Disembodied Busybodies
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I'm in the shower. I'm afraid to wash my hair because I might open my eyes and find someone standing there. People, they say I'm crazy. Maybe it's a little touch, but perhaps showers remind me of Psycho too much. You've crossed over to Spooked.

I've never been one to court visitation. All that yelling Bloody Mary in the mirror, trying to tempt the Candyman or whatever, it seemed like a bad idea to me from a very early age. But my brother, just 12 months younger than I, 12 months, but he had a different relationship with the Land of Shadow, where I built a line between here and there, between us and them.

My brother observed no such demarcation. He'd talk out loud to things I could not see. He'd threaten, cajole, laugh, laugh, as if with old friends. Maybe they were, in fact. Old friends, old friends. He's with his old friends now. Another side of this veil, and I hope they are still laughing. I hope, I hope. And how I wish...

This wall of bricks I built between here and there, between us and them, between he and I. How I wish I could pass through it, even for a moment, just like he did. My name is Glenn Washington. Everything is everything. It's everything. Bookstarts. Now then, as I've mentioned, some folk have a relationship with the other side. They see what's beyond the veil and they run toward it. I am not one of those people. But our storyteller, Catherine...

She is... spooked. I walk inside and I walk into this kitchen. There's coriander countertops that are cracked. There's this peeling linoleum that's this cornflower blue and white checker pattern. There's this border of birdhouses around the room. I'm enveloped by this warm feeling.

It was just this friendliness and calm. This feeling that Catherine Dean is experiencing, it's not just ambiance or good decor. She says it has a personality. So I go walking through this house. This feeling is falling in. I can tell that she's an older woman and she's very friendly.

Now, she can't see anyone. No apparitions, no flowing figures. But to her, it's like she's being taken on a guided tour. And so I'm walking through and I'm kind of quietly chatting with her as we go. And I would see shapes on the wall that would suggest picture frames. And I'd say, "You hung something there." And she would go, "Yes." Katherine doesn't actually hear someone say yes or no.

but she feels it. It's kind of like somebody telling you, "I'm so happy." But take the words out of it and leave the emotion. Catherine understands the emotion. She picked this really cute border that you would normally put at the top of a room, and she put it underneath the chair rail in the dining room. And I said, "That's a really cute floral pattern. I like that a lot." And she would say, "Thank you." Little things like that. It was questions and compliments, and that's how I moved through the space.

When I moved back to the kitchen to go outside to get my parents, I opened a cabinet. I don't remember her telling me to open the cabinet, but I opened the cabinet and I looked down and there was a Medicare card. And that's when I found out her name, Joyce Dodge.

And so I went, okay, Joyce, thanks for showing me around. I'm going to go get my parents. And we went through the rest of the house. Joyce followed. By the time we made it back downstairs, the realtor had showed up and I am grinning from ear to ear and I'm just going, this is the house. This is it. Here we are. The search is done. So Catherine got her house and she started dreaming up all the changes and improvements she was going to make. And she was dying to share them with her new housemate.

I'm very excited to talk with Joyce again. She was excited to bring me into her home. I was excited to involve her in the repairs to this home. Joyce is this soft-spoken, sweet woman. I've never seen a picture of her, but I imagine her to be shorter, just because she has the personality of someone short, if that makes sense. She's someone who gets in and out of a lot of places.

And sometimes she does it very quickly and sometimes she creeps. She slowly comes around the corner and she will watch you to make sure that you're okay with her being there. When my mother and I were outside and we were talking about how we wanted to do the garden, she got really excited. You know, there's a lilac bush in the backyard and I just feel joyous, be so happy that I'm going to keep this lilac bush alive, you know, little things like that.

The garden, the kitchen, Catherine had it all scoped out. But she didn't really pay much attention to what was underneath, in the basement. So when I walk into this basement and I'm looking around and I'm inspecting the stairwell in the back and the remnants of the Bilka doors in the shower in this cannon cabinet, I feel something behind me. And it's not Joyce.

And I start to get concerned. And so I promptly hightail it out of the basement because I don't know what that is. I don't want to deal with it. And I'm starting to worry. I'm like, did I get myself into something more that I can bite off? You know, Joyce is in the rest of the house. This thing is in the basement. Maybe it's fine that it's just in the basement. Okay, so the basement's a little creepy, but the rest of the place was pretty cute. It still wasn't ready to move in, though.

Catherine is an English teacher, so after the school day was over, she'd come over to the house at night and fix it up. I was here fairly late. It wasn't quite 10 o'clock yet, but it was getting close. I was working on something in the living room, and I just felt something come up from the basement. And this thing comes and finds me and tells me, it is 10 o'clock, you need to leave. ♪

I can't see this man, but now I recognize him as a man. And I was in a panic because I didn't know who that person was. But once he was standing in the dining room looking at me in the living room, and I could tell he was like leaning on the wall and his arms were crossed and he's just kind of looking at me. And now I understand who he is. See, as soon as she showed her mother Joyce's Medicare card, they looked her up to find out as much as they could about Joyce Dodge.

We found when she had been born, when she passed away, when her husband had been born. And we found her husband's name, Jimmy Dodge. Where Joyce had been a little bit confused but open to the fact if someone was coming, he was not pleased with it.

The way that he is moving through this house, the way he is interacting with the spirit of Joyce, the way he's not overpowering her, but he's setting limitations. And I'm like, oh, you're Jimmy. We will address this later, but I'm getting out now. She went back to her mom's house where she was staying, went up to her room, and tried to figure out what to do with her roommate situation. So I'm laying in bed, and I'm going, okay, how do I establish respect and trust? The trick with getting...

Anyone to change is doing one thing at a time. She knew that the next time Jimmy started to throw his weight around, she was going to have to stand her ground and talk to him in a language he could understand. I didn't talk back, but I would tell him, no, I'm going to stay after 10 o'clock because I poured too much paint into this cup and I'm not going to put it back. I'm going to finish this. And I would say, yeah, give me a half an hour more. And then I would work and I would make sure that I was done within that half an hour. And then I would go.

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After a while, he didn't mind that I was there, you know, after 10, so long as I was working and not diddling around. It was just, I had to get to that point first. Catherine would mix plaster, patch the walls, and it felt to her like Jimmy finally stopped micromanaging and Joyce was all in on the new renovations. But then one day, she came by to check up on her kitchen contractor.

I am walking up the driveway and I see the gas stove on the back porch. The first thing that hits me in the face before I can even register what's going on in the kitchen is Joyce just being despondent. Like I walked in and I feel my chest constrict. I feel my eyes start to prickle. I feel my hands shake, but I'm like, why? And then it, like, as soon as I asked the question, why?

I could feel her. And I was like, "I'm feeling this because she's feeling this." It feels like experiencing heartbreak secondhand. And then I look around and the kitchen has just been basically demolished.

The cabinets are coming down, the countertop is being ripped up, the floor is being ripped up. Everything is in disarray. She is upset and she is so confused. And it's this feeling of, "I don't know what's going on. I don't know who this person is. Where did my oven go? What are you doing with the floor?" And as soon as I am done processing that, I feel Mr. Dodge maybe five inches from my face going, "Why did you make my wife cry?" I am standing in this kitchen.

where there is this crying woman, this very angry husband, and a contractor who turns around and smiles and goes, "Katie, what do you think?" And I'm having to play it cool. Meanwhile, my mind is racing because I feel awful. I am trying to keep casual and polite conversation with a gentleman who does not understand the havoc he has wreaked in this relationship.

And I feel badly because I did not warn them. And I didn't think to warn them. I assumed they understood because we had stood in that kitchen and talked about the changes and talked about the repairs and what would occur. Joyce, in her creeping, in her overhearing, I thought it made sense to her and it didn't.

After I disentangle myself from the conversation with the contractor, I make my way upstairs to the master bedroom because the last thing I want this man to see is me trying to talk to ghosts. And what needed to happen between the Dodges and I was an open and candid conversation. That was not going to happen in front of him. So once I found privacy, I shut the door as best I could. I said, I'm sorry, out loud. And then proceeded to just talk with them out loud in the master bedroom.

And I start to explain to Jimmy, because Joyce did not follow me upstairs. Joyce was still in the kitchen, upset. But I start to explain to Jimmy, this is what we're doing in one. And I start to draw it out in the dust in the floor upstairs. I drew the walls, and I drew where the refrigerator had been. I drew where the original door into the dining room had been, where the basement stairs were.

where the sink originally was, where the stove originally was. And I went, "Okay, this was your kitchen." And then piece by piece, wall by wall, I would erase what was there and then I would draw something else. I said, "All we're doing is we're expanding the wall and moving it down. Let me show you where the refrigerator's gonna go. Let me show you where the stove is gonna go." And then I promised him, "The next time we do something like this, I will tell you." Joyce finally calmed down.

Thus, Jimmy calmed down. But any headway that I made with him was gone. And it was going to be twice as hard just to get that inch back. I had to make a change in my interaction with them to prove that I meant that I was sorry. And that would never happen again. So from there on, anytime we made changes to the house, anytime we were planning anything, down to paint color...

I would take those samples and I would leave them upstairs on the windowsill. Here are the paints. This is what I'm thinking. Once we got a lot of the anxieties out of the way, they felt much more comfortable because I wanted them to feel comfortable. They were still living here. And once she started spending some weekends in the house, the three of them began to work it out. And they each carved out their own little routines. And every day started the same way. At 8 o'clock...

I would be woken in the most gentle way, as if someone was going, "You need to wake up. There's a full day. Come on. Get out of bed." And it was just very gentle, but it was still consistent. Somewhere in the realm of 8:00 to 8:05, and I would be in my kitchen having a cup of tea or coffee, and Joyce would go, "You need to eat a real breakfast." They would putz about. Sometimes they would ask questions. You know, sometimes they would watch. And then 10:00 would come.

And Mr. Dodge would come up from the basement, and he'd look into where I was, and he'd go, it's time for bed. It's literally like I was living with grandparents. Their behavior towards me was a little overbearing, but it was okay because they were treating me like I was their family. And I was also only there on weekends, so it wasn't like I had to deal with it all the time. It was just when I was there.

Katherine finally got all her furniture in, left her mom's house, and moved in with her new family. And just like family, the more you get to know them, the more you get to know them. Things start to change because now it's every day. Mrs. Dodge would judge my cooking. She goes, "I don't like what you're doing with that chicken." And I go, "Joyce, you're not eating it." She also did not like how much spice I added to things.

It was funny at first, and then it slowly grew to be frustrating because it was constant. Jimmy did not like certain things either. You know, certain ways I would do my laundry or I would fold it. He's like, "That's not how Joyce did it." I'm like, "Well, I'm not Joyce and this isn't your pants. I don't know why you're that upset."

And then he'd say that I was sassing him and he'd get more frustrated. I'm not going to stop adding garlic to every dish I possibly can just because Joyce does not like garlic. I am not going to stop burning nice smelling candles because Jimmy says they stink. He's dead. One night, about 30 days after she moved in, Catherine is sitting on the couch in her new home with everything around her finally just how she likes it.

I am grading papers and then I just feel something in the house start to change and it's like this ramping up of a rumble of activity. And I, rather than give it attention, decide to tactfully ignore it while keeping tabs because I have work that I need to get done. And I'm feeling them and hearing them moving between

the basement and the mudroom and the kitchen and the dining room. It's weird. They're talking to one another, but I can't understand what they're saying. They're moving with purpose. There is no pause. They see something and they go directly to it. They're toying with things. I'm hearing little crystal pieces clinking in the kitchen. I finally get to a point where I get up and I walk into the kitchen because I need a drink.

And every single cabinet in my kitchen is open. And there is a glass that seems to have just been rested on the counter because it's rattling to a still. And I feel the room freeze, like I caught them in the middle of something they knew they shouldn't have been doing. And I go, "Okay." I just take a deep breath. I put the glass back. I closed all the cabinets and I said, "I'm so glad that you like what I have done with the kitchen."

I'm going to ask, though, please don't play with my glassware. My mother and I spent a long time trying to find that. And I don't know how well you can hold on to these glasses. Please be gentle with my things. And I could feel that they understood. And I walked back into the living room. And as I was walking by a standing lamp that is to the right of the doorway, the bulb flickered.

I knew that they were following me into the living room. And I was just like, "You are standing very close. You are very overly excited." The level of intensity was something that I had not felt before. That's where they started to scare me. And I paused and I'm going, "You know what? I think I am gonna call it for the night. I'm gonna take my stuff, I'm gonna go upstairs, and I'm just gonna leave you guys down here." I take my computer, I take my phone, I go upstairs. I'm in my blankets, in bed.

I turn on this interesting Chinese animated movie, but there is no way I could concentrate on it. I texted my boyfriend Travis and I told him, "Something's up with the Dodges. I don't know what's going on." I could hear them shuffling around the living room. And I was upstairs in the master bedroom. And then I hear someone coming up the stairs. And it's not like a general house creak. I mean, it is footstep creaks coming up the stairs. I'm starting to freak out.

Since I had moved in, they had never come upstairs. If they were that active downstairs, what are they going to be doing upstairs? Jimmy came upstairs first, and he's looking around. He's in the guest bedroom. He's checking out the master bathroom. You know, I'm hearing him play with certain things. At one point, the fan in the bathroom turned on and then shut off. I text Travis this, and as soon as I hit the send button, the master bedroom door opened.

popped open and it was the first time I could see the shadow of someone standing at the door. And I figured it was Jimmy. It felt like Jimmy. So something happened and I could see him. I could not see them until that point. Seeing someone for the first time was equal parts terrifying and awe-inspiring because it's going, that's what you look like. That's why other people are scared of you. He's not much taller than me, broad-shouldered,

If there was hair, it was very short. I could see no features. Um, not completely solid. And once he popped the door open and it hit the doorstop, which is a cast iron rabbit, my whole brain goes, "I am going to be hurt. I am not going to be okay." As soon as that thought flashed through my mind, that's when I got up and regardless of how afraid I was,

The rest of me went, "Nope, this is my house. You're gonna leave." It wasn't even the fact that I could see him. It was the fact they opened the door. You broke a very clear delineation. I don't go into the basement in the middle of the night to wake you up. I have respected your boundaries.

Now you turn around and disrespect mine. You took a door that was closed and blocked and forced it open. It is a clear barrier of "do not come in." That is a universal language. And he decided to ignore it as if it was still his house. That was the moment I was not okay. I throw the sheets off, I walk to the door, I move the rabbit, I throw the door open, and I just feel Jimmy get very embarrassed and very apologetic.

I'm standing at the top of the stairs. Jimmy is now backing down the stairs. I can't see the shadow form anymore. I can just tell he's there. Joyce is at the bottom of the stairs. And I just go, "I'm really glad you like the house. I'm really glad you like everything I've done with the house, but I'm gonna end it tonight. You need to leave." I said, "It is safe. It is secure. I love it just as much as you love it. Everyone is taking care of it. I promise you.

You can spend the rest of the night here and check out everything, but then you have to leave by tomorrow." And both of them were very awkward. I don't know if it was because they realized their behavior and that they scared me, or it was because I was standing at the top of the stairs in my underwear, but either way, they backed off, marched myself back into my room, put the door in the rabbit's doorstopper back where they were, crawled myself into bed, and texted Travis and went, "Well, you'll get a kick out of this."

Katherine tried to play it off, but she was clearly shaken. She could still feel the couple downstairs rummaging around until 3 in the morning. And that's when the noises below finally stopped. I didn't sleep that night. But then 8 o'clock came the next day, and Joyce did not try to get me out of bed. I stayed an extra hour, still awake. When I opened the door of the master bedroom, the house felt quiet and still.

And when I walked down the stairs and through the living room, through the dining room, into the kitchen, I could tell that I was the only person moving in the house. There was no one awake or around but the house and I. It's been like that ever since. Even though she had completely redone the house in her style and had been living there for months, Catherine did feel that for the first time, the home was truly her own. Although as much as the three roommates had gone through together, she does wish that things could have ended better.

I do feel bad about the tone that I used the last time I talked to the Dodges. I miss Jimmy's approval when I would take up a challenge. Like, I didn't know how to plaster before I bought this house. I learned on the fly and he appreciated that I took the time to do that. I miss, "You need to take care of yourself."

that Joyce would give me. But then there are times where I remind myself that they would do that, so I now do that for myself. You know, if I miss a meal, I go, oh, Joyce wouldn't be happy with me, and I make sure to eat a salad or something. Thank you, Catherine, for sharing your story with the Spook.

Folks, I want you to know that Kaplan G is a spooked listener. We love it when our listeners share their stories with us. And maybe you have a story to tell. Maybe you brushed up against something in the darkness and you tried to find out what it was. I hope you didn't. But if you did, we want to hear from you. Drop us a line at spooked at snapjudgment.org. The original score for that story was by Mr. Doug Stewart. It was produced by Chris Hambrick.

Oh, it's that time. It's that time of this road. This road is never over. But these rocks, they are slippery. This path, it is steep. These woods, they are dark. Hold someone's hand. We are strangers in this strange land. And if you dig it, let somebody know. It's like lighting a candle in the eternal night. But if you like your storytelling under the rays of the sun, check out our sister podcast, Snap Judgment. It's cinema sound.

Movies of the mind. Storytelling. The B. Spook was produced by the team that never, ever hears voices. Never, ever, ever. Except, of course, for Mr. Mark Ristich. For Anna Sussman, our chief spookster is Eliza Smith. Chris Hambrick. Annie Nguyen. Lauren Newsome. Leon Morimoto. Renzo Gorio. Tao Ducat. Marissa Dodge. Aaliyah Yates. Zoe Ferrigno. Greta Webber.

Jacob Winnick, Sona Khan, Tiffany DeLisa, Anne Ford, Fernando Hernandez, and Flo Wiley. Some people, they set out treats to appease the shadow world. Others leave gifts of coins or burn sweet-smelling sage. Me? I'm not trying to attract anything to me. I'm trying to repel it back from whence it came, so my strong advice to you and to everyone else is to never, ever, never, ever, never, ever,

Turn up the lights.