The Watcher - Classic

There are times when you're supposedly all alone,

and you feel someone,

something watching you.

You see her, him,

it out of the corner of your eye.

You hear

whispers, the almost voices, and you try to believe that you're imagining the whole thing.

But

what if

you're not?

We're going in search of the other side.

Stay.

When I was 10 years old, I read a book, A Very Famous Story, that Harry Houdini and his wife, they made a pact.

Whichever one of them passed away first, let the other know.

Some way, somehow, if there is life after death.

And so I told my brother,

only one year difference between us, the neighbors called us Irish twins.

I told him the story, and we made the same vow that Houdini did.

And over the years, as we grew older, this pact turned from a conversation among boys to a promise between men.

Bruh, remember, I know.

Somehow, some way, whoever goes first has to let the other know.

Then he grew sick.

Started to remember things that never happened.

Dark things.

Angry things.

No,

I never stole from you, brother.

How would I hide your child from you, brother?

I have no hidden plans, brother.

Brother.

Please get better.

Please get better.

And one day,

he did

get better.

As if the fog lifted, he looked at me, smiled like old times.

Man,

I've been saying some crazy stuff, right?

Dude, it was like someone,

something else took over.

I saw another me.

And another you.

Like

I was here and there at the same time.

He said,

remember?

Remember our promise, right?

Yeah, I remember.

Well, I then.

I then.

We laughed together.

It'd been so long since we laughed, but we laughed.

A week later,

I picked up my phone and heard my sister screaming.

Then I heard myself

screaming.

I knew he had passed, felt myself falling, curled into a fetal position on the ground, praying that the universe was a liar.

Silently reaching for my other self, my twin.

touching nothing.

I don't recall months.

I don't remember the funeral.

I don't remember collecting his things.

I don't remember any of it.

And only later,

when I saw my shadow waving back at me

of its own accord,

did I remember our promise?

Brother?

Is that you?

Brother.

Later at the San Francisco Powell Street BART station, riding up the escalator, I saw a dude with dreads just like his, wearing an army jacket just like his, right down to the Grand Valley State Laker patch on the left shoulder.

Like his.

What?

Then my brother

turned around and smiled

before he vanished.

I almost peed myself

and you think

you think I am seeing my own sorrow and I understand that but

you're wrong.

I've seen

him

And

I want to know about this veil, about this ribbon between here and there, between us and them, between the lost and the living.

You see, mysteries abound.

Things go bump in the night.

And the only way I know to navigate this road is to ask people their stories.

Is it scary sometimes?

Do I get scared?

I do.

But I know this.

He promised.

And my brother always kept his promises.

And that's why

Snap Judgment probably presents Scoot.

Amazing stories from real people crashing against the unknown.

My name is Ben Washington.

Question everything.

The Spooked Podcast starts now.

Imagine, it's the middle of the night.

You're not even 15 years old.

You're home alone with your little brother, waiting for your mom to come home.

Waiting and waiting to hear her car pull into the driveway.

And you're wondering,

what if

she doesn't make it?

She had a night shift job in Salt Lake, which was about 70 miles south of where we lived, soldering electrical components.

I think she was actually working on missiles.

I think she was, Sperry Rand

had a

defense contract from the federal government.

So, when mom went back to work, my older brother Kent had been babysitting us, but he had been drafted and was in Vietnam at the time.

So,

after he left and went into the service, it was pretty much just Rod and I and my younger brother Rod.

And I was mostly in charge at that time.

So

yeah, when I got off the bus every day, there was nobody there.

We're responsible for making dinner, cleaning up, taking care of ourselves, getting ourselves to bed.

usually up again the next morning because mother would come home and she'd be sleeping.

So

yeah,

that was the way it was.

Remember, this is the 50s and a Mormon community.

Nobody,

nobody that I knew of was getting divorced at the time.

And it did.

It made me different because I was the one that was coming home

to a house without a mother in it.

So one night I'm sleeping and I'm suddenly awakened.

And I sit up in my bed and I look around the room and I try and figure out what it was that woke me up and I'm thinking it was some kind of sound

and for some reason my attention goes to my bedroom closet where I can see that my old tap shoe box has fallen from the shelf above the hangers and I thought that was quite strange but nonetheless I went over and I picked the box up and

put the black patent leather shoes back into it put the lid back onto it.

And then of course I went back and got into bed.

But I couldn't lay down.

I just really just sat there under the covers waiting because I was feeling like I was supposed to be up for some reason.

And I knew something was going to happen.

I can't explain it except that I felt like I was waiting on something bad.

And I would have gone and told mom if she'd been there, but of course she was at work.

And so I was in charge and I was very well aware that whatever was going to occur was going to be in my lap.

And then I heard this thud.

And then I heard another thud and another thud.

I knew they were coming from my left side as I was positioned in my bed looking out my window.

And that would have meant that they would have had to have been coming either from our garage or the ward's place

on the other side of it.

The ward's place was right next door to us.

Thud,

thud, like that.

I remember hearing that sound, you know, as it diffused out over our orchards to the west.

Then I heard another one.

And then I thought, well,

I better get up and check the rest of the house out because I'm in charge now.

I felt a real deep concern.

So I go and I check out the locks on both the front and back doors at first.

Then I go into the kitchen and I turn on the light above the sink.

So, I'm standing at our porcelain sink and it has windows all the way around it.

I just stood there for a while and just like anchored almost,

as if I was supposed to just be in that spot.

It did seem at that point that something bad had taken hold of the night.

My first fear was for my mother.

She had to drive that 70-mile drive, you know, all the way home in the dark,

and she was always complaining about about how tired out her eyes were after staring eight hours into a magnifying glass.

How tough it was to keep from falling asleep on that drive home.

And I told God, would he please protect her and our black Chevy?

Protect me from becoming an orphan.

It was more just sort of maybe a dread.

My breathing alters a little bit.

I prayed off the dread of a call from the police.

Right then, sirens,

sirens come screaming down Highway 89 and four

patrol cars screech to a halt in the Wards driveway next door.

And, well, all I can think about is Donnie, the one with the wild reputation.

But I can't understand why it would take so many cops to arrest one guy.

The policeman gets out, they hide behind the doors of their cars, the sheriff gets out the megaphone,

it was just like in the movies.

And he started,

he first called for Mr.

Ward to come out of the house.

And then he called for Mrs.

Ward.

And then he called for Donnie.

But nobody came out.

What I saw was a policeman.

I saw him come out of the house and he was headed in our direction.

And this really worried me.

I remember watching him walk over their lawn, crossed our double driveway, and then he selected the cement path that led to our front door.

I went and turned on the porch light, or turned on the foyer light, and I opened the door and there were two people standing there.

It was him and a woman.

Now I assumed she was a plainclothed policewoman because she wasn't in uniform, but nonetheless she was with him.

I told him my mom wasn't at home you know hoping that that'd make him go away but he said no he still wanted to come in and I let him because he was holding a baby.

He came into the foyer and she followed him in and then left us and I had the notion she had just gone into our kitchen.

But anyway I didn't have too much time to process it because the policeman was trying to inform me what had occurred next door.

Some people had been shot.

One of them was this baby's mother.

She was dead and so was the baby's father.

The kid was about three months old and I could see blood on her pajamas.

He said they were waiting for the relatives to some relatives to come and get her, but they were coming from a ways away.

It would take them a while.

They happened to be short on personnel.

They needed everybody over at the Ward's house.

So they didn't really have anyone to watch the child.

He said he'd seen the kitchen light on.

He'd seen me standing in front of the kitchen sink, and he wondered if I would take her in.

I don't even remember saying yes before he ditched her with me and gave me her bottle, and I noticed it was only half full and wondering what I was going to do if they didn't get there in time.

I was wondering if the kid came with diapers.

I was thinking I might have to go swipe one off one of my old baby dolls.

And that caused me to think about this woman that had gone into the kitchen.

I had never seen her leave.

When I walked into the kitchen, I did see her, but I could see

through her.

And that's when, and that's when I understood

the woman wasn't with the cop.

She was with the baby.

She's very, very very shook up and she is standing in the corner.

She was apologizing.

That was the first thing.

She was apologizing for being there, but she also told me that she was going to be there for a brief time.

This was the baby's mother.

My curiosity more or less kicks in at that point, and I don't really feel a sense of fear.

So then I told her that I knew she was there and that it was okay.

And after that, she seemed to relax a little bit.

She relaxed, actually, a lot because it wasn't because I gave her permission to be there, it was because we could communicate.

And that seemed to be of tremendous relief to her.

So after establishing the identity, I got all practical.

I realized I wasn't going to be able to hold that baby all night, that I was going to have to go make it a bed.

She follows us into the living room.

Then she walked right across that living room to the opposite side and stood in front of those plate glass windows.

And I remember looking out those windows and seeing those stars shining over those huge

rocky mountains.

And she would stand there the rest of the night.

She was focused on me and the baby.

And there didn't seem like a lot of time to be fearful because

I felt that she was there for a reason.

I don't know, I think

she was communicating her thoughts to me because I felt a lot of emotion and I felt her concern about what had just happened

and I knew she was troubled because she didn't know who I was or if she could trust me with her child.

And I wanted to alleve her concern.

So I told her, hey, don't worry.

I babysit all my nephews and nieces, and I've got 11 of them.

And then I told her how sorry I was that she had just died.

Maybe it was my own fears that were feeding into things.

I mean, I had just prayed off not becoming an orphan myself, and there I am holding one.

But I suddenly felt the pain of a mother and a child divided.

I was

sad.

I was very, very sad.

Then I felt her disappointment.

And then I felt her hope.

She really hoped that her child would be able to hear the story and not let it ruin the rest of her life.

Our relationship

was

quite practical, it seems.

But most of the time, yeah, I held her really close next to my chest.

I was quite protective of her.

Just rocked her, kept her safe.

It was really important for me

that she felt safe because she kind of wasn't.

The baby was really quite a good baby.

I only remember her waking up once and crying and then she slept the rest of the time.

So, you know, I've often wondered if her mother's presence, if the child felt her mother's presence.

And I think that was the whole point of her being there.

She was sticking around until she was sure that the baby was in the right hands.

Well, I remember when mom got home and pulled into the driveway.

I was at the, you know, I was at the door waiting to tell her what had happened.

And it was probably about an hour or 45 minutes after she arrived home that they, the relatives, came and picked her up.

They were very kind to me and, like I say, very appreciative.

There wasn't a big transaction.

We gave them the baby and it seemed like they were off.

As soon as the relatives had departed and the baby was gone, so was she.

So I'm sure that she went with the child.

And by then we had learned what had happened.

This young woman had been having an affair with Donnie

and she had just asked her husband for a divorce so that she and Donnie could carry, you know,

forth their lives together.

And her husband was a Brigham City policeman.

And after his shift, he had gotten drunk and then drove down to our little town to settle the score.

He shot Donnie

and then he shot the mother and she was holding the baby.

They were standing in the kitchen and she was holding the baby at the time and the baby fell with her to the floor, which of course explained the blood on the pajamas.

And then the shooter turned the gun on himself.

So the thuds that echoed over our peaceful orchards had been bullets.

This sort of thing just didn't happen in our part of town, and it had given me some celebrity to have it happen right next door.

So, the next day,

when I returned to school, I was a center of attention because everybody wanted to hear this story.

You know, it had made the Box Elder Journal by then.

So, and I told them about the policeman, I told them about the gunshots and the baby, but I left out the ghost.

Why didn't you want to tell them

at 12?

You crave ordinary.

I didn't want to be seen as unusual or different.

And the other part of that is, this was a private and very powerful experience that I was hesitant to share.

It was mine.

Now,

some people

have something

right over their shoulder.

After the break,

stay tuned.

From the creators of Snap Judgment, welcome back to Spooked.

Now, I'm pretty sure it was Mulder or maybe Scully who once said that running parallel to our existence is the world of beasts, of others, of the dead

that it's right there right here next to us all the time

and yet occasionally these two overlapping worlds collide

it was quiet and calm and you could see all the birds, you could hear the frogs.

It was just beautiful.

It's It's wherever I went when I just needed some time to be by myself or just to think clearly for a while.

And I ran into one person ever, a lady walking her dog, and I'm pretty sure I scared the life out of her that there was another person in the park that day.

So I remember I had been on the phone with my then-boyfriend, and I don't remember what we talked about, but I remember he said something that made me think he was a chauvinistic, not nice person.

And I remember yelling at him and telling him that if he knew anything about me, he knew exactly where I was going to go.

And I hung up the phone and got in my car.

I drove off to the park.

The sun was already kind of down behind the tree line, but it wasn't dark yet.

And I pulled into the parking lot.

And I thought it was weird that there was two cars there.

And you know how police cars will sit side by side so they can talk out their driver window?

it was like that so they were talking to each other

and when i got out i remember the the man in the truck just staring at me in in this horrible way like like you know when when someone just looks at you like like they're looking through you like you don't exist or don't matter

well This is weird.

No one's ever here.

It's late.

Why are these two men here?

And then I thought, ah, they're leaving.

I don't care.

I have my own problems to deal with.

I'm going.

And I only took my keys with me because I don't want to have a big clunky purse banging around with me.

So I headed across the field.

I didn't look back at the parking lot.

To get into the woods, you really had to cross through the field to find an opening because there's no trails.

You kind of just have to know where there's places you can cut in without going through thorn bushes and getting torn apart.

I headed into the woods where the opening was and I started to walk towards that little spot in the creek.

And I was taking my time because I was calming down and I was just listening to the birds and sounds and just

calming.

Like that's all I was thinking about, you know, the argument I just had and what I wanted to do and should we break up and all those stupid things that go through your head.

And

then I started realizing it got really quiet.

Like, I didn't hear the birds anymore.

I didn't hear the squirrels bouncing around the leaves.

And then I heard something big moving through the woods.

And I was thinking in my head, I'm like, maybe it's a dog.

And then I heard the voices.

And the first voice is a male's voice.

And he said,

I know I saw her go in this way.

She couldn't have gotten that far.

And then the second voice comes and it's quieter.

And it says,

shh, she'll hear you.

Okay,

so there's two men in the woods now and they must be looking for something, obviously.

They're looking for something.

And I kept thinking, it must be a dog.

They're looking for their dog.

That makes sense.

Of course.

They must have lost their dog and they're driving around looking for it.

And then I thought, they wouldn't be being quiet.

They wouldn't try to sneak up on it.

They'd be whistling.

They'd be calling.

And I stood there frozen because that's the kind of person I am.

I'm the deer that stands in front of your car, staring into your headlights and doesn't move.

And I could still hear them coming closer to me through the woods.

I could hear the trees, the snapping of twigs as they were walking and leaves crunching.

I don't even know how long I stood there, but I was completely frozen, waiting for them to get to me.

And then

I heard the other voice.

It was distorted like

if you heard somebody talking through a closed door or talking underwater, like you could hear what you could understand kind of what they were saying, but

the voice wasn't right.

It wasn't in my head because it had like a volume and a pitch that changed.

That my thoughts don't do.

Maybe other people's thoughts change in volume when they get upset, but mine are very monotone.

So

I could almost feel where the voice was coming from.

Like if someone yells, you can kind of feel where they're standing at, like where the sound comes from.

And

it was behind me and a little above, like it was taller than me.

It just said,

go to the river now.

And I don't know if I was more scared of the fact that there's some disembodied voice talking to me or maybe there's a person behind me now and there's two men coming towards me in the woods.

I don't know which scared me more.

I mean, I guess I listened to the voice because

I don't know.

I didn't really have other options.

I took off towards the river and I was making a ton of noise because I was just running as fast as I could.

And the voice came back right away and said, no, quietly, quietly, and almost like it hissed at me when it said it.

Quietly.

And I got to the river the river was and where this little embankment was, and I just jumped down it instead of climbing down like I should have.

I ended up cutting my legs up in the process.

And I squished myself against the embankment and squeezed down into the smallest, tightest little ball I possibly could.

And the voice just kept saying really quietly to stay.

And I just sat there hoping that whoever else was in the woods was just going to leave and that I wasn't having some kind of breakdown.

And I kept hearing them moving through the woods and getting closer and closer.

And then I could tell they had split off because one sound was going further away and one was coming much closer.

And as I sat there, that voice just kept telling me stay stay and quiet

over and over again like like it was almost trying to comfort me

i could hear what sounded to me like like someone was right above me

and i knew if i leaned out

if someone was up there they'd be able to see me And I couldn't help myself.

I had to look to see if something was there.

So I just tilted my head up just a tiny bit and I could see the tips of these construction boots hanging over the edge of the embankment.

And then I could see hanging down next to them this dirty old rope just swinging there.

And I don't, I don't even know if I even thought anything at that point.

Like I was just so scared.

I just tilted my head back down and just tried to not breathe.

It felt like hours, but I know it couldn't have been that long, but it just seemed forever.

And even then, like the voice even was completely silent.

Like there was nothing but me hearing this man breathing above me.

And I guess he didn't look down because he started to walk away at some point.

And that voice came back and it kept telling me to wait.

And

I didn't want to.

I wanted to go so bad.

And I just said, well, I'm already hearing voices.

I have people in the woods with a rope looking for something, which I assume is me at this point.

And I might as well just listen.

So I waited and I waited.

And finally, the voice said, go now to the field.

Go.

And it was screaming at me so loud.

I jumped just from how loud it was.

And I climbed up the embankment and I ran through the woods.

And I didn't care about being quiet.

I'm torn up by thorn bushes and tree branches and everything.

And I got out to the field and I'm far, far, far away from the cars and from the street.

And at this point, the sun's starting to go down.

It's getting dark and I could see the parking lot, but it was so far away.

And I knew there was limited chance that anybody on the street could see me.

And I'm running and I start hearing footsteps running.

And I mean the field's loud, so I can hear them.

And they're first they're farther away, but they're much faster than I am.

So much faster than I am.

And they're barreling down on me at this point.

And the only thing I have is my car keys.

And I'm like, you know what?

I'm not going down like this.

So I put the car keys and I did what my dad always used to tell me to have the keys between each one of your knuckles.

And I had my fist all balled up and I'm like, I'm going to at least see this person.

I'm not going to just let them take me.

And I spun around with the keys in my fist.

The footsteps are right on top of me.

And there was nothing.

Nothing.

I fully expected to see

at least one of the men there,

but it was silent.

No more footsteps, no anything.

And the only thing I could think was

the footsteps must have belonged to the voice somehow.

And then I hear the voice again, just screaming at the top of its lungs that I need to run right now.

And I immediately hear the footsteps again.

So I'm looking as I'm running now, but I can't see anything.

And the footsteps are literally in pace with me now, like something is running next to me through the field.

I'm thinking in my head, I'm like, I have no idea.

This is how people die.

Like, I mean, I have like a thousand crazy thoughts running through my head because none of this makes any sense.

Finally, I break out of the field.

I get in my car, got my keys in the ignition as fast as I could.

And I see both the cars that had been running that were leaving are now parked in different places with nobody in them.

I had like cuts and scrapes from, you know, the embankment and climbing back up all the rocks and running through the thorn bushes.

And I definitely remember my tires making squealy sounds as I backed up way faster than I should have.

And I just sped out of there and I refused to look behind me in the rearview mirror.

I just kept picturing picturing like in every bad scary movie there's that person that you see in the rearview mirror and I'm like I'm not gonna have an image of them haunt me.

No, no I don't ever wish to hear it again because I assume if I do I'm in a really bad place.

I assume if I ever hear it again something really terrible is happening.

I mean don't get me wrong.

If there hadn't been a voice, I probably wouldn't be talking to you.

I would probably be a missing person's case somewhere in somebody's drawer.

I can only assume it meant good things.

I mean, it got me out of there.

Those are the stories we have for you.

We want to hear the stories that you've got for us.

Please let us know your story.

Record onto your phone device, Dingy, and send it to spooked at spookpodcast.org.

Big love to our guests this week, Janet Larkin.

Thank you for taking care of the baby.

Janet's book is Surrounded by Ghost.

And thanks so much to Shelly Shaffery for sharing your story with Spooked.

Shelly has not heard that voice since it's recorded.

You'll have links to more information about those stories at spookedpodcast.org.

This episode was produced by the Ghostbusters at Snap Judgment with special thanks to Mark Ristich, Anna Sussman, Eliza Smith, Nancy to the Lopez, and Jody Colli.

Original music by Pat Lacedi Miller, Leon Murimoto, and Renzo Gorio.

And especially, if you're afraid, huddled in the corner, waiting for the ghouls to kick open the door, always remember, and don't forget to never, ever, never

turn out the lights.