The Woman In The Mirror
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Whether thou art a ghost that hath come from the earth, or a phantom of night that hath come, or one that lieth dead in the desert, or a ghost unburied, or a demon, or a ghoul, whatever thou be until thou art removed, thou shalt find here no water to drink. Thou shalt not stretch forth thy hand to our own. Into our house enter thou not. Through our fence break through thou not.

We are protected, though we may be frightened. Our life you may not steal, though we may be scared to death.

Welcome to Scared to Death, Creeps, Peepers, Roberts and Annabelles. I'm Dan. Hello, Dan. I'm Lindsay. Hello, Lindsay. Hello. It's nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Yeah, good to see you. So you have our charity information and then we can get started. I sure do. Well, friends, it sure has been a bumpy start to 2025 and we're feeling the weight of the New Orleans terrorist attack. And we're feeling the weight of the New Orleans terrorist attack.

and the weight of the LA fires, both places so incredibly important to us. And our hearts are broken for all the people whose lives have been affected by both of these tragic, awful incidents. Upon reflection, we have decided that we're going to donate to both recovery efforts in both places. How we're going to do this is that this month, we're going to donate to a charity centered around the New Orleans situation. And then next month, we will donate a

a charity effort towards the LA fires. So this month we're going to be sending a $13,000 to the new Orleans new year's day tragedy fund while putting $1,450 into this year's scholarship fund. Now,

This fund for New Orleans is being sponsored and managed by the Greater New Orleans Foundation, a nonprofit that connects donors to causes that makes New Orleans what it is. And their mission is to drive positive impact through philanthropy, leadership, and action. If you'd like to learn more about how you can support New Orleans during this time, please visit gnof.org. And that is it.

That is it. That is it. Let's do some spookiness. What fan-submitted true horror stories have you chosen to creep us out with today, Lindsay Lou? Well, my first tale will take us to the intensive care unit. Oh, okay. Which I feel like is probably a more common place for these stories than we realize. Yeah. So we're going to hear about an experience that a patient had there. Already a scary place. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And definitely, I think normally we hear from nurses and doctors. Yeah. So I

love hearing from a patient and something that happened to them yeah and then my second story we are going to go to el salvador and we are going to learn a little piece of their lore and an encounter with said lore okay i'm excited to uh check that out i don't know that we have been to el salvador before on scared to death i know i was thinking about that and i can't recall okay cool

My first of two stories is about two guys in London putting a free mirror in their flat back in 2012. Oh boy, mirrors. Yep, and very quickly regretting it. You know how I feel about mirrors. Uh-huh. And this mirror seems particularly diabolical if we can believe their claims. Okay. My second story is the tale of poltergeist activity, heavily documented poltergeist activity coming from Indianapolis, Indiana back in 1962. Okay. What caused it? Teen angst.

A ghost? A hoax? I'll let you be the judge. All right. Well, that sounds like a fun tale. Yeah. What spoopy socks are you protecting yourself with today? I have these socks that I'm calling my giant fluffies. Okay. Because I don't know what else to call them. They look handmade, crocheted, or knitted because I don't know the difference. Fluffy on the inside. And they're going to keep me super safe and super warm tonight. Okay. Awesome.

Now that you have changed into your show clothes, I will tell my first tale. Okay. What if I was just wearing socks right now? Only socks as your uniform. Well. Hey, I wouldn't complain. Listen, you guys, there's no video. A couple weeks ago, we did this with no shirts on. Just for fun. We were like, that would be really funny. And so we did. Yep.

Okay, in early September of 2012, two London flatmates, 20-year-old Joseph Birch, a university student studying art and design, and 34-year-old Sotiris Charalambis. Wow, what a name. I know, Sotiris Charalambis. You don't meet a lot of Sotiris Charalambises. A painter and decorator were living peacefully together in a small studio apartment in their neighborhood of Muswell Hill.

But then later that month, they brought a free piece of furniture into their home. Their landlord was about to place an antique mirror and want an excellent condition, no less into the skip, AKA into the dumpster out behind their building.

When he saw them eyeing it, he told them to go ahead and take it. They could have it for free. He no longer had a use for it, clearly, as he was in the process of throwing it away. And both men felt drawn to it. They loved it. And they would both later wonder if that was exactly what the mirror wanted them to feel when it chose them. Time now for the tale of the woman in the mirror. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. How many times have you heard that old saying? And it is an old saying.

This proverb can be traced all the way back to the writings of an early Christian theologian and citizen of Rome, St. Jerome, in the 4th century CE, where it appears in Latin as Noli equidentis espir siri donati, which translates to never inspect the teeth of a given horse.

And people used to inspect a horse's teeth in order to determine the horse's age, which largely factored into the horse's value. Okay, thanks for explaining. It's a proverb that means you should be grateful and not be critical of or question the value of something that someone has just given you, something you've received for free. The phrase is a cautionary reminder to be thankful for what you have, even if you secretly want something better. It's often used to advise people not to be ungrateful or not to be suspicious of a free gift.

But sometimes shouldn't you be suspicious? Maybe the person isn't just giving you something out of kindness. Maybe they're not giving it to you because they no longer need it. Maybe they're giving it to you because they no longer want it. And perhaps they no longer want it because they fear it.

Immediately following hanging the large mirror, which looks as if it's about four feet tall by three feet wide, on a wall of their flat near the front door and above an old radiator, the two claimed that the atmosphere of their home changed dramatically. Their studio, if anything, should have appeared lighter, thanks to the mirror's reflectiveness. But instead, it appeared darker, like it was absorbing some of the natural light flowing in from the windows. The entire vibe or atmosphere of their home changed. It now felt heavy, dark.

Melancholic. Forboding. Joseph would later say while being interviewed about the allegedly haunted mirror by a reporter with the Daily Mail, "...we both felt drained of energy all the time, but if we left the flat it made us feel instantly better. Both Joseph and Sartorius, despite feeling a powerful sense of sadness and despair when they'd look into the mirror, still found themselves staring into it often, getting lost in their reflections and feeling almost hypnotized."

And then in just a few days' time, the mirror began to not just entrance them, but to hurt them. Joseph would later say, And then,

The paranormal activity surrounding the mirror continually escalating. The mirror began to show them things. They both described seeing, quote, flickering shadows and glimpses of a black darkness in the mirror. They also witnessed small orbs of light seemingly floating into and then back out of the mirror. In addition to being terrified by all of this supernatural phenomena, they were intrigued. The mirror felt like a great mystery begging to be solved. What was it trying to tell them? What was it trying to show them?

In early December, in an attempt to make the mirror appear less gloomy and perhaps turn its sad, dark, strange energy into something cheery and light, Sartorius painted the old mirror's walnut frame silver. And this little makeover did change the mirror's energy. It turned it from gloomy and mysterious and possibly dangerous to downright malevolent.

The two men now began having recurring nightmares that revolved around the mirror. Dark dreams where the mirror would show them things they did not want to see. Terrifying things, like a dead woman's rotting corpse staring back at them in place of their own reflections. And when they were awake, they now had to deal with all sorts of things gone wrong in their flats.

The pair said that the radiator below the mirror stopped working despite them never having problems with central heating before. Their landline phone stopped working as well, and various pipes began to rattle inside the walls of their flat at all hours of the night. Also, items around their home began to disappear. Phones, loose change, keys, and more would just vanish. They'd never find some of what went missing, but they claimed they would sometimes see these items again later, in the mirror.

They'd see the reflected image of what they'd lost, then look to where it should have been in the room, but it wouldn't be there. And when they'd look again into the mirror, the reflection of the item would now also be gone, as if it were never there in the first place, as if the mirror was not just taking from them somehow, but also toying with them. They now desperately wanted to get rid of it, but they were afraid to touch it, terrified to take it down from the wall, afraid to upset it further. What might reach out from the mirror and grab them if they got too close?

Before they finally got rid of it, the mirror also started throwing things around. Joseph later said, I went into the bathroom one morning after hearing a loud bang. I found objects strewn out across the floor and a tub of shaving foam, which had been on the other side of the room down the toilet. With my flatmate working most days, I spent a lot of time here alone in the flat. I became paranoid and had the uneasy feeling that I was constantly being watched. My anxiety levels reached an all-time high and I was prescribed antidepressants by my doctor for the first time in my life.

Finally, in February of 2013, they realized, for their safety, they had to get it out of their home and soon. Joseph said when interviewed on February 18th, 2013, Following this, both Joseph and Sartorius

Sartorius claimed to have witnessed their furniture levitate up off the floor one evening and began to float around the room while a shadowy flickering entity appeared in the mirror, a human-shaped spirit that stood there and seemingly watched them. Still afraid to touch it, afraid to toss it back into the dumpster, they decided instead to sell it. They listed it on eBay, making sure to advertise all of their paranormal claims associated with it so whoever was buying it knew exactly what they were getting into.

They said someone with a very strong interest in the paranormal quickly took it off their hands. They came over to the flat themselves, taking it off the wall and walking out with it. And instantaneously, all the problems they'd been experiencing went away. And life in their flat returned to how it had been before they had brought this seemingly incredibly haunted or cursed mirror inside. After all they experienced, what do they think is wrong with the mirror? Sotirist Cheralambas thinks that a woman was once murdered in front of it.

and that the dark energy of that act changed it somehow, twisted it, and it became some kind of beacon, drawing more dark energy towards it. A year after all that Sartorius and Joseph claimed to have experienced, a short film based on their supposed encounter, simply titled The Mirror, debuted at the Frightfest Film Festival in London in the summer of 2014. The director, Edward Bose, was able to track down the purchaser of The Haunted Mirror, who offered to let him use it for the film, but he said no.

He said that while he claims to not believe in ghosts or the paranormal, he was too scared and he went to use a prop instead. In a July 23rd, 2014 interview with the Evening Standard, he said, I was too scared in case something happened to one of the actors. I would never forgive myself. So I guess at least some small part of him does believe in the paranormal. He's also clearly not afraid to look a gift horse in the mouth.

As to what has or has not happened to the new owner of the mirror, we have no idea. Hopefully they're alive and well and sane. And the woman in the mirror hasn't done something terrible to them. Oh, man.

I was about to interject so many times when you said they put it up for sale. I was like, you sons of bitches. But then when you said like, well, they, you know, gave the disclaimer that this mirror is very haunted. I mean, how many times on Facebook marketplace, Craigslist, anywhere that you might buy a secondhand item?

Does it say like haunted doll or like you're just looking at the thing and you're like, get the fuck out of here. They were interviewed for a few like publications in the UK around the same time. And they seem to have gone out of their way to like understanding what it would look like the optics. And they're like, well, like in one, they talked about how they, they thought about just, you know, said it sounds like they were afraid to break it for whatever reason. They didn't want to just go smash it. Well, that makes sense to me because you could possibly release what is in there. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm sure they were thinking about this stuff all the time.

And, uh, and then they thought about giving it away, like kind of like, you know, how they found it with a dumpster. And they're like, no, we can't in good conscience, you know, like let somebody just unknowingly, you know, get ahold of this thing. Totally. So yes, they put it on eBay for a hundred pounds.

And I guess like 30 people wanted to buy it within like a few minutes. Wow. Mm-hmm. And yeah. And whoever took it, they didn't charge much money. They only charged that amount because they had went to an antique store with a picture of it and just asked how much it would be worth. Okay. And that's what the person said, like 100 pounds. Okay. And yeah, I guess like, you know, if somebody really wanted to see if this thing was all that it was cracked up to be, I guess then that's on them. Didn't they take it out of the dumpster after the landlord put it in there? Mm-hmm.

I find it absolutely incredible that what you didn't just go ask the landlord like, hey, was this shit happening to you guys? I know. I did want to have that information in one of the articles. It just wasn't. Yeah. There was, they did talk to the landlord, but like early on just to confirm that he didn't want it, it sounded like. And there was just some quote in there that they said of like, yeah, he just said, you know, he didn't, he didn't.

he didn't want it. But there was no more details in that. That's what I thought too. I'm like, yeah, I'm like, he probably didn't want it because it was fricking haunted. Yeah. Right. And interesting to me that they, um, were afraid to touch it because,

but they painted it silver. So clearly at some point they touched it. Yeah. So, so I guess like the, uh, the fear of touching it would have come after they painted it. Like they painted it in an attempt to be like, okay, well maybe we'll kind of like, you know, uh, change it somehow, change the energy or who knows. And then when that didn't work and it got worse,

then they don't want to touch it. I do like the theory that... I know I've never seen a name even remotely. There was no picture of him, so I have no idea where that name comes from. It's S-O-T-I-R-I-S. It's his first name? Sotiris. Sotiris.

And then... Yeah, Sotiris. We can stop there. Charalambus. So Sotiris. So Soddy. Yeah. I'm just wondering if old Soddy... I liked his theory that the mirror had been hung somewhere previously...

that a murder took place in front of it. And then like, you know, because we think of mirrors often as portals. So I was like, Oh, actually that's very okay. Yeah. I can see. Not a bad guess. Not a bad guess. Um, okay. And then just one last question and then we can look at some photos. Uh, does anybody think that they made the whole thing up in order to make this movie into, Oh yeah. I had that thought as well. I had that thought as well, where it's like, did, did they make money off the movie?

I don't think, no, they didn't. Okay. I will say that because, and it seems like what happened is it doesn't seem like, uh, from what I can tell, and I don't like, no, but there are various newspaper articles you can find about this.

There's articles that came out all around the same time. And it might have even just been one interview that got reprinted. Sometimes it's hard to tell, like an AP interview. Totally. And then numerous newspapers just published versions of it. Yes. That may have happened. But that happened in February of 2013. I'm 99% sure without looking at the dates. So that comes out. They get this press. And I believe what happened is then the director, what was his name? It was like Edward Bose, B-O-A-S-E. He was the director.

He reads that and he's like, ooh, that's interesting. I see. Then he contacts them. And then all it was was like a festival short that never got, to my knowledge, converted into a full length movie. And I mean, like very low budget. I can't remember that one of the articles did say what the budget was. I mean, I want to say the budget was like a couple thousand pounds. Sure, sure. Yeah. Like almost like a student film. Yep. Okay. That makes sense. Okay. That helps though, because that I think lends credibility to the story. Yeah. And then there's no more information after that.

So it's not like, then they write their book. Totally. They don't seem to be pushing for this at all. Once they give their interviews, they disappear. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, there you have it. And then here's, I don't have a lot of pictures, but I have some. This is the mirror. So that's after they painted it silver. Okay. There's nothing even that. There's nothing like, oh my God. No, it's not particularly creepy. Their flat is incredibly well lit. Mint green walls, like very, almost like Tiffany blue, actually. Tiffany blue walls and-

Yeah, just normal. Just feels like a normal mirror that you would buy at any Target, Goodwill. Like it could be any number of things. I mean, I guess it would have looked older when it had like the walnut. You could see like the wood frame around it. Yeah, I guess. And then there was another picture of the mirror that I just didn't put because it was so bad. It was so grainy and just blurry. It was like it was they were talking about like we captured this orb by the mirror coming out or going in.

But it just looked like it could have been like the flash of the camera or something. Bouncing off the mirror. The mirror, exactly. You know, the thing, the shiny thing that you like look into that reflects back to your own image. So this is Joseph. This is the student, Joseph Birch. Okay. The guy that talked about getting scratches. And then here, this next picture is scratches. I mean, it looks like just a basic scratch. I can't even look at his scratch. I'm distracted by his horrible...

What do we have going on there? Oh, that's Mario Brothers. Never mind. It's not horrible. Oh, yeah, yeah. This little star from Mario Brothers. I was like so distracted by that. I felt a little uncomfortable bringing this photo up just in Starbucks because at quick glance, I feel it looks a little pornish. Oh, totally. Just like some naked dude's hip. Yeah, it's really tight on his torso. Yeah. And a large photo. And the angle of his hand looks like he's reaching for his crotch. Exactly. Well.

That's all right. People have done worse than Starbucks, I'm sure. Oh, yeah. I'm sure they have. Oh, okay. Actually, Starbucks, I saw they just changed. You can't just hang out there. Yeah.

You have to buy something. You have to, and you can't like, you know, your behavior is more closely monitored. They're reversing this policy they've had for a couple of years where just anybody can go in there and hang out for any length of time. Yeah. So maybe now I could get tossed for looking at like, you know, what appears to be soft porn on the computer. Yeah. That's a tricky thing. I think any business owner...

Here's what I'll say. I haven't read the article. I'm not up to date. I hear what you're saying. I imagine that if you're a small business owner, like if you own a small local coffee shop and somebody comes in and just hangs out for hours and you're like, hey,

You know, like I only have four tables and you're taking up a table and you haven't bought anything. They probably say things like, well, it's Starbucks. And so I wonder if, you know, like the ripple effect of what Starbucks has allowed over the years. Hopefully that's like a positive change for small business owners too. Yeah. That,

They can say like, well, even at Starbucks, even at this huge franchise, it's one thing to have an emergency bathroom situation. We all know what that looks like. That's fine. That's another thing to go and set up camp somewhere and bring your own, which I have seen, bring your own snacks, bring your own food, just everything.

doing their nails. I'm like, what is happening here? Well, and it's sad, but then, you know, I've been in a lot of Starbucks and seen Starbucks close down because they have, you know, they're in an area where there's some shelters and things and some, a high percentage of like a, or a high amount, blanking on the exact terms here, of like people struggling with mental illness. Yeah. And those people will just come and hang out at Starbucks and some of them are having,

what looks like kind of violent episodes. Yeah, it is really sad. And baristas get threatened. Baristas don't feel safe. Yeah. I say feel threatened. I've seen them blatantly be very threatened. I know. It's very challenging. And then I've seen some of those stores close down because they're like, our employees don't feel safe. Our customers don't feel safe. We got to change things up. Yeah. But anyway. Yeah. Well, I'm hopeful that their reason for doing it was safety. Yeah.

You ready to move away from that creepy-ass mirror and head to Indianapolis? I am. Before we move on to more scares, we need to take a quick in-between story sponsor break. If you don't want to hear these ads, please sign up to be a Robert or Annabelle on Patreon to get all these episodes ad-free, additional bonus episodes, and more. Looking to buy your dream home or rent that perfect apartment? With the

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Okay, so we have covered numerous examples of poltergeist activity here on Scared to Death Before for many, many years. Until recent decades in the history of ghost research, the source of traditional hauntings and poltergeists, ghosts or supernatural beings supposedly responsible for physical disturbances such as loud noises and objects being thrown around, was traditionally attributed to the work of spirits alone.

But then many paranormal investigators began to wonder if other psychic phenomena might be at play when it comes to outbreaks of poltergeist activity. There have been countless reports of knocking and tapping noises, sounds with no visible cause, disturbance of stationary objects like household items and furniture, doors slamming, lights turning on and off, fires breaking out, and much, much more.

And while in some of these cases, this activity does seem strongly connected to the presence of ghosts or other spirits, in other cases, the connection isn't so clear. It seems clear that something paranormal is happening, but what exactly? In recent decades, as we've discussed here so many times before, a theory has emerged that the root of a lot of poltergeist-like phenomena is a human agent, someone in the household, and not just anyone, but specifically an adolescent.

and most often, a teenage and emotionally troubled girl, actually. Starting in the mid-20th century, parapsychologists began to speculate that some teenagers are able to subconsciously manipulate physical objects around them through PK, psychokinesis, the power to move things via energy generated in the brain.

The presence of the energy seems to almost always be a subconscious one, and it's rare when any of the agents actually realize that they are the source of the destruction around them. They have no idea, seemingly, that they are the reason that objects in their home are flying around or being hidden and are usually under the impression that a ghost or some other type of supernatural entity is causing the disturbances instead. Their bursts of PK, if that is in fact what is happening, mysteriously vanish just as quickly as they arrived.

Most poltergeist-like cases peak early and then slowly fade away. Is that what happened in the following story? What was the root cause of bottles being smashed, glass flying around, and even phantom bites? Time now for the tale of the Indianapolis Poltergeist. 2910 North Delaware Street. Indianapolis was a strange place to be in March of 1962.

According to 32-year-old Mrs. Renate Beck, a recently divorced woman who lived in a two-story home at that address with her widowed mother, 61-year-old Mrs. Lena Gemmicki, and her 13-year-old daughter Linda, the terror began on a Sunday night, March 11th, at a few minutes past 10 p.m.

In their recorded accounts, the women stated that they hadn't experienced anything odd in the house until that evening, when a heavy glass beer stein somehow moved on its own. It happened in the kitchen. The big mug lifted itself up and out of the sink, floated several feet through the air, and then crashed to the floor behind a flowerpot. Both Mrs. Beck and her mother were in the room at the time and claimed to witness this paranormal activity. Neither one of them were close to the glass.

Neither one of them could have somehow manipulated the mug to make the other think they were witnessing it move on its own. Then about a half an hour later, after I imagine talking pretty much nonstop about how crazy what they just witnessed was, at 1037, this strange incident was followed up by the sound of a loud crash coming from upstairs. Because of a number of robberies in the neighborhood recently, Mrs. Beck initially worried that a burglar might have broken into their home.

However, after she and her mother and her daughter crept up the stairs to quietly figure out if they needed to call the police or leave the house, they found a large piece of German crystal lying on the floor about four feet from the bookcase where it had been sitting. The crystal, which belonged to Renate, had been broken into multiple pieces. Rather than becoming upset that it was now broken, she was confused and scared. It was immediately clear to her that this was not a case of it just accidentally falling off of a shelf.

I don't see how it could have gotten off the bookcase in the first place, Mrs. Beck said later, unable to comprehend how it could have also landed four feet away. While still discussing these two seemingly impossible occurrences and wondering what was behind them, a third unexplainable incident occurred a few minutes after 11 when a heavy glass ashtray was hurtled across a downstairs room and broke against a wall. Now the women were truly rattled. No one stood near where the ashtray had come from.

And it was thrown hard enough where if it would have hit one of them, they could have been badly injured. Increasingly rattled, scared to be alone, unable to fall asleep for the night, the three women then witnessed what appeared to be a fourth occurrence of paranormal activity when just before midnight, another piece of crystal inexplicably just shattered. No one touched it, didn't fly into the wall, just exploded into shards of glass.

Now far too unnerved to remain inside the house, the women quickly grabbed a few of their things, some toiletries, a change of clothes, ran out of their home around midnight, and checked into an area hotel. They were able to get at least a few hours of sleep, and when they woke the next morning, not knowing what else to do, they decided to return home, hoping the strange paranormal events of the previous evening would just not reoccur. Unfortunately, the poltergeist activity they'd witnessed was just beginning.

Before moving forward and describing more of it, how about we take a closer look at each of the generations of women from this family who all live together and who all claim to witness supernatural phenomena. As I mentioned earlier, psychical researchers often point to troubled relationships and turmoil within the family when trying to determine the cause of poltergeist outbreaks. And the Beck family was far from a peaceful and happy trio. Renate Beck was a divorced wife of a former U.S. embassy officer whom she had married in her native Vienna.

She was well-educated, spoke English fluently, although with a thick Austrian accent, and it seems her husband was not actively involved in helping to raise their daughter, Linda. Linda will be described by investigators as being shy and generally uncommunicative. They had a hard time getting her to open up about, well, much of anything. Linda's grandmother and Mrs. Beck's mother, Lena, on the other hand, was all too happy to talk. Researchers almost immediately found her to be antagonistic and the primary source of the discord in Mrs. Beck's home.

Mrs. Gemmicki was the wealthy widow of a German newspaper publisher. She had moved to Indianapolis in 1959 following the death of her husband, and she was not happy about it. She wasn't glad that she'd left her native Germany. She'd become a pretty miserable person. Friends of Mrs. Beck and the family's neighbors later told investigators that the family did not get along well at all, that noisy and nasty fights, lots of screaming and name-calling could often be heard coming from their house. Some of these friends would also bear witness to the family's poltergeist activity,

such as Mr. and Mrs. Emil Nozada. Mr. Nozada was a respected Indianapolis businessman who had operated the city's Sheffield Inn for many years. And after the strange activity in the house began, Mrs. Beck would call Mr. Nozada and the police in that order. The police became involved in the case on the second day of activity.

After fleeing to the safety of the hotel room for the night, the three women returned home around 1.30 p.m. the following afternoon. They found that nothing had been disturbed while they were away, and for a few moments, they were pretty hopeful that life had returned to normal. But within 30 minutes of their arrival, they again heard the sounds of shattering glass. And this time, the sound came from numerous areas of their home simultaneously. The women ran from room to room, finding bowls, vases, and glassware lying on the floor, broken and cracked.

After heading to the kitchen to sit and talk about what to do, following Mrs. Beck, calling over Mr. Nazeda, who came over with his wife, when Mrs. Gemmicky stood up from her chair, a coffee cup that had been lying in the sink on the other side of the room, suddenly flew through the room, smashed against the wall just above the chair where she had been seated moments before. Bewildered and very frightened, not knowing what else to do, now Mrs. Beck called the police. Sergeant John Mullen was the first officer on the scene.

When he arrived, he found two very nervous and agitated women, one also very nervous and agitated teenage girl, and a house littered with broken glass, plates, and assorted other objects. He wondered initially if the damage had been done by the sounds from a, quote, hi-fi stereo or by a pellet gun. He didn't have a clue what was happening and was clearly tossing out wild guesses. There was no hi-fi stereo in the house. In fact, they only had one small record player with a single tiny speaker and it was unplugged.

Also, the home had thick and intact storm windows, windows which were all shut, which would have made firing a whole bunch of pellets capable of shattering a whole bunch of glass and crystal objects into the home or in the home pretty much impossible. Sergeant Mullen would quickly abandon his pellet gun and or really loud music explanation when, with the police present, the paranormal activity continued.

Patrolman Ray Patton was in the house when he heard the sound of something falling in Linda's bedroom. He investigated and found the glass figure of a swan broken into a number of pieces lying on the floor in the middle of the room, the middle of a room that was and had been empty. Other officers soon arrived and they brought with them high frequency sound gear now to try and detect any movement that might be causing the objects to fall or fly through the air and break. And during the time their gear was being set up and tested, the house was now surrounded by hundreds of nosy neighbors and curiosity seekers.

Word had gotten out that something very strange and spooky was going on at the house at 2910 North Delaware Street. Because of all the new onlookers, additional officers had to be dispatched to keep the street open for traffic now. The cops listing equipment was later removed when nothing out of the ordinary was ever detected with it. During the time it was in use, no activity occurred. However, while all this was going on, Mrs. Beck realized that something had vanished. Her purse disappeared.

which contained $125 in cash, operating money for a small restaurant she'd recently opened near her home. Police officers and reporters scoured the house for any trace of the bag, but it had simply vanished. Was it by supernatural hands, though? On March 25th, two weeks after the glass began to fly in the house, the purse reappeared. Mrs. Beck told police that her mother found it when she felt the bag nudging against her leg. Only $35 of the original amount remained in the purse when it was found.

Before the purse return, police officers were baffled by a new angle in the strange case. It seemed that bizarre marks had begun to appear on the hands and arms of Mrs. Beck and her mother. In each case, the mark consisted of tiny puncture wounds like those made by a bat, according to the police record. But no bats had been seen flying around this Indiana neighborhood in the middle of the winter. That would have been highly unusual.

And another very puzzling, hard to rationalize as having a natural cause incident had taken place on Monday night, March 12th, the day the women returned home from the hotel around 830 that evening. Backing up here, it was a short time after the previously mentioned officer, Ray Patton, had arrived as an observer. He accompanied the women on a tour of the house, which was still littered with broken glass and crockery when Mrs. Beck showed him a smashed mirror, which was lying on the floor. She told him that it had been shattered by a heavy glass ashtray that had flown across the room from a night table next to the bed.

She also showed him a set of three matched glasses, of which they had six matching pieces originally, even the day before they still had all six. Three of them had been mysteriously broken. For safekeeping, Mrs. Beck had placed the three remaining glasses under her hat on her dresser in her bedroom. This is where they were when Patton last saw them. The room was empty when Patton began to leave it, but as the officer was leaving the room and walking out into the hallway, one of the glasses that had been hidden under that hat

suddenly struck him in the back hard enough to bounce off him and break into several pieces. The glass hit him with enough force to leave him bruised and sore for several days. And a moment after he was struck, he heard the sound of more breaking glass. Patton crossed back into the room, found another glass lying broken on the floor now. He raised the hat where the three glasses he had just seen where they'd been placed earlier found that now only one of them remained intact. The room was completely empty when this happened. There was no one else nearby but the officer himself.

As it happens with many such cases, the phenomena in the house peaked and then subsided by March 22nd, 11 days after it had begun. The place on North Delaware Street was left in a disastrous state with broken mirrors, glasses, and pottery scattered about. Feathers had been torn from pillows, pictures had been ripped from their frames, walls and woodwork were dented from where objects had been violently smashed into them. The three women were left with no answers or causes for the events as they began cleaning up.

but the Beck family was not yet out of the news. On March 25th, as I mentioned, Mrs. Beck's purse was mysteriously returned, but the police would not be called back to the house until the following day, March 26th. A call from one of the neighbors summoned officers back to North Delaware Street, and when they arrived, they found Mrs. Gemmicky lying on the floor, apparently only semi-conscious. But when one of the officers was on a stairway landing, he saw this woman, who didn't seem to realize she was being watched, throw a heavy smoking tray against the wall.

and then he saw her overturn a piano bench. Was she the poltergeist? Based on the events that have been so recently plaguing the house, he arrested Mrs. Gemmicki on charges of being disorderly. She was immediately under suspicion for causing the other recent supposedly paranormal incidents, despite eyewitness accounts of other officers who had been on the scene, accounts she couldn't have been responsible for. Mrs. Beck protested the arrest of her mother. She stated that she was a diabetic and in shock and needed medical care.

The older woman was taken to the hospital where she was examined, and then she was taken to city jail for the night. She spent the night in jail. In court the next day, the judge proposed holding her for a mental examination, but agreed to dismiss the case if Mrs. Gemmicki would go back to Germany within 10 days. She agreed, and she was released into the custody of her daughter.

Now, local newspapers, which had previously printed stories about a haunting, are printing stories about it all being a hoax. They immediately asserted that the poltergeist activity at the house had not been the work of the fantastic, but rather the result of the abnormal, but not paranormally abnormal, actions of Mrs. Gemmicky. And they were aided in reaching their conclusion by, quote unquote, research done by Lieutenant Francis J. Dew of the Indianapolis Police Department. He reported to the papers that he had, quote, tried to get the spirits to come out and play, but they wouldn't.

It seems that Lieutenant Dew sat everyone in the Beck household down for about an hour and a half to observe what might have happened. When nothing happened, he reached the immediate conclusion that the activity only happened when one member of the family was out of sight and away from the others. Thanks to his approximately 90 minutes of research, he dismissed all of the paranormal aspects of the case entirely. This conclusion was quickly questioned by Emil Nizeda, that respected businessman and family friend who had been on the scene virtually day and night for nearly the entire duration of the activity,

Nozadeh had been on the scene since the second day and explained that the phenomena had developed selectively First only glassware was affected Then the activity seemed to target plates and china when most of that was broken cutlery and glass jars began breaking Finally furniture began moving about sometimes violently One night he said a wall lamp was pulled off of the wall and nozadeh reattached it with a larger nail A few minutes later. He came down again this time breaking No one was near it at the time only him

How were any of the members of the household responsible for that? Additionally, on another evening, Nozada, his wife, and all three members of the Beck family were in the living room together when they all heard a loud, quote-unquote, racket in the kitchen. They went to see what was going on in there, and they found three steak knives lying on the floor in the shape of a cross. Nozada put all the knives back in the drawer. The group returned to the living room. Then the sounds were repeated a few minutes later. They again walked in, found the knives on the floor lying in the shape of a cross again. I've never seen anything like it, Nozada said. Never.

He also spoke with later investigators about the so-called bat bites that affected Mrs. Beck and her mother. He claimed to have seen them literally appear out of nowhere several times on the women's skin, as did many others who were present. He also said that one day when Mrs. Gemmicky was sitting on the couch and all of them were discussing the strange recent events, the older woman suddenly grabbed her throat and cried out that she was being choked.

Nosada and a nearby police officer both grabbed her hands and pulled them down, and now on her throat were two tiny sets of punctures that looked like small teeth marks. They formed a triangle on either side of her throat. The officer examined Mrs. Gemmicki's hands to see if she could have inflicted the wounds herself. He didn't think that she could. She was not wearing a ring. There was nothing in her hands, and the marks did not look like anything you would get by scratching yourself with your fingernails.

Altogether, Noseda reported,

Noseda also added that all of the paranormal phenomena had stopped before Mrs. Gemmicky had been arrested, and he stated for certain that from what he had seen and heard in the house, there was absolutely no way that Mrs. Gemmicky or Mrs. Beck, her daughter Linda, or anyone else could have done all of the things that had taken place. He was certain that something else, not someone else, was involved. A supernatural force that had deliberately broken objects in other parts of the house, while all of them were seated together in another room.

Along with some of the police reports that would seem to agree with his assessment, there were also first-hand reports from the man who was likely the country's eminent researcher into poltergeist phenomena at the time, Dr. William Roll. Dr. Roll was an American psychologist and parapsychologist on the faculty of the Psychology Department of the University of West Georgia. Born in Germany, he had received his B.A. in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1947.

A year after graduating, he went to Oxford University in England, where he did parapsychology research for eight years and became president of the Oxford University Society for Psychical Research. He worked in the famed parapsychology lab at Duke University from 1957 to 1964. Then he became president of the Parapsychological Association in 1964, also wrote numerous notable books on poltergeist activity, and would even become a regular guest on multiple episodes of the original edition of Unsolved Mysteries.

Dr. Rowe was present in the Beck house, essentially living there, between March 16th and March 22nd. And he too said he witnessed firsthand the appearance of many of the phantom bites. He also was impressed with Mrs. Beck's no-nonsense accounting of the events, which he noted was a lot less dramatic than the original paranormal accounts printed by local newspapers. He wrote that he personally witnessed 110 unexplained movements and incidents he considered paranormal in origin.

He was also able to rule out Mrs. Gemmicky as the origin of all the activity. In order to observe everyone involved, he enlisted the aid of Dr. David Blumenthal, a clinical psychologist in Indianapolis. Dr. Blumenthal had first brought the case to Dr. Roll's attention and was glad to help out however he could. The two men divided their time observing members of the family, and they did begin to suspect that a strange knocking sound they kept hearing might have been the work of Mrs. Gemmicky.

The sound had come from the direction of her bedroom and could have been duplicated by the movement of a large picture above her bed. But then late one evening, while Dr. Roll was in the kitchen with Mrs. Beck, Linda was in bed, Dr. Blumenthal was in another bedroom, holding onto the hands of Mrs. Gemmicky, a series of knocks happened again, and no one present could have caused them. Certainly not Mrs. Gemmicky or the other two women. Dr. Roll would detail this case in his 1972 book called simply The Poltergeist.

He never hesitated to call out a hoax in his career, and in fact, he did everything he could to make sure he was not being duped whenever he was called out to look into a paranormal activity, to do a paranormal investigation. And in the end, he felt that the events Mrs. Beck, her mother, and her daughter experienced were, in fact, of a paranormal origin. So what did happen in Indianapolis that summer?

was all of that activity, or at least most of it, the result of 13-year-old Linda Beck subconsciously manipulating physical objects around her via psychokinesis, unaware that she was doing so, and possibly doing so due to emotional turmoil resulting from living in a house where her father wasn't around, where her mother and grandmother were constantly fighting? Perhaps. Was it all a hoax? Is psychokinesis a bunch of bullshit? Maybe. Or was that activity caused by a ghost or ghosts or some other supernatural entities?

Who knows? It's a mystery that doesn't look like it'll be solved anytime soon, but it's also one that numerous people walked away from, feeling certain that they had definitely come face to face with the paranormal. That's really fascinating.

Mm-hmm. Then there's lots of witnesses, police reports, all kinds of stuff. Yeah. And it's, you know, altogether too convenient to just like blame it on the little old lady and then ship her off to Germany. I know. Weird that she was a witness doing that. Uh-huh. But who knows? Maybe she thought the granddaughter was doing it and she wanted attention. I mean, she sounds... I wish there was more details about her. Yeah. But...

The little ones that exist, it sounds like she was a character. A character. Big time character. Yeah. Yeah. And it is possible that two things can be true at once. Yeah, exactly. She could have been doing, like, as she recognized how much attention they were getting for the paranormal activity, she was like, well, I want that. Yeah. Or I like that attention or what have you. And so then, therefore, began adding to it with her own little...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I thought it was really weird that the purse went missing and then $35 of the $125 was left. I'm like, that is so strange. That to me, Rhett, is opportunistic. You got all these people milling about

Why didn't you just take all the money, though? Why would you leave $35? Maybe they felt guilty or something. I don't know. It's weird. It is weird. Sergeant Mullen is an idiot with his pellet gun hi-fi nonsense. Yeah, that was – I wonder if he later regretted that being quoted. Yeah.

He just shows up and he's like, I don't fucking know. And he just like throws out a guess. He's like, well, I mean, you know. You know hi-fis these days. I know. And it felt like hi-fi stereos must have been like new technology. And there was probably rumors that they could like reach certain frequencies. They'll blow out your eardrums. Well, remember like, well, I don't know if you would remember, but like there would be. I don't think so, yeah. There would be commercials for like old stereo systems.

I have a vague memory of this where it's like you crank up the volume and all of a sudden glass starts shattering in the house. Like that's how loud they could get. I don't know that I ever saw that commercial, but I feel like I've seen that played out in, you know, a movie. Yeah. So back in the early 60s, I wonder if that was a thing where it's like, well, you know, these new hi-fi stereos. I mean, you know, you crank them up, they'll blow all your crystals out. All your windows will shatter. It was interesting in the beginning that the vast majority of things breaking in the house were glass items. Mm-hmm.

Or those were the items being thrown around. It's like, well, why? I don't know. I just was like, I started right down. I was like, okay, glass, crystal. I'm like, can we throw something else? Well, if you go with that psychokinesis or what is it? Yeah, psychokinesis. Psychokinesis theory. Yeah. Because, I mean, that hasn't been proven to be possible. It's just, you know, speculation. Okay. But if people, it reminds me almost like a Carrie from Stephen King. If people, you know, when they get like really angry.

can like cause some kind of electrical interaction with their brain and the objects around them. And it's, and like they talk about the theorizing of subconscious and you have these angst and emotional turmoil. Let's just say that the daughter, Linda is really mad at her mom and grandma. And it sounds like they had a lot of like German crystal and stuff around her.

I'm guessing like, okay, just speculating. That's her mom's favorite stuff. Got it. Okay. Yep. That is helpful. Right. And so angry daughter is like not consciously trying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It would make sense going with that theory that all of a sudden her mom's best things just keep getting shattered. So I would have broken all of my mom's humbles. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Last question. Yeah. Just tell me 11 days of poltergeist activity. Could you withstand 11 days of that?

You're in this situation. Just insert yourself into that situation. Don't modernize it. Just like you, your dad, and Kyler. 11 days. Well, you know what? And actually, I think it went on about two weeks. Oh, I thought you said 11 days. There was 11 days. It was 11 days between one point and another point. But I think the full thing was from like... Okay, so two weeks. Yeah, two weeks. Whatever. Give or take two weeks. Totally, totally.

By ourselves, no. But neither did they. They left that first night. And then when they came back, they had some friends come over. Then they had the police come over. Then they had investigators there. They had the friend over there all the time. In that situation, yeah. If we had our friends helping us out to document things, if we had investigators coming in, setting up equipment, I could stay in the house for a few weeks in that circumstance. If it was just me, you, and Momo, no. No.

I wouldn't feel safe. I'd be worried about you guys, honestly. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd be worried about our kids. Um...

Of all the things that could happen, objects flying around is like, yes, scary, creepy, but not as bad as so many of the things that we've covered here. I think I might be able to stomach it. Yeah, if it was just... It's just so specific. Totally. I know, it's very different than... And it's funny because it actually is more dangerous than a random shadowy humanoid entity. But like...

If I'm seeing like plates swirl around and sometimes smash into the walls, it's weird. It would freak me out. My hair would stand up. I could handle days of that, I think.

But if I saw a shadowy entity walking into the room, I am fucking... Like, cartoonish. You are. Get the fuck out. It's like... Where it's like you just make a hole. You make a hole through the door in the form... Your feet are just... Uh-huh. Like, kicking up... Dust underneath you? Dust, yeah, exactly. Like the old Looney Tunes. Yeah. Yeah, I am getting out of there so fast. All right, Tasmanian Devil, do you want to show us some photos? Yeah, you know what? I only have one...

Couldn't find a decent photo associated with the story. There are photos out there if anybody wants to look. Were they just super low quality? Super grainy, these old photos. And then I couldn't show some of them.

That were a little decent because there's so many watermarks. Oh. You know like the Alamy? I think it was like some photo service that newspapers would use. Oh, no. It's kind of like Getty Images. Yeah, yeah. It's a competitor. Got it. And I was like, dang it. So many watermarks. So I'm like, okay. All right. Well, off you guys go to the interwebs. So all I found was a recent photo of the address. So I doubt this is... I mean, if it's the same house, they obviously...

you know, fix it up with vinyl siding and stuff. But this is 2910 North Delaware street, Indianapolis. I'm sure whoever lives there now is super glad that you've put that photo up. That's out on Zillow. My goodness. It looks pretty safe now. Yeah. Wow. The houses that look the safest. I know. Yeah. We have, we have discovered that it's like, well, some houses definitely look creepier than others. There's no correlation between creepy looking house and haunting. Correct. It can be a nice modern house haunted as shit, but,

And there can be like this old dilapidated Victorian where nothing ever happens. Truth, homie. All right. You ready to sit back and hear two tales? I'm so ready. You're so ready. Yeah. You got OG Layla over there. Oh yeah. How's she smell?

Oh, she smells gone. I got to grab a new one out of the bin. Okay. All right. Yeah. Well, I've got to build out the Layla army again. Okay. Well, let's go to a place I hope I never have to visit you. The ICU. Yeah. No kidding. No doubt. Vice versa as well. Oh, seriously. Hello, Lindsay, Dan, and my scared to death creeps and peepers. Hello. I've never told this story about my stay in the ICU to anyone before, but it's been bothering me these last few days.

Wow.

My life has been one giant battle for the last three years. With so many complications after surgeries and during treatments, I was at the point of wanting to give up, even at the very end of that part of my cancer journey. The reconstruction surgery was the day after Christmas. It was after that surgery that I had this encounter. After my... Oh. Oh, sorry.

After my initial reconstruction surgery, I was not doing well in the ICU. I was alone, upset, and incredibly scared. I was in so much pain that I expensed my good pain med through the IV and was just lying in bed silently crying. I don't know how long I did this, but at some point during the night, a tall, lanky young man came into the room.

I thought he was there to take more blood. I'd been having some complications, and the last nurse told me that they would be there to take more blood around 3 a.m. And it was about 3 a.m. when this man walked into my room. He wasn't wearing scrubs, which I guess should have been my first red flag that maybe he wasn't supposed to be in there. He was wearing a black long-sleeved shirt and black pants.

I wondered if maybe he was the chaplain and had been asked to come speak to me because I was spiraling, both physically and mentally. And even though I'm not very religious, I'd had so many chaplains dispatched to my bedside over the last three years. I know they're there to comfort you and bring peace to people, but if I'm being honest with myself, they kind of freak me the fuck out, which in turn makes my stress even worse.

Sorry if you're a hospital chaplain. I know you mean well, but... Anyways...

He greeted me by name, so it further solidified the idea that maybe he was the chaplain on call that night, but I don't think he ever actually introduced himself. That was probably the second red flag. And, thinking back on it, very serial killer of him. Instead, what I remember was the intensity of his bluish-violet eyes. He was so, so pale, but I thought maybe it was because of the ridiculous fluorescent lighting.

Maybe he wasn't a chaplain because looking back, he was giving Carlisle Cullen vibes, which may or may not be another red flag. He had blonde hair that reminded me of my little brothers when he and I were very small. I felt comforted, but also a little on edge.

He walked up to the right side of my bed where all my cords and cables were attached to all the machines in there that were keeping me alive and asked me if I was feeling all right. I felt like complete shit. But to be polite, I said I felt better because I didn't want to complain. With one hand resting at the top of the part of my hospital bed, he then asked me about the cancer, the treatments, the surgeries, all to which I gave my standard answers.

At this point in my journey, I was so tired of talking about it, saying the same things on repeat, playing down the brutality of everything I'd gone through during what should have been the best years of my life. He listened intently, but I could tell he wasn't really buying my carefully practiced responses. After a few minutes of his questions being met with my bullshit replies, he grew very, very quiet.

shadows formed on his face and very matter of fact he said do you like your life Skylar this was an alarming question and my mind went straight back to my serial killer theory I was probably still very high on pain medication and was hopeful that the guy might actually be the chaplain but I told him yes but that it had taken me a long while to get to a point where I could like my life

I remember explaining that despite all of these things that kept happening to me, there were people and animals and places that still brought me joy, and that I had found my purpose in caring for said people and animals. And because of all that, my life was not at all as bad as I often felt about it. My answer didn't feel as genuine to me as I would have liked for it to, but he nodded his head once and kind of glanced back towards the door as the sound of a squeaky wheel made its way past.

He then turned his attention back to me and even softer, asked if I was afraid to die. Again, a very startling question.

I was starting to feel slightly concerned, but not wanting to be rude or piss off this serial killer cosplaying as a hospital chaplain, I just shook my head and replied honestly. I told him, no, I was not scared of death. At this point in my life, death felt more like an old friend and something that should scare me. A release, if you will. An ending of one thing to begin another. Wherever that may be, whomever I may become after I leave this life.

Yes, death is sad and sometimes can feel ominous, but there's never been a time in my life where I have been scared of death. Of course, during my treatment and all the complications with my cancer experience were scary, but it was the thought of what was happening to me while I lived that scared me the most. Never the thought of what would happen if it all came to an abrupt end.

I also remember his smile after I said all of that, warm and genuine, just like the words I had just spoken to him. It had been the most truthful thing I had said in a long, long while. He looked down at me with such understanding and compassion, but his eyes held a sadness I could feel so deep in my bones. The squeaky wheels started coming back down the hall again. As quickly as he walked into the room, he was on his way back through the door.

They're coming to take your blood, he said. I remember feeling very confused. Hadn't he come to take my blood? Wait, was he the chaplain? Was the hospital just letting random vampire-esque hotties wander around the ICU for funsies? My blood pressure monitor spiked at that moment, and I remember thinking I just needed to remain calm because hospitals would definitely not let some random person get into my room. And I could just ask the nurse who he was when she got to my room.

He paused in the open door, turned and looked back at me. I remember two nurses who passed my room at that exact moment, neither turned their head nor acknowledged the guy now standing half out in the hall, half in my room. I hope for your sake we don't meet for a very long time, he said. And then he was gone.

When the lab tech came to take my blood, I asked about the man in black. She had no idea who I was talking about. Or so she said, even after I described him for the twelfth time. But there was something about the way she shrugged it all off that made me feel like maybe she had an idea who had come to my hospital room during the witching hour. But she wasn't about to spook me further.

By that morning, I was having multiple blood transfusions. I'd crashed once just after the actual nurse had left my room, and I was in the worst pain I've ever experienced. I told the doctor that morning that death would be kinder than all the suffering I was going through. Then the real chaplain came to see me, which, fair. As soon as I had had that thought, though, I remember my strange late-night visitor telling me he hoped we wouldn't meet again for a very long time.

Right.

Was he a drug-fueled hallucination? I may never know. I do know, however, how that conversation changed me. It really felt like I had known the man in black my whole life, even though that was the first time we'd ever acknowledged the other's existence. Maybe he was death. And whenever he comes back for me, he really will be an old friend.

Maybe he came to visit me that night because we already are old friends. I've been obsessed with the personification of him since middle school. After all, so many of my family and friends had already gone to be with him. Maybe it was safe for him to show himself to me since I was in a drugged out, half-conscious state and anyone I told would think I was absolutely delulu. Maybe I made the whole thing up in my head because I really was feeling scared and vulnerable and just wanted some kind of company.

I like to think it was death's way to remind me of all the reasons I have loved this life. It was his way of telling me that all my fighting the last few years would not be all for naught. After the actual person taking my blood left, I remember feeling so at peace. I was so relaxed that the pain was barely registering anymore and I fell asleep.

I have not seen the man in black since. No matter the reason he appeared to me that night, I am forever thankful to him, even though that encounter left me with an eerie sort of feeling when I thought back on it for several days after. As comforting as the encounter initially felt, I hope that he and I don't cross paths again for a very long time because I'm finally living a life that I'm starting to be genuinely proud of and grateful for.

Thanks so much for listening, Creeps, Peepers, Roberts, and Annabelles. Until next time, I hope you've been scared to death. Skylar. Aw, that was a great story. I love that. Sorry I was a little slow on the button there. It's okay. I know your brain's not working. I missed it. Dan's getting allergy shots right now, and he goes once a week. And so the three days after his shots are sort of like, he's good, he's good, he's good. And then 7 p.m. comes, and his brain stops working. Yeah, they warned me, and I was like, ugh.

You're like, how bad can allergy shots be? But it's going to be great. It's going to be worth it. It's going to be worth it, I hope. And then you said, like, Thanatos. Did you add a T in there? Or is that Thanos, the Avengers guy? No, it's Thanatos. I don't know Thanatos. Is it like a Greek god or something? No, I will tell you because I looked it up earlier. He is a comic book character. He's also, in Greek mythology, the personification of death.

But when you look it up, it's like Thanatos and then... Oh. Yeah. Okay, okay, cool. So there you go. I thought it was the guy from Endgame. I know. I thought I was like, is it Thanos? But no, it's not. It's not.

And Grim Reaper, that's who I also thought. I was like, oh, that's so weird. And actually, just a Nightmare Field little story I just finished just came out on Patreon right before we recorded this episode. There was a character in there that is a little Grim Reaper-y as well. And I'm like, oh, that's weird. I know. It is weird. The Reaper's showing back up here. And I knew that we had discussed...

you essentially using that nightmare fuel to process our horrific near-death experience car accident. And you had told me then that like,

You had worked this character up into your brain and like, okay, this is what I think it looks like. And then you kind of like Googled. And then you were like, wow, that's weird. That like it's exactly what I thought in my head, like this funeral director guy. And then so then when I was like prepping stories, I moved this one up because I was like, well, that is kind of weird. And then the other person that she references, I'm saying she's, well, yeah, breast cancer. I'm going to. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Men can have breast cancer too, so that wasn't fair. Oh, hysterectomy. There was a reason that I knew we were talking about a female-born person. But she references... I had to look it up. Carlisle Cullen. Oh, yeah. And I wanted to know who that is too. From...

Hold on, hold on. The vampire movies, I know people are out there screaming. Twilight. That's it. Oh, is it Twilight? I just didn't watch those. I watched the very first one as research for another show I was working on, and then I never watched them again. I was going to guess Twilight, True Blood, and then I was out. Oh, wait. Maybe it is Car- True Blood? Carlyle.

I watched the season of True Blood so long ago and I did like it, but I... Oh, no, it was Twilight. Okay, Twilight, yeah. Played by Peter Fassanelli, who is Jenny Garth's ex-husband. Okay. Who she stayed with during the LA fires. I know that actor. That's super random. All right.

Well, yeah, good story. Yeah, I just, listen, it is creepy. It is strange. Death does come for people so often in the ICU. Like, it's a completely understandable story. I think that my, I should say, completely relatable story. I think we can all put ourselves in Skylar's shoes or in her hospital bed. But the thing that I really loved the most about this story was the

that came in to actually take Skylar's blood and Skylar is like are you sure you didn't see him are you sure you didn't see him and the way that Skylar interacts with this nurse is that Skylar feels like the nurse is like not saying something that she knows and I have to wonder if we have any

nurses who deal with people like in hospice or just see a lot of death at work. I wonder if you, like, if that, a nurse or someone in that position hears a lot from patients about, did you see that man in black? Did you like... Yeah. Yeah. Because...

That's what it sounds like happened here. Yeah. Yeah. I was even thinking even if Skylar, Skylar subconscious manufactured all of this. Yeah. That still is fascinating. Absolutely. And why do we all manufacture the same looking thing? I don't know. Man, I hope that when death comes for me, I am so hoping it's like my grandma kiddo and my grandpa Chucky.

Two people I really love and trust and just would like... My grandpa Chucky would be making really funny jokes about how we're going to go sit at the bar and drink Coca-Colas. Okay. And my grandma kiddo...

Just would be, yeah. And my grandma Tilly, she should be there too. Like, there's one of my grandparents. My grandma Tilly will be a bitch. Yeah. Just tell me like, hurry the fuck up, let's go. Yeah. And my grandma Tilly will be so sweet to me. I hope when death comes for me, it's either Christopher Walken or Willem Dafoe. And I know neither one of those people are dead yet. Did you say Willem? I just want to make sure you don't mess it up. I did say it correctly this time. I know neither one of those people are dead. Yet. But they're both quite,

quite a bit older than me. Yeah. So I'm hoping I live along, I live long enough for those guys to both die and that they, one of them, because that'd just be pretty funny. Now, do you want Willem Dafoe as Willem Dafoe or do you want him as like Nosferatu? No, just as Willem Dafoe. Just as him? Mm-hmm.

Okay. Yeah, just as who I imagine Willem Dafoe to be. Okay. You know, from his movies. I think that'd be pretty funny just to have him, you know, like dressed up as a man in black or whatever come in and take me to the afterlife. I'm trying to think of this one act. Christopher Walken might be even better though. That would be pretty awesome. I think it's time to go.

Very specific cadence. It's time for me to take you to the other side. Okay, that sounds fucking awesome. That'd be pretty cool. Christopher Walken as the Good Reaper. Yeah, I'm like, all right, Chris. Oh my God. I was going to say John Malkovich would be- Oh, John Malkovich, another good one. Yeah. Do you care if I stop by the snack machine? Yeah.

God, I didn't know you could do that so well. Oh, my eyes are watering. That is really funny. All right. Well, thank you for that little... You would just be so random. I got you a high C. I just...

Sip on on the way out of the hospital or whatever. Do you think he talks like that in real life? You know, I've seen enough interviews with him. I actually do some level of that. I'm sure he plays it up for certain roles. Yeah. But I think an element of that is his natural cadence. Where is he from?

Mars? No idea. Because it's not like a... I want to say New York, maybe. Okay, okay. I think it's from New York City. All right, maybe then I can see that. Okay, anyways, sorry, distracted. All right. Are you ready for one more tale, Dan? I am. Let's go. Hello from Nebraska. How would Christopher Walken say that? Hello from Nebraska. Hello.

Oh God, this is so great. Hello from Nebraska to the queen and king of all things weird and spooky. My name is Mickey and my wonderful mother, Rochelle, got me into scared to death in late 2019 and I've been hooked ever since.

I have since made my way through time suck and have gained a reputation at work for having the most fucked up fun facts. Thanks, man. I have recruited my college roommate and bestie cat into this wonderful world of horror. Thank you. She is the peeper to my creep. Cat told me this story and I immediately knew it would be perfect to send into the show.

It is a little gnarly.

Kat's from El Salvador. Her parents immigrated here before she was born, but most of her family remains there. Many natives of El Salvador believe in the power of shamans, witchcraft, and the many legends of horrible beasts that come out at night. It is not to be taken lightly.

This story takes place in the village of Las Narronas, a small sect within Son Sonate, El Salvador. It was sometime around the 90s and Kat's uncle, Mariel, was building a house on his property about halfway up the Santa Ana Mountains.

He owns the finca where the story takes place. A finca is a plantation that is over four acres of land. The land was used for growing coffee beans, but Mariel now uses it for fruit trees, raising chickens, and many other crops he wants to grow.

Marielle's property is about a 15-minute drive from the bottom of the mountain up a winding cobblestone road. When you reach his gated driveway, you have to park near the entrance and walk the rest of the way up another cobblestone path that is surrounded by jungle. Not too far from the bottom of the driveway lies the gardener's living quarters, which cannot be seen from the main house. Walking further up the driveway, you eventually reach the home and the main area of the property.

It's a hacienda-style home and has a middle section that is open air aside from a roof with the house surrounding it. Because of the jungle climate, the windows have no glass and only metal bars keeping out the outside from getting inside. This part of El Salvador is absolutely covered in lush, green, damp foliage. Once you reach the house, you are completely enveloped by the canopy of trees, making it incredibly dark even during the day.

At the time this story takes place, the house was being constructed, so the only ones living on the property were the gardener and Mariel's livestock. At the edge of the property lies a thick wall of jungle, behind which there is nothing but a steep drop off into a raging river below.

To the left of the home is where the chicken coop resides, as well as the kennels for Marielle's guard dogs, some very big and not easily spooked Rottweilers trained to protect the livestock. Because the property is so large, the chickens roam free but tend to stay where their food and shelter are. Now that you have the lay of the land, it is time for the tale of What's Lurking in the Jungle.

Mariel paid many visits to his home as it was being built. He would make the drive up the mountain every weekend to feed his livestock, exercise and train with the dogs, and make sure the construction was proceeding as planned. One weekend, as Mariel pulled up the long gravel driveway, he came upon a gruesome scene. Three of his beloved chickens had been beheaded, their mangled bodies lying amongst the living, the heads nowhere to be found.

Marielle, a seasoned farmer, was not shaken by this. He had owned livestock for most of his life, and there was nothing new about losing a few to a wild animal here and there. He figured a wild boar, a mountain lion, or a particularly aggressive monkey was likely responsible, though it was uncommon to find anything left of the body when this was the case.

Two full months passed, and like clockwork, Mariel would return to his property to find more of the poultry decapitated, but the bodies relatively untouched. Growing a bit concerned, he resolved to set traps and wait until he inevitably caught the culprit. He enlisted the help of the gardener, and together they laid the traps. When Mariel returned the following weekend, he found something that would make him question what was really antagonizing his animals.

There, in front of the doghouse, was one of his three trained Rottweilers mauled to death. Impossibly the very dog he had trained to fight off the creatures that posed a threat. Marielle was beside himself. He couldn't think of anything in that jungle his dogs couldn't overpower.

The responsible farmer decided that whatever was targeting his animals would have to get to him first. He resolved to stay at the house, not yet fully built, to ensure the safety of his beloved animals. He did not want to raise his family in a home that couldn't be protected, and he wasn't going to let whatever it was scare him away from his own property.

Marielle didn't sleep much that first night in the house. Strong winds howled through the various open walls and ceilings of the unfinished home. The trees cast shadows that seemed to breathe alongside him. He tossed and turned, occasionally getting up to triple-check that the shotgun at the foot of his bed was loaded and ready.

Just as he was beginning to drift away, Mariel was jolted awake by a single terrified cry. He raced to get his gun, knowing the sound to be one of his dogs, the same dogs he had never seen frightened in all the time he'd been raising them.

As Mariel wove through the house to reach his pets, he noted that the air was colder than normal. So cold, in fact, that goosebumps were now covering his whole body. The unmistakable smell of sulfur wafted through the barred windows and Mariel quickened his already hurried pace. As he reached his animals, the stench in the air morphed into a hot, burning, rotten smell. Miraculously, both of his precious pooches remained in their quarters, though visibly shaken.

Both dogs were glued in place, eyes fixed on one point past the tree line. Mariel squinted, trying his best to make out the indistinct shape barely illuminated by the moon's rays. His eyes focused, not on the form, but instead on two glowing red eyes. He knew when he saw them that whatever they belonged to, it could see him too.

He raised his shotgun and fired in the direction of the eyes. But when he regained his composure after the blast, the eyes were gone and the air was once again warm. Across the wind, the smell faded and he heard a laugh unlike anything he'd ever heard before. It was neither human nor animal, man nor woman, and yet somehow all of these things all at once.

Marielle brought his dogs inside for the evening, resolving to check on his chickens in the morning. Sleep would not hold him that night, and every so often he swore he could hear the laugh above the wind.

In the morning, Mariel decided that this issue was beyond his bandwidth. At the suggestion of his father, he went to speak with the closest neighbors he had, a couple of miles away, about if they'd experienced anything similar. His neighbors, a kind elderly couple, expressed their condolences about his animals and said that while they had not lost any of theirs, they too had been awoken late at night by their dogs howling as though they knew a grave, inescapable danger were near.

The husband placed his hand on Marielle's shoulder. It seems to me like you've got a wild boar on your hands, he said. But his eyes, they said something more unexplainable was going on. Marielle understood this context. While in the U.S. we picture them as deer, El Salvadorian skinwalkers most often take the form of boars. And your gardener is from Izalco, chimed in the man's wife. I don't mean to be nosy, but they call it boars.

For you non-Spanish speakers, Brujalandia translate pretty much directly into Land of the Witches. Mariel understood what they meant and thanked them for their help. Mariel once again contacted his father. He explained what the neighbor said and his father gravely agreed that this situation stunk of Skinwalker.

His dad explained how he too had an experience with one of them when he was a young boy, and that the only way to keep the beast from transforming back into a human form is by stealing their clothes before they can transform back. With this knowledge, Marielle and his dad hatched a plan. With one last piece of his vice, he sent his son off. Don't trust that motherfucker, he said.

That Sunday night, Mariel returned to his property to find his gardener working. Usually, the staff would leave over the weekend to spend time with their family and give the residents some privacy. It struck Mariel as odd that his gardener was still around. Seizing the opportunity, Mariel questioned the man about the happenings. I haven't heard anything, sir. Once I fall asleep, I'm out for the night. But your farm is widely envied. I'm sure it's just a jealous neighbor seeking to upset you. I wouldn't worry too much, he said.

The men parted ways and Marielle prepared for the night, double fisting a machete and a pistol. He was more than ready to take that fucker down. He waited for what felt like forever impatiently on his bed. No goosebumps, no sulfur, no dogs crying. He was almost convinced he'd imagined the whole thing. Maybe it was just a bore. And he was silly for thinking...

But before he could finish his thought, the wind blew through the house so viciously he had to catch his breath, and something about the air around him felt heavy. In a matter of moments, a sharp cry pierced the thick air and Mariel sprung into action. Moving faster than he ever had, he ran to defend his animals. The stench of sulfur was almost suffocating as he made his way back to the edge of the jungle.

He approached his dogs, who were once again petrified by an unseen force. Following their gaze, he found himself staring back at the tree line until he locked eyes with the beast. At last, he was face to face with the creature, stealing his livelihood. But as he reached for his pistol, he found himself frozen in place.

Just like his beloved animals, he was entranced with the being, hypnotized by its massive, glowing red eyes. Had they gotten bigger? Across the howling wind, he once again heard the wretched laugh.

He was trapped inside his own mind, as though stuck at the bottom of a well, the speck of light at the top taunting him with freedom. He could only watch as the eyes inched closer and closer, threatening to leave the cover of the jungle. They had definitely gotten bigger. And with a start, Mariel snapped out of his trance as one of his dogs finally barked. Regaining his own composure, he calmly raised his pistol, the sickening laugh growing even louder.

With a sharp bang and a wretched cry, the laughing ceased. The moonlight finally broke through the canopy of trees illuminating the jungle, and as the creature whimpered away, Marielle caught a glimpse of it. It was the largest boar he'd ever seen, bleeding from a gunshot wound in its leg. The beast limped out of sight, and the air felt light again.

A cool, calm breeze washed over Mariel, who hadn't even realized he'd begun to sweat. Shaken, but now feeling safer, Mariel decided to toss out the idea of stealing the gardener's clothes. He didn't need to be there to find out if his hypothesis was true. He knew he had won. Mariel slept soundly that night, with no tossing, no turning, or shrieking beasts to wake him. He rose to find, miraculously, no more chickens dead for the first weekend in months.

He walked outside, expecting to find his gardener working away in the foliage, but the land was eerily silent. That is, until a telephone rang out inside the house. Marielle rushed to pick it up, sitting at the kitchen table. He was greeted by an unfamiliar voice. "'Hello?' he asked. "'Hi, I'm sorry. I know you don't know me. I'm your gardener's wife.' The voice cooed back. "'His wife?' "'Yes, sir. I'm calling to let you know he can't come into work today.'

"'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Might I ask why?' "'Oh, of course, sir. He's too proud to admit it, but he had few too many last night at the bar and got hurt in a fight. He's all out of sorts.' "'A fight, you say?' Marielle leaned forward in his chair. "'Yes, sir, a nasty one at that. A gunshot wound in the leg is no laughing matter.'

Marielle slammed the phone into the receiver. He sent out the gardener's letter of termination that day and threatened that if he ever saw him on his property again, he'd finish the job. I hope you enjoyed Marielle's story. He's a very serious man and he tells this story like it is as real as the clothes on his back. It's an honor to be a part of your wonderful community. Thanks for everything you do, Mickey, Kat, and Rochelle.

Thank you, Mickey, Kat, and Rochelle. I love that story. I know. That is very unlike most of the fan stories. It reads like, in the best of ways, it reads like an old legend. Yeah, it's beautifully written. Well done, Mickey. I mean, I was in it with you, moving through the motions, staring at the edge of the jungle, wondering like,

you're doing the same thing like that Marielle did like oh this isn't real like I have worked myself up so much and then it's like oh shit it's like an episode of the X-Files oh yeah totally yeah very cool and not every day you get to shoot and fire a skinwalker I know

I had never heard of, I mean, I guess it makes sense, but I'd never heard of skinwalkers that far south. I've heard of, like, you know, skinwalkers as far as, like, North American lore. You know, but once you get down into, like, you know, Central America. Yeah. I didn't know that they had, like, skinwalker equivalent entities. Yeah. Or if I did know, I forgot. Now I'm thinking, I bet every culture on Earth has some entity that...

can transform back and forth between an animal and a human. Yeah, some shapeshifty kind of thing. Yeah, exactly, a shapeshifter. I don't remember ever hearing this thing about in order to keep the...

skinwalker, that it could transform from animal to human and back and forth. So this thing about taking the gardener's clothes, I don't ever recall hearing that you have to get rid of their clothes so it stays in animal form and can't transform back into human form. Yeah, I don't recall that either, actually. It very much stood out to me. That's not to say that we haven't

discussed it at great length here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've discussed so many things. It's hard to sometimes remember some of the things. Well, and that stuff, what's tricky is like it differs slightly from one, you know, like, okay, with Skinwalkers,

You know, many, many different, you know, tribes and nations have their own skinwalker equivalent or skinwalker. And but the rules change a little bit like in this one. It's, you know, you do something terrible. Like, for example, I remember one like legend was like, you know, cannibalism. If you eat like another person, you're

That can like help you set you on this path of transforming to this animal and you just stay as the animal forever. But then there's other legends, you know, equivalents where you can go back and forth. It's more like a medicine man. Sure. Who can transform into an animal, but then also can transform back. And then there's still more where sometimes when you transfer back, you're mostly human, but like you might have deer...

Hooves? Yeah, like hooved feet or something. Yeah, like little tails. Cloved feet, yeah. Where somebody can be like, ooh, you're not right. Yep, yep. And I can tell by your ears. I can tell by your feet, yeah. Yeah, I never thought about that as like a transformation back and forth between the two. I thought of it as a slow transition into. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I was having like a comical thought in my head as you were talking about that. I'm like, oh my God, what is...

I don't know why this is funny. This is, it's really not. Uh, you die. You're on the other side. Okay. And,

don't know the rules. Yeah. And you are somehow like, okay, like I die here in America, but now I'm somehow my spirit ends up in El Salvador and I'm so confused because I don't know the rules of being like a spirit in El Salvador. Yeah. Motherfucker. I know the rules of US ghosts. I know what I'm allowed to do there. And I'm just like constantly like getting written up and report. I was having this whole like Monsters Inc vibe. Like I'm just getting constantly like written up in reports. Like my ghost boss is like, you're an idiot. This is not how we do. I'm like, I don't,

I don't know how to do it. I'm picturing you in the Beetlejuice waiting room, like talking to somebody. Totally. Like, no, that's not right. They're like, oh, Lindsay, you're a mess. And I was laughing in my head because Christopher Walken keeps popping back in my brain. Oh, let's do it. And I was just thinking of like him as a skinwalker. Oh, this is great. Like just being extra weird with it. Honestly, he probably is a skinwalker. Why does everyone choose a deer when you could be a moose?

I like to go back and forth between the different kinds of animals. I just picture like, he's like everyone else is a deer and he's like this big moose. I just didn't know you could do that voice.

I'm also picturing you now with your floofy hair. Oh, God. Doing that voice. Oh, yeah. Okay. We can do that when we get home. Oh, can we please? Yeah, you can. Oh, my gosh. My hair out. I have this special hairbrush I'm using to help grow my hair and like to keep my hair from thinning. And I brushed Dan's hair the other night and it made it.

He looked like he just stepped off the Soprano set. And we had had our sleepy time candy. So we were just... My hairy chest and my poopy hair. Oh, God. I was...

I was in tears laughing so hard. Can I take video of you doing floofy hair, Christopher Walken? Sure. Okay. Okay. All right. If you remember. Yeah, you can take video. Do you want to thank some Annabelles? I do. I will do it in my normal voice and thank normal people for being normal contributors to a normal show. Okay. Chantel Albert, Claudia Moisher, Esther Towsley.

Lindsay Beal. Lindsay, you spell your name wrong just so you know. Karen Nesrem. Bonnie Quimby.

Nes, Rainberry, and Jonasaurus Rex. Nice. Yeah, it's cute. Or Jonesasaurus, maybe. I would like to think the following Annabelle's. Now, is this Lucy or Lukey? There's two C's here. Is that intentional? Like L-U-C-C-Y? I just copy and paste it from... So maybe it's Lukey, or I'm going to say possibly also Lucy. Lucy Carrick. Weird dude from Finland. But how would Christopher Walken say that? Oh.

weird dude from finland nice sarah kirk uh don britney jay courtney wait wait is it don don is one yes britney jay's another okay i thought it was don britney jay oh sorry i was like what courtney testelin emily james uh natisha i think natisha stacy and caitlin russell how about just natisha

Oh, yeah, just Natisha. N-A-T-I-S-I-A. Natisha Stacey. Yeah, there you go. Natisha. Sorry, Dan's an idiot. Natisha Stacey is a beautiful name. Yeah.

I only want you to talk to me like this now. This is so great. This is my new fetish. Okay. Okay. Just a couple of spoopy shout outs to Travis from summer. You are the best man I could have ever imagined. I love you forever. My lobster. Thanks so much for introducing me to the best cult ever to Stephanie from Stephanie. Happy birthday. You little baddie. May 2025 be the most epic year ever.

And to Sam from Sam, happy 24th birthday. Oh, 24, Sam. So young, Sam. So young, Sam. I was also super annoyed in my 20s when everyone was like, you're so young, you're so young. I thought like when I hit 25 that people would stop saying that. I thought when I hit 30, I thought when I hit 40, not even now. Soak it up forever. Yeah. But 20s are, listen, they're bumpy as fuck, Sam. You just got to hold on tight because your 30s crush. Yeah.

Well, that is our show. Thank you for continuing to send in your personal tales of terror to mystoryatscaredtodeathpodcast.com where Lindsay can find them. You can email us for everything else at info at scaredtodeathpodcast.com. Thank you to Logan Keith scoring today's show. Thank you to Heather Rylander for organizing the My Story emails to book editor Drew Atana polishing and preparing listener stories for book number six. Thank you to me for finding both stories I shared this week.

You and Christopher Walken. Thank you to Christopher Walken for finding the stories I shared this week with you fine people. We're on Facebook and Instagram where we post pics that accompany episodes of more at Scared to Death podcast. We have a private Facebook group, Creeps and Peepers, full of fellow horror lovers. Big thanks to the All Seen Eyes, the Creeps and Peepers moderators. Thanks for making our online community so much fun.

Enjoy your nightmares, peeps and peepers. I hope you were scared to death. I don't even know if this is funny. If spirits threaten me in this place, fight water by water and fire by fire. Vanish their souls into nothingness and remove their powers until the last trace. Let these evil beings bleed through time and space. Evil may pass through but have no home here within. Scared to death.

He's good, he's good, he's good. And then 7 p.m. comes and his brain stops working.