transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Hey everyone, we have a republish this week of the episode, Stranger in the Attic, Friend in the Sink. But on the day that this goes wide, not for Tenderfoot plus subscribers, we will be posting on Instagram a video actually of the Friend in the Sink. So if you listen to that story and you hear about like the ghost that might have been in that hospital room, check out our Instagram at Rattled & Shook. We will have posted the video that that storyteller sent us of the supposed ghost in the room. Let us know what you think.

Speaker 2:
[00:32] And now presenting Rattled & Shook.

Speaker 1:
[01:06] Hi, everyone, I'm Meredith, and welcome to Rattled & Shook, a podcast where we tune in to scary stories and discuss our deepest, darkest fears, but in a fun way. And today's fun comes from two very different, but very freaky stories. I'd say the theme here is people in places where people shouldn't be. And the best part is that both of these stories are going to be told first person. Well, the first one is told through a friend, but these are the actual voices of the people who we interviewed for these stories. The first story that I'll play hits on a major fear of mine that I've touched on in the podcast before. Not sharks. Okay, without further ado, here is our first story.

Speaker 2:
[02:04] I worked for a global company that was based in Chicago, Illinois. I live in Cleveland, so I happened to strike a friendship with one of my colleagues out of Chicago, Illinois. We were out for drinks one night after work. We were at an offsite, and she told me this story about how she had been hearing these sounds in her house, and it was building over time, and how her husband, she and her husband, sort of assumed that it was some kind of rodent or animal, but the landlord was being unresponsive to their repeated complaints about rodents and nuisance noises. It's just incessant, and there's sometimes really loud clunks and drops and bangs and different noises, and she's like, we're assuming there's many of them, they're having babies, etc., etc. Well, it was not long after that, that Corona hit and everybody was sent home, so we were no longer working in our offices at the work sites. We're working from our home offices now. So she's home now working, she's not leaving during the day, and so she started to hear lumps and bumps and things that seemed a lot more substantial than a raccoon. And so in meetings, when we'd all call in to these teams calls, she'd be like, can you guys hear that? And she would point to the ceiling, like, can you guys hear this? And we were like, no, what does it sound like? And she's like, it's just incessant, it just never stops. So she one day decided to take matters into her own hands after a day of pretty incessant sounds coming from the ceiling above her head. And she took her selfie stick and said, I'm gonna just go ahead and get like video or photos of what's going on up there to send to the landlord to say like, hey, look, here's an actual video, we're not making this up. Please, you know, send an exterminator, please, you know, take care of this problem. And so she went into the spare room where the attic access door was in the ceiling. She took the selfie stick, pulls the stairs down and she climbs up just a few of the stairs and snakes the selfie stick up into the access hole. And takes the picture, brings the phone down and looks at the screen. And there's a man staring back at her from the screen. And he's from the vantage point of where she had stuck the selfie stick up into the attic. He was maybe, he was less than 10 feet away from her. From where he was sitting, which then caused her to basically fall off the couple of stairs she had climbed up. She fell backward and ran out of her house, terrified and screaming. And fully under the assumption he was chasing her. She gets to the street, she goes to the neighbor's house and is pounding on their door, frantic, calling 911. And the police come, they enter the home and they do find him in the attic still. He had been there for a year. He had hoarded a bunch of their private things, personal effects, etc. So prior to their being home more often with coronavirus and everybody being sent home, he was accessing their home during the night while they were sleeping, and basically becoming almost a member of their family, like immersing themselves into their home and their lives. He had a little rack of her husband's button-down shirts, like his work shirts, and then he had blankets and pillows, things that he had taken from spare bedrooms or linen closets that they hadn't noticed. So he had very much been all throughout their house and the most personal spaces in their home. He was using their bathrooms, showers. One of the most terrifying parts of this is that he was using her husband's razor to shave his head. He had a completely clean, shaven head. And the police later asked him, like, how have you been maintaining? Like, do you have another dwelling or another place you stay? And he said, no, I've been using their razors, toothbrushes, towels, all of it. He had been using. She experienced severe trauma. They had to vacate their house periodically. They did break their lease. He was prosecuted. She's still not able to live in a home that isn't a single story, like ranch-style home, any kind of access points below or above her. She is not able to feel comfortable or safe. So we got on a Teams call and she was not in her normal office. And she showed us her phone on the call. And I had the most, like my blood ran cold. It's the most terrifying photo I've ever seen in my life. And it's still to this day haunts me. It's terrified me and haunted me literally ever since.

Speaker 1:
[07:15] My God, that is just nightmare fuel. That is just nightmare fuel. I love hate the stories about people secretly living in your house while you're there, just lurking behind the wall. And I have so many questions about this story, to be honest, like where is this man now? I feel like we all deserve to know. But anyway, thank you to Logan for this story. We actually posted the screenshot of this guy from the attic on our Instagram, and we'll link her TikTok so you can watch her version. She's LadyMarine11, and the picture is unreal. All right, we're going to take a quick break, go check out the picture, and we'll be right back. We'll be back after a quick break. Let's tune in for another story.

Speaker 3:
[08:55] I was currently on maternity leave, and my eldest child was dealing with medical mystery, as the doctors like to call it. She had her health issues get worse, and we ended up having to rush her to the emergency room. While we were hanging out in the emergency room, waiting for the doctors for an answer on what we can do, because she was unable to walk. At that point, she was 10 years old. We are waiting for the nurses to come back after they did the liquid IV for the fluids. And my daughter, Layla, she was on the phone with a friend of ours, and they were just on Snapchat. And I was on my phone. I was just reading and texting just random articles. All of a sudden, I hear water running. There is a sink in the emergency room that we're in. And I look up, and the water is on. And then I paused for a second, and I felt the temperature change. It got chilly, and I was like, there's someone here. I looked at her, and she was like, Mom, are your friends here? And I was like, I don't think so. I've, my whole life, had experiences with the paranormal. They follow me wherever I go, and if they're there, if they're still staying in that particular building, they like to say hi. In my home, we have them, they come and go, and we refer to them as my friends. So we are sitting, and I was like, is anyone here? If you're here, I want you to make the water run again. And sure enough. That's when I gave the go ahead to my daughter to engage and ask to be friends. When my daughter did that, she started asking questions, and I was kind of guiding her, like, you can't ask a direct question, so start with, are you a boy or are you a girl? Press the water. She would ask questions, and then the spirit would answer it through having the water go off. We did this for about 20 minutes before it dawned on me that I should record it, because first she was on the phone with her friend, and I'm calling my mom to let her know, oh, guess what, one of my friends came, or there's a new spirit in the room with us. One of those, like, oh, let's let Nana know, and let's let dad know, because it's fun, because they encounter this all the time with me. And then I was like, oh, we should record it. Let's see what happens. And that's when I started recording. Who is it? It's so weird. Is it you? It's me, it's not me. It's motion sensor. There's no one over there. Okay, do it one more time.

Speaker 1:
[12:26] Do it one more time, please.

Speaker 3:
[12:35] And at that point, I was like, okay, let's find out who it is. Let's see. I knew just because of my experiences and what I normally go through with the spirits, that it was a child. But I wanted my daughter to experience it. She's always wanted to feel them like I do and hear them and be able to communicate with the other side. I was like, okay, go ahead and question. She started with asking age or what your name is. I was like, you have to start with letters. You can't hear the spirit, so you won't know what they're actually saying. So go through the alphabet. My daughter was like, does your name start with the A? Silence. I was like, okay, it's not an A. Does your name start with a B? The water runs. So she's like, your name starts with a B? And the water runs again. So my daughter is like, mom, what are B names? What are B names? I'm like, Britney, because that was the first girl name that popped up that was with a B, and out of the blue, out of nowhere, my daughter is like, what about Bianca? And the water started running again in the sink. And that was confirmation that it was Bianca. And that's how we knew she had the right name. And in the beginning, the spirit was very playful. So it said it was a doctor. I was like, it's not a doctor. And I told my daughter to keep questioning and asking questions. She started asking, are you one, are you two? When she got to nine, You're nine? That's when the spirit said they were nine. You're nine years old? My daughter, she wanted to call her dad to show him. She's on the phone with him. And every time she was on an actual phone call, the phone would have severe static on the other person's end. So her dad was like, do you hear that? I can't hear you. And there was a lot of static on his side, but we had a clear line. He was experiencing it throughout the entire call. And at one point, the nurses came in. The moment the nurses came in, the spirit would leave. I was like, oh, I don't think the spirit likes the nurses. Something happened. She's like, do you think it's gonna come back? I was like, try to see if it'll come back. That's what my daughter did. And my daughter started questioning again. Have you always been with us or stayed at this hospital? Are you in the hospital? All the time. Later on, my daughter did get hospitalized, and when we were moved, we had two other encounters, and we were on the phone, so I did not record, it was just one of those moments where we were enjoying the spirit with us. And we knew it was there, I felt it. My daughter, the other person on the line that she was with, was hearing the full static, and they could not hear us at all. So she was like, okay, let's do the lights. I was like, okay. If you're here, can you flicker the lights for us so you know you're real? We look at each other, we look around, and all of a sudden the lights have a light flicker to them. You can visibly see the flicker. And then my daughter's like, oh, what else can you do? What else can you do? She got super excited. I was like, okay, maybe you can have them move the curtain. And it did a swoosh, like a light breeze touched a curtain and the curtain moved. My daughter was like, okay, can you move something other than the curtain and the light? That's when the cabinets that were next to the sink in the room by the water opened and closed. My daughter got some get well balloons and the balloons started floating through the air. There was no air conditioning on. There was no fans. And it wasn't just helium balloons either. 20 minutes into it, the nurses walked in again and the spirit left. At that point, it fully left and it did not return. It made me sad to know that she has not left the hospital. But at the same time, she was very happy to interact and just play pranks. I had a video I posted on TikTok, it went viral. And I believe it was a month or so after it going viral, a woman reached out to me and she had a daughter named Bianca. They used to have treatment at Phoenix Children's Hospital in Arizona, and that's where my daughter was. And that's when the mom told me that she died with an incident that was associated with water. And her daughter did have a bad reaction with the nurses, and she was fearful of them. So it all aligned and it made sense in the end. The spirit did not follow us home. We have plenty at home that stay and some that visit. But it was just a wonderful experience for my daughter to actually get to engage, to show her that there are good and bad spirits out there.

Speaker 1:
[18:59] Oh, this one is kind of sweet and kind of sad, and I want to believe it. I think that's the real thing here. There are so many creepy or otherworldly stories that I really don't want to be true, but this one is more sweet and love-affirming. But I guess another part of me feels like this could be the beginning of a horror movie where the little girl's new best friend Ghost is sweet, and then later on you realize you misinterpreted the spirit was and actually it's a demon. This is just the first act where you get it wrong. Sorry to ruin this for you. This story is sweet. The story is so sweet. Thank you for sending it in, Sandra. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. We'll be back after a quick break. We're back, and here's another Irrational Fear. Irrational Fears is a segment where I read out dumb little anxieties sent in by you people out there. And I don't say that with judgment. I too have plenty of dumb little anxieties. A lot of these things don't feel like they're possible, or you know it sounds crazy, but you just can't stop hyper fixating on them. So today's Irrational Fear was sent in by Tess. Thank you, Tess. Tess writes, I'm terrified of my toddler at night. Let me start by saying that I adore my kid more than anything and anyone in the world. That said, she scares the shit out of me sometimes. The first time was when she was two. I woke up in the middle of the night to the terrible unsettling feeling that something in the room was wrong. I felt like I was being stared at. I slowly turned my head and my daughter stood there in her white nightgown, silently staring at me for God knows how long, like a tiny psychopath. I calmly got her back to bed, but I was so spooked. I couldn't sleep the next night because I was afraid she'd do it again. Now, a couple years later, she has semi-regular night terrors, nightmares where she is still asleep and in the dream, but screaming and thrashing and talking like she's awake. She doesn't remember them at all the next day. Sometimes it's just nonsense and crying, but sometimes she points up to the corner of her ceiling and says, make the girl go away. Terrifying. Then ever since she was about three, she will talk about the over there. She points to some dark corner and just casually says, the over there is back. Only three times over her life and at different locations, and she never seems scared, but woof. Finally, the most terrifying thing she ever did so far. We were playing in the living room where we have a gas fireplace. It was not on and it's painted black inside, so it just looks like a big black dark square. She stopped playing, looked at the fireplace and asked, what's that? I asked what she meant. What's that? She pointed to the big black space of the fireplace. I tell her, it's the fireplace. She looked at it, looked at me confused and asked, why is she upside down? I'm scared that at any moment, my angelic little girl will say something straight out of a horror film. Little edit to add, this is a 100-year-old house with a real fireplace that was converted to gas. So the image she was conjuring up was of a person hanging upside down, legs up inside the chimney, and head staring at us from the empty space inside the fireplace. Jeez, Tess, if this isn't an example of people where people aren't supposed to be, then I don't know what is. I don't know what to tell you. This is just like the kind of thing that makes you go, hmm, I don't know about children. Why are they so haunted? Why are children so haunted? Best of luck with your tiny psychopath. She sounds like a delight, to be honest. She sounds like maybe she should be hosting Rattled & Shook, but I think that it'll probably be a phase. And if it isn't, don't hold me to that. Keep us posted. If there's more hauntings, we definitely want to hear about them. All right, y'all. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll be back on Tuesday with a bedtime story. Bye. Rattled & Shook is a Tenderfoot TV production in partnership with Odyssey. Showrunner and host is Meredith Stedman. Lead producer is Stephen Perez. Executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. Editing by Stephen Perez, Meredith Stedman and Audrey Sliger. Sound design by Stephen Perez, Dayton Cole and Cooper Skinner. Mix master by Stephen Perez. Assistant producer is Jordan Foxworthy. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set, including our ending theme, The Phantom Hour. Original artwork by Puppyteeth Studios. Follow us on social media at Rattled & Shook.