, Episode 15 about the three knocks. So my family, you know, my grandmother told me we had a family curse and it had these three knocks associated with it. And the story goes that generations before when the family lived in Appalachia, that somebody had done something to upset a local woman who's known as a witch. She shows up at their house, points at a member of the family and says, come Jack and stay.

At that point, like, he's holding some sort of lawn, implements sort of, like, a hoe or shovel or something. It immediately jerks out of his hands, standing up on its own, starts moving across the yard. And after that, it's intermittent poltergeist activity and knocks for, to this day.

And like my grandma talked about when she was younger, the bed that she and her siblings were sleeping on started moving, jumping up and down, and like, you know, her parents struggling to get all the kids off the bed as it was moving. And at one point she moved into a new house, and you know, the lawn was muddy and they had these boards going across the yard so people could walk on, and multiple people heard footsteps going up the boards and into the house, and sure enough, poltergeist activity starts.

So the knocks is you're going to hear three loud knocks. There'll be nobody at the door. Something terrible has happened to somebody in the family. Like my dad remembers hearing them opening the door, nobody there, and his brother had gotten in a bad car wreck.

And the last time the knocks were heard was about nine years ago. And so that becomes a thing whenever the family gets together, who's heard the knocks, especially if somebody has died. And, you know, sometimes it's on the door, sometimes it might be on a bedroom wall or something like that. But they all describe it as like, not like a knock, like you're knocking on the door, but like the door is about to fly off the hinges. And like the poltergeist activity in the houses, you know, continue forever.

A lot of it is things walking up and down hallways. One I witnessed with my grandmother was, you know, we were sitting on her bed in her room and you could see down the hall and we're looking at this photo album that my grandfather had taken all these photos of his time in Vietnam.

and something comes down the hallway. It's moving real quick, making this loud kind of wind rushing sound, but it had substance because it blocked out the light in the hallway when it went under it. And it rounds the corner and goes into this guest room. And that's kind of a common theme is people hear something walking or running down that hall and going into that room. And that happens to this day despite, you know,

smudging or sage or anything else you do, you know, you're not getting rid of the ghost. And in fact, my grandmother got very upset one time because some local preacher decided he was going to pray over it and make it go away. And she was basically, you know, how dare you? Like, I'm never alone when I have my ghost. But that's just the knocks brought that to mind. And, you know, hopefully we don't hear them anymore. But thanks again. Big fan of the show. Thank you, Alfred, for calling in. There's that knocking or rapping that I was talking about.

And there is that magic number that we see all so often. Three. As in three mysterious knocks. Now you might be wondering how far back this poltergeist phenomenon goes. And thanks to our resident researcher Delaney Bowers, you no longer need to wonder. And I bet it's much, much older than you expected. The very first poltergeist case was called the Benjen Demon.

but we know it as the 9th century poltergeist. Around 850 AD, a farmer in the small town of Bingen on Rhine, Bavaria, was besieged by a poltergeist that allegedly threw stones on his roof, caused his entire house to shake, murdered his livestock, and burned all the farmer's crops. Now, according to legend, the farmer was a man of unscrupulous deeds, and it is thought that a victim placed a curse upon his home.

Now the results of the poltergeist activity have been lost to time. Now there's a link in the show notes if you want to learn more about this case. But as you'll quickly learn, it's pretty par for the course. And thank you again, Alfred, for sharing your phone call and for kicking us off here tonight. Now folks, I have all kinds of these stories lined up for you this evening, so don't go anywhere. We'll be right back after these messages.

There is nothing more annoying than slow internet. Especially in your home.

In addition to loud and sudden knockings on things throughout the house, another way these noisy ghosts are said to manifest is by throwing objects.

Brantley from Louisiana is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Hey, my name's Brantley. I'm from about, say, 40 minutes outside of Baton Rouge in a little place called Holden, Louisiana. If you don't know where that is, I'm about an hour and some change from New Orleans. My story takes place in Denham Springs, which is right down the road from me.

This went on from probably about 2005 up until after I was a teenager. A little bit of backstory.

Me and my sister are nine years apart, and this is where the story takes place. So I was over there all the time, you know, on weekends and things like that, because she's so much older than me. And when she had kids, her oldest is nine years younger than me. So we're the same age apart, and they lived in a trailer, but

But the trailer was bought brand new, so we think it had something to do with the property, but we could never find anything about it. They lived there for a couple years, and it was on family property. It was on my brother-in-law at the time's family's property. And my nephew would—he called him Tommy.

And we thought, you know, he's just a little kid and he's got an imaginary friend. There was stuff that happened all the time, but these are two instances or so that really stick out to me.

About anywhere from like 1 to 4 o'clock in the morning is when everything would kind of ramp up. And it was never anything malicious or anything like that, but I would call it more like poltergeist stuff. Like the TV remote would go missing, toys would go missing, things would get thrown around and moved around.

Which, you could chalk it up to a kid, you know, just losing stuff. It happens all the time. But then these things would reappear and sometimes they would be gone for a month, sometimes they'd be gone for a few minutes and you know exactly where you put whatever it was and then it would show up in just the dumbest of places.

One instance, my nephew, I think he was probably three or so at the time, he was getting in the bathtub. And the way that their trailer is set up, you're walking into the living room as soon as you walk into the door. And at either end, there's bedrooms and bathrooms.

There was this ball, it was a Finding Nemo ball, is what it was, like you get from Walmart or wherever. And that was one of his favorite things to play with in the tub. And it had been missing for going on, you know, two, three weeks. Well, his mama is running him a bath, and he's in there, and I'm watching TV, and

I'm sitting in a recliner chair and then this ball, it was thrown and bounces and hits the TV. So I turn around and, you know, I'm thinking that he done snuck up on me and thought he was, you know, going to be cute and he found his ball and is playing a joke or something like that. I turn around.

And there's nobody there. I go back there to the bathroom and he's still just playing in the tub and my sister's in there watching him. By the time I ran back there, there was no way for him to have ran all the way back to the bathroom from the middle of the house. And there would have been, you know, little wet footprints everywhere.

My sister had just cleaned the house and we had been looking for that ball on and off, thinking that it was just in a pile of his toys somewhere. And this ball came from behind the recliner chair that I was sitting in and bounced once and hit the TV.

And there's nowhere that that ball could have came from. It was thrown. You know, it didn't just, like, roll out from under the recliner chair or anything. It had force to it. It was thrown.

That was one pretty weird thing, but I couldn't really chalk it up to anything else. I'm not really a person that is one to jump straight on the paranormal train or anything like that. I try and at least debunk it as best I can before I'm going to chalk it up to anything. But over the years, for whatever reason, me and my sister are just...

If there's something there, it's usually gonna try and fool with us in one way or another. And we've always known things are there when we go to a certain place. The other thing that happened, like I said, anywhere from like 1 o'clock to 4 o'clock in the morning, things would change.

really ramp up and my nephew his room was all the way down at the other end of the trailer and I would sleep on the couch that was in the living room so I could see straight down the hallway into his room and it was always a fight to get him to go to sleep because he swore something was in there and for a while you know we just thought he was scared of the dark or something like that well

You could sit there and you could be up or something and then you go to sleep and you let things get kind of quiet. And he would be awake having a full-on conversation with somebody or something. And you could hear something responding to him and he was responding to it. And around that time is whenever we would start asking him and he'd say it was Tommy. Yeah.

Like, who is Tommy? And we figured out later, you know, hey, this isn't just an imaginary friend. Tommy is something. But then his toys would always go off. And it was always, it would be monster trucks or dinosaurs or something like that.

And we thought it was just, like I said, a kid having a million toys, you know, that something's going to make it go off or whatever. But it would always be between those times at night, and it would never happen any other time. And it would scare him to death. So one time, the time that really sticks out to me,

He had a Tickle Me Elmo that was customized to say his name. And it had, you know, different phrases every time you squeezed it, but it would say his name.

Well, that ended up being whatever this thing was, favorite toy to manipulate. And at first we thought something was wrong with it because it would go off so much until we took the batteries out of it and it would still work. It would scare my nephew to death and it would make you go in there and it would be

ice cold and his bedroom like i said is all the way at the other end of the house which is further away from the air conditioner if you know anything about you know trailers mobile homes whatever you want to call them if you're at the furthest end from the unit whatever room you're in all the way at the other side is not going to get nearly as cool

And he always had his vents covered up with toys and blankets or whatever anyways. But you'd go in there after this Elmo would go off and he's, you know, screaming and hollering, scared to death, and it would be freezing in there.

Elmo doll. Like I said, it was custom made for my nephew and it had 10 or 15 different phrases that it would go through, but it would only go in order. And with whatever was, I guess, Tommy manipulating

the doll it would only ever say two of the phrases and they were out of order it would say that it wanted to play with him and that it loved him and everything and um you could take it and put it in anywhere else in the house other than his room batteries or not

Because I think I mentioned that you could take the batteries out of it and it would still go off. And it would not go off at all. You could leave it there.

wherever in the living room, put it anywhere you want and it won't go off. But as soon as you put it back in his room with the batteries in or out, every time it would go off and say the same two things instead of cycling through the 10 or 15 phrases that it came with. And I wanted to add to the conversations that he would have in the middle of the night

It would be him talking, but you could hear the whispers and murmurs at the same time. So we ruled out that it was him just saying something and then whispering back to himself. But yeah, I think that's about everything. I know I ran it long. Really like the podcast.

I think giving everybody an outlet to give their story in their own words gives a more genuine feel to it. Yeah, I hope you can use all this. Keep up the work. Thanks. Thank you, Brantley. Could you imagine sitting there lounging in a Lazy Boy and a child's ball goes shooting across the living room and pings off your television? Now imagine that happening, knowing full well

but there was no one that could have tossed the ball. Then imagine that there's an Elmo doll in the house somewhere with a mind of its own. Now that's exactly what these infamous haunters are known for. Throwing things around the room, upturning objects, and generally just causing a ruckus. And throwing things and knocks aren't all that they're known for. And when I return from this break, we'll explore the rest of the characteristics. I'll be right back.

Now another known behavior of these paranormal mischief makers is that they're said to have the ability to alter or affect electronics. Well, according to Naomi out of Canada, those claims are gospel. Welcome to the program, Naomi.

Hi Derek, my name's Naomi. I'm originally from Wales, but I'm calling from Vancouver, Canada. My family and I are huge fans. And my kids have been pushing me to call in because I have a few little tales of my own. Coming from Wales, very old country, lots of tradition there, and lots of old houses. And my family and I have lived in those houses. Growing up, one of four girls, eldest of four girls, close in age, very separate personality.

And this story centers around the sister after me, the second sister in line. And while I'm outgoing, she is my polar opposite. She is very quiet and would do anything not to attract attention to herself. And it's very understated.

The story centers around her. She was in the process of studying for her final exams to graduate high school. A lot of pressure on her, very gifted academically. I had moved out some months previously. I was living with my then-boyfriend about two miles away. And I remember waking up one May morning. It was a chilly morning, but dry, gray and overcast, but dry. And I just had the strongest feeling I should call my sister.

And we didn't actually have a phone in the house at that point. This was back in the early 90s in a little town in Wales, and no cell phones, and we didn't have a phone installed yet. So I went to the nearest pay phone, and I called her, and she picked up immediately.

And she sounded unlike I've ever heard her. She sounded very freaked out to the point of terror. And she said, thank God you called. Please come home right now. I can't stay here. I need you to come home right now. This is so out of character for my sister that I immediately said, I'm coming. I hung up and I left and I immediately got up there. It took me about 20 minutes and I was there and caught a train up.

And as I'm walking from the train station to my parents' house, which is where my sister was living, maybe a 10-minute walk, I actually met her coming the other way. And remember, this is a cold, overcast May morning in Wales, which is not warm at the best of the times. Barefoot, wearing nothing but a nightshirt, so basically an oversized T-shirt to her knees. That's it. And she was white as a sheet, shaking, and it wasn't just cold. And...

And I looked around and I said, oh my God, what are you doing out here? I gave him my coat, I took it off. We were about a block from my parents' house. We walked back and she could barely get her words out. She said, you just have to see, come in and take a look. Well, we got to the house and the first thing I noticed is the door was wide open. This again, completely out of character. The area we lived in was peaceful, not a lot of crime, but what there was was petty crime. If you left the door open, there was a good chance someone was going to go in, have a look around and see what was worth taking. So you never left your door unlocked.

And it was wide open. And I'm like, what's going on? I got her in the house. The first thing I noticed was that the appliances, all the TVs, the stereos, the radios, my sister's radio on clock, all on. Every light in the house seemed to be on. And as you come in the front door, you're facing directly straight through the house.

And I could see directly opposite the front door is the stove. We had an old electric stove, which took forever to heat up. And the broiler door was open, the oven door was open, and every element of the electric stove was almost white hot, hotter than I've ever seen it before or after. So I went around the house turning off all of the appliances and turning off the stove and turning everything else off. The weird thing was with the stove is that...

When I came to turning it off, it wasn't actually turned on. And I noticed when I came to turn it off, which is the last thing I did, it was already starting to cool down. It was super odd. Anyway, I asked my sister what had been happening, and she said she'd gotten up to study early after my other sisters went to school, my parents went to work, and...

When she was studying, she was downstairs studying at the dining table when she heard my sister's alarm radio go off. So she went up, turned off the radio alarm clock, and as she did that, she heard the television. We had a little portable TV set in the room that she had formerly shared with me, and that came on. So she's like, oh, that's weird. So she went to turn that off, and she heard the TV on, another little portable TV set on in my parents' room.

So she went in to turn that off, and she heard the stereo downstairs on. And as she came out onto the landing, then she heard my sister's radio alarm clock go back on, and the TV go back on in her room, and she noticed the light was on on the landing. Now, we had strip lights installed throughout the house. We didn't have bulb lighting because, you know, at that time when we moved into the house, we were a single-income family, tight incomes, teacher's salary, so my parents wanted everything to be cost-effective.

So, yeah, she had come downstairs and she had seen that this oven was cooking hot. The elements were incandescent. It was so bright in a way that they have never been. And I don't think they were actually really designed to be capable of. And the kicker was that the oven never heated up that fast. It took about 20 minutes to get to 400 Fahrenheit. And here it was, like, at the maximum setting in a matter of minutes, mere minutes.

Anyway, having come home with her, I calmed it down, turned everything off. I stayed with her for the day and everything stayed as normal. I was there until the rest of my family got home. And she explained to me during that time this wasn't the only thing that had been happening. She was now in a room by herself.

because in a family with a three-bedroom house with four girls and two parents, you're always sharing. She was now in a room by herself, and she had found that while she was in bed at night, she would hear things move around. And when she would get up, the sounds would stop.

But as she laid out awake, she would hear them move around. And she said, I thought I was going crazy or just, you know, my imagination playing tricks. You know, will you please maybe just stay the night and tell me if I'm going crazy? Yeah, of course. So I called my boyfriend. I said, look, I'm going to stay with my sister tonight. She's really freaked out. Some weird stuff going on. And I did.

And she had a double bed we shared, and I'm lying there that night. She wouldn't let me turn the light off on the landing. The bedroom door was open, so the light was shining in, but the bedroom lights were off. And we lay there going to sleep, and all of a sudden, the dresser next to my bed had an old-fashioned alarm clock on it, a brass one with little feet. And I heard it being dragged along the dresser. And I turned my head because with the light coming in, it was shining full on the dresser, and I could see it.

and the clock didn't look like it moved. I thought, well, that might have just been me. I'm not really paying attention to where everything is. So I settled back down, and my sister said, did you hear that? I'm like, hear what? She said, that sounded like the alarm clock moving. I said, yeah, it did. And she said, that's not it. You just wait. So I'm lying there, and sure enough, under the bed...

I hear things being moved around. Specifically, we had a tin under the bed, an old cookie tin with little bits and pieces, little bits of memorabilia and junk in there. And I believe it was my beer coaster collection. And when you heard it, when you press on the lid of those tins and they flex, that's the sound we heard. She's like, do you hear that?

Like, yes, I hear something. What do you hear? She said, I hear this. And she described it. So needless to say, I decided I was going to stay with her. And it's not the first time my family and I have had these experiences with odd things. We've always lived in pretty old houses, apart from the course in the UK. And I remember lying there and I said out loud, whatever, whoever is in here, you better know this is our place. This is not your place. And we are going to find a way to take care of you.

You have to go. Didn't work right away. And in fact, I ended up living back home with my sister and my parents, sharing that bed with my sister, sharing the room with her for about two months until we finally confessed to my dad what had been going on. And he has some gifts in this area. And he actually turned around and did something. He said, okay, I'll take care of it. And that night was the last night that anything ever happened.

The next night from that point on, nothing ever happened. My dad looked so tired the following morning. I don't know what he did. To this day, he won't tell us. But she never had that issue again. But it was truly terrifying. And we just wanted to share that with you. And I probably will call in again. My son, Jack, wants to say hi and say he's a big fan.

I love your podcast. Hello. That was my daughter, Rowan. And yeah, thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoyed the story. Take care. Thank you, Naomi. And hello, children. Now that's spooky stuff, and not only because there's an unseen force in your home, but if you think about it, turning all the electronics on like that can be extremely dangerous, or even deadly. What if something were to catch on fire?

Say that stove were to get too hot and burst into flames. To me, that's far scarier than a few bumps in the night. But I'm glad that none of that happened with you, Naomi. And I'm also glad that you took the time to share your call. Now, folks, if you too would like to have a story played here on the program, give my hotline a call at 888-608-NIGHT. That's 888-608-N-I-G-H-T-N-I-T-H.

or record your story on your phone and send the voice memo to me at monstersamonguspodcast at gmail.com. Now, sometimes these encounters occur on a smaller scale, a single solitary event, or perhaps a one-off occurrence. But be warned, even the most benign of experiences could hint to the beginning stages of a horrifying infestation. Please welcome Frank from Connecticut.

Hi Derek, this is Frank calling from the state of Connecticut. I'm a longtime fan of the show, but I'm a first-time caller, and I have an interesting little poltergeist story that I'd like to share, and I hope you guys enjoy it. What makes it unique was that it takes place on the banks of Loch Ness in Scotland, of course, the legendary home of Nessie.

A few years ago, in 2018, in the fall, I took a group tour with other young adults from all over the world. And it was a tour of the United Kingdom and also Ireland. And one of the destinations was Bac Ness. And a couple of days before that, the subject of the paranormal got brought up.

And the tour guide mentioned that on one of her previous tours, she and her partner were staying overnight in one of the hotels along the trip. And she didn't specify which destination they were at, but her partner, the other tour guide, was woken up in the middle of the night and saw a shadow figure sitting at the edge of her bed.

So when we finally get to Loch Ness, I selected one of the single room accommodations and it was a pretty uneventful night. But the next morning, as we were all getting ready to leave, I was freshening up using the bathroom and I had the door closed, even though I didn't have a roommate. And all of a sudden, the latch on the doorknob started jiggling violently. The entire doorknob started jiggling.

vibrating back and forth so hard that you could actually see the movement of the doorknob. And I immediately thought that it was a housekeeper that was testing the knob to see if the occupant had already left. So I called out and said that I was still inside. And then I opened the door. And of course, no one was there.

The idea popped into my head that it might have been something paranormal. So I started testing by stomping around and trying to do anything that would get this doorknob to move in that way and recreate it. But I had no success in doing that. So I mentioned that little experience to some of my tourmates.

And when the tour director got wind of it, she then revealed the bombshell that the hotel that we were staying at was the location of her partner's much more dramatic paranormal encounter with a shadow figure or a shadow person at the edge of her bed.

So I hope you can use this. I thought it was a very fascinating and kind of eerie little experience. But thank you again for all that you do and keep up the great work. Thanks, Frank. You never know what you're going to get when you're staying at a hotel. In fact, I bet I can do an entire episode just on hotel hauntings alone. Now, like I'd mentioned while introducing this call,

Perhaps this was just the beginning of a full-blown poltergeist infestation. After all, they don't just show up in one day. There are actually eight stages of a poltergeist haunting, at least according to historical writer Rupert Matthews. What are those stages? You might ask. Well, stage one usually begins with faintly registered sounds, usually a scratching noise that might be disregarded as rodents or water pipes.

usually only heard at night. For example, a rattling doorknob. Now stage two brings louder sounds and they become harder to ignore, similar to knuckles knocking on wood or glass or cracking objects that may vibrate. And these can be heard during daylight hours. The third step is signaled by moving objects. Sometimes small objects such as stones or coins may be thrown, typically focused on one specific item.

and those items may be hot to the touch. Now stage four of a poltergeist haunting is accompanied by aports and disaports, objects that may appear or disappear suddenly and randomly. And the fifth stage is communication, oftentimes established with the entity through a series of knocks, once for yes, two for no. Sometimes speech occurs, but it can also manifest in slurps, growls, or whistles.

sometimes even murmured whispering. Stage 6 is a bit of a climax. The poltergeist activity reaches its zenith, which may last for several hours or several days. Stage 7 sees a slight decline in the activity, as the poltergeist loses its abilities and becomes weaker. And finally, stage 8 is the conclusion of the haunting. A slow fade or dramatic burst of energy. Either way, whatever this thing was,

it seems to be gone. No, I'm not lying when I say that each of tonight's entries could easily find their own place in this eight-step breakdown. A truly unsettling concept. Well, I'm not real sure if this next one is actually a poltergeist or not, but I thought the story was too close and too good.

not to share. So please welcome Harris from Kentucky. Hi Derek, my name is Harris and I'm calling from Kentucky but my story takes place in Connecticut. My ex-husband was a travel nurse and we went up there on an assignment and we rented a house out by a lake and I got the creeps from the house from day one and I kept telling my ex, I said, "I hear somebody

It feels like there's somebody in the room that can't breathe. They're like labored breathing, and it's really creepy. Well, he was at the local ER on assignment, and he was telling all his coworkers how I was scared of the house, and I thought it was creepy because I could hear someone trying to breathe, and they were obviously sick, you know, and something was going on. Well, the ambulance driver and the EMTs had to be sitting there with him when he told the story, and they were like, where's your house?

And he gave me the address and the guy, he said the guy was going to turn white. He's like, right before you guys rented that house, I was in that living room and I pronounced the old lady dead and she had had emphysema and she died where she couldn't breathe anymore. So,

Anyway, that's my story. And coincidentally, it was also located in an area known as Witch's Rock Road in Connecticut, which is supposed to be haunted, but I don't know if it had anything to do with it. But anyway, thanks a lot. Bye. Thank you, Harris. Well, I guess like Frank and his hotel earlier, you never know what you're going to get when you rent a house either. Who knows who lived there or who died there previously.

Well, I'm sorry it made for a creepy experience, Harris. But I'm happy that it made for a great phone call. Thank you again for calling in. Now, folks, before I push play on this next entry, don't forget that our entire merch shop is on sale to the tune of 20% off. So if you've been eyeballing some wares to wear, there's no better time than now. Just visit MonstersAmongUsPodcast.com and click the shop tab. The sale won't last forever.

So go take a look today. Our next entry takes us to the state of Massachusetts. Kyle, welcome to the show. Hey Derek, my name's Kyle. I'm from Massachusetts. I would like to talk about the ghost or poltergeist that's in my apartment. So my girlfriend moved in with me at the beginning of the pandemic and she brought her cat. And one thing to know about this cat is that it's

It's really old, it's about 18 years old. It's really lethargic, it just kind of like hangs around and sleeps all day. So, but it really likes to drink water from the sink. And so it ran into the bathroom and the moment that it went into the bathroom, it made this shrieking noise that I've never heard it make before. And it jumped like five feet in the air and gunned it out of the bathroom and ran under the couch in the living room.

And I took note of that and I looked in the bathroom and there was nothing there. And so later that day,

I was talking to my girlfriend and I go, "Hey, I think Mitten saw a ghost." In a joking way, but the moment I said the word "ghost," my girlfriend's an artist, her artist's easel swiveled and knocked the painting that she was working on off of the easel. And that was pretty impossible because you have to lock the easel in place so that it doesn't rotate while you're painting.

And so that was one thing. Later that night, I was sleeping and I heard a big crash in the kitchen. And so I go into the kitchen and the trash bin is across the room and, you know, there's trash everywhere and the cat's sleeping in the bed with us. So it's not the cat.

You know the cat also weighs four pounds. So I pick that up and I'm like that's weird and I go back to bed. The moment I get back in bed I just start hearing banging from the living room and so I run in and all of the pictures that we had on the wall are falling off the wall just one after another in a row. And I kind of understand what's going on at this point and so I pick everything up and I just put it away and I just kind of like am in denial. I just put it away.

Later that week, I was like, hey, so what about the ghost in the apartment? The moment I say the word ghost again, we have string lights around our living room. They all just come tumbling down like someone ripped them off the wall. And then yesterday, you know, we were getting ready for bed and my girlfriend said that she's using her flashlight to get around the room because the lights were off and she freaked out and she said that she saw something.

like the leg of a person in the corner of the room when her flashlight swiveled and so yeah that's my story it's kind of freaky there's definitely a ghost or poltergeist in my apartment i'm not sure what it wants but yeah that's my story thanks for everything you do derek bye-bye thanks for calling in kyle what does it want it is an important question and you know it's a question that i never thought to ask about a poltergeist i never really considered

what it might want. But thanks to our next caller, we just might find out. But first, I have to sneak in a quick break. But trust me, you don't want to miss this next one. Now, like I said, you don't want to miss this one. Kelly from the UK.

Welcome back to the show. Hello, hello. I just wanted to share with you a poltergeist experience that I had back in 2014. So just to explain a little bit of the backstory, back in 2012, I used to rent a couple of acres from a local guy whose name was Clarence.

And instead of charging me field rent for that grazing for my horses, Clarence asked me instead if I would go in in the evening and change the coals in his agar in the kitchen. Now, Clarence had a business on the same property and he had a guy who would go in at sort of seven o'clock every morning and do that job for him. His name was Dan and Clarence was kind of old and frail and he'd never had his agar serviced. And he used to leak fumes into the house and

And so he had respiratory issues that related to the fumes from the Arga. But anyway, so he was quite tight with money and he would never pay to have it serviced or have the chimney swept. He was more than 50 years old. He lived downstairs in his house and the upstairs was kind of derelict. So we never went upstairs in the house. There were like vines growing through the windows and your feet were at risk of going through the floorboards.

He lived a very basic, simple life sort of thing. And Dan and I were probably the closest people to him in life. He never had children. He was never married. I think his brother had moved to Canada, so he had nephews alive in Canada that he'd never met. Yeah, so Dan and I were basically the only people in his life. We spent a lot of time with Clarence, so you go in and do the calls, obviously.

Every day, even on Sundays. But we would sit and have a cup of tea with him and talk about, you know, the news. And he would talk to me about investing and his family history, which was with steamrollers. His dad...

ran a business that rolled new road surfaces. So a few years down the line, 2014, Clarence passed away and his death was related to the fumes from the Arga. So Dan and I had just moved in together, I think it was probably a couple of weeks before that. And when we'd moved into this apartment, it was like an upstairs, downstairs flat in the top of a multi-storey. Though we had no neighbours next to us, just underneath.

And when we moved in, the place that we'd moved into, I think the previous tenant had been a heavy smoker and she hadn't decorated for decades. So it was like 1960s retro wallpaper and it was all smoke stained and the whole place stank of cigarettes.

And it was kind of creepy. So when we moved in, we acknowledged, you know, this place is creepy, let's do it up. So I had stripped all the wallpaper, painted the skirting boards, started to hang fresh wallpaper, aired the whole place out. And it was kind of a little bit higgledy-piggledy because furniture wasn't in the right place until we'd finished. It wasn't the tidiest place to live purely because we were decorating and things were still in boxes.

So the first experience that we had, Dan and I were in bed, middle of the night, both fast asleep, and we woke up to pans. It sounded like somebody was throwing pots and pans around our kitchen. So I phoned the police. Dan grabbed a hockey stick, went downstairs to confront the burglar, and there was no burglar. As soon as he opened the door into the kitchen, all the noise stopped and everything was as it should be, which really freaked us out. But we just kind of scratched our heads and moved on.

So we also found that if we were sat on the sofa and eating dinner in the evening, we didn't have a dining table at that point. So we'd both be sat on the sofa with a tray on our laps and we would see a head bobbing in the reflection of the window on the wall opposite. So we would come home and the first thing we would do would be just shut the curtains because it freaked us both out.

Following that, I think Dan started to experience the bathroom door slamming in his face. So he would kind of walk up the stairs, go to walk through the bathroom door and it would just slam in his face. And he kind of got so...

used to that happening he would expect it and stop before he walked through the bathroom door knowing that it was going to slam in his face which was also really weird because that would happen even when all the windows and the doors were shut it wasn't a drafty place there was no extractor fan or air conditioning on we couldn't figure out why that was happening

The final straw for me, what kind of made me really realise this is a poltergeist and it's not just, you know, an old building that's drafty. I was sat eating my dinner one night and I had a tray on my lap and

meatballs and pasta or whatever and it felt to me like somebody had used two or three fingers to jab me in the throat and it was with force enough to move my body backwards and that was it that was the final straw for me and I said to Dan I'm going to phone the local spiritualist church this is not okay the lady that used to live here before us doesn't like what we've done with the place and she wants us out and

And Dan's not spiritual in any way, shape or form. He doesn't believe in that kind of thing. And I think he actually said to me at the time, Kelly, it's just asbestos in the walls. Like that's like asbestos causes that kind of thing to happen. So I phoned the spiritualist church and I said to her,

We've got this stuff that's happening in the house. I don't like it. Can you please come and help? And she said, don't tell me anything. I don't want to know. Don't put ideas in my head. I'm going to go through all of this when I get there. And she came out the same day. So after I had phoned her, I was up a ladder hanging wallpaper, 10 o'clock in the morning. And I thought Dan grabbed me by the back of the shirt to pull me off the ladder, you know, like just joking around. And I was like,

So I dropped the wallpaper, the sheet that I was holding, grabbed a hold of the ladder and I turned around to say to him, what the hell were you doing? Like, that's not cool. And I realised Dan was at work and I was in the flat on my own completely.

And I left the house that day, actually. I went to my parents, came back to meet Marie. Dan wasn't around. He said, oh, that's rubbish. I'm not going to be a part of that. So when Marie came around from the church, the first thing that she said to me was, you think that this is the previous tenant and it's not. She isn't here. She's moved on. This is a guy who you used to care for who has passed recently from respiratory issues. And, um...

I was kind of gobsmacked because I couldn't get my head around the suggestion that somebody I was so close to, who had always been nothing but kind to me, would be so violent in what he was doing. It didn't make any sense to me. And she said, what you need to understand is that he's got some really urgent messages that he needs to get across to you. And he's tried to talk to you in your dreams. You've just moved house. You're grieving for him. You've got so much going on in your life that you're not open to what he has to say.

So she said the message that he has first and foremost is that the house and the land and everything had been left in his will to his only remaining relative, which was the nephew over in Canada. And he said that the nephew is basically just going to get a house clearance company in. They'll throw away all the stuff that isn't valuable, sell the furniture and sell the house and the land. So he's just got the money.

which is kind of a normal thing to do. I think I probably would do that if I had a relative I'd never met who died overseas. But she said there are things in that house that now that his line has ended are just going to be thrown away and he urgently would like for you to go and get those things.

So the first thing that he had asked for was his bathroom upstairs, which hadn't been used for decades. He'd kind of used it as a storage cupboard. So she said, if you go in there, you're going to find his parents' wedding photos and the family pictures. So he would like for those to not be thrown away. And later we did find those exactly where she told us we would find them.

The other thing was that there was a letter that he had written, which was in the hallway, and he had died. I think he'd written the letter and been taken into hospital and hadn't had the opportunity to say, can one of you guys post this for me? And we found the letter as well, so that was posted online.

And then she said in the third drawer down in the hallway, so there's kind of a cupboard that's built under the stairs. She said, go in the third drawer down and you're going to find the horses from his family vehicle. When we looked, what we found was the brass. It's like a rearing horse, which would have been the badge on the front of the steamrollers. So she said, he knows you love horses. You've got your own horses. He wants you to have those horses.

There were a couple of other things that she gave us for verification. So she told me that I'd had the vet out to my horse the day before, which was true. She had an abscess in her foot.

She told me that he had loved donkeys and that was true. And she'd tell me about the pet goat that he'd had before I ever met him. And the pet goat used to terrorise the guys who worked for Clarence. And he used to get into the neighbours' gardens and eat their flowers and all that kind of thing. So the most important message that Clarence had was for Dan. And that message was that he never got to thank him for...

for looking after him for all those years because Dan knew him for 10 years before I did and he just wanted to say thank you he wanted Dan to know that he loved him and that he would always watch over him yeah so that was his message and she said he's not going to disturb you anymore now that he said what he needed to say and you'll know when he's around because he will leave you 20 pence coins

Now, Clarence, as I've already explained, he was kind of, he was really tight with money, really tight. When his bed frame rotted, he asked Dan to go and get a five bar gate from in the garden to put under his mattress because he wasn't willing to buy a new bed.

he was just that kind of guy and she said he's going to look after you he's always going to watch over you guys but you'll know when he's around because of the 20 pence coins and since then every now and then a 20 pence coin will just drop out of nowhere and that usually happens if I'm spending money that I don't need to

For example, if you're on Amazon and you think, oh, I really like that puffer jacket that I don't need because I've already got one, but I like the look of that and I'm going to buy it. A 20 pence coin will just drop out of nowhere, you know, and you just close Amazon and don't buy the jacket because Clarence said not a good plan.

But apart from that, I don't feel him around anymore. We don't live in that flat anymore. We've since moved out, but I've never felt his presence. I've never seen reflections in the windows. He's certainly never pulled me off a ladder or poked me in the throat or anything like that. But yeah, it's just really nice to know that he's still watching over us. So all of those things that we took from his house, the photos and the steamroller badges...

That's all in a little bag in our spare bedroom and they'll always be with us. We'll never, ever let that stuff go. So yeah, that's my poltergeist story. It's not always a bad story, it turns out, but that experience has certainly changed my life and it's changed me from somebody who believes to somebody who knows. I kind of feel like Clarence confirmed that there is something after death.

Yeah, anyway, I'm rambling. So that was my story. Love your podcast so much. And don't ever stop doing what you're doing because it's great. Thank you so much. Bye. What an incredible story, Kelly. Now, before we go any further, I was confused about a certain part of this tale. And I imagine other Americans were as well. So allow me to clear it up. In the early parts of the story, she's referring to an agastove, A-G-A.

which is a sort of old-fashioned cooking stove with all sorts of little doors on it. Now, I imagine the Clarence's stove either leaked CO2 gas or something that led to his respiratory issues. And I reached out to Kelly just to verify this. And she'd mentioned that he burned coke in the furnace, which is a very cheap coal byproduct. An unsafe byproduct, I believe. And Kelly also elaborated a bit on Marie and the spiritual church that she belongs to.

And according to Kelly, she did not know Murray previous to this event. So the chances of her guessing on all this information about Clarence seems to be very unlikely. No, either way, it's incredible stuff, Kelly. And a rare story that offers up a bit of hope that consciousness continues even after our final breath. And also a story that suggests that whatever these poltergeists are, they can be communicated with. So thank you again for the amazing story.

And thank you, listener, for tuning in here this evening. Because that's going to do it for this episode. The Monsters Among Us is written and produced by me, Derek Hayes. Copyright Red Crow Media. Additional support is provided by Sarah Carter Hayes and Delaney Bowers. All media used in this production is done so under the protection of fair use. Give us a like and follow on Instagram, Facebook, and I don't know what's going on with TikTok, but I think we have an account over there as well.

And of course, you can catch us on YouTube. Now, if you love the show and would like to catch it on digital radio, you can do so every Saturday evening at 11 p.m. Eastern on the UnX Network. Just visit unxnetwork.com to learn more. And finally, tonight's score was provided by Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse, Co.agmusic, and Carl Casey at White Bat Audio.

Now folks, be sure to check out our documentary Shadows in the Desert High Strangeness in the Borrego Triangle. It's available for free on the Tubi app, or you can get it on Amazon Prime if you're a member. Just visit borregotriangle.com to learn more. And if you haven't already seen it, now is definitely the time. And if you have seen it, go watch it again. It'll give David and I an excuse to get out there for a sequel.

Alright folks, I'll catch you all on Thursday evening with a brand spanking new episode. But until then, have a good night, and please keep it spooky.