There's A Little Boy Up There
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Whether thou art a ghost that hath come from the earth, or a phantom of night that hath no hollow, 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. Are you Dan? I am. I'm still Dan. You're not...

Christopher Walken. You're Lindsay. Oh, I love how much you guys loved the Christopher Walken. The comments, the emails, it has been cracking me up so much. It's so silly. It's so great. So great. I got to fluff your hair up and get a video. Oh, yeah. Let's try to remember that tonight. Okay.

Okay. So no announcements. We're just going to go right into it. That's it. Which is fun. Yeah, that's true, Chris. Yeah. What fan submitted horror do you have for us this week? Well, what I have for you is my first tale is a very creepy Ouija board tale. Okay. We haven't had one of those in a little bit. Yeah. Yep. And I definitely feel like something is trying to get out via the Ouija board.

Then I have a classic ghost tale. Nice and easy. Yeah. Not too bad, not too scary, but just enough. And then my third story, really strange and creepy, a haunted or possibly possessed stuffy.

Oh, all right. Uh-huh. Yeah. I like these little stories, too. It makes me want to do another episode myself where I have some little ones. They're fun. It's a fun change of pace. Yeah, yeah. I know we talked about maybe at some point just doing, like, an entire episode of just me telling you a lot of fan stories just to kind of switch it up. Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. Tell me more. My first story today is the retelling of the moments that lead to one young woman becoming a firm believer in the paranormal. Okay. She sees something. She experiences something that she just cannot deny. For my second story, we'll explore the lore behind a curse associated with New Hampshire and Maine's Socko River. Are people still drowning in this river thanks to a curse placed over three centuries ago now? Probably. Probably.

You ready to put on your sock show? Oh, yeah. I'm ready for the sock show. As we're moving through this month of love, I've got these cute kissing gnomes. Be mine. Cute. And we hope, we know this episode comes out after Valentine's. We hope you had a good Valentine's Day. Yeah. When you guys hear this episode, this comes out on the 18th, we'll be in the middle of our first ever adult vacation. I hope it's so fun. That is not for work and does not involve our kids. Oh, my gosh. Dude, that's,

Incredible. Excited. 13 years together, our first vacation. Yeah. Let's go. Let's fucking go. And here we go. One of my favorite questions to ask believers of the paranormal is, what made them believe?

For some of us, we've just always felt deep in our bones that the other world, the spirit world is real, that it's all around us, that it's highly unlikely that literally everyone who has ever claimed to have had a paranormal experience, they're all lying. They all have a or have an overactive imagination or they just saw some trick of the light.

For others, there was an exact moment, an exact moment in time where a flip within them switched, a moment where they felt something or saw something, something that was so strange and inexplicable that all at once the boundaries that they had long believed to confine reality dissolved into nothingness. And suddenly they were forced to confront the possibility, no, the probability that the dead do return or the demons or angels or some other type of entity or all of the above, malevolent, helpful, benign, or otherwise real.

For one Reddit user, the following was the moment that turned them from a hardcore skeptic and ghost denier into an ardent believer. Time now for the tale of There's a Little Boy Up There. I got my first job when I was 17 years old. It wasn't a great job, but it required minimal effort and zero skills. Plus, it paid okay, and that was enough for me at that age. The gig was at this place called Joe's Gym. It was a gymnasium slash kids' play place, but really it felt more like a knockoff Chuck E. Cheese's.

Joe's gym was located off the highway just outside my middle America hometown in a shoddy looking warehouse type building Inside there were two main sections the gym and the bounce room inside the main gym We had all the typical stuff you need to keep snotty little kids entertained for a couple of hours Like balance beams monkey bars saucer swings a foam ball pit a slide a climbing wall climbing ropes trampolines plastic tunnels You name it?

Then in the other room, which we were forced to refer to as the bounce bungalow, which sounds more like the name of a private room in a strip club than something for kids. There was this inflatable obstacle course with way too much duct tape slapped onto it to possibly be safe. But no one ever complained back in the 90s.

Officially my job title at Joe's was five and under gymnastics coach However, it's pretty hard to teach real gymnastics to most kids that age So really my job was to play games with the little ones every Friday Saturday and Sunday Chasing them around the gym and occasionally making them walk on the balance beam do front rolls and back bends on the foam mats and things like that I actually really enjoyed working with the kids. They were snotty. Yes, but they were adorable too and I was good at it I mean I was a fun babysitter and I kept them safe and entertained and

My encounter with the paranormal happened in late October or early November of 1996. I can't remember the exact date, but I remember most of everything else about the day. It was a Saturday. My first class started at 11, so I got to work around 1030. There were a few parents I didn't recognize loitering outside the entrance in the frigid cold, smoking cigarettes, which meant that there must be a birthday party happening in the bounce bungalow. I shuffled inside, stomped the snow off my boots, and headed to the employee break room in the back.

The narrow hallway had pissed yellow walls and this nauseatingly putrid confetti patterned carpet. Along the way, I stuck my head in the security room to say hi to Hammy. Yep, his name was actually Hammy. Due to a few decades of hard manual labor, binge drinking, Bud Lights, and based on how his skin looked, refusing to ever wear sunscreen, Hammy looked like he was in his 60s, but really he was only in his 40s. Maybe only 43. He might still be the nicest person I've ever met.

He was always smiling, always cracking jokes. And when he laughed, his gigantic beer belly shook like crazy. He had these bright red cheeks and a long gray wispy beard. He kind of reminded me of Santa Claus, if Santa Claus chain smoked and rode a Harley. Anyway, I handed Hammy a can of Coke, which I did every Saturday and Sunday morning, and told him I'd stop by to chat after my class ended.

After stuffing my purse, puffy jacket, and muddy boots into my locker, I headed into the gym. When I walked in, I was immediately struck with a cold gust of wind. Irritated, I stood under the nearest ceiling vent to see if some moron had turned on the air conditioning, even though it was below zero out. I think it was like negative four or five. The air conditioner was off, so I figured the breeze must have somehow snuck in through an open door window somewhere. Even though there were no doors or windows leading to the outside of the gym, and I started preparing for class. I was in the middle of the night, and I was in the middle of the night.

That day, there were only five kids from the program signed up. I still remember their names. Jeremy, Talia, Miranda, Kevin, and some other kid. I remember almost all their names, I guess. They were between three and four years old. After dropping the little ones off, their little ones, some of the parents stayed and watched class from a viewing corner of the gym, and some split to go get a coffee or run to the drugstore or just whatever. I remember specifically that that day, Kevin's mom was the only parent that stayed.

And I remember that because Kevin's mom was basically the only parent that I liked. She was a single mom with a great sense of humor, and she drove a kick-ass car. Plus, she was always super nice to me. Even gave me a Christmas gift one year. I think her name was Sherry. Her kid, Kevin, was four and a real stinker. But I loved him for it. He never had meltdowns when I made the group try some new game or gymnastics technique like some of the other kids did. And he never hit or bit anyone like a lot of the other kids did.

He was just a super independent, silly, outgoing, class clown in the making type of kid. Plus he had a lisp. And come on, little kids with lisps are so cute. My other favorite kid in class was Talia, and she was the exact opposite. She was three, teensy tiny, super petite, and quieter than a mouse. She would spend every class glued to my side, either holding my hand or standing directly behind my legs. You know how kids do.

I remember her favorite part of class was when I took out the bubble machine and let the kids run around. That was the only time she would go farther away than maybe 10 feet from me. Anyway, that's all the background you need to understand to understand what happened next. It was about midway through class. I had the kiddos lined up to take turns walking across our tallest balance beam without holding my hand. Kevin, per usual, was the first in line. "'Mithewa,' he said while I helped him onto the beam. "'Yeah, buddy.'

Can I go on the swing after this? He asked, gesturing to the set of tire swings directly next to us. If there's time, buddy. Okay. Without warning, Kevin let go of my hand and began slowly but confidently marching across the beam. He stared at his feet as he went, face all scrunched up with such intense concentration, it was hard not to laugh at him. Good job, Kevin! I heard his mom yell from the corner of the gym. He didn't seem to hear her. He was too laser-focused on the task at hand. But then the little boy came to an abrupt halt.

It was like he was frozen there. One foot in front of the other. His stubby little arm stretched out wide on either side. It's okay, Kevin. You're almost there. I encouraged him. Don't be scared. You can do it, buddy. In that very moment, for reasons I cannot explain, I felt something similar to disgust well up in my stomach. I'm not sure how to describe it. It came out of nowhere. And it wasn't like I was disgusted with Kevin. There was something else that was making my skin tighten, my inside squirm. I don't know what it was. It was weird.

Kevin, buddy, you got this, I said. Suddenly, Kevin tilted his head towards the ceiling directly above us. And I saw that his lip was quivering. I followed his gaze to see what he was looking at. There was nothing up there but the industrial gray rafters and a maze of metallic air ducts. I squinted harder trying to figure out what he'd seen, what had scared him. And that was when I heard him scream. To this day, I have never heard another kid scream like that. I've never heard anyone else scream like that. The sound was, I don't know,

Shrill? Blood-curdling? It was the sound of pure, scared-down-deep-into-your-bones terror. I was so distracted looking at the ceiling that I didn't notice that Kevin was losing his footing. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late. He was already on the ground. He was just rolling on the ground, crying for his mom, cradling a crooked wrist in his hand. In an instant, Sherry was kneeling over him, asking him what hurt. "'My wrist! My wrist!' he wailed."

"'Should I call 911?' I asked breathlessly. I felt tears burning behind my eyes. I also felt like someone was watching me from the ceiling. "'No,' Sherry said frantically, picking her son up off the foam mat. "'I'm going to take him to the emergency room. I'll let you know if it's broken.' I could tell she was irritated with me, but also that she felt something too, that she wanted to get out of that area as fast as she could, and not just because of her son. I think I said something like, "'I'm so sorry. I didn't see him fall. I should have caught him, but I don't really remember. Everything happened so fast.'"

As she walked away, I heard Kevin whimper something to her between sobs. "The other widdle boy up there! The other widdle boy up there!" I turned to keep an eye on the other kids. One of them was crying. I don't remember which one, and I don't remember what I did next, but I assume I just gathered them all up and told them that Kevin was going to be A-OK, then turn on the bubble machine for the rest of class. All I could think about was Kevin's scream, and how I felt while he stared at that spot on the ceiling. And selfishly, I for sure wondered if I was going to get fired or not.

When the end of class finally came, the kids' parents were waiting for them in the lobby. It was crowded because the birthday party next door had just ended at the same time. I think I said something to them about how there had been an accident in class that day and that the child who had gotten hurt was at the ER right now, but again, I don't exactly remember. What I do remember, however, and what I will never forget, was what little Talia said to me when she gave me a hug goodbye. Miss Sarah? She squeaked in her tiny voice, and I bent down so I could be at eye level with her.

Yeah, Talia? I said, zipping up her puffy pink winter coat. Did you see him too? Did I see Kevin fall? No, honey, I didn't. I... Tali interrupted me, shaking her head so seriously from side to side. No, not Kevin. The other little boy. Confused, I met her gaze. She looked completely earnest, waiting for me to respond, but for some reason, I was afraid to. What little boy, sweetie? I finally asked. The little boy in the ceiling. I felt like I'd been punched in the gut, like the wind had been knocked out of me.

"'Uh, uh, no, honey,' I stammered. I didn't see him. I gave her one last quick hug before practically running to the employee room in the back. I sat on the bench by the lockers for a while, trying to calm down, amazed at how loud the sound of my heartbeat pounding in my ears was. Once I was sure it had been long enough for all the parents from that class to have taken their kids home, I gathered up my things, put on my boots and jacket, said a brief hello to my co-workers who had just finished working the kids' birthday party, a quick goodbye to Hammy, and I was gone."

The next day I got to work at 10:30, same time as I always did. I had mostly shaken that eerie, panicky feeling that the previous day's class had left me with, but I was still dreading walking back into that gym and seeing that same spot on the ceiling. When I stopped by Hammy's office to give him his Sunday Coke, he asked me what was wrong. I remember he said it was plastered all over my face. Something was clearly bothering me. I sighed and walked into the security room, which was more like a security closet, and sat down in the chair across from his.

Then I told him everything, from the weird cold feeling I got when I walked into the gym Saturday morning, to the mystifying thing Talia had asked me after class. So, pretty weird, right? I said with a forced chuckle, once I finished regaling him with the tale. Just a lot of weird coincidences. I mean, kids say weird stuff all the time, kids get hurt all the time. It just so happened that both of those things occurred on the same day. Hammy was silent for a while, which was unusual for him. Finally, in his gruff voice, he said, "'Let me know you something.'

and gestured for me to look at the screen on the desk in front of him. This here is footage from yesterday, about 4 p.m. Don't know if you know this, but Michelle, that gal that runs a gymnastics program for the middle schoolers, called in sick yesterday, so the 1 p.m. class was canceled. So no one was in the gym after you left at, what, 1230-ish? Anyway, take a look. Hammy put in a VHS tape with some white label on the side, and a few seconds later, the screen came to life with a view of the gym.

Like he had said, the timestamp of the video read yesterday's date, 3.46 p.m. There was only one security camera in the gym, positioned right above the entrance, but it captured almost the entire space except for the ball pit and the parents' corner. Hammy pressed play, and we watched. After about a minute, maybe two, Hammy clicked pause and turned to me with wide eyes. Did you see it? He asked. See what? I replied. Everything in the video was so still, you could have told me it was a photograph, and I would have believed you. Okay, watch again.

There. Did you see it? He asked again, pointing to the screen. No, Hammy, I don't see anything. What are you, what's going on? Although I did my best to sound calm, there was no disguising a little bit of panic in the way my voice was about to tremble. Okay, here, he said, pointing at the center of the gym where the balancing beam and the swings are. Watch very closely. I leaned in closer and I watched and I waited. I was just about to tell Hammy that nothing was happening when suddenly something did. One of the tire swings, the red one in the middle,

began to sway back and forth back and forth each time reaching a slightly higher height my hand involuntarily surged to cover my mouth and i sucked in my breath what why is it moving looks like someone's on it don't it hammy asked his eyes fixed on the screen but nobody is maybe maybe it's the wind i offered no don if it was the wind wouldn't all three of them swings be moving and other stuff too besides you and i both know there's no windows or doors in there

So where would the wind even come from? I couldn't give him a good answer All I could do was stare at the screen and the swing that somehow seemed to be moving all on its own Then hammy said You said that boy kevin saw something in the rafters right above the balance beam, right? Well, whatever he saw if he in fact did see something would have also been right above those tire swings too, right? I nodded hammy continued and he said the girl asked you if you saw what was a little boy in the ceiling, right? I nodded again

Well, he said, leaning back in his chair and grinning a bit while he said, seems to me that little boy in the ceiling was waiting for his turn to play on the swing. And at that very moment, the swing in the video came to a sudden halt, like someone had grabbed it from behind. I shuddered. I couldn't believe what we were looking at. We watched that section of the tape a few more times. God, I wish I knew where it was today. I've often wondered if Hammy kept it. I don't know what happened to him. Ever since that day, I have believed, no, I have known

That the dead do not always leave this earth. That's like a great confirmation story. I know it's not like necessarily terrifying, but it did give me the chills in some moments. Oh, yeah. And it's kind of cute, too. I like your little lisp. Thou, can I go on the swing, thou? It just takes me back to baby Monroe. Can we please have be it mummies for dinner? I want be it mummies.

Monroe, where were you born? Spotan. Yeah, I know. She had the cutest last name. And she just was an exceptionally cute kid. She was. Ugh, Monroe. Anyways. She still is, but little kid. Little Monroe. You could just pick her up and tickle her. Yeah, I know. I remember she was in her messy bun phase and she wanted to smooch me so much. Uh-huh. Oh, God. Okay. Um...

No, I think that's a... First of all, I do think it's creepy. You know, it's creepy. Kids do say creepy-ass shit. Yes. They really do. Intentionally or otherwise. They're just... Kids are so creepy and weird. So there's that. And I worked, like...

as an assistant teacher in a nursery school. So I've heard some creepy, creepy shit. They're so cute and they're exactly that. They're like snotty and like dirty and gross and also so yummy. So I was able to picture this whole situation and you know,

If there wasn't video footage, it would be a throwaway story. It wouldn't matter. It would be like, okay, whatever, kids saying weird shit. That footage makes it so dead-ass creepy. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And I was picturing like the old, like when it was like VHS, everything was like VHS. Yeah. And then just, you know, like rewind it and then click and then pause and click, you know, to pause it again when you get to the spot you want. Yeah. And how it's like...

I mean, there's a reason they go back to that era a lot in horror movies because the resolution was so much worse than it is now. I could see how she would miss it a few times. Yeah, so grainy. Yep, it's grainy. There's just one camera for this whole gym. Yeah, but it's a huge wide shot. It would just be this little tiny swing in the distance, this little pixelated thing. You'd be like, oh, shit, that is moving and there's no one around. Yeah. But talk about a great confirmation story in that it didn't happen to you.

Oh, yeah. You know, nothing actually, you weren't touched. There was no... I just felt a little cold for a second. I felt a little off. Kevin may have broken his wrist, but even that is not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. Yeah. It's at your place of employment, so it's not at your house. You know, you don't have to be worried about that. It doesn't seem malevolent. Right. Just a little kid waiting for his turn. That's a pretty great confirmation story. I will take it. Yeah. No pics attached to that story, but the setting reminded me a bit of the old Savage Land pizza. Yeah.

Is it called Savage Land? Yep, I looked it up. Because I know we were talking about it. It was Savage Land Pizza in the Spokane Valley. It burnt down, you know, years ago now. But we went there a few times and it was just like, yeah, not like a knockoff Chuck E. Cheese, but kind of. There was no animatronics, but they had pizza. And I remember it being really good pizza. Of course. I mean, you know, cheap, good pizza. Yeah.

Like good trashy. Listen, you know I don't care about pizza. I know. You can talk about pizza, but I'm like, whatever. I thought it was delicious. But then they had this big area of like all the habitrails, you know, like for kids' sides, like the tunnels where you can crawl through. What did you call it? Habitrails, like a gerbil.

Habba? I think it's called Habba Trails. Huh. When you like set up like a hamster or a gerbil's little cage and you put all these little tunnels so they can like... Yeah, yeah. I think that's what they were called. Now I'm second guessing myself. I've never heard that term before. I might have just made it up, but that's what in my head they're supposed to be called. I like it. And so they have like all these like, you know, plastic tunnels and then this area. God, I remember playing with Kyler in this one area all the time. It was so fun. Oh, yeah.

Those days are so fun. Where they had like these foam, big foam rectangular pads and a rope would connect that pad to the ceiling all in this one room inside this thing. So you had to go through a tunnel to get to this little room. And then if you pushed it, you know, they're not attached to the bottom of the mat. So they swing. It's like a swinging mat. Yeah. And so we would go in there and try and blast each other with these mats. Cute. Oh, he loved, Kyler loved those things. I mean, he still loves to hike.

Yep. And when he was little. And he goes rock climbing all the time. Yep. He loved to crawl and climb on stuff. Uh-huh. I wasn't thinking of a like Chuck E. Cheese place. I was thinking more of my gym. My gym is a little kid's gym.

And they're scattered all over SoCal. I don't know if they ever franchised out of there, but it sounded more like that to me where it has the balance beams and things, but like more gymnastic-y. What was that place called in Century City Mall? Uh, that was a kid's climbing area. It was like a, like a. It didn't have a name. It was just their little like play area. Oh, okay. I know what you're talking about though. Yeah. Yeah. Did you bring up pictures of Savage Land? Uh,

I couldn't find Savage Land pictures other than just from the exterior, but I found these others that were similar just for anybody who's not been to a place like that. That looks like a giant Lego statue.

Oh, yeah. It's like a Lego thing, but it's all inflatable. Just, you know, like bouncy stuff for kids to climb on. Yep. I mean, this sounds like it had more like balance beams, but they had like the ball pitch you referenced too. So it would be like this kind of stuff with a big mat area where you also have some more traditional gymnastics, you know, set up. Equipment, yeah. Equipment, thank you. Sure. Yeah, that's it. That is all. That is all. That is all.

Anything else you want to talk about with that story? No, sir. Okay, we'll move it along. Oh, wait, there was something. At the beginning, you said it was really funny. It made me laugh so hard. Yeah. You were trying to say, flipped my, you said my flipped switched. My flip switched. Oh, instead of my switch, my, wait, flipped a switch? I know. It was like the way you said it. I was like, wait, do you mean...

it switched my flip my flip my flipped switch it threw me off for so long i was thinking about it and now i'm like oh i'm gonna have to go back and listen to the audio because it was cracking me up because i was like i don't think that's what he meant to say i don't know how it was written in your script like if it got written yeah or i might have just like it is an interesting thing that i've noticed where um flipped my switch switch flipped i got my switch flipped it was i don't know it sounded inverted but then i was like wait is it

I will sometimes shift phrases because I'm used to like reading my notes in Time Suck and it's like making grammatical corrections on the fly. Yeah. But then sometimes the notes will be correct, but my brain will just flip some words around. Totally. Yeah. Okay. Now you're ready to move forward? I am. Before we move into more scares, we need to take a quick in-between story sponsor break. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

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Scared. That's MeUndies.com slash scared. Code scared for 20% off plus free shipping. MeUndies. Comfort from the outside in. Thank you for listening to those sponsored deals, creeps and peepers. I hope you heard some that appealed you. All right. The Saco River. The Saco River, which travels from northeastern New Hampshire into southwestern Maine, is reportedly plagued by a curse, giving it the ominous nickname of the River of Death.

For many years, this important river served as the primary method of transportation and water power for many living near it. It led to the development of main towns like Biddeford, Saco, Freiburg, and Hiram. The Saco River is approximately 136 miles long, originating in New Hampshire's White Mountains, flowing across the state and into Maine, and then entering the Atlantic at Biddeford Pool and Saco Bay, near the twin cities of Biddeford and Saco.

Biddeford Pool is the site of the state's first recorded permanent settlement, originally called Winter Harbor, an important location in this story. The Saco River is, for most of its run, a fairly calm river, slow river, making it a popular river for recreation, canoeing, sport fishing, that sort of thing. An estimated 3,000 to 7,000 people visit the river every weekend in the summer to enjoy it, and it is mostly a safe river. However, some areas of it have deceptively strong undertows and rough rapids.

And despite the overwhelming majority of people who interact with the river in some way having nothing but a positive experience, drownings in the Saco River are unfortunately allegedly pretty common. And many people still attribute some of these drownings to a curse that is now over three centuries old. Time now for the tale of the Curse of the River of Death.

Saco was once a territory of the Abenaki tribe, an Algonquin-speaking tribe who were part of the Wabanaki Confederacy, which was a confederation of four principal eastern Algonquian nations. The Sakoi people were a subset of the Abenaki, Wabanaki nation, and they lived near the mouth of the river. In 1630, the Plymouth Company of London granted Thomas Lewis and Richard Bonneton a charter to establish a town where the Sakoi lived in the Saco area.

And the town of Winter Harbor was settled in 1631. And then 45 years later, or I guess 44 years later, in 1675, reportedly near Limington, Maine, a few cold-hearted English settlers are said to have committed a brutally violent act against an indigenous woman and her child. In the late 17th century, the Sequoyah people were led by a sachem, or chief, named Squando. And Squando had a wife named Wagamiska and an infant son named Menowee.

In 1675, Owegamiska was pregnant with the couple's second child. Her husband, Squando, was a strong and respected leader, a brave warrior, and a man known for having great spiritual powers. And he would curse the men who harmed his family. Initially, English settlers in the area had a peaceful relationship with the Sequoyah people. Squando, for example, rescued an English girl who had been kidnapped in a raid and returned her to her family as a gesture of peace. The story of how this peace was shattered has several versions.

In one version, Squando and his wife, Awagamiska, were traveling along the Sako River with their son when they came upon an unruly group of English sailors. These Englishmen had been drinking, they were out looking for trouble, and when they saw the couple's baby, they decided to test the truth of an ignorant rumor that indigenous babies were born with the instinct to swim.

They got into an altercation with the family, and during the scuffle, they snatched the baby out of his mother, Owegamiska's arms, and as they held the child's father back, they threw baby Menuhi into the river. Owegamiska was let go in time to save her baby boy from drowning, but he tragically, after spending too much time in the cold water, died a short time later. In another version of this story, an older daughter of Squando, a girl he had fathered with another woman, was kidnapped by three white settlers and taken away in a canoe.

She then fell out of the canoe along a rough section of the river called Limington Rips and drowned and died. In a third version of the tale, Owegamiska was rowing a canoe with her baby boy near Factory Island, formerly called Indian Island. The Sequoy people used to spend their summers on Factory Island, and an English ship was anchored nearby, close to the mouth of the river. Three sailors decided to go out in a rowboat to explore the island, and they spotted Owegamiska in her canoe.

One of the settlers, again, said that they had heard indigenous babies were born with the instinct to swim, and the settlers rode up beside Owegamiska, tipped her canoe over, caused her baby to fall into the water. Owegamiska fought against the Englishman and was able to save her baby from drowning, but then he became sick with a fever and died a few days later. And in yet one last version of the story, the most common version, both Owegamiska and her baby drowned because of this incident.

Regardless of which version is true, this event is said to have marked the end of peaceful relations between the Sequoias and the white settlers. Squando mourned his son for three days, and at the end of the third day vowed to have his revenge. According to legend, he stood on the banks of the river and cursed it, so that three white men would die every year until they left the area. And then to shed more English blood, Squando persuaded the Androscogon tribe to attack Winter Harbor, which was the beginning of King Philip's War.

King Philip's War was also called the First Indian War, the Great Narragansett War, or Medicom's Rebellion. It lasted from 1675 to 1676. The war is named after the Wampanoag chief, Medicom, who later took on the English name of Philip and was known locally by many settlers as King Philip.

After the Pequot War of 1636 and 1637, which began when allied Puritans and Mohicans attacked a Pequot village in Connecticut and killed around 500 people, the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and New Haven formed the New England Confederation. And this confederation fought the Wampanoag, Nipmuc, Pocomtuc, and Narragansett people during King Philip's War.

The Mohegan and Mohawk tribes sided with the English. Medicom was the second son of Wampanoag chief Massasoit, and Massasoit had previously negotiated a peace treaty with the colonists at Plymouth Plantation, but then the colonists continued moving on to indigenous land.

Medicom came to power when his older brother, Wamsutta, later named Alexander, was arrested on suspicion of plotting war and was murdered during questioning by the English. In January of 1675, John Sassaman, a, quote, Christian Indian, warned Plymouth that Medicom was going to attack. They ignored his warning and then found Sassaman's body. He had been murdered.

Three Wampanoag men were later found guilty of the murder and hanged June 8, 1675. Metacom was furious. This only increased tension between the Wampanoag people and the colonists. In June, the Wampanoag raided the Swansea colony of Massachusetts, killing several colonists and destroying a lot of property. The English then destroyed Metacom's village on Mount Hope, Rhode Island. Algonquin warriors joined the Wampanoag in the summer of 1675 and continued to attack settlements.

And then the Confederation officially declared war on September 9th, 1675. Indigenous people in the Saco area attacked the Winter Harbor settlement during King Philip's War. Settlers had to move to the mouth of Saco. The homes and mills they left behind were burned. Finally, a treaty was signed September 6th and November 6th, 1676.

More terms were decided two years later in 1678, and the settlers were now allowed to return to their homes, but had to annually forfeit a peck of corn, which was eight dry quartz, to acknowledge they were on indigenous land. Some assigned much of the spilled English blood from all these battles to Squando's curse. And now that we've established a historical background of the curse, can we ask the question, is it true?

Ted Baker, a historian and archaeologist at the York Institute Museum in Saco, a.k.a. the Saco Museum, reports that the curse was never mentioned in print until 1880. Baker told a journalist from Yankee magazine that historical accounts describe an incident on the river that led to a baby's death that year. He said, I think the legend of the curse might have sprung up, as some other legends did, during what we call the colonial revival era, when it was popular to romanticize events that took place in the colonial period.

While there's plenty of skepticism about the curse, many still believe in it, especially amongst the older generations. Up until 1947, some people reportedly refused to go near the river until they knew, until they were certain, that three white men had already drowned that year to ensure they would be saved from the curse. Many mothers also would not allow their children to go swimming in the river until they knew again that three white men would drown that calendar year.

Historian Hubert Clemens told Yankee magazine that he had known about the curse since he was a little boy and had a partial list of drownings near the Hiram area dating back to 1873. And while it is hard to find accurate statistics on drownings along the entirety of the Socko River because it passes through so many different towns, several counties, two states, he claimed that it seemed to him that at least three white males had in fact drowned in the river each and every year.

Ruth Chaplin, librarian, resident of Steep Falls, Maine, and reporter for the Portland Press-Herald, recalled writing about numerous drownings during her 20 years with the Press-Herald. She said the curse has been carried out many, many, many years in drownings up and down the length of the Saco. A bunch of reader comments beneath a 1989 Press-Herald article on the curse, which was posted online in 2021, was full of stories of reported drownings in the Saco River, as well as numerous drowning tragedies involving young children.

In February of 2022, it was announced that the Biddeford Culture and Heritage Center would erect a bronze statue of Squando and his family to acknowledge the pain inflicted on indigenous people in the area by European colonists. President Diane Sear is quoted by mainphilanthropy.org as saying, our hope is that the statue still, excuse me, our hope is that the statue will speak to mariners

Oh my gosh, Mainers. I've never heard that before. Our hope is that the statue, third time's a charm, will speak to Mainers and other New Englanders about the extent of the brutality that indigenous people have endured. It will stand alone in Maine as the only visual reminder to date of these horrific incidents. Whether or not this curse is real is still up for debate. Probably always will be. But the river's reputation still causes fear and uncertainty amongst some locals and visitors.

Are the high number of drowning incidents due to the fact that the river is just large, has a lot of visitors, or is the curse of the river of death more than just some old, possibly made-up story?

What do you think? Would you go swimming in the river? I mean, for me, all rivers are cursed. Like, I don't like to swim in the river, just like, you know, growing up along the Sam River as a kid. Yeah. I mean, every summer, you would hear about several drownings, fatal drownings. And that was just along, like, a 30-mile stretch of the river. That's true. Every single year. And so, like, after all that, I became so scared of, like, undertoes and things. Mm-hmm.

I would go to this one beach area where you've been to, like Shorts Bar. Yeah, Shorts, yeah. And stuff. But even that, I'm like, eh, I don't ever have to go back there ever again. Just because, like, oh, we took the kids to Skookumchuck, I know, this last summer. Uh-huh. You know, which is closer to Whitebird. And it's fun if we stay within, like, 10 feet of shore. But if the kids joked about going farther, it's like, I would be like, nope. Yeah.

do not do not do that you don't know what the current's like out there yeah like i remember kyler joking but he's like i can swim across the river i was like do not fucking do that yeah i'm like i mean because you don't know it's like just one undertow and you're done no no life jacket no no way with a life jacket sure rafting down the river with like a good life jacket that's fine you float the river in missoula

That river's like four feet deep. So? You only need like two inches of water to drown. Well, yeah, if you get knocked unconscious. I'm just saying. But that one, if I can stand up and touch the bottom, then it's a different ballgame. Okay, well, you didn't say that. Now I know. Now I know the parameters. That's why I love that river.

It's like, it's so shallow. And not only is it shallow, it's shallow and it's not like a crazy current. It goes so slow. It's almost too slow. Yeah. In moments, I'm like, come on. Let's, you know, it's like. Pick up the pace a little. Yeah. But I love that. I mean, that's perfect. Remember the last time we floated that river and there was like a crazy storm that came through? Oh my God. We were all holding on to each other for dear life and freezing cold. That was hilarious. It really was. It was one of those crazy, I guess, what, like an air pressure drop? Yeah.

where it was, I don't know, 75 degrees. It was like, it wasn't crazy. It was a perfect day. Yeah, it wasn't like crazy hot, but it wasn't cold. It was just warm enough. I remember because you do want a hotter day for the river because the water is going to be cooler. And I remember it was just warm enough. I'm like, oh, okay, this is going to be good. And then we were going along and you could see it in the distance down the canyon. You could see like out of nowhere, it's no wind and then huge gusts of wind. I'm like, uh-oh. And you could see like sand blowing off the beach and stuff. And then you saw these dark clouds rolling so fast.

And it felt like the temperature dropped 30 degrees almost instantly. There were what, like six or seven of us and we all just like banded together. We were just laughing at the absurdity of it. Oh yeah. But also freezing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's pretty funny. Do you have pictures for your story? I do. I have a few pictures. This first photo,

is an aerial shot of a big sandy beach along the Saco River near Freiburg, Maine. That looks like fun. Yeah, this is the Fiddlehead Campground. Yeah, you can see, like, you know, people got their little floaties out in it. Yeah. Super chill. Like, I'd be okay with that. Uh-huh, uh-huh. And then this is... The water's moving a little quicker here. This is that Limington Rips section of the water, and people will do, like, kayaks and little canoes through that. Yeah, it looks like a small little passage where you would practice doing...

Like rafting. Yeah. You know, like a good- Kayak maneuvers and stuff. Yep. Kayaks too. Yep. Practice your rolls and all that. Actually, there was another photo I didn't include. There were a bunch of people like on the rocks and stuff. Uh-huh. All had their helmets on. They're all watching each other. Yep. And there were like people in kayaks doing maneuvers. Yep. That makes sense. And then this is Biddeford Pool where the Saco- or near, very near where the Saco River dumps out into the ocean. Okay.

And this is, you know, somewhere near this spot that's now like a marina and a bunch of nice little houses is where Squando, you know, allegedly cursed the river. Just so you guys know, they're nice big houses. Oh, yeah. They're not little. They just look little in that photo. Some of them are little. Like this one right here. It's like, I love these kind of things where that person probably like bought in the 1910s or something. And then they just kept that little house going. I do really love East Coast houses. Yeah.

I know, me too. Like the classic East Coast style. Is that like Cape Cod style or something? Uh-huh. I think that's one of the styles, yeah. Yeah, it is so charming. It is. It is, it is. Yeah. Who knows, maybe someday, well, let's see where Monroe goes to college. We might be East Coasters. Who knows what the future holds. You never know. We can record from anywhere. I love it. I love it.

Okay, well, Dan, are you ready to sit back, relax, and get spooked? Ooh, yes. Oh, buddy. Are you going pink Layla or brown Layla? I'm going traditional again. Back to brown. Okay, back to classic Layla. All right, well, let's dive into this Ouija board story. Aloha, queen of the suck and the suck master himself. Hello, I love Hawaii. My name is Erin, and I'm originally from Oahu, which is where this true story takes place. It's something I will never forget.

Picture this. Sicily. Valentine's Day. 2012. Just kidding. That's my favorite part of Golden Girls. Picture this. Sicily. 19... Oh, I forgot about her... Yeah, Estelle or whatever saying that. That's right. Oh, welcome. Welcome back to Planet Earth, Dan. It was Valentine's Day, 2020-12. My closest high school friends and I were hanging out at Tanner's house. And we were bored. We were bored.

We didn't have a lot going on that day, just watching YouTube videos and whatnot, when Ryan got the great idea that we should all play with the Ouija board. I wasn't really into that kind of stuff growing up. I believed in the paranormal, but I never wanted to explore it.

We went upstairs to the guest room where some of our friends had played with the board before. Everyone was sitting in a circle. Three of the six of us had our fingers on the planchette. I chose to sit out. I had heard stories about Ouija boards and all the bad things that can follow after playing with one. I didn't want to run the risk of having something follow me home. Against my better judgment, I watched as they began to use the board.

Five minutes in and nothing had happened. Except suddenly the planchette started to move and everyone freaked out. Ryan started asking questions, asked the board its name. The board spelled out Sophia. They asked how she died and the board spelled love lost followed by death. Okay, not that big of a deal. Then the planchette kept moving. Amen.

A. R. Ryan interrupted and asked, Aaron? I lost it. I was beyond scared. I yelled at my friends to close the session, and thankfully they did. The rest of the day was pretty normal, and I began to wonder if my friends had just been playing a joke on me. I let it go.

Around 8:30 that night, most of my friends went home. Ryan and Tanner and I were sitting out back smoking cigarettes when suddenly we simultaneously received a Facebook message from my girlfriend. It was a paragraph written in Hebrew.

It was a story about a woman who had lost the love of her life. It was so weird. First of all, it was Valentine's Day. Second, we had the whole Ouija board experience. Third, why was my girlfriend sending us a story like that? And lastly, she doesn't know Hebrew.

Sitting there puzzled, I called her. She answered in a sleepy, almost unrecognizable voice. I asked her why she had sent us all that message. She said she hadn't sent us anything. I was suspicious until she sent me a screenshot of her Facebook messenger. It wasn't there. None of the messages were.

Tanner started to speak suddenly in a very proper British accent. His posture changed. It was as if Tanner was no longer himself.

Ryan and I began to panic. Tanner, or this new version of Tanner, told us we needed to burn the board, that as long as the board existed, she would haunt us. After issuing this warning, Tanner morphed back into our beloved friend. We explained what had happened, but he didn't remember any of it. We decided we had to burn the board. Except someone had to go get the board, which was upstairs in the guest room. We drew straws, and Tanner drew the short straw.

Ryan and I waited, scared shitless. It should have only taken like a minute or less to grab the board and run back downstairs. But too much time had passed. Ryan and I began calling out, Tanner! Tanner! No response.

Another five minutes go by. We were scared and not wanting to go upstairs when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Tanner comes flying down the stairs, practically charging at us, board in hand, and a creepy-ass grin plastered across his face. We chased after him. Tanner lets out this creepy laugh. It had seemed that Tanner was running to my house just a few blocks away. We were doing our best to keep up with him, but we lost him. He was running so fast.

And then we did what every dumb person in every horror movie does. We went back to look for him. We found Tanner with his legs crossed in the middle of the road sitting under a street lamp. It was the most fucking terrifying thing I have ever seen in my life. We cautiously approached him while calling out his name. He just sat there, not moving, staring into space. A moment or two passed when Tanner gently said, What happened?

Why am I in the road? Where are my shoes? And then he relayed to us the series of events that had unfolded. He told us the last thing he remembered was being in the guest room, grabbing the board, and then looking across the hall when he saw a little boy at the edge of the other bed swinging his legs. He said he froze in fear and then couldn't remember anything after that.

By now, I just wanted to burn the board and end whatever madness this was. We walked to an empty lot in our neighborhood and blazed that board. Erin. Yikes. So yeeby. So yeeby. Uh...

Just the whole concept of spirit boards, Ouija boards, you know, whatever, just opening up a portal where you don't know what's going to come through it is insane. I feel like life is so unpredictable as it is. We make, you know, the best laid plans and we do all the things that we can to...

control our environments, like, and there are so many things that are just coming at us all the time. Why make it worse? Why risk more? I mean, I do understand the appeal of Ouija boards, all that stuff, of just, like, confirmation. If you're like, you know... I don't need it. Yeah, yeah, but I understand for a lot of people, you know, it's so funny where I...

We've been doing this show for so long now and I'm still like, I have moments where I'm like, maybe it would be fun to like play with the Ouija board. A thousand percent. But then, but then like when it comes down to like pulling the trigger, I clearly do like, like there's part of me that's like fucking Parker brother sells this stuff. It's a gimmick. It's people, you know, someone's always pushing the planchette. It's all bullshit. It's bullshit.

But clearly, I don't believe that to my core because I still will not pull the trigger and actually do it. That's good. And if someone were to invite me, I still wouldn't feel ready. They freak me out. I definitely think it's a day-by-day thing. Like some days, I'm like, I need no company. I mean, I just said, I was like, whatever. Like, why would you do that? And then catch me on another day. And I'm like, what?

you know, I understand, you know, we're human, our environments, our stress levels, how rested we are, what's going on in our lives, what's happening at work, what, are we hungry? Like, when we sit down to record these episodes, there are so many factors outside of these stories that definitely change how we approach each and every story. Totally. So today, I'm like, I don't fucking need it. Next week, I might be like, well, could be interesting. Yeah. You know, it's not flip-flopping, it's,

Horror is interesting that way. It's so similar to comedy that way, you know, from doing stand-up for so many years, where, you know, uh...

People bring their days with them into the comedy club. Yes, that is such a good way to say it. Yeah, it's like, so, you know, doesn't matter how funny you are that night. There's going to be a few people. They have too much other shit on their mind and they can't get out of their head and they're just not really in the mood for it. They came with friends. Yeah, they bought the tickets three months ago. Yeah, they feel obligated to go, all those things. And it's the same with horror where it's like there are some times when we record and it doesn't matter how scary the story is.

I'm just not in that mode where I'm not feeling like spooky or whatever you want to call it. And I'm like, I feel like I can handle any story. And there are other days where I'm like, I don't want to, I'm getting freaked out. Yes. Like we're going to finish the podcast, but there's a part of me that's like, I just want to quit. I just want to like get out of here. Or especially at home working on the stories. I love to work on horror stories 90% of the time.

10% of the time. And definitely like if you're, if you're gone and it's only been, we're almost always together, but there's been a few times when you're with girlfriends or something and I'm home alone and I'll start being with you all the time. I love being with you all the time too. And I'll, and I'll start working on a story and then I'll be like, Oh my God, like I'm approaching 50 years and I'm still like, Nope.

You know what? Turn on all the fucking lights. Put on a happy thing on the TV. Totally. And do not think about horror shit for the rest of the evening. You know what? I have, like, what I've learned about myself is that after a certain time of day, I just have to be done. Even if you're home. It's usually around 7 o'clock in the summer because we have really bright, long summers. I can work on horror stories longer into the day. But it's, like, it's about proximity to my bedtime. Yeah. And it's...

proximity to the sun going down and I just start to feel, I'm like, you know what? I just don't need this energy right now. I don't want it in my house. And I, I mean, I know that like my story creation workload is very different than yours. And so sometimes you don't have a choice, but you have to, you must finish. And I can move on to, you know, business work and non-creative work where I'm like, I find whatever I'll do with it tomorrow. But

I feel bad for you in those moments. Well, that getting later thing is true where it's like, I don't think I've ever worked on a horror story, specifically a horror story, past about 1 a.m. Because like once you get to that 2, 3, what, the witching hour? Oh, God. Like 3 a.m., I do feel weird. Now I'm feeling weird even talking about it. I know. I'm like, okay. Let's move on. Let's move on to the next story. See what you did?

See what we mean about energy? I know. There's like an energy shift in the room when I was talking about 3 a.m. And now I'm like, now I feel freaked out. Okay. I want to spray some cleansing spray really quick. I just don't feel like. It's so weird. Okay. Okay. What is that? You're surrounded by white light. You're surrounded by white light. Do you want some? No, I'm okay. Okay. One of us is safe. And I'm still trying to resist that kind of stuff, but I am freaked out. Okay. Okay. Let's do a less creepy story. Okay. Hey, Dan and Linz.

I love that somebody called me Linz because it just like makes you feel like you're my best friend. My story has two instances that separate each other roughly 15 years and thus require a little bit of setup. My dad started working for a heavy manufacturing company in the late 70s and then purchased that same company in 2007.

I have been in and around this company since the day I was born. As a young boy, I used to go in on off hours with my dad while he worked on various machines. He would often tell me the building was haunted. There were always strange noises, as it is in very large, open, older buildings filled with pressurized lines and a constant stream of pigeons nesting in the rafters of the shipping bay.

I often have an unshakable feeling of something watching me or being right behind me when I'm alone in the building. My dad enjoys the thrill of a good prank. And one time after a tale of Indian burial grounds, he cut the power to the building while I was inside and locked the doors. Oh. I was eight. Oh my God. Thanks, Dad.

When I was about 14 or 15, I used to sneak out of the house to play basketball with friends at a local school around midnight most nights during the summer. The friend that went to this school often had tales of the ghost of Shou Li, a young boy who died on the property after getting lost in the woods. Always good for a laugh and a midnight layer of goosebumps, I never truly believed in it.

Until one night, all six of us playing basketball heard a weird squeaking noise coming from the far end of the court along the edge of the woods. We saw a bluish gray figure the size of a small boy, about six or seven, riding a tricycle along the tree line, completely ignoring us before disappearing into the woods.

Thinking it was a neighboring kid, we ran to the edge of the court and called out, not daring to enter the woods. With no answer and no further evidence of anyone other than ourselves being there, we were convinced we had just seen the ghost of Sholi.

A week later, I was in my basement bedroom sleeping when at 3 a.m. I felt my dog kicking in her sleep. I opened my eyes to see a young blonde boy, about 6, scratching my dog's head with his face pointed down. Jazzy, my dog, continued kicking as dogs do when you hit an itchy spot.

The boy was a bluish-gray color, standing in the moonlight, spilling in from the glass block windows. I rubbed my eyes, thinking I was dreaming. I reopened my eyes, and he was still there, scratching away. I sat up, and to my relief, I thought, oh, it's just my younger brother, also a blonde boy, aged six. I called out, Nate? Nate?

The boy stopped scratching my dog's head. She immediately fell still, and he slowly looked up. It was not Nate. He looked at me coldly, and in my head I heard the phrase, only children can truly see. He slowly turned, and as he left the moonlit spot in my room, he completely disappeared. Still hoping it was my brother, I sprinted up the two flights of stairs only to find him sound asleep, and I never saw the boy again.

Fast forward 15 years. I'm now 30 with a family of my own. I am the plant manager at the family business and history repeats itself as I bring my three-year-old son with me to work on off hours as often as I can.

One such evening, my son asked me to get something out of the vending machine. We left my office to go to the plant floor. We walked through a small hallway leading to the main plant, lit only by the light of the vending machine. I put in a coin that was rejected by the machine, falling into the return slot in a pinging sound quite loud in contrast to the silence around us.

My son quickly grabbed my pant leg and shushed me, saying, Daddy, be quiet. You'll wake the baseball player. Immediately freaked out, I whispered, What? He pointed into the dark abyss of the plant floor, looked up at me, and said, That man right there with the bat, he's sleeping. Don't wake him up.

I saw and heard nothing. The words, only children can truly see, rang out again loudly in my ears. I grabbed my son, unfortunately snackless, locked all the doors behind us, quickly finished what I needed to in the office, and bolted. It has been a few months since this day without occurrence, but each sound when I'm alone in the building carries a little extra weight these days. Somewhere between a creeper and a peeper, Nick.

Good story, Nick. I like that story of like what he saw when he was a kid. Uh-huh. Made him believe his son seeing things when he's a little kid, even though he's no longer seeing them. Yeah. And just understanding that thing that a lot of people say where, you know, kids are more susceptible to seeing things because they, you know, don't have their defenses up and haven't become jaded and cynical and all the things. Mm-hmm. And also, I thought that story was going to take a very different turn when you talked about when he was a little boy and it's 3 a.m.,

Or wait, he might not have been a little boy then. But the three, yeah, I think it was 3 a.m., sees a little blonde boy. And then at first you just, I think you said it differently. You said, with my dog's head. And then you corrected yourself. Oh. And I was like, where is this going? Like a little, I was picturing a little ghost of a blonde haired boy with his, Nick's dog's head. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Like he's decapitated. Oh no. So sad for a second. Yeah. Oh dear. I was like, oh, okay. Oh, phew, phew.

I know, it goes to show like the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable will really take you down the wrong route. Yeah, yeah. All right, Mr. Walken, are you ready for one more? I think I can hear another story. It's unbelievable.

It's uncanny. It's uncanny. I enjoy being scared sometimes. It's the craziest thing. Okay, listen. Yeah. I need to record that voice and send it to Christopher Walken. How do we do that? Oh, my God. So many people have impersonated Christopher Walken as like one of the most impersonated people. Really? Oh, yeah. He'll be like, okay. I've heard this a million times. You know who does a great Christopher Walken actually? I mean, he actually really is. I know not everybody loves him, even though he's pretty lovable. Jimmy Fallon is...

I think he became known as the guy who would like break character on SNL all the time. He's wildly talented and he is a really good impressionist. Okay. Noted. Well, thanks for sharing that. Yeah. All right, Chris, let's go.

Hey guys, Thomas here from Utah. Love the podcast and listen to it whenever I get the time. Sorry, love the podcast and listen to it whenever I get the time. And my oldest daughter and I love to sit out by the fire and try to get super duper scared. Oh, I love it. Yeah, it's cute. Anyways, time now for the tale of Stefano Elefante. Oh.

It all started about five years ago. I was working on the road and on my way home, somewhere between here and there, at an old crappy gas station, I saw a huge pink stuffed elephant for sale. I thought my oldest and only daughter at the time, who was four, would love it. My girlfriend and I surprised her with this gift. She did not seem to love it, though. Actually, she dismissed it.

We thought maybe it was all of the excitement of me being home or maybe the fact that the elephant was as big as she was. When it came time for bed, we tucked our daughter into bed with her new stuffy, Stefano Elefante. About an hour later, she came into our room crying. She did not like Stefano. She said he was creepy.

We tried to keep it light. We told her that he was going to be her new best friend. But then another hour passed when we heard her crying in her room softly. I went in to see what was wrong. She said she did not like Stefano, that he was still creepy, he was rude, he wouldn't go to sleep, and he was saying mean things to her.

Though a little creeped out myself, I did the tough dad thing and I roughed up Stefano a bit and then I stuffed him into the deepest corners of her closet. In February, the next year, my girlfriend and I moved in together. While packing, I came across Stefano. I recalled his first night in our home and decided I would throw him away. Although I don't specifically remember throwing Stefano away, I do remember putting him in a box labeled garbage and I absolutely remember throwing out a lot of garbage boxes.

However, when we unpacked, there he was. I guess maybe I didn't throw him away, I thought, or maybe I had put him in the wrong box. Nothing noteworthy happened for the next six months. My girlfriend became my fiance and we moved into a house. It was a home with three floors and a weird little basement built in the early 70s. Not too old and plenty large enough for us with a nice yard at a price we'd be crazy to turn down.

We moved out of the apartment and then we came across Stefano again. I decided we would for sure toss him out. Once again, I don't actually have a recollection of personally throwing him away, but I do remember putting him in a garbage can outside to be picked up on trash day. As we settled into our new home, we discovered we had some other roommates, some supernatural ones.

The first few nights in the new house were the spookiest. While we were in the family room, the second to the lowest level in the house, we heard people walking around on the floor above us. We wrote it off as maybe the dog or the cat messing around until we noticed the dog lying on the floor by us and the cat sitting at the bottom of the stairs looking up, focused on something like cats can only seem to do when you're already creeped out.

And the footsteps continued. While we laid in bed on the top floor, it sounded like someone was walking up the stairs, down the hallway towards the bedroom, and then stopped outside our bedroom door. And then the footsteps turned around and went back the way they came. Soon after this, we saw them for the first time. Well, my fiancé saw them. I was working as a building service director on the other side of the Salt Lake Valley and was called in late one night to repair a leak.

My fiancé was sitting in the bay window on the main floor when she saw our daughter at the top of the dark stairs. Sarah, you know you need to be in bed, my fiancé told her. Sarah backed up into the darkness until it absorbed her. My fiancé ran up the stairs ready to whoop some kiddo butt for creeping her out when she knew she was supposed to be in bed.

But when she got to Sarah's bedroom, she saw her sleeping tightly in her little bed. It was obvious she had been sound asleep for quite some time. We agreed that we had at least one spooky roommate. She wasn't harmful or really even bothersome, so we didn't mind. We tried to pop around corners and leave on lights in hopes of seeing her again.

A few weeks later, I was shutting the sliding glass door, and in the reflection, I saw what looked like an adult walk down the stairs and into the living room. Thinking it was my fiancé, I began talking to her. When I received no response, I went into the living room to follow up. But no one was there. I found my fiancé upstairs, sleeping.

The footsteps continued. The slight feeling of someone standing by the bed while I slept was a new addition to the creepy happenings in our home. Occasionally, we'd see a shadow cross our door at night and go into Sarah's room. I figured it was just Emily, our resident ghost, going to play with some of Sarah's toys.

We were planning our wedding during this time, and as this is so stressful, my fiancé and I had a few arguments. One particular argument ended with me sleeping on the family room floor. Half asleep, I heard someone walk down the stairs in the night. I felt two feet, about an inch from my head, the way you can feel movement on really plushy carpet. I pulled the blanket off and said something asshole-ish like, came to apologize, huh? But no one was there.

During the Christmas holiday, my soon-to-be brother-in-law and his wife stayed with us. Refusing to sound like crazies, we did not tell them about our current house guest and waited to see if they noticed anything. And sure enough, the second morning, my future brother-in-law's wife came to us. She said, Oh my God, the weirdest thing happened to me this morning. I walked up the stairs and as I did, I swear I saw you, Thomas, sitting at the table. I said, Good morning. But as I came across the partition wall, there was no one sitting there anymore.

The last few months, there have been a ton of activities in the house, knocking footsteps and so on. One of our nanny cams caught two orbs rushing across the room quickly. Unfortunately, the camera records in loop, and we didn't know that in time to pull the footage off and save it.

And then one night, our dog started losing his shit, barking and howling while he headed straight for Sarah's room. My fiance and I ran after him. Sarah was sitting up in bed. At the foot of her bed was our old friend Stefano. What the fuck? I exclaimed. I thought you threw him away. My fiance said, uh, me too. I replied.

The dog wouldn't stop barking and growling at him. I put him in Sarah's closet, shut the door, settled the dog down, and went back to sleep. The next morning, I opened our bedroom door to find that creepy bastard Stefano sitting in the hallway.

I immediately got in the car and donated him to the Salvation Army. Sounds messed up, but maybe if he had someone else to haunt, he would leave us alone. And he did. As I drove home, I called my fiancé, calling her out on her funny little joke she had played on me with Stefano. She had no clue what I was talking about and assured me that she had no interest in touching that thing. That day, the ghosts all but stopped. No more knocking, no more footsteps, no more shadows out of the corner of our eyes.

My wife and I had another little girl in June of last year. Every now and then, you'll hear her laughing when she's all alone. One time, Emily, our little ghost, actually brought her a balloon over from the other side of the room to comfort her while she was crying.

I heard Penelope crying, and I peeked into her room, and then I watched as a balloon floated across the room towards her, and she began to giggle. There was no open window, the heat wasn't on, no explanation of how the balloon could have drifted across the room like that.

Since getting rid of Stefano, other than a few innocent occurrences with Emily, the last few years have been really, really good. We think that the ghosts living here were a little upset by whatever spirit was in Stefano. Now that he's gone, we just kind of coexist with Emily and the other mischievous beings. Stay spooky, Thomas. Thank you, Thomas.

Uh, yes. Stefano Elefanto. Such a funny little name and such a naughty little entity. Uh-huh. And that, and that little detail at the end, I, uh, sorry, sometimes I will admittedly, I'm like, ooh, there are like some of the details from, uh, like people's true stories. Uh-huh. I'm like, ooh, I could use that in a fictional story. Just like, it's just like. Yeah, absolutely. And, uh. We're in the, we're all inspired by life. Yeah, yeah. There's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. And that thing of like the balloon. Yeah.

Going across. Yeah. Going across. Cause it's such a distinct motion. I can just picture somebody with like a helium balloon tied to a little, like, um, it's not a string. It's like a ribbon. Yeah. Like a thin ribbon walking across with it. And it kind of bobs as they walk and just seeing that, but with no one there. Oh man, that's something. The way he was describing it. I was thinking about that, how, um, when you walk across a room, the balloon is,

Is a little bit behind you. Like at an angle a little bit. Yeah. Or the ribbon or whatever is like, you know, at an angle in front. Yeah. Yeah. And it kind of like goes a little slack and then tightens. Uh-huh. Just because the nature of the helium and everything. Mm-hmm. It's so specific. Yep. Yep. And then what did I have?

Oh, no. I think we got it all. Okay. I had some thoughts, but I think I wrote down early, but then it was answered later in the story. Yeah. Yeah. I thought Thomas did a great job of closing all the loops of like, okay, well, and I do appreciate that he says like, okay, I swear I threw it away, but like, okay, maybe not. Yeah. Maybe I forgot. Yeah. It's like, you know, we all move, we've all moved at least once or twice in our lives and we know how chaotic and hectic it is.

it hectic it is, even when we're trying to be organized with like label, this is garbage, this is donation, this is, you know, storage, whatever. It's like, okay, the first time, sure. But then the second time I'm like, I don't know, that's, that's too fucking much. And then for that thing to show up, what feels like, I don't know, a year later, that was, it's, it's the ending. It's Stefano Elefante showing up at the very end of like,

what like I know I took that mofo and I put him in a trash receptacle outside my house rolled that out to the curb to be picked up get the fuck out of here how did he get back in my house Stefano needs to be burned

But I do understand the fear there. Yeah. Is that whatever is inside Stefano gets released and I'd be worried that like, is it going to come into me now? Yeah. So nobody go to a Salvation Army in the Salt Lake City area and buy a pink stuffy that's an elephant. And if you have done that, you need to get rid of it. I don't care if it's your kid's favorite thing and they're going to sob every night. Go bury it.

bury it, put it in a little metal box or something. Yeah, I think you have to contain it first. Yeah, maybe you could put it like a little box that's locked and then somebody puts some kind of charms on it or I don't know, sages it. I'm trying to think of some kind of, I'm sure there's some kind of crystal that is, I know there is actually from doing research for stories that it supposedly would like

like a protection field around the box. I don't know. I would do all kinds of stuff. Yeah. Around the box after, and then buried as well. I was so confused by charms. I thought you meant like decorate it. No, I don't know. I was trying to think of, I don't know. The word escaped me. That's okay. I was, I was just picturing this really like,

bedazzled box yeah you know you put some glitter on it and i was like okay just stickers and stuff little jewels well you know maybe that would work maybe it would make it happier and lighter and it would combat the darkness yeah i can get back who knows who does know who knows what's going on with these spirits uh do you want to do you want to thank some annabelle's i do thank you i would like to thank the following annabelle's for their continued support on patreon this month alicia genoviac

Donna Diaz, Elizabeth McNamara, Bo Galletti, Audra Day, Dan Gordon,

Brad Cooper. Oh, Brad. How much do you either love or hate being the other Bradley Cooper? Oh, I didn't think of that. That's right. That's got to be interesting. Isabella Hall, Beck Hooper, funny Cooper and Hooper all in one, and Jenny Dugan. Nice. And I would like to thank the following Annabelles as well for supporting us. David Holmes, Boston Grammy. Cute. Cute. Julian Drew, another JC.

Mark Corbelli, Scott Fendrick, Amy Arhart, Izzy the Frog, Matt Foraker, and Justin Smith. Nice. And then I just have two spoopy shout-outs this week. Okay.

To Gabe, a.k.a. the Lord of the Ganja from Mufasa Chuckles and Juice. Oh, man. I know. This is great. Happy 21st birthday. We love your weirdness and everything that is you. Your 21st year will be magnificent. We love you. Awesome. That's such a good birthday. Yeah. It's so fun. To Erica, Crystal, Kirstie, and our mom, Marty from Cassandra. Erica, thanks for being on call to answer all of mom's medical questions.

Crystal, thanks for watching game shows and drinking coffee with mom. I know she loved it. Kirstie, thanks for being so strong and a source of comfort. And mom, wherever you are, thanks for always having our backs, for always being around to watch our favorite shows. You taught us to be kind and strong. We will forever miss you. And until we meet again. I know.

And that is our show. Thank you for continuing to send in your personal tales of terror to mystory at scaredtodeathpodcast.com. 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 and to book editor Drew Atana for polishing and preparing listener stories for book number six. Thanks again, just like last week, to Molly Jean Box for finding the first story I shared and Olivia Lee finding the second.

We are on Facebook and Instagram where we post pics that accompany the episodes and more at Scared to Death Podcast. We also have a private Facebook group, Creeps and Peepers, moderated by the all-seeing eyes who are fantastic. Enjoy your nightmares, Creeps and Peepers. Hope you were scared to death. Bye.

I enjoy being scared sometimes. It's the craziest thing.

Hey, it's Dan Cummins. If you're into the weird, the wild, and the downright bizarre, check out my podcast, Time Suck. Each week, I dive into shocking stories like the rise of the NXIVM cult, the origins of conspiracies like QAnon, and the San Francisco witch killer murders. With deep dives and dark humor, Time Suck brings you the stories that'll fascinate you, make you laugh, and fill your head with lots of strange facts. New episodes drop every Monday. Join the cult of the curious. Follow Time Suck wherever you get your podcasts.