The Empty Chair

March 14, 2025 33m

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Max’s mom is a seamstress. Most nights, she stays up late working. The buzz of her sewing machine can be heard all throughout the house. Max is used to the sound, and when he wakes up in the night, he likes knowing that his mom is there… But then one night he discovers that she may not be alone.

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As I prepare my instruments, I tell the person lying on the gurney that I have done this procedure several times.

Doctor,

doctor, she asks, will I be okay?

I turn on the gas and pull the anesthesia mask over her face.

Oh,

I'm not a doctor.

You've crossed over to Spooked.

Steady, tune.

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It's crazy to recall,

but in another life,

before spooked, I went to law school.

Walked the halls of power and at this law school, there's a list.

if you fight your way to the top of the list doors are open tables set futures are promised

but land further down the list

these same doors slam shut understand

the profession of law does not embrace people like me

I hear their whispers To even have a chance, I must land on the top of their list.

Yet I know pretending to belong here is a lie,

a make-believe mask.

Still, I need this.

My grandparents pick cotton.

My parents pick cotton for this chance.

against my better angels.

Against my weeping inner voice, I make a bargain with darkness.

An exchange older than time, I gamble,

but I can touch the shadow and remain unharmed.

So instead of ignoring their barbs,

I feed on every slight,

every dismissal, every sneer, stoking the heat of rage.

I hear them.

How do you get in here?

Black bastards, stupid, that smug laughter from those of the manner born.

I stoked the storm because

in the anger,

in the fury, there is power.

What?

Chad?

You think you can best me?

Beat me?

You don't know where I'm from?

I will skate next to madness, will you?

My rage reads their books again and again.

Rage whispers, they said you don't belong here.

Rage does not sleep.

Rage burns the midnight oil.

Rage checks and rechecks.

Rage knows each and every person is my enemy and treats them accordingly.

Because each and every person

wants what must be mine.

The terrible, awful, really bad thing is in the end, when I finally forced myself to walk alone, step by step, over to the judgment wall

to see the final grades.

I look up

and find my name high

on their list.

Not the very top.

But high enough.

Because rage

works.

rage was right rage is a truth teller a problem solver

but not a deed done

i need to put rage back in the bottle

because i want light

companionship laughter again to feel something

to feel anything beside fury

but this rage

this new self refuses to go

the broken vanquished better part of me wails

shrieking

screaming I told you

I told you we should never have let this monster in.

What

who

do you let in?

Max is just eight years old, lives in Santiago, Chile, with his three sisters.

His dad, his mom, and his mom's oppression.

I'll let Max take it from here.

Spooked.

My mom, she's a seamstress.

It was mostly for the community.

If kids had to have costumes for a specific tradition or like musical theater sometimes,

she would also

fix clothes for us.

And other moms in the neighborhood, if they needed something for their kids,

she would, would, you know, do those things.

So she was very good at that.

She would stay up late sewing.

Since it was a small house and the walls between each room, they were not very thick.

In the dead of night, we would hear the sewing machine going off.

It was a very

old machine, very good quality, but very noisy, especially especially at 3 a.m., 4 a.m.

It became a bit frustrating if I had to get up early the next day, but at some point it also became a bit comforting.

The

sound of the machine, it was telling me that she was there, she was present.

So it was probably around fall.

Me and my family were having lunch.

We were

just having some small talk.

We heard that the gardens gate was opened.

Which is very unusual because someone would need the keys to get in.

But we didn't give any extra set of keys to any uncles or family friends, so that was weird.

We looked at each other,

and after a couple seconds, we heard a knocking on the door.

My older sister, Solilab,

she made a joke about how it's probably the Mormons handing off, you know, Bibles or their little pamphlets.

My dad got up and walked to the door, opened it, and there was no one there.

So he comes back to the table and he says, oh, it's probably just a ghost.

We laughed about it because, from where I come from, it's what you usually say when you cannot really find the reason why something happened.

So, a week or two later, we're having lunch again on a weekend.

We're all sitting down and

small talking, and then it happened again.

We heard the garden gate open, and then we heard the knocking on the door.

I thought it was pretty weird, and I noticed that my sisters were a bit concerned because they exchanged looks.

But my dad, he just distracted us talking about things about the news that he didn't really agree with.

To just focus our attention away from that thing that we cannot really explain.

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I know, right?

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What movie is that?

I haven't pressed play yet.

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Jimmy, what have I told you about scaring our guests?

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One night, the sound of her machine woke me up.

And I felt the need to go to the bathroom.

So I just went out of my room

and I saw my mother's room.

I saw the door open

and I can see her from behind.

She's looming over the machine.

She didn't even notice that I was there looking at her.

She was just completely 100% focused on her sewing.

And next to her, she has this old wooden chair placed as if someone was next to her looking at her work.

I thought to myself, why is she working with the empty chair next to her?

But I just brushed it off, went to the bathroom, did my thing, and then went back to bed.

I remember a couple times, a couple nights, doing the same route, you know, needing to go to the bathroom at 3, 4, 5 a.m.

And my mom would never close her door.

It was always open.

So every time I would walk outside of her room, I would see her and the chair.

On Sundays, we all do a general cleaning of the house.

She would usually be on a weird mood and she would like to do things the way that she does it and in a very specific way or or she didn't want to be bothered.

but this Sunday I noticed that she was playing music very loudly

because she's in a good mood

she was

sweeping kind of to the rhythm of the song

we have two dogs that would try to play with the broom and she would usually tell them to piss off but that day she didn't and she was laughing with the dogs like playing with the dogs, which made a big difference to me.

It was curious to see her like that because I've been used to seeing her very

depressed for so long.

We all notice it.

My older sister, Soledad, she asks my mom, Hey, like, you seem in a very mood.

Like, did something happen?

Did something particular happen?

She just looks at us and she says, well,

lately I've been missing my mom a lot.

And for the past couple nights, she's actually

coming to visit me.

I felt surprised because by this point, my grandmother had died eight years ago.

She says that when she's sewing, she can feel that someone is behind her and that she can feel someone softly breathing next to her ear

and that

somehow she knew that it was her mom.

I felt like

a tingle through my spine.

I personally thought it was scary

to even picture that, that that you would be doing something at night by yourself, and you would feel someone breathing next to you.

But she said that she was not afraid.

And then she said that,

so for her not to get tired,

I would put a

seat next to me so she can sit with me, so she doesn't have to stand up.

So, after my mom says this out loud, I can see that my sisters are

as shocked as I am, my dad as well.

This awkward silence

takes over.

I think we all felt a bit bad for her.

I thought that she was getting better and it was actually just

that she thought that her mom would come visit.

No one really challenged her views.

I think we all felt more comfortable with her

having these moments of happiness than just

plain old depression.

My older sister, Solidad, she comments on how good the food is.

She's like, oh, yeah, the food is very good.

Like, thank you for making this

and changed the topic.

So it's a few weeks later.

I came back home from the mall with my dad, and my sisters are in

the living room.

I ask my sisters, where's mom?

And they tell me that she's in her room.

She spent in her room all day sewing, so I shouldn't, you know, go bother her.

We turn on the TV, we were watching something.

Then we hear her bedroom door open

and she comes crying,

like completely hyperventilating.

She's freaking out, so she couldn't speak very clearly.

I remember my dad grabbed her and hugged her, and we set her on the couch.

We put on some water to boil and we made her a tea.

And when she calms down, she tells us that

she

heard the phone ringing.

My mom had a phone of her own

in her room, in her studio.

And when she picked it up, she said hello.

Is anyone there?

She cannot hear anything from the other side of the line.

But then

before she decides to hang up, she starts hearing a breathing, a very soft breathing.

And then that breathing becomes louder

and raspier.

and more labored

And that's when she tells us that it sounded exactly the way that her mom would sound like at her last stage of her cancer.

And then my mom asks, Mom, are you there?

Like, is it you?

And then the breathing becomes louder and louder.

It becomes very, very deep and loud and calls for her name.

That's when my mom freaks out and throws the phone and leaves the room and comes to us.

I'm petrified.

I feel like my heart is racing because I can see my mom freaking out in front of me.

I saw on her face a very

special mixture of sadness and fear that I have never seen in anyone else.

I also saw that my sisters and my dad were freaking out.

He was walking back and forth in the living room, trying to get close to my mom, but also taking a step back because he knew that she was very upset.

So after this episode, my mom that night she didn't sew.

She went to bed pretty early.

She was very exhausted.

It was one of the few nights in which I didn't hear the sewing machine

that made me

very uncomfortable.

The following days, my mom became very depressed again.

She was not interacting with us as much.

She isolated herself again.

It was early in the morning, I would say 10 or 11 a.m.

I was sitting on the couch in the living room reading a book about dinosaurs because I was obsessed with them.

I hear my sisters talking in the dining room,

and when I go to

meet them, they are starting to burn the Palo Santo.

My older sister, Soledad, told me, like, oh, this is just, you know, a little ceremony.

thought it was exciting.

So they start burning the Palo Santo, and a lot of smoke is coming out of it.

Like a lot.

I've never seen so much smoke.

They were walking around the house slowly burning the Palosanto, and I got a bit scared because I thought maybe the house is going to catch a fire.

But then, when I was just surrounded by smoke, I felt very safe

as if it was, you know, a screen to protect me and protect us from this thing, from this spirit.

They started reciting these passages.

We waited for the Palo

to consume itself.

Nothing happens right away.

After this ceremony, we do our things as usual.

I don't remember that we even talked about it,

but I instantly felt safer.

To me, that was enough.

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OAK offers non-stop flights to your favorite destinations across the U.S.

and Mexico with new non-stop flights to Los Cabos and Zacatecas.

OAK makes travel easy with Park OAK's convenient parking options.

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Learn more at iflyoak.com, the best way to San Francisco Bay.

Oh, watch your step.

Wow, your attic is so dark.

Dark.

I know, right?

It's the perfect place to stream horror movies.

What movie is that?

I haven't pressed play yet.

AT ⁇ T fiber with all-fi covers your whole house.

Even your really, really creepy attic turned home theater.

Jimmy, what have I told you about scaring our guests?

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After the ceremony took place,

we were sitting in the living room in the couch.

We were all cramped against each other watching this reality TV show.

On the right side of the couch, there is the door to enter the house.

And the lights were off.

The only light that was on was coming from the TV.

I feel this icy cold wind pass in front of us.

I thought to myself, maybe I left the window open.

But then I immediately remembered that I closed all the windows earlier.

It was very strange.

After the wind passes, after a couple seconds, I see this shadow

pass

between us and the light from the TV.

It's about a meter and a half tall

and it doesn't really have a definitive shape

and when it passes between us and the TV, it doesn't completely block out the light.

It's still semi-transparent.

What is that?

And I noticed that my sisters and my mom also reacted to it.

We all saw it.

We all kind of stood up from where we were sitting,

and

we saw the door open

it is an old door that makes a lot of noise but this time it didn't

it opened very smoothly

i felt goosebumps all over my skin

We were all looking at each other

and before it even closed we heard the garden gate open.

And after a couple seconds of just silence and tension,

the door closed very strongly.

And then we heard the garden gate close again.

My sister kind of jumped and screamed, and my mom was

just

shocked.

My sister turned to my mom

and they said at almost the same time like

did it leave

and to me that was what gave away that we were all thinking the same thing.

After all that I went to bed and I heard my mom get into her studio.

She turned on the sewing machine and after a couple seconds she started playing music again.

I heard that specific blend of the buzzing of the sewing machine and the music and it made me feel safer.

I woke up again around 4 a.m.

and walked up to her room and the seat was not there anymore.

It was only her sitting by herself.

To me, that also felt safe

because I felt like my mom was coming back from where she was before.

Nothing ever happens again.

personally think that

there was this spirit,

and that was the thing that was opening the garden's gate and then knocking on the door.

To me, what made this

spirit evil was that it slowly came close to my mom, pretending it was my grandmother.

This spirit, this entity, is

scaring everyone on purpose.

And my grandma, being the sweet lady that she was, she would never do that.

She would never scare us.

It wasn't till my mid-20s that I came up with the theory that maybe my mom let in this spirit to our house.

My grandmother, when she started to get sick, my mom developed some sort of avoidance to, you know, the painful reality of what it's like to have a mom with a cancer.

So she started going to their family house much less.

And when

her mother died, she started

feeling these

very strong

feelings of guilt and shame.

I can see my mom

just sewing for hours in the middle of the night.

I always pictured her just thinking about her mom, ruminating about their relationship,

hearing the door

and inviting it in.

She was hoping that it was her mother coming to visit her.

It was almost a promise of

making peace with her past.

Thank you, Max, for sharing your story with the spooked.

That piece was scouted by Elizabeth Zipardieu, was scored by Lalene St.

Just,

was produced by Zoe Frigno.

Now then,

sages, have long told us that we share this place with entities that are not us.

not angels not demons neither good nor bad but other

and other wants

other needs

sometimes every once in a while

Other wants what we have and this is a very dangerous place to find yourself and I wonder if I know someone who's interacted with the other

perhaps that someone is you.

If so,

I'd love to know about it.

Please send a message, a picture, a passenger pigeon, spook at stepjudgment.org because understand,

there is nothing better

than a spook story from a spooked listener.

Spook just brought to you by the team that doesn't need to touch the fire to know that it is hot.

Except for Mark Ristich.

Because to Mark,

every day is a brand new adventure.

There's David Kim, Zoe Ferrigno, Ann Ford, Eric Yanez, Taylor DeCotte, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Helena Creeky, Elizabeth Zipardu, Adithia Matu, Lulu Jemima, the spook theme song is by Pat Masiti Miller.

My name is Kim Washington.

And you know Arthur C.

Clarke, the brilliant writer, futures thinker, he once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

And he's kind of right.

You flip a switch, light appears.

Tap an app, food arrives, magic.

But

what about when you're lying in bed?

And you know with 100% certainty that someone is watching you from the corner of your room?

What about when your three-year-old daughter points to an empty chair and she asks, Daddy?

Why is that man crying?

Technology doesn't explain the handprints that appear on the insides of your windows.

Doesn't postulate why your dog growls at empty doorways.

Doesn't suppose how sometimes you can smell your grandfather's cologne years after he's passed, right when you need him most.

No.

Mystery doesn't care about our algorithms because Clark had it backward.

Magic isn't what happens when technology advances.

Magic is what happens when technology fails.

When we need to know someone else has walked this valley, someone else sees through this illusion and it might be a candle.

it might be a torch

it might be just the strike of a match but whatever you do

however you do it

never

ever

never ever never ever never

never

turn out

the lights