Husky
26:22 Share

Don't let this chance just pass you by. Big, big winnings, that's no lie. But if you miss, well, at least you tried. So pick a number. Roll the die. You're walking the dark path of spoot. Stay tuned. It was a good day. A really, really good day.

Hang with my niece in Sacramento, California. Eating turkey sandwiches. Drinking lemonade in the sunshine. But I need to get home early before the darkness falls. So I tell her goodbye. Get my hugs. Drive the car down Highway 80 back to Oakland. Four o'clock in the afternoon. Turn on some James Brown because I feel good. Driving down the road. I blink my eyes.

And I wake up, gripping the steering wheel of a car, speeding down the road at 80 miles an hour in a panic. What? Where am I? Pull over. Pull over. Pull over right now. Swerve the car over to the shoulder of the road, and I'm shaking. Did I fall asleep? How long? One second? Two? How close? To the unimaginable. To never coming home to my babies. To stealing someone else from their family. Seatbelt strapped on the side of the road. I'm terrified.

Three months before, I told the doctor that I can't sleep at night. He tells me, "You're fine." "No, no, you're not understanding. I never sleep." He tells me that everything checks out, there's nothing wrong, but that he can give me some pills if I promise to be careful. I don't need pills, Doc. I need rest. I need to not stare at the ceiling for hours every night. I need to dream. I don't dream. I need this shadow to go away.

A little later, I get to take my kids on a trip, a wonderful trip. We rent a house on the beach, a beautiful home. And they squeal. They say it's even better than the house we rented last time. Last time? Here? You know, Daddy, the place right down the street, the big one, where our friends stay. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. That's right. Smiling, fighting that deep horror because I don't remember that house.

I don't remember those friends. I don't remember any of it and I know why. I think I know why. I read that people who sleep less than three hours a night, that they lose the ability to recall their own lives. This shadow, it's stealing away my memories. It's stealing me away from myself and as hard as I try, nothing works. Nothing works by itself. So I decided to do it all. All of it at the same time.

The machines, the teas, the blackout mirrors, the neti pot, the weighted blanket, the meditation tape, the blue light filter, aromatherapy, sleep music, stretch sequences, plant-based diet, ergonomic pillow, face mask. I do everything but the drugs. Because I tried that too and learned that there is no drug for this. Not one that works. And slowly, very slowly, color changes.

seeps back into the world. It's glorious. Like I'm basking in the sunrise for the very first time. Like I'm shedding this terrible weight. Light returns to my children's eyes when they see me. I understand then that I haven't borne this shadow, this darkness, this madness alone, that everything I've lost, those who carried me through this valley, they suffered as well. So much time. So long.

And I fear that no matter how hard I fight back now, everything the shadow stole, I will never get back. My name is Vin Washington. Spook starts now. The shadow, the shadow, the shadow, the shadow, the shadow waits. The shadow lurks. And when you least expect it, our guest, Milton, he's about to fight the shadow. Fight it for one of the people that he loves most in the world. Spook. Spook.

So when I was 23, I had graduated college. I want to say maybe 2010. My mother got breast cancer. It was recurring. And she got really sick really quick. She had three months left to live. My two siblings, who were both college age, we both just moved back home. We were just making sure that we were there for her. And, you know, my dad was there as well. But that was the main reason why we all moved back home.

We were just kind of taking care of her in shifts throughout the night. If she would get up, one of us would have to get her her medicine or give her a shot. We had a little chair set up in the room, so we would just sit there and watch movies with her while we took care of her. It was pretty aggressive, so it had already entered her spinal cord, and it kind of made her kind of spacey. Like, she would get me and my little brother mixed up. Sometimes she would get our ages mixed up. She would get our names mixed up.

You know, it was definitely hard seeing her go through that, but it's almost like you compartmentalize the pain. I would say maybe a month after we moved back, strange things would happen, like taps on the window on the second floor. The basement windows would tap. We would be upstairs taking care of Mama, and we would be like, "What was that?" And we would hear doors slam throughout the house.

Or like someone was just walking really loud, like a loud footstep, just like one loud footstep. And we were like, is someone downstairs? And we would go with a baseball bat, just in case. You know, because that's what it sounded like. It sounded like there was somebody in the house. It sounded like it had a lot of weight to it. And we'd go down this track and there would be nothing going on. And this happened like multiple times. We just sort of wrote it off as house noises. You know, like, okay, this is...

This is normal. We really don't have the energy to investigate this further or even be scared. So let's just make this something that we can make sense of. Let me tell you about the online cannabis company that's revolutionizing how we deal with life's challenges.

From sleepless nights to stress-filled days, Mood.com has created an entire line of functional gummies that target specific health concerns with 100% federally legal THC blends. They'll deliver them discreetly right to your doorstep. And you can get 20% off your first order at Mood.com with promo code SPOOKED.

It's wild how different each one feels. Their sleepy time gummy wake up feeling good with no grogginess and try the epic euphoria gummy. Perfect for those days when nothing's going right and you just need to hit the reset button. What makes these different is how they've paired THC and other cannabinoids with herbs to create something you're not going to find anywhere else.

And they have gummies for almost anything from immune support to menopause relief to mental clarity with cannabis grown on small family American farms. No pesticides, no BS. And they can ship it to most states in the U.S. Best of all.

Not only does Mood stand behind everything with an industry-leading 100-day satisfaction guarantee, but as I mentioned, spooksters get 20% off their first order with the code SPOOKED. So head to mood.com, browse their amazing selection of functional gummies, and find the perfect gummy for whatever you're dealing with. And remember to use the promo code SPOOKED at checkout to save 20%.

One night, it wasn't my shift, and I was sleeping. And I just randomly woke up. I would wake up all the time during the night. So I wake up at 2 a.m., and I check my phone, and I remember being awake because I was checking my text messages and responding to a friend. So I was, like, wide awake. I'm checking my phone, and then I just look in the middle of the room, and there's, like, just this head. It was kind of, like, bluish-gray, kind of, like, glowing. ♪♪

flickering like a movie projector and it's just staring straight ahead. It was definitely a man because the features were very masculine. And I remember just sort of looking at it, not really sure like, is this what I'm seeing? And I speak to it and I go, "Hello?" And it just sort of looks at me like its eyes move, the head doesn't move, but just the eyes sort of like shift and just look straight at me. And as it's looking at me, we make eye contact.

Sort of just gave me a, okay, you see me type look. And it just flickers out slowly. And the entire room just goes pitch black. And I just started screaming my head off. I had no idea what was going on. I was completely freaked out. You know, I had just seen a ghost. I was very, very scared. I turned on the light and I couldn't sleep for the rest of the night. All night until 7 a.m. This happened at 2 a.m.

It just felt like it wanted to be seen. It just felt like it just wanted to be noticed. Like it wanted me to know that it was there. Oh my gosh, the next morning I'm so freaked out. You know, I go downstairs. We're having breakfast. I tell everyone what I've seen. I think my sister was like, oh, was that that scream in the middle of the night? And I go, yeah, you know, and I'm trying to tell them I've seen a ghost in our room.

And my sister goes, OK, well, ghosts aren't real, Milton. You know, you were probably hallucinating. You've been up all night taking care of mom. You know, there's an explanation. And that's when my little brother goes husky, which is my nickname. You know, I've seen a man and the poster on the back of our door. I've seen a floating head. And he says, yeah, one night I was just looking at the door and there was just a man staring out the poster, looking back at me.

And that's when my dad was just like, you know what, sometimes this happens when people we love are close to death. Sometimes they just get visitors, you know, the doors opened a little bit more. He said that it was my grandfather, his father, who has the experiences with ghosts. Sometimes he would get night terrors and he would just sort of wake up and he would see a shadowy figure sitting in his chair.

And this happened to my granddad a lot, apparently, where he would just see figures. And that's how my father, I guess, kind of became familiar with ghosts and educated about it because of what his father was experiencing. It made me feel, OK, maybe I'm not crazy. Maybe this is really happening. But I was really scared, too. So we don't really tell my mom what's happening anymore.

We just want to keep her calm. You know, she can't really, she wouldn't even be able to understand what was happening anyway, to be honest. So we just keep things on the low. We don't talk to her about it. We just kind of keep it between ourselves and just go about taking care of her as normal. So a few nights after I was taking care of my mom, it was my shift. It was pretty late, maybe around midnight or one.

She was laying in her hospital bed and I was sitting in the chair next to her and I'm reading her a book even though she's asleep. And keep in mind that at this point my mom was like really infantile, you know. Forming complete sentences were just so difficult. Her eyes were always kind of foggy and glassy. So I'm sitting there and suddenly she opens her eyes and her eyes go from like foggy to just completely clear. I hadn't seen her eyes that clear in a long time. And she just sits straight up

without any assistance, which was really weird because she didn't help to get out, you know, to go to the bathroom. So she just sits straight up, eyes are completely clear, and she looks behind me and she goes, "Husky, look how tall that man is behind you." Every hair on the back of my neck just stood straight up. I got chills. I was cold. It just felt like there was this really, really tall man standing behind me, bending down over my shoulder from the ceiling.

And I'm like scared out of my mind. I was so scared my eyes started watering. Because it just felt like there was somebody behind me. It felt like this intense just darkness. Everything in me wanted to turn around. But something in me was just very defiant. And I was like, you know what? I'm not going to give this any of my energy. I'm going to ignore it. This is my house. This is my mom. And I'm taking care of her right now. And you can just like buzz off.

It just really messed with my head to see her get up and do that. And I felt like maybe whatever it was had a hand in it. And I didn't like the fact that it may have been manipulating her in any way. Even though I was scared, you know, I kind of just came back to myself and I was like, Mama, there's nobody behind me. You're safe. It's okay. It's fine. She closes her eyes again and then I just start reading like nothing is happening. And whatever it was just disappeared.

And it just felt like normal again. It felt like the pressure in the room became normal. I don't even know what just happened. My mind is just blank and all I can think about is just comforting her. You know what I mean? Just making sure that she's okay and making sure she's not scared because I was really scared. Well, the next day, you know, I thought about what my dad has said about her getting visitors and it just felt as though it was there for her.

It felt like this man behind me was some sort of grim reaper. It felt like it had a purpose, and the purpose was my mother. It was there to take her. It was there to help her pass over. It was there to take her soul to the other side. That sounds very dramatic, but I don't know how else to put it. Literally a week later, my mom passed away after this experience. ♪ Try angel stuff for your tushy ♪

Everything that had been happening in the house kind of accumulated in this moment of this dark creature behind me bending over my mother's bed, almost like checking in, waiting, waiting for her to just pass away. ♪♪

I think that if I was not there, you know, if I wasn't in that room with her at that moment, I think she might have passed away because she was, we were kind of just waiting for the day at this point. So I think that it came expecting to take her and then saw that I was there and it wasn't expecting me. I'm not sure if my defiance played a hand in it, but I know that just me being there played a hand in it, definitely. It was good to not see her suffer anymore. After she passed away, it felt like

whatever was in the house lifted, you know? Like whatever presence was in the house was just gone. Like the tap stopped, the loud noises in the middle of the night stopped. I didn't see a ghost again. My little brother, he never mentioned that he saw another ghost, at least to me. So as soon as she passed away, all the activities stopped and it made sense. You know, whatever it was, this Grim Reaper figure had finally done what it had come to do.

which was Take My Mother. As soon as it did its job and my mother passed on, you know, it was gone. Big, big love to you, Mildred. And love to your beautiful family, from all of us here at The Spook. The original score for that story was by Leon Morimoto. It was produced by Greta Weber.

Real people, real stories from the dark side. Spook season six. Have you ever seen a monster? Have you ever displayed a power that no one will believe or seen something that shouldn't be there? Don't toy with me, spooksters, because I need to know.

Tell us your story, spooked at snapjudgment.org, because there is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. Let us know, spooked at snapjudgment.org. Spooked is a community, and the best way to let folk know that you walk this dark path is by sporting some spooked gear. The t-shirt of your dreams available right now at snapjudgment.org. And remember...

If you like your storytelling under the bright light of day, subscribe to our amazing sister podcast, Snap Judgment. It's storytelling with a B. This book was created by the team that always, always, always buckles up for safety. Even Mark Ristich, who never drives without wearing his galoshes. I don't know why.

The Spook Thing song is by Pat and Cindy Miller. My name is from Washington. They say...

There are no truly random encounters. They say everything happens for a reason. They say that you will never face a challenge that you cannot surmount. Perhaps, perhaps that's true. But as for me, I don't like taking chances, which is why I always advise anyone who will listen to never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, ever, never, ever turn out the lights.