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

We are protected, though we may be frightened. Our life you may not steal, though we may be scared to death. Welcome to Scared to Death, Creeps, Peepers, Roberts, and Annabelles. Thank you for spending some time with us. I can tell by recent reviews and ratings and emails that Lindsay and I have gotten that we have a lot of new listeners, and we are so glad that you've chosen to give us a shot. We're going to be talking about the

A quick lingo refresher for those of you who are new, a creep is somebody who cannot get enough of true horror, right? The scarier, the better, the more, the better peeper is somebody who loves true horror, even though it scares the shit out of them. They love to torch themselves with horror. They kind of hate it, but kind of love it.

They're me. Hi, I'm Lindsay. Yeah, perfect. Yeah. And I, yeah, and I'm a creep. Um, a Robert is a patron supporter who pays $5 a month for monthly bonus episodes and ad free episodes. Uh, and Annabelle is a patron supporter who pays $10 a month, gets their name read on the show. It's everything the Roberts get plus a merch discount of 20% and 20% of everything we get from patron goes towards monthly charities. And while we haven't had a Darren pop up in a story in a while, a Darren is somebody who just won't get the fuck out.

Even though they could walk away from a threatening, menacing, paranormal encounter, they don't. They double down, and they invite needless torment into their lives. And the lives of the people around them, oftentimes. True, true. And yeah, so that's a little refresher. Also, I'm Dan. Hello. I'm Lindsay. You really threw me when you didn't immediately start with that. I know, I know. I was like, what's he doing? Hi.

What fan-submitted, allegedly true paranormal horror tales do you have for us today, beautiful Lindsay? Well, my love, I have two. My first story takes us to that magical place that may or may not be real, also known as Australia. Oh, okay. Yes. We're going down under, and it's a bizarre camping tale that happens in Australia. Okay. Very into it. Really freaked me out.

And then my second story actually really freaked me out, too. Really sat with me for a long time. A haunted house. Maybe. Does something come from their dreams and then enter the house? Or is it the other way around? What's happening in this creepy ass place? Okay.

Before I set up my stories, yeah, the Australia reference, that's from a little-known conspiracy. It was kind of peaked four or five years ago that Australia wasn't real, which is a conspiracy believed by a small segment of the population who just clearly weren't getting out of their basement enough. I love it. I love a good, kooky conspiracy like that. Oh, man. I used to love them more than I do now. It feels like they've gotten too mainstream.

My first of two stories today is very hard to preview without spoilers. Well, you just ruined everything. Now I know what it's all about. No, I'm not going to preview it. It's going to be a surprise. I know. It's a very creepy tale.

Uh, my second story was once featured in one of my favorite shows of all time. The original unsolved mysteries hosted by Robert stack. Oh, I have the best memories of watching that show as a kid alone in my room. Uh, it's, it's a tale of a young woman, grace Brown, putting her trust in the wrong man over a century ago and paying dearly for doing so. Uh, and it seems in death, she still hasn't been able to move past how her life so tragically and abruptly ended.

So what spoopy socks will you be cozying up with today before I begin? Yeah, and again, for those of you who are just joining us for the first time or have been here for a minute and you're like, what is up with the damn socks? When we very first started this show, part of my protection ritual to feel safe and cozy was to put on a pair of fluffy socks and cozy up behind a blanket. Probably how many of you

you take the show in if you're not at work when you're listening so that's what this is about yeah and then people started sending fans started sending you socks and just became a thing yeah it's super fun and if you want to send socks you can find our po box in the episode description so i have these fun valentine's um smiling hearts so cute may all your hearts smile

Okay, so no setup for this first story. Found the bones for this one in the archives of a website called Your Ghost Stories. It's a site full of thousands and thousands of supposedly true paranormal encounters. We cleaned it up a bit, massaged some of the stories, connective tissue to make it, in our opinion, an easier listen. Time now for the tale of Are You Cheating On Me? Uh-oh. It started about a month ago.

Or maybe it started a long, long time ago and I just didn't realize it until it was too late. I don't know. Everything is so confusing, so foggy. I'm having a hard time piecing it all together, retracing the steps we took that got us here. All I know for sure is that it happened slowly.

Elliot my boyfriend have been acting strange for a while But I just thought it was because he was overwhelmed and tired and stressed After all he's a full-time PhD student who also works a full-time job So he has every right to be all of those things and I didn't really question it We've been together for a little over two years Elliot and I and have built or at least I thought we had built a solid foundation for our relationship I thought we were I don't know unshakable That was until last month

I was venting to my friend Allison about how distant Elliot had been recently because of his insane research and his demanding job, and how bad I felt for him for all the responsibilities he was juggling, when Allison suddenly interrupted me. Listen, Zuri, I know Elliot is super busy and all, but that's not an excuse for him to just disappear. Is he making any time for you at all? The question was like a punch in the gut. I hadn't thought about it that way before. The unfortunate answer was no. He wasn't making any time for me. But I didn't want Allison to know that.

"'Yeah, I mean, of course he is. We still see each other all the time. It's just—' I trailed off, not knowing what else I could say in his defense. "'It's just what, Zuri?' Allison asked. I sighed. "'It's just, when we're together, he's somewhere else. He's not really there. I don't know.' I groaned and flung back myself on the bed. Allison sat next to me. "'Okay, Zuri, be honest with me,' she began. "'Are you guys still sleeping together?'

I perked up. Yes, yes, we are. And he's still very, you know, attentive and stuff. So that's good. I know they say like intimacy is the first thing to go. I basked in the glory of being able to say something positive about my boyfriend when suddenly this awful realization came over me. Oh my God. I muttered under my breath. What is it? Questioned Allison.

Ellie and I are still having sex, but we stopped sleeping together. I said, and Allison looked at me confused. I sat up next to her and explained. I mean, I can't remember the last time I spent the night at his house or he spent the night at mine. Normally, we sleep together at least three or four times a week, but recently, he's always had an excuse of why we can't. Allison looked at me like I was a lost puppy. She looked at me like I didn't realize what was so obvious to her and my stomach sank. "'Oh, babe,' she said softly. "'That's not good.'

I know that now, I exclaimed, embarrassed, but I guess I just didn't really think anything of it while it was happening. I mean, his reasons have always sounded valid in the moment, like he had to wake up early for his morning lab, or he had a stomachache from some bad Thai food and didn't want to blow up my toilet, or he forgot to take his laundry out of the dryer because he came over to my place and had to go take it out before his crazy roommate noticed. Allison stared at me sympathetically, which I hated.

I agreed that what I needed to do was talk to Elliot, not in an accusing or malicious way, but just to kindly call him out on his weird behavior and tell him that I needed more out of our relationship. When I confronted Elliot the next day, the first thing he told me was that he hadn't realized how long it had been since we spent the night together, and he promised he wasn't doing it on purpose. He said it was just that he was super busy and overwhelmed, and there was a lot happening at once.

I told him I understood, but I would really appreciate it if he could put more effort into making sure we spent at least a few nights a week together. He agreed. He said it was what he wanted too. However, when I asked him if he wanted to sleep at my place that night, he said no. He said he had plans to FaceTime his friend back in Oregon and he couldn't cancel. Again, which I guess is reasonable. And then he asked if I wanted to hang out and watch a movie before he had to go. And even though I didn't feel that much better about the whole thing, I agreed.

A few hours later, at some point during the night, Elliot and I were talking about this famous singer that had died, and I wanted to look up the specific cause of death. My phone had run out of batteries, so I grabbed Elliot's off the counter instead, something I had done many times before. I was halfway through typing his passcode, which he'd given me a long time ago, when he snatched the phone out of my hand. I was dumbfounded. He looked caught. He looked guilty. I just... It doesn't matter how the guy died, right? I mean, who cares? Probably just an overdose. He stuttered.

"'Elliot, what the fuck?' I snapped. "'Why won't you let me use your phone? You've never cared about me using it before.' He shrugged, unconvincingly. "'No, I don't care. It's just, let's just finish the movie, okay?' I felt sick. I shook my head. "'No, it's late,' I said. "'I think I actually should just head home.' Elliot didn't protest. He just grabbed my purse from his room and told me he'd see me tomorrow. And then without a kiss or even a hug, I left.'

That night, I couldn't sleep. There was this horrible, sour feeling lodged in my throat. I began combing through every detail I could remember about the last few weeks, looking for evidence that Elliot was cheating. Sad and pissed off, the next morning I went back to Elliot's place. I didn't tell him I was coming over, so his roommate Keith was the one to let me in. I didn't stop to engage in polite small talk with him. I just said thanks and marched into Elliot's bedroom.

When I swung open the door, I found Elliot, naked, except for some raggedy old boxers, hunched over and stripping the sheets off of his bed. And when he saw me, he jumped. Jesus, fuck, Zuri, you scared the shit out of me, he cried. And then before I could launch into speech, I'd been practicing, something caught my eye. Elliot saw where I was looking and ran over to me. It's not what you think, I promise. Zuri, listen, he yelled as I pushed him to the side and walked over to the bed. In the middle of the crumpled fitted sheet that he had only partially removed from the mattress was a whitish clear stain.

I turned towards Elliot with tears in my eyes. "'I know what that stain is, Elliot,' I hissed. "'Jury, please, I promise, it's not what you think.' "'Okay, so were you masturbating?' I asked.'

No, I wasn't. So were you fucking someone? Is that why you've been so distant? Because you're cheating on me? I cried. No, it's very, I promise I'm not. It wasn't. He looked frantic, borderline insane. I crossed my arms and waited for him to say more. It's God shit. It's, it's, it's what you think it is kind, but it was a dream. It was just a dream. I sneered. You're 25 years old, Elliot. Do you honestly expect me to believe you had a wet dream like a middle schooler? Yes, God, please. You have to believe me.

I won't bore you with the rest of the details of our conversation that morning because it was mostly comprised of a lot of blubbering, begging, accusing, yelling, and sobbing. He swore over and over and over again that he wasn't cheating on me, that it was just a dream, that he'd been distant because he was overwhelmed, and that he loved me. He really, truly did. By the afternoon, I had to get to work, and he had to go TA. So we agreed to talk more later that night. I still felt horrible. I still knew he was hiding something.

I arrived at around nine. Keith was with his girlfriend for the night, so it was just me and Elliot in the apartment. When I got there, he was making my favorite dish, salmon and potatoes. I know he meant it to be a gesture of love, but it seemed like an apology, an admission of guilt. I told him I was going to finish some work in his bedroom while he finished cooking in the kitchen. He said that was totally okay, and that he wouldn't disturb me. He seemed so desperate for my forgiveness. But what exactly he wanted me to forgive him for, he had yet to admit. I was

Once I made it into Elliot's room, I waited a few minutes to make sure he wouldn't come in, then quietly sat down at his desk and logged into his computer. I didn't quite remember his password, so it took me a few tries to get in, but eventually I guessed it correctly. It was Zuri1996. First thing I did was pull up his iMessages, and I found nothing suspicious. But that wasn't proof of his innocence. He could have deleted the text right before I came over.

Next, I pulled up his browser history. I half expected to find a list of obscene and disturbing websites like bestialitylovers.com or mutilationporn.org or something terrifying. What I found instead wasn't damning. It was just infusing. Scanning his search history, I immediately noticed the same word popping up over and over and over again. Succubus. What the fuck? I whispered. And then I pulled up the Wikipedia page for succubus on my phone. It said succubus.

A succubus, plural, succubi, is a female demon or supernatural entity in folklore who appears in dreams to seduce men, usually through sexual activity. According to some folklore, a succubus needs semen to survive. Repeated sexual activity with a succubus will result in a bond being formed between the succubus and the person, and a succubus will drain or harm the man with whom she is having intercourse. My head was swimming. I wondered if maybe Ellie had gone insane.

Or maybe he had a secret fetish for folklore that he never told me about? I was so confused. I returned to his browser history, and that day alone, he had searched, how do succubuses feed? Are succubuses real? What to do if haunted by a succubus? Where do succubi come from? How to get rid of a succubus? Do succubi only exist in my head? Can a succubus exist outside of my dreams? Can a succubus kill me?

I glanced at the door just to make sure Elliot wasn't coming in yet and clicked on the site he'd closed out most recently, a Reddit thread about succubus experiences on the r slash occult page. I scrolled down to some anonymous user's post from over a year ago and it made me cringe with secondhand embarrassment and disgust.

Dude, stay away from succubus. I have constantly been raped to my dreams by succubus. Of course, beautiful and master at seductive techniques, horribly sick fantasies, manifesting disgusting plots like porn to make love to me. Even during the day, they send pleasures into my loins and my chest and arms. It's torment because Jesus wouldn't want this for us. Jesus loves this man. He died for us. We need to follow after him and do what he says out of love.

These demons try to seduce me all day with their moans. You are correct that their lust is greater than any female human partner I've ever had, and their sexual ingenuity is greater than any porn I've ever seen.

Their figure and beauty is of course tempting in many ways considering their ability to be so lustful. They're demons, man. They're from hell. And they want to take us with them. We cannot let them do this. All day I see images in my head. I feel motions and my astral body is forced into sexual positions even while I'm sitting down eating. And so it's as if I'm able to relax and work while having sex with them at the same time.

They come on to me often and bro, we have to get away from them. They will drag us into hell if we do not stand firm. I cannot express this enough. Get saved, please. Under the post, someone had commented, I think you might just be a sex addict with vivid dreams. I stifled a laugh and continued scrolling through the page. All the posts were kind of like the first one I read, like they'd been written by some incel who wears fedoras and says stuff like m'lady. Before closing Reddit, I pressed command F and searched the page for Elliot's username.

My stomach sank two weeks ago. He had posted. I think i'm going to die I think she's killing me just then there was a knock the door and I jumped zuri dinner's dinner's ready elliot sweetly announced I hurriedly exited out of the page stuttering i'm coming after we ate dinner and mostly silence elliot and I talked no fought Some more he refused to admit he was cheating on me and I was actually starting to believe him I didn't bring up the whole succubus thing. I wasn't ready to talk about it

There would have to be a converse or that would have to be a conversation for another night at around midnight We'd reached some sort of resolution or at least we'd grown too exhausted to keep fighting I asked him if he wanted me to leave and he was silent for a while staring at the ground until finally he said No, no, he wanted me to say soon after that. We were in bed We weren't cuddling or touching but we were next to each other and despite everything I was happy to be there

Though my mind was still heavy with doubt and sadness and confusion and anger, like a million little mosquitoes buzzing around my skull, sucking me dry, I still fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow. I guess I was just exhausted from everything. As I was drifting off, I could feel Elliot next to me, tense and alert, as if on watch. I didn't have the energy to ask him if he was okay, plus I knew he wasn't. So I just let it be and let sleep take me. At 3 a.m., I was woken up by the sound of Elliot moaning. Elliot! Elliot!

Elliot, are you awake? I whispered. He didn't reply. All I heard was his moans, these awful moans, breathy and low and deep, something between a whimper and a sigh, somewhere between pleasure and pain. Against my will, I felt revulsion and anger seize me. I grabbed my phone off the nightstand and used the bright screen as a flashlight. I could see Elliot better now. He was laying flat on his back with his arms outside the covers, stiff straight on either side of his torso.

His face was contorted into this mollified, fleshy expression. His eyebrows were furrowed together as if in contemplation. His mouth was ever so slightly open. His heavy, ragged breath teeming between his parted lips. I could see his pupils moving under his eyelids. I could see them roll into the back of his head. I stared at the strange face he was making, disgusted. Even in the dim light of my phone, I recognized that face. It was a sex face. Then, out of the corner of my eye, in the shadows...

I saw something. I tapped my home screen so it wouldn't turn off and shined it towards the edge of the bed. I had to fight a scream. There was something writhing under the covers. Traversing the length of Elliot's body, it was small and undefined, but on my mother's grave I could see it. It was slithering over the shape of him, starting at his feet as if it came from under the bed, making its way up his thighs, his pelvis, his stomach, until finally it emerged.

A pale, nimble, disembodied hand reached out from under the comforter at Elliot's chest. A woman's hand. My phone turned off and I was plunged into darkness and scared silent. I fumbled with it, searching blindly for the button. When I finally did find the on button and the dim blue glow, I saw her. Her naked form was hunched grotesquely over the bed, straddling Elliot. Her flesh looked as if it had been hastily fastened to her bones, like someone had uncoiled a thin sheet of skin and wrapped it around her limbs and face and neck. She was revolting.

In some places, her skin looked taut, as if it had been stretched too tight. Elsewhere, it gathered in excess. Folds of it puckered and sagging and dripping off her frame. Her spine was undulating under her thin skin. Her sharp shoulders heaved with each breath. Her spindly fingers clawing at the sheets on either side of Elliot's head. She was looking at me. Her face was gaunt, hollow, as if her black eyes and gaping mouth had collapsed inwards.

Her jaw looked as if it had been unhinged. She looked like she was screaming, but no sound came out. Thick saliva dripped off her quivering, fatty lips. Her tongue snaked out of her mouth, bubbling, soiled, hungry. The light went out again, and I found my voice, and I screamed. By the time Elliot managed to wake up and get the lamp on, I was sobbing.

I know he was talking to me. I could hear his questions, but he seemed so far away. Zuri! Zuri, what's wrong? Did you see her? Was she here? Zuri, was she here? Zuri, please! Zuri, don't go! Please don't leave me here with her, Zuri! I didn't say anything. I couldn't say anything. I just stumbled out of bed, grabbed my coat and my purse, my keys, and I ran out the door. Elliot didn't follow. The next day, he called me 10 or 12 times. I never answered.

I didn't know how to talk to him. And as horrible as it is to say this, I didn't want to talk to him. I kept seeing his face in my head, the way that it had twisted with pleasure and terror. That ungodly figure crouched over him, salivating at the mouth. It makes me cringe just thinking about it. I avoided him for the rest of the week. Eventually, he gave up on trying to get a hold of me, and I went three days without hearing a word. But then on Sunday, I got a call, not from him, but from his mom, and she was crying. Elliot was dead. He'd had a seizure in his sleep.

Holy shit. Yeah. Okay, what would you do?

I mean, it's easy to say here, sitting in the safety of not seeing something like this, that's okay. You know, I would, I would help the person I was with like, okay, if there's an incubus with you, like the inverse of all this. Yeah. And, you know, we were like, you know, dating, but it was serious, you know, like, you know, earlier on, it's like,

I would, yeah, I mean, I think I would back then at that time be like, no, we have to figure this out. But I can also see this angle if maybe like you really care about this person, but it's not like your person necessarily. I don't know. But like if it just freaks you out, you're like, you're seeing this monster and you're wondering like, did they invite it into their lives? Is there some kind of like thing between the two of them? Like, like what is his responsibility in all of this? I mean, but he's, but she saw the search history. So it seemed like he was just scared and trying to figure it out. I mean, it does seem like she just abandoned him.

I hate to say it. I know. It doesn't look good. It doesn't look good. I can see how she was freaked the fuck out. Yes. While I don't think it's the reaction that I would have, I can appreciate that she grabbed her shit and left. Yeah. It's the next three days. I know. That I'm like, oh, come on. Zuri, seriously? Yeah. Even if after all of it, she's like, can't be with him, can't ever...

You know, imagine, you know, being intimate with him again or, you know, sleeping in the same bed as him overnight. Yeah. Okay. Well, I would want to run some experiments. Can you come to my house? Can you spend the night at my house? Does this thing, you know, travel, travel. And then if it does, it's like, I don't know, maybe it's just the,

way that I am and I'm not saying that I'm more right or that she's wrong I just I I'm really bad about like uh drawing boundaries when people are in need yeah so I I have a boundary issue to begin with like maybe she did absolutely the right thing I don't I don't know I can't be the moral police on the paranormal like that's a yeah that's a line that's uh it's pretty hard to to walk but at

I know me and there's no way I wouldn't be able to try and help. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine myself not speaking with the person after that. It's,

It's like, I understand like not going over there to stay the night. Yeah, I understand breaking up. Uh-huh. But also like why wouldn't you try to help them somehow? Like do research for them? I mean, if you saw that thing. Fuck. Then you know he's not making it up. Exactly. You saw it too. And again, it's like if after you deal with it and help them as much as you can, if you're thinking like,

you know, I just can't like get past this or I'm always going to be worried that this could happen again or, you know, all these different variables. Fine. Fine. Deal with that three months, six months, a year down the road, whatever. But like, just right off the rip. I know. And now you're going to be fucked up because you did abandon him and now he's dead. The guilt. Yep. I mean, hopefully some guilt. If you don't have guilt, you're

Possibly a sociopath. Well, then there's something else going on. Then Zuri has other problems to deal with. Oh, man. I have two photos that are not attached to the story, but just some succubus photos. This first one is a depiction of a succubus via Wikimedia Commons. But this is a sketch created by German artist Fritz Schwimbeck in, oh my gosh, 1895. It is called My Dream, My Bad Dream. Dang. Mm-hmm.

Actually a really cool drawing. Uh-huh. With the succubus over him as he sleeps. And then this next one. She's got quite the butt. Has she? She's been doing her squats. Oh, yeah. She's got a nice butt. She does. She does. I mean, it would make sense that she's, you know, supposed to look pretty sexy. Yeah. No, good for her. She's hot. This next one is a depiction of the original succubus. This is found in Wikimedia Commons as well. This painting was created by British artist John Collier in 1892. It's called Lilith.

And Lilith, there's many variations of Lilith, but one is Lilith is a demon from Jewish folklore who became a succubus after leaving Adam as in O.G. Adam, Adam and Eve. O.G. Adam. Hell yeah. Get that in the Bible. This is O.G. Adam. And she left Adam and started to mate with Samael.

Uh, she is often depicted as a beautiful woman with wings who preys on sleeping men to create demon children. And in Jewish, uh, folklore, Samael is the sort of, is kind of a sort of a, a king of demons and the husband of Lilith, a demonic queen. They're often depicted as a counterpart to Adam and Eve. Uh, there's a lot more to it, but that's the, that's the gist. Okay. There is curvy Lilith. I mean, Lilith's also pretty hot. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

I'm not interested in women, but I like what I see. Yeah. Yeah, she's beautiful. Mm-hmm. She is. You have a very similar body to Lilith here. Thank you. Mm-hmm. That's all. That's all I got. Okay. Well, that story is also just sad. I know.

Yeah, saddened. Well, get ready for more sadness coming up with my next story. Oh, geez, Luis. I was just thinking about Kyler. And, you know, he's away at college and, you know, has dated on and off. And if, you know, if he was dating the same person for a few years and then, you know, we like knew this person enough that they had our phone number. Yeah. And we had theirs. And to have to call...

a person of like a young age and say like hey your significant other just passed yeah yeah and also like did zuri like tell elliot's mom like by the way by the way it wasn't a seizure wasn't a seizure it was a demon that i i there was a demon tormenting him and i abandoned him my god like yeah yeah yeah yeah uh you want to you want to move away from demons on towards ghosts i do all right

Before we move on to more scares, we need to take a quick in-between story sponsor break. If you don't want to hear these ads, please sign up to be a Robert or Annabelle on Patreon to get all these episodes ad-free, additional bonus episodes, and more. A new year can inspire you to clean out your closet and reinvent your look. But maybe not.

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Upfront payment of $45 for three months, five gigabyte plan required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first three months only, then full price plans options available. Taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details. Thanks for listening to our sponsor deals, creeps and peepers. I'll jump right into this next one. Time now for the tragic tale of Grace Brown's ghost.

The murder of 19-year-old Grace Brown made national headlines in America well over a century ago, back in 1906. Grace Brown grew up on a dairy farm in the quaint little 1,000-ish person town of Otselik, New York. She desperately wanted to leave a life of farm work behind her, so she got a job at the Gillette Skirt Factory, 30 miles away in the bigger town of Cortland, New York, which would have had about 10,000 people at the time.

And there in Cortland in 1905, she met a young man named Chester Gillette, the nephew of the owner of the factory where she worked. Author Craig Brandon, who has written about the infamous Grace Brown murder, said of Chester, he was considered quite a catch by the people in town because he was popular and he was athletic and he was handsome. I'm sure a lot of women in Cortland were interested in him. Chester's parents worked for the Salvation Army and moved often. He'd grown up across the country without ever really having a stable childhood home.

Chester had been living in Montana when his uncle took him under his wing and paid for him to go to college. This opportunity didn't last long, and Chester was soon expelled for reasons not specified in sources. And then his uncle then offered him a job at the skirt factory. Chester Gillette was one of the most eligible bachelors in town. And Grace Brown, although described as being a great beauty, was a lower-class girl from a farm, and she was not who his family would have picked for him. She's not someone they would have likely even condoned courting, let alone marrying.

Grace may have been likely was aware of this on some level, but she seems to have really fallen in love with Chester in spite of this obstacle. The heart wants what the heart wants, as they say. According again to author Craig Brannon, quote, I think she saw him as the ideal person, that he was everything that she wanted. She was in love probably for the first time in her life, and she wanted to see this through no matter what. Chester, it seems, did not feel the same way about her. Grace was one of Chester's secrets.

A known flirt with the reputation of possibly being a womanizer, he'd convinced her to see him without a chaperone, which was highly scandalous at this time. Something that if word got out about it, it would have destroyed Grace's reputation, left her labeled as a loose woman of dubious morals. Tester never took her out in public. He never publicly acknowledged the relationship, and he was in fact often seen out and about with various other girls from the town's wealthier families.

In short, while she was in love with him, it seems he was clearly using her for sex. A few of Grace's friends knew about the relationship, and they warned her that Chester was a bad guy, that his intentions with her were far from honorable, that he didn't care about her, but she wouldn't stay away from him. And soon, the inevitable happened. In May of 1906, Grace revealed she was pregnant with Chester's baby.

He left her job at the factory before she started to show, and she returned to her family's farm, where she'd exchanged numerous letters with Chester. She'd begged him to please marry her, as he had hinted at, but he was reluctant. Grace was terrified about her future, afraid to tell her parents that she was pregnant outside of marriage. She dreaded the ensuing scandal that was beginning to look unavoidable.

After nearly two months of receiving Grace's increasingly desperate letters, Chester agreed to take her on a trip to the beautiful Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. On July 2nd, 1906, Chester wrote to Grace, Dear kid, I think it is best that you should go to Hamilton next Monday morning and meet me there. It would be better to go where we are not known, so we can leave there that day, although I don't know where we can or will go. Dear kid? Feels a bit condescending.

Grace wrote her final letter to him on July 5th. She wrote that she looked forward to her trip to the mountains with her lover, the father of her child, and of how she wished she could tell her mother she was pregnant. As if she had a premonition about her future, she also wrote, I know I shall never see any of them again. And Mama. Great heavens, how do I love Mama? I don't know what I shall do without her. Sometimes I think if I could tell Mama, but I can't. She has trouble enough as it is and I couldn't break her heart like that.

If I come back dead, perhaps if she does not know, she won't be angry with me. Grace most likely believed that Chester was going to propose to her during this trip, or that they would elope together. They spent the first night of their trip together on July 10th in Utica. Then on July 11th, they stopped to visit Big Moose Lake. They'd planned an afternoon picnic and rented a rowboat from a man named Robert Morrison.

And Morrison will later say that he found it very strange that Chester brought both a suitcase and a tennis racket with them on the boat, while Grace brought nothing with her. She left her belongings back at the train station. Morrison expected them to return the boat that evening, but they, and I doubt you will be surprised to hear this, did not return. He was already suspicious of Chester, and now he was genuinely worried about Grace, and he organized a search party to find them both.

A short time later, they found the couple's rented rowboat capsized in the lake and floating face down a short distance away was Grace's lifeless body. She was barely 20 years old. Grace had drowned. That was obvious. However, her autopsy revealed that she had been attacked before she had drowned.

It was bruising and cuts on her forehead and mouth as if she'd been beaten, beaten perhaps by that tennis racket. Beaten by the man who had impregnated her, led her on to think he might marry her, beaten by the man she adored as she likely fought for her life. The autopsy also revealed that she was four months pregnant. Robert Morrison mentioned that Grace's companion had a tennis racket, and it was soon found hastily buried near the lake shore.

Morrison also told the police he thought it strange that her male companion had brought not just a tennis racket with him out into the lake, but also a suitcase. And now he was missing. The police went to the last hotel the couple stayed at and saw that Carl Graham and Grace Brown were on the list of registered guests. The police soon contacted the Gillette Skirt Factory after finding out that Grace had recently worked there, and they learned that no one by the name of Carl Graham also worked there.

and that she didn't know anybody by the name of Carl Graham. And that led to the discovery that Grace was involved with Chester Gillette. Just two days later, the police found Chester Gillette staying at a nearby hotel under an alias. At first, he suspiciously denied ever knowing Grace, but then he admitted he not only knew her, but was with her when she died. Chester claimed that Grace had drowned herself because he wanted to end their relationship.

Detectives were thankfully highly suspicious of Chester's lazy and unconvincing story, especially since he showed zero emotion when recounting Grace's death. Chester Gillette will go on trial for Grace's murder a few months later on November 12, 1906. The prosecution believed that Chester had coldly beaten Grace about the head and face with his tennis racket until she fell into the water and drowned. How savage. She had previously told him in a letter that she couldn't swim.

The defense argued that Grace had jumped into the lake to end her life. They referenced letters written by Grace saying that she wanted to die. Her unrequited love for Chester had driven her mad. The defense added that the boat capsized when Chester stood up to save Grace. Chester Gillette testified that shortly before the boat had tipped over, he and Grace had been discussing what they should do regarding her pregnancy. He said it was not wise to continue as they had been.

To keep it a secret, Grace told him she was afraid to tell her parents, so he offered to tell her father himself, and then according to Chester, quote, she stood up in the boat and threw herself into the lake. He testified that they had never spoken of marriage, not once, and he declared that she never indicated she wanted to marry him in any of her letters. However, he also testified, because he was such a wonderful and noble gentleman, that he left Cortland with the intention of marrying her.

The jury, fortunately, was not entirely composed of gullible idiots and were unconvinced by Chester's pathetic self-serving lies. And on December 5th, 1906, Chester Gillette, literal lady killer, was found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to death. As he got closer to his execution date, Chester reportedly confessed to Grace's murder to his spiritual advisors in prison. But those individuals never revealed the exact details of what he told them.

On March 30th, 1908, Chester Gillette was executed via the electric chair at the age of just 24. Despite her murder having received justice, it does not seem that Grace Brown's soul then found any peace. Many have claimed in the years since her death to encounter Grace's despondent, wandering spirit around the site of her death on Big Moose Lake. Back in 1988, several employees of Covewood Lodge on Big Moose Lake were walking together one night when they witnessed a strange sight. One of them was Rhonda Bousselot,

who later spoke with producers of Unsolved Mysteries, who aired a segment about Grace's murder and ghost on the seventh episode of season eight of the show's original run with Robert Stack. Rhonda said, I walked into the staff lodge, straight up the stairs with my hand out, reaching for the string, which is how to turn on the light. As I approached the top of the stairs and just before I was ready to turn on the light, a feeling came over me that somebody was right there. More or less, I stopped in my tracks and really just didn't move.

I didn't have an overwhelming feeling of fright, but something definitely or someone was there and it just kind of took my breath away. Rhonda didn't see what her friends saw at this time from outside the building, but they recounted their terrifying experience to her. According to Rhonda, all three of them had the same exact story. It lingered for just a few seconds and then moved away. All three of them saw the ghost. I didn't see anything myself, but I felt that somebody was right there and it was just such a strange feeling.

Linda Lee Mackin had another encounter, seemingly with the same spirit at the resort later that same year. Mackin recalled, Sightings such as these continue to this day.

In 2019, a resident of Webb, New York, named Owen Melnick, shared his experience with the paranormal investigation team Haunted Upstate. Apparently one night, Owen was walking out in the vicinity of Big Moose Lake, heading towards the water. He was using his flashlight, but the batteries were starting to give out. By the time he made it to the rocks along the shore, the flashlight was dead. So he decided to turn back, and just as he was turning around, he claims he, quote, saw this thing. He said he wasn't sure what it was, adding, quote, but the moment I saw it, and it saw me, he said,

I was just sad. I had this really weird feeling of sadness wash over me, like a dreadfulness, and I'm pretty sure it was her. I know it was her. Poor Grace Brown. So full of sadness and pain and betrayal at the end of her life, and it seems those feelings haven't entirely faded in death. Grace? Anne. Why are you telling sad stories this week? I don't know. It's supposed to be scary stories. There's ghosts. There's ghosts in them. It's sad. Oh, jeez. It's so, so sad. Uh...

Yeah, I mean, common for the time to like, you know, not that people aren't embarrassed now when they get, you know, pregnant outside of wedlock. Sure, sure. But, you know, at that time, just like big secret scandal. What will I do? Upper class, lower class, like all these fucking stupid trappings of the times. Yeah, trapping's a good word for it. And, yeah, I mean, I do just feel bad for her. Uh-huh. You know, I mean, it...

I'm glad the jury was like, fuck you, dude. Take your privilege and shove it up your ass. You're a murderer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It is so weird to think back then that like, you know, like, okay, like you could, like a young woman could probably go to the store and steal something and get less kind of scorn than

than if she just like went unchaperoned with a young man and fooled around. Totally. Like it's just wild where it's like not hurting anybody, not doing anything wrong to anybody, but then just stink eyes, scorn. Ah, she's fast and loose. Uh-huh. She looks like she's been, what do they say? Like it looks like she's been ridden hard. Oh, rode hard and put away wet. All these, yeah, horrible. Yeah, like Jesus. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Uh-huh. I have some pictures.

This first one is a picture of Big Moose Lake during the day. Gorgeous. I know. It does look really pretty. The Adirondacks, the whole area of New York, really pretty geography. Let's go. And this next one is... Oh, my God. What a beautiful sunset. Same lake at sunset. This is the only picture I can find of poor Grace Brown. She looks sad in this photo. She does. Finally, a photo of her murderer, Chester Gillette.

Okay, and like when you're talking about this skirt thing,

Do you know what that is? I think it's literally where they just like, they made skirts. Oh, I was, I was expecting it to be like a term for some, for something else. Uh, I'm not positive, but I, but I think they just actually just put together skirts and just like pumped out. Copy that. I wonder if it's related to like Gillette, like razors. I don't know. Gillette stadium, Gillette, Gillette, Gillette, Gillette. Yeah. Big name out that part of the country. Um, and then here's a plaque for grace in her hometown of New York. Um,

Uh, her death would actually be the inspiration and it's kind of referenced here on this sign, uh, be the inspiration for the plot of American author Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel, an American tragedy. It was a very popular novel. Uh, that book would later be adapted into a Broadway play and also a 1951 big, uh, you know, blockbuster movie, a place in the sun starring, starring Elizabeth Taylor. Yeah.

Now what? And listen, I know it doesn't matter. Wait, go back to that photo, please. I know it doesn't matter, but above her name, what is that symbol supposed to be? Oh, that's just the shape of New York. It's New York State. Oh, it looks very...

Not correct. Yeah, the little... It looks like a duck foot. Uh-huh. The little part on the bottom, that's like Long Island and New York City. And then you go up into all of upstate New York. I guess I never really knew the shape of New York. Just when you extrapolate it from a map, it doesn't... That's not what I think. Oh, funny. Okay, well, there it is. You learn something new every day. There it is. The more you know. Yeah. Absolutely.

Ask me what Ohio looks like. That I know. I wish I could from memory just do, do, do, do. There's like a little tones that the more you know, like the rainbow. I know it's a little rainbow. Uh-huh. You said rainbow. Now I'm thinking reading rainbow. Yep. Oh boy. Okay. Have you...

Have you got yourself a little Layla? I got two. Okay. And just more info for new listeners. A Layla is this like voodoo doll stress reliever guy. A little squishy doll. He's a little squishy or she. She. He, she. I mean, it feels like Layla is. Layla's pretty androgynous. Yeah. Yeah. As I say, gender neutral. And the original Layla is.

a brown one and smells like vanilla cookies or something. And then, oh, now brown Layla is making out with black Layla. Oh, look how cute they are. Oh, they're in love. We have so many of them. Also, so fortunate to have fans send them in. They're really, really cute. How did we get the first Layla? I don't remember, actually. Okay, fans, people from the beginning, help us. Man, I don't remember at all. How did we get it?

Somebody randomly sent it in, I think, like a little stressful even. I was like, oh, okay. And then I just started kind of like smushing it on the show and then it just became a thing. Yeah. It's funny like how your socks kind of like took off and then that just a little, I don't know. It might have been that like you were like yelling or like slapping the desk or something. And if our vocals sound at all different this episode, we're going to fix it. I was trying to figure out how to learn some software with our new recording system for like –

promos, like guesting on other shows from afar. And I did some updates and it tweaked the settings a little bit. So I'm going to work on it just so you know. If you're like, what is, there's something different. Yeah. I'm hoping to figure it out by the end, after the show. Yeah. If our, if some words feel clipped. Yeah. That's what it is. And we're, it's not a weird editing mistake. It's just. Yeah. So sorry about that. Sorry. Sometimes things happen. Okay. It's called a noise gate for audio nerds. I'm sure they, yeah.

We're already screaming it out. Like, yeah, that's what it, I know what it is. You don't have to tell me. Okay. Are you ready? I am. Let's go to Australia. Okay. Let's do it. Hey, Dan and Lindsay, this comes to you all the way from the upside down country, Australia. Yes, we are not a myth.

I feel compelled to paint a picture of the Australian outback so that listeners may understand how untouched and unknowable some places here really are, so that they too may realize how the landscape makes it impossible to believe we've crossed paths with every creature that may be lurking out there.

To give you an idea, there was a small community of Aboriginal people known as the Pintupi Nine who emerged from living in the Gibson Desert just 40 years ago and had remained completely unaware of the European colonization of Australia over 200 years ago. What? I know, isn't that wild? Yeah. If that doesn't speak to how vast and isolating the landscape can be, I don't know what will.

I've heard people from other countries talk about the wilderness where they're from and have been fortunate enough to have traveled to some of those places myself. But there has always been something different about the Australian bush.

Of course, we have beautiful, bustling, densely populated cities, but we also have some vast stretches of emptiness. The kinds of places where you can drive for hours without seeing another soul. Where you could stare out the car window and see nothing but red dirt all the way to the horizon. So untouched that no other roads or buildings or fences cut across it.

At night, the sky is so unpolluted by light, you can see the Milky Way accompanied by a silence so deep it's almost deafening, broken only by the rustle of wind through dry leaves or the occasional cry or growl of an animal.

It doesn't feel indifferent like most places do. It feels alive with some kind of awareness, like it's watching you. That's the part that gets under your skin. It's vast, yes, but it's also intimate, like the land there could swallow you whole and no one would ever know you were there. It brings with it a feeling of insignificance that, for some, sparks a panic like no other.

Whatever the opposite of claustrophobia is, the terror of seemingly endless space, of being so far from help if you needed it, that the openness feels like a trap, a cage that needs no bars. I'd felt that feeling myself a few times growing up in regional Australia, but never had I felt it as strongly as I had the night we decided to camp out on my friend Grace's family cattle farm.

By farm, I mean 30,000 acres of land. Even with the portions cleared for agricultural use, a good majority remained untouched, bordered by more uninhabited land. I had been out to stay at the property a number of times and absolutely loved it. Grace, her siblings, and I had explored a lot of it over the years growing up, and everyone knew to stay close to the homestead after dark.

The house itself had a kind of beauty that came only from being loved by generation after generation of the same family. We were in those cocky few years between 17 and 21, too stubborn to listen and too eager to party without anyone yelling at us to pull our heads in. While Grace's cousins visited one long weekend, our plan to camp out in one of these lesser explored corners of their land was born.

We wasted hours that day, swimming in a creek that cut through the part of the property, swollen with clear, frigid water from a violent downpour in the early hours of the morning. Thanks to that, and to the bottle of rum Grace's brothers were passing around, by the time we set up our swags and tents, a chill had crept in along with the burning orange sunset. We were loud in a way you could only be when the nearest neighbors were two hours away.

We played drinking games around a small fire until Grace's brother Tom fell asleep, snoring in his camp chair, the fire nothing more than embers, and we had run out of booze. I remember waking from a deep, dreamless sleep with the kind of alertness that came with feeling certain that something, somewhere, was very wrong. I laid there in my sleeping bag, staring into the pitch black of the tent, listening. It only took a few seconds for me to hear it.

footsteps walking across the clearing, crunching and distinct in the silence of the night. I brushed it off as someone having woken to go for a pee, but before I could shake the strange terror I was feeling, the footsteps stopped and the scratching began.

It wasn't soft or subtle. It was laborious and loud, like something with claws digging for a buried carcass. I woke Grace and her cousin Emily, whispering a frantic...

as they stirred. The three of us sat in the darkness, listening to a strange, irregular pattern of footsteps and scratching, breaths held like our lives depended on it. After a few moments, I could make out Grace's form reaching for the torch in the dark. She held it up, waiting for our nods of agreement before slowly unzipping the tent. However, the second she started pulling the zipper, the scratching stopped.

Grace froze, glancing back at us wide-eyed before ripping the zipper open at full speed, desperate to catch red-handed whatever had been out there.

As she scurried out the opening, clumsily sweeping the torchlight over the clearing, there was nothing. What the fuck? She hissed as I straightened, climbing out of the tent behind her. Even though there was no one in the clearing, some kind of primitive fear gripped me at the sight before us, like my body was instinctively picking up on something my conscious brain couldn't quite comprehend.

The fire had burned out completely, and in its absence, the clearing seemed swallowed by the vastness of the dark. As Grace swept the torch back and forth and back and forth again, I saw it. The ground. The dirt. It wasn't how we had left it.

The previously smooth, flat ground was torn up, crisscrossed with deep, clawed marks that spread out in jagged lines. Scattered all around the camp were holes wide and deep enough to bury a person upright, surrounded by mounds of dirt, as if something had been clawing its way up from below.

It took a few tries to rouse Grace's brothers from their rum-induced comas. Eventually, both Tom and Marcus joined us, standing wide-eyed and sober, staring at the surrounding ground.

Marcus tried to dismiss it as the peculiar behavior of some animal, but that was quickly shot down by the others, especially when we pointed out that the footsteps we heard between the incessant scratching had sounded like that of a person, a distinct rhythm that could only have come from something walking on two legs. "'Wait,' Gray said, shining the light into the top flap of Marcus's tent. "'Where's Ethan?'

Marcus and Tom shoved their heads back in the opening, groping around in the dark for their brother, coming up, empty-handed. "'I heard him get up a while ago. Figured he needed to piss,' Marcus said, a panic now evident in the pitch of his voice. "'I must have fallen back asleep. I have no idea how long ago that might have been.'

We turned on the car's headlights and were yelling his name into the night, sheer blinding panic spurring us into action, but our voices were swallowed in the yawning silence of the land. It was the exact reason we had gone out there, to be able to make as much noise as we wanted and not be heard. We were a long way away from the house, nearly an hour drive thanks to the rough, barely there tracks.

At some point, we stumbled into the tree line at the edge of the clearing, calling out for Ethan. It is only now that I'm an adult and my frontal lobe has fully developed that I realize just how stupid this was. We ventured so far into the bush, we put ourselves at great risk of not being able to find our way back to camp. I am also ashamed to say it never occurred to any of us to try to radio back to the house.

Waking to the unsettling sight of the holes had shaken any logical thinking right out of our heads. Minutes dragged into what felt like hours, and the density of the trees forced us to slow our pace. Both Grace and Tom had torches out, and the thin beams of light cut sharply through the maze of gnarled trunks. In the dark, the peeling bark of eucalyptus and paperbark trees looked like they're shedding strips of old, rotten skin.

"'It was Emily who saw him first. "'There!' she shouted, "'pointing towards the faint outline of a figure standing "'facing away from us in the darkness "'between the trees up ahead. "'Ethan stood, motionless, as we approached, "'showing no sign of having noticed us "'trambling through the shrub to get to him.'

As we got closer, the details became clearer in the dim, sporadic torchlight. I stopped dead in my tracks. Ethan stood still, looking at something in the distant darkness, unearthly still, and he was covered in red dirt. Head to toe, it was caked on him, in his hair, all over his clothes and his skin, buried underneath his fingernails. Wait! I hissed, too late, as Grace reached out to touch him.

His head snapped around and something like recognition and relief passed over his face, like a child being woken from a nightmare. Tom shook him by the shoulders, angrily demanding to know what he was doing all alone, all the way out there in the middle of the night. And it was only then that Ethan seemed to take in his surroundings, his expression morphing into one of horror.

After a few false starts and panicked mumbling that sounded a lot like cursing, he managed to choke out a reply. The last thing I remember was going to bed. And then, and then, I'm here.

What do you mean? You just woke up here? Just now? Grace probed, grabbing his shoulder. Ethan flinched, but he didn't respond. A branch snapped behind us. We all swung around. Grace and Tom flashed their torches wildly in the direction the sound had come from, hands shaking. That's when we saw them.

Three pairs at least, glowing amber in the shadows between us, unblinking slivers of reflected light, high enough off the ground that the figures they belonged to had to have been over seven feet tall, even hunched and twisted as they were.

Their limbs were long and crooked, bodies bending in with the darkness so well the only features I could see with real clarity were the glint of their eyes and the jagged, too-wide, gaping holes of their mouths.

I don't remember who bolted first, but whoever it was shocked the rest of us into movement. Tripping over roots and rocks, it was purely by dumb luck that we happened to be running back in the direction we had come from. And soon we were bursting through the trees, back into the clearing of our campsite, and straight into the car.

We drove all the way back to the house that night, doors locked, eyes glued to the windows, straining into the darkness, watching for any sign of movement. It was the longest hour of my life. I never went back to that farm after that. It was too far out to warrant only going for a day trip and I just couldn't bring myself to stay there overnight.

Ethan swore, even years later, that he couldn't remember a thing, and I have been unable to come to any logical conclusion about what may have happened while we slept. Why had Ethan been covered so thoroughly in dirt it looked like as if he'd been buried in it? There had been three of those creatures watching us in the trees when we found him, but try as I might, I've never been able to say for sure how many holes we had woken up to in the ground.

Keep up the spooks. After my own experience, these stories have a way of making me feel better and worse at the same time, if you know what I mean. And I just can't get enough. Mackenzie. Thank you, Mackenzie. Yeah, that's, uh, I didn't know that. I mean, I know that the Outback is very remote. Just, you know, doing some, like, uh, studying for it, uh, over on TimeSuck. You know, Australia is so unique that way, where it's like, there's these coastal cities, uh,

But the vast majority of the interior is uninhabited, like very, very, very sparsely inhabited. Yeah. And there's not even like that many roads and stuff that crisscross around the country. And most of those seem to like go around the edge of the coast. Uh-huh. And it's huge. It's like this, you know, I mean, it's a whole continent. Yeah, yeah. And just like, but I didn't realize that there were actually like people living in the outback that,

didn't even know about Europeans until, what, 40 years ago? Isn't that crazy? Mackenzie said, that's wild. I'm 41, so... Yeah, so when you were born, that's when they first realized, hey...

there's some other people over here. Yeah. Yeah. And I know... Well, moreover, like, there's people living out there that had no idea that the rest of the fucking, like, world was as it is. Oh, yeah, for centuries. That's insane. And there is still... And it's like, I know that there are still tribes that have no contact with the outside world, never had contact with the outside world. And, like, the Amazon rainforest, like, Papua New Guinea, like, there's a few places. But I never thought of the outback that way. I never thought of, like... Because it's not really, like...

It's not rainforest. It's not like thick, thick jungles. The same with more like brush. Yeah. It's like, it's almost like, how could you hide? Yeah. Yeah. Then also how could you survive? I know. I know. I was just having like the weirdest thoughts. I got a little distracted when you talk to my mind was just floating. Be like, what would that be like? And it made me think of like helicopters and planes. Like where it's like, okay, you're way out there by yourself. You've never seen other people, but then all of a sudden you see a helicopter just out of nowhere, go over you. I,

If that was me, I am so terrified. I would lose... Yeah, I mean, you're just... It's a new bird. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. UFO, it's some like... Yeah, like I wouldn't even be able to process what it was. Totally. But yeah, that was... And then that thing about the holes out there. Oh, God, I did not like that. Yeah, I'm like, that's creepy. Like these things could be coming up, these weird entities could be coming up out of the ground. I know, that's...

Because I initially didn't think about them coming up, like just as I was reading it. But then when she says that, I was like, oh, shit.

And I don't know, I had very strange visions of like giant earthworms just like coming up from the earth and just eating people and then taking them back down. Like Tremors with Kevin Bacon. Exactly, exactly. Or Beetlejuice, those big worms on Beetlejuice. I know, I know. Dune, there's all kinds of big worms in movies. Yeah, that was good and unsettling. Exactly, very, very, very unsettling. I agree. Thank you, Mackenzie. I'm hoping that you'll do a time suck on the Aborigines. Yeah, Aboriginal people. Yeah, I...

Yeah, that would be like a good time. Like, actually, because I don't I know very little about them. Yeah. I mean, I think over there on that show, it's just so hard at this point to find something that you're like, I actually don't know anything about that.

Yeah, yeah. Because you've touched on such a wide variety of topics. Yeah, that I feel like you know a little bit about a lot of things. Yeah, yeah. Because I don't know with that, like, and I'm guessing there are, just like with like, you know, North America, like indigenous peoples are so many different tribes. Yeah. I'm guessing there's a variety of cultures within the aboriginal people, you know, where it's like this group speaks this language, has these customs. But I don't know. I don't know. Well, I guess you're going to find out. I have to find out these days, yeah. Okay. Okay.

One more story before we go. Let's do it. Hey, Dan and Lindsay. Hello. The experience I'm about to share with you is 100% real. It's too strange and too unsettling not to share. The experience I'm writing about today is called lurking in the void. I live in a tiny town in Wisconsin called Delavan. My boyfriend at the time and I moved into a house on the outskirts.

It was nestled in a rural area where the roads were barely lit and the nearest neighbor was more of a shadow in the distance. The only sounds at night were the distinct howls of coyotes, their eerie cries echoing through the trees like something out of a nightmare.

The house was small, a modest two-bedroom, one-bath cottage. But the yard was expansive, a sprawling stretch of green with a deck that was perfect for quiet summer evenings. The kind of place you dream of when you want peace and solitude. It never crossed my mind that the property might be haunted.

Growing up with siblings who had a knack for tormenting me with ghost stories made me an easy target for fear, but I convinced myself I was above it. Too old and too logical to fall for these childish tales. At first, the oddities were subtle, almost nothing at all. A flicker of movement in the corner of my eye when I passed by the bedroom. A strange pressure in the air like someone was standing too close.

Waking up at exactly 3 a.m., my heart hammering in my chest, certain I was being watched, but finding nothing when I turned to look. The anxiety began to gnaw at me slowly, creeping in during those quiet moments when I was home alone for too long, like something lurking just beyond my perception. At first, I brushed it off, just my imagination, but the longer we stayed, the more it became clear something was wrong.

One night, while Jay and I were sleeping, I woke up suddenly, my eyes heavy with sleep, my mind foggy and disoriented. The room felt unnaturally cold, and as my blurred vision began to clear, I saw something, rather someone, moving in the darkness. It was Jay. His figure was moving slowly, unnaturally, pacing back and forth just beside his bed,

The silhouette barely distinguishable in the faint moonlit filtering through the curtains. I blinked, trying to focus, my heart picking up speed. "What are you doing?" I whispered, my thick voice sleepy and confused. But there was no answer. The figure didn't stop or even acknowledge me. I sat up, confused and uneasy, my pulse hammering in my ears. And that's when my breath caught in my throat.

No.

I forced myself to look away from the shadowy figure that still paced besides the bed, trying not to let it see that I was awake. The air in the room felt thick, as if I was holding my breath, waiting. Slowly, I pulled the covers tighter around myself, shut my eyes, and willed myself to stay still, praying that whatever it was wouldn't notice me. But I couldn't shake the feeling that it was watching me.

Jay didn't believe me when I mentioned the shadowy figure the next day. He'd always been a skeptic.

The figure kept returning. One night, I climbed into bed, feeling the familiar weight of Jay settling beside me. But when I turned over to face him, his spot was empty. Jay wasn't there. And then another time, I walked into the bedroom and my blood ran cold. There, in the corner of the room, crouched the entity, its form impossibly still.

Not long after I started seeing the shadow figure, Jay was in a motorcycle accident. He was hospitalized for what felt like an eternity, leaving me alone in that house, in the dark. Before bed every night, I followed the same ritual. Turn on the TV, leave the living room light on, and keep my phone within arm's reach, as if all those small comforts could ward off whatever was lurking in the void.

One evening, I had a dream, rather a nightmare, that blurred the line between reality and something far darker. In this dream, Jay was finally discharged from the hospital. I heard the faint sound of footsteps outside the back door. Jay reached under the doormat for the spare key and entered the house. I watched him slowly move through the hallway, his presence familiar yet unsettling.

He made his way to the bedroom, stood over me, and then crouched down beside the bed. In a hushed, urgent whisper, he breathed into my ear, "'Someone's in the house!'

I woke up in a panic, gasping for air, heart pounding in my chest. The room was pitch black, the silence deafening. My hands fumbled in the dark as I scrambled for my phone, my pulse racing. I shot up, frantic, flipped on the light, casting long, harsh shadows across the room. My mind raced as I rushed through the house, checking every corner. I texted Jay in a daze, asking, Did you somehow come home?

His reply came almost instantly. No, I haven't been discharged yet. A few days later, Jay was discharged from the hospital. I was working the night shift at the time while he remained at home on short-term disability. Gradually, he began to understand what I had been saying about the entity and the unsettling atmosphere in the house. He eventually confided in me that he too was beginning to feel uneasy being home alone.

After that nightmare of an experience, I knew I needed help. The fear was starting to swallow me whole and I didn't know where else to turn.

I reached out to my oldest sister, the only one in the family who was deeply religious. She listened quietly as I explained everything, and without hesitation, she gave me a Bible and a framed picture of the Lord's Prayer. This should help, she said, her voice calm, but firm. She also told me to burn sage throughout the house, a ritual to ward off any unwanted spirits.

I did as she suggested, and the house remained silent after that. No more shadows, no more strange occurrences. It was as if the darkness had dissipated, or maybe it was just waiting, lurking. Either way, in the span of a year, Jay and I broke up, and I packed up and left. I moved out and hoped whatever haunted that place stayed behind, tied to Jay, where it belonged. Alicia. Alicia.

Oh my God. That's like a pretty awesome breakup gift. Like, well, fuck you, buddy. You can keep the house and the entity that's here. So I just... There's one thing I want clarification on in case I missed something. When...

So Jay was in the hospital, still hospitalized from the motorcycle accident, when she's home alone and she thinks Jay is whispering to her, something's in the house. Yeah, she has a dream. Oh, that's right. Okay, it's a dream. It was a dream. And then what wakes her up is the, there's something in the house, whisper in the dream, and then she pops awake. Right, right, right. Okay, okay. I couldn't remember if that was a dream or real. I'm like, because I'm like...

that's crazy is if you think that like your person is being like, Hey, there's something here. Oh my God. And then you find out your person's not there. And it's like, what the fuck just warned me? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just taunting me. But I mean, there was that thing mimicking him. It's like when that, that other moment when she was laying in bed, um,

And it was pacing. Yeah. And she thought it was Jay pacing at first, but then she realized Jay was actually lying beside her and it was still pacing. Uh-huh. And that was a good creepy story where it's like she's weaving in and out of dreams. Uh-huh. But the things that are happening in real life are very similar to things that are happening in like nightmares. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and she says like even like one day, just in the middle of the day, she goes in her room and this entity is crouched down in the corner. So now things are happening. How it feels to me is it feels like it was escalating. Yeah.

Like ever so slowly, like first dreams, then you're seeing it in reality. And then as I was reading this for the umpteenth time, I was like, oh my God, how did I miss that? I have to wonder if Jay's motorcycle accident, if in any way, shape or form was caused by this entity, because then it, because then it controls the situation and now it has Alicia alone by herself. Like, is that what it always wanted? Yeah. Was it trying to get her? Uh-huh.

And that's such a scary thing. Like I'm thinking now my mind's going to like horror movies and stuff where it's like when the things start to leave the dream and it just like then it just messes with your perception of reality. Oh, yeah. Am I awake? Am I still dreaming? Yeah.

Yeah. Am I, am I unwell? Uh huh. Yeah. Right. And that's what we talk about a lot, you know, is like that line because, you know, listen, we've both struggled with our mental health. Thank God. Neither one of us has ever had such a struggle that we've started to hallucinate or, I mean, I've had like sound hallucinations or, you know, like moments of like, wait, what? Just from pure exhaustion. Yeah. But not middle of the day, uh,

fully rested, operating on 150%. Yeah. I am so grateful that my mind has never betrayed me that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Me too. But I just can't imagine, like, if I started to see things, my immediate thought is not going to be the paranormal. I mean, maybe now, after doing this show for almost six years, you know, maybe now, but...

Six years ago, no. I would just think like, okay, take me to a hospital right now. I need to see a psychologist, get my therapist in here, get me back on my meds. Like what is happening? I would panic. I think I would deal with it. I think I would not deal with it as well now as I would have like maybe six years ago. Because now I would think if something like that started to happen, I'm like, oh, have I made myself crazy? Have I like been like my imagination is like just going crazy?

bananas now and I've almost and then it's like I've lost the ability to decipher like between normal thinking and like abnormal mentally ill kind of thinking oh man yeah luckily that has not happened yet yeah I know we're gonna talk a ton about our car accident on the bonus episode but it it does make me think about that just like how for weeks the edges of life have felt really soft and there's so many times where I'm like am I still

I still hear. Yeah. Are we alive? Are we living in an alternate reality? Like, I know we're going to dive into that heavy on the bonus episode. Yeah. Which will already have come out by the time people hear this. Oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the January bonus, we'll be talking about that. But it makes me think about all of that, like the mental health of it all. You know, and like what went. How do you know? How do you know? Yeah. You want to you want to thank some Annabelle's for supporting us? I do.

I'd like to thank Tessa Marconi. I'm over here trying not to say macaroni. I'm really sorry. I'm sure you've heard it a thousand times, right? Nothing new here. Tessa Marconi, Paul Inglis, Clifford, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Katie Bastian, Megan Hoggle, Hoggle, Hoggle, H-O-G-L-E, Hoggle? H-O-G-L-E, probably Hoggle. Hoggle.

Oh, man. I'm sure you've heard it all, too. And Sandra Kelkar. Nice. I would like to thank the following Annabelles for supporting us. Dennis Heike. I like this. Diet Bush Light.

It'd be pretty funny if you started like naming beers diet, like diet bud, diet Coors, whatever. I know. Because the light is obviously like the diet version. Yeah. But it'd be pretty, it's just funny to my brain just to hear it called diet. Yeah. And now there's ones like, like Mick ultra that's just like zero carbs or whatever. So would that be like diet diet? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Double diet.

Like Coke Zero. Uh-huh. Bud Light Zero. Oh, man. If they came up with a zero-calorie beer, oh, watch out. But yeah, Diet Bush Light. Cummins Cider Coke. Nice. Nice. I guess we have a cider company now. I've seen those. I don't know if it's a real company, but I've seen those like memes. Cummins Cider. Of course. Cummins Cider. Say it fast enough. Brittany Camp. Colby J. Not Cuddling Taco. That one cracked me up. And Calvin Childs. Are you looking up Cummins Cider? Uh-huh.

Okay. Is it a real company now? Did somebody actually name their company this? You can go to just the first thing that pops up is the dude's threads and

The dudes threads.com. Okay. So it's just a joke for gravity. Uh-huh. But it is, uh, it's a pretty good, it's pretty good graphic. Uh, all natural Cummins cider juice box. And she's, uh, uh, you know, tight jeans and, uh, like a Daisy Duke kind of vibe about her. Okay. Well done. Okay.

Well, that's... Hold on. I have spooky shout-outs. Oh, yeah. That's right. That's right. Right. Sorry. Sorry I got distracted by Cummins cider. Because also, I didn't catch it. Okay. Yeah. I was like, okay. What they're really saying there? Yeah. Because I think when we met, I was a grown-up, and I missed the phase of your life where everyone was making Cummins jokes. And I remember one of the kids coming home from school and just being like, oh, it started. And I was like... But I was like, what are you talking about? I'm like, oh, my God. Seriously. It just...

It literally never occurred to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Anyways. To Flynn from Reggie. Happy anniversary. You are simply the best. To Wilson from Kendra. I know things have been a little tough lately. Hang in there. I've got your back. And to Heather from Lindsay, which, well, great name. Thanks for being my very best friend ever. I love you. And that's it.

And that's our show. Thank you for continuing to send your personal tales of terror to mystoryatscaredtodeathpodcast.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 organizing the My Story emails. Thanks to book editor Drew Atana polishing and preparing listener stories for book number six. Thank you to Molly Jean Box for finding the first story I shared this week and to Olivia Lee for finding the second book.

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, full of horror lovers. And big thanks to the All Seen Eyes, the Creeps and Peepers moderators for doing such a fantastic job making that online community such a fun, welcoming place. Yay! Enjoy your nightmares, Creeps and Peepers. Hope you were scared to death. Bye!

I mean, Lilith's also pretty hot. Yeah.