The Kids Aren't Alright

Little Jack Horner sat in a corner and Jack began to cry.

When asked what's wrong, he said forlorn,

I know who's next to die.

You're listening to Spoot.

Stay tuned.

I have a little nephew, seven months old.

He's beautiful, gritting, chubby, chuckling, little guy.

You can't help but want to squeeze on him.

I get all up in his face.

He looks straight at me, his full attention.

And he's smiling, laughing, reaching, grasping like he's never seen anything more delightful in all his short life than my roundy head, lips, my ears.

He's got him plenty to say too, but say to me

that he wants me to know.

I want to know, but then

somebody always has to come talking about, it's time for the babies now.

Okay, fine.

They lay him down in the other room.

Turn the lights back.

Be quiet for the baby.

All right.

All right, I'm quiet for the baby.

But I sneak into that other room.

I see him in his crib.

There he is.

And he's still talking to someone.

Smiling, laughing, reaching, grasping, focusing like whoever he's looking at, whoever he's babbling to is looking right back at him.

And I can't help but wonder what he sees.

Who he sees.

My mother says that I used to do the exact same thing.

She wondered who it was I was talking to.

Who was I looking at?

The same way I wonder who is it he's looking at?

Who is it he's talking to?

And if maybe

a long time ago, perhaps

I spoke to them as well.

Stroke starts

now.

Now,

I never played any of those games that you learn from other kids in school.

I didn't play Candyman.

I didn't step on any cracks.

I wasn't going to break my mama's back.

No way.

No way.

No matter how much my friends dared me to do what I knew better.

But some people,

some folk,

they need to see it.

To believe it.

Spooked.

Growing up, I was never afraid of anything.

I remember when Thriller came out.

I was little,

and all the little kids were terrified of it.

I would just be like, What are you scared of?

That's crazy.

This is make-believe.

It's no different than anything else we watch.

I was very logical.

I always looked for an explanation.

It's the beginning of the year.

I'm in the fifth grade, and I start to hear about this game.

Everyone is talking about Bloody Mary.

They're talking about it on the playground.

They're talking about it at the bus stop.

They're talking about it in our class when our teacher turns her head.

My friends tell me

that

to play this game,

you have to go into the bathroom and you have to say her name, Bloody Mary,

multiple times

in the mirror

and she would appear.

And if you were too afraid, you shouldn't say her name because she'll show herself and then she'll kill you.

We're waiting at the bus stop, and these boys won't stop talking about how Bloody Mary said she was going to come after them after they played the game at their house.

We played Bloody Mary yesterday, and she appeared.

We saw her.

She said that she was going to come after us and she wanted payback.

They're scaring my friends behind me.

My friends friends are sitting here terrified.

I'm so annoyed with this whole thing.

My friends are all scared.

These boys are tormenting us.

And I just feel like everyone is lying.

I feel like no one's seeing anything.

And they just keep talking about Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.

And meanwhile, I just really want to talk about something else.

I want to talk about Janet Jackson because I'm obsessed with her.

And I just want to talk about dancing and singing and playing and

just anything else besides Bloody Mary.

My friend starts crying at the bus stop because these boys won't stop and they threaten to say it again.

I tell them that Bloody Mary's not real

and I'm gonna prove it.

Later in class I'm doing my schoolwork and chatting with my friends who I sit beside.

Our desks are all lined up in this U-shape and our teacher stands in the middle.

Our teacher turns her back and the boys whisper to me

you're scared.

You're not gonna do anything.

And I want this over with and I want this over with now.

I say them,

watch this.

I raise my hand to go to the bathroom.

I get a pass from the teacher.

I march my way down the hall.

I walk into the bathroom and I can see the cement brick walls and

the dirty, dingy, dirty white paint.

And then I turn to the right where there's three stationary porcelain sinks and three mirrors.

And

at that point,

I gather up any kind of determination in me and I decide that I'm going to go ahead and play this game.

I hope nobody comes in here and sees me doing this.

This is so embarrassing.

This is such a stupid game.

I just want to see something

or have this be over with and prove to them that this isn't real.

So if there's something that's going to come out of this game, it better happen now.

So, I put my bathroom pass on the side of the sink.

I stand in the mirror, I go ahead and run the water a little bit, and I take my hand out of the water and I sprinkle it on the mirror, and then I proceed to look into the mirror

and

I start chanting

Bloody Mary,

Bloody Mary,

Bloody Mary,

And then

the lights go out in the bathroom.

It's pitch black in the room.

And

the only thing you could see is the reflection of the mirror.

That's really all you can see.

The rooms start shaking as if it's an earthquake.

Everything starts shaking.

The sink, the mirrors, everything.

I felt like the walls were shaking.

It's not a normal shaking.

It's

literally hearing the rattling against the cement

and seeing the sink shake that's firmly inside of the ground.

I'm terrified and hysterical all at the same time.

What's going on?

I look up in the mirror and behind me I see a white figure start to appear.

It doesn't come all at once.

It's about six inches, seven inches above the floor

and it starts appearing at the toes.

The feet are like kind of dangling as if they're just hanging there.

They're not standing.

They're just hanging and drifting there.

I try to shut my eyes and tune it out.

And I'm like, this isn't happening.

This isn't real.

Open your eyes.

Get a hold of yourself.

And I open my eyes again.

Then it more starts to reveal itself.

It's a white dress.

A long white dress, but it wasn't, it wasn't like a wedding dress.

It was just a gown.

Almost clear i see her black hair draped on her dress her hands are dangling her feet are dangling but there's no face like i i don't see a face

and i see some blood on her dress as if she was hurt

so i'm like i don't want to see it i don't want to see it

I run into the bathroom stall.

Everything's still shaking.

I try to keep the door shut, but it's shaking and everything's everything's moving.

I still see the white light in her nightgown.

I'm terrified and I'm crying.

And I just don't want to see this anymore.

I don't want to see.

I don't want to see.

I don't want to see.

I don't want to see.

I don't want to see.

Make it stop.

Make it stop.

Please go.

Make it stop.

Make it stop.

And

then all of a sudden, everything stops.

As I'm running out, even though the lights come on, I feel like

out of the corner of my eye, the figure is still there.

Not saying anything, not doing anything, just dangling.

The feeling I got, and

it just comes over me and it's almost like a heavy energy just flows from the top of my head and it's just like it's like a windburst down to my toes she just wants to be seen

i run out of the bathroom and i see the janitor in the hallway

i run to the janitor and i'm like why did the lights cut out is there an earthquake why did the power go out The janitor says to me, what's going on, honey?

What's going on?

What's wrong?

And I keep pleading with this janitor to tell me anything, anything that makes sense of what just happened in the bathroom because nothing makes sense at this point.

And he says to me,

Everything's on.

Look around you.

The lights are on.

They never went off.

Nothing was ever shaking.

So he takes me and I go

into the classroom.

I can't stop crying.

and

the janitor says to my teacher

she's so upset I'm gonna go check out the bathroom

and so he runs I can hear his keys slamming against his leg back and forth I'm in front of my teacher and she's consoling me and she's hugging me and she's like what's going on are you okay what's the matter

the janitor comes back and he says Everything is fine in there.

I didn't answer the boys

when they asked, What's going on?

I didn't try to tell them what I saw.

I didn't want to brag about it.

I didn't want to talk about it.

I didn't want to, I just,

I want to forget.

I was always a need to see it to believe it type of person.

So

that was my for sure.

Okay, Okay, you need to see it to believe it.

Well, here's your proof.

Something I said, something I did in my actions, maybe it was asking to see it.

I don't know, but

it opened up some kind of,

it opened up something bigger than myself.

I asked to see.

I got what I asked for.

Years later, my daughter comes home and she said some kid was at school talking about it.

And the only thing I said to her is, do not play that game.

Do not try it.

Don't do it.

Never ask to see a spirit.

Never ask.

She looks at me and she just kind of pulls back like, whoa, mom, like, why?

I just

said this like you don't mess with things you don't understand

thank you Danielle Addison for sharing your story with the spooked Danielle thinks a lot about the supernatural even when she's not on her show and if if you want to get to know her a little better, we'll have a link to her Instagram on luminary.link/slash spoot.

The original score for this story was by Stanley Itkiss.

It was produced by Zoe Frigno.

So when I was a kid, I'd go out and play with my friends in the woods.

We'd play hide and seek in the trees, jump in the lakes, swim.

See, these woods were our playground.

Our next storyteller, Maggie, she used to do the same thing until one day,

her world changed forever.

Spooked.

I grew up in a small town, central Wisconsin,

but it was always pretty quiet.

It's mostly just potato fields kind of out in the back and I've got, you know, a nice wooded lot behind me and pretty much there was woods and trees all over the place.

Imagine there's some houses, but multiple, like hundreds of thousands of trees.

Mainly these really big, tall pine trees that just kind of tower over you and you just sit there and marvel at it.

The thing I probably liked most about living where I grew up was being able to sort of have that freedom to, you know, go out and do those things I wanted.

You know, I could climb trees over into the neighbor's yard.

I could go biking and we could find some abandoned trailers or like an abandoned ditch in like some water areas.

Maybe there's a little hidden creek like a couple miles down on this dirt path.

Our parents weren't really in the picture all the time when it came to you know us playing around and stuff like that.

It was considered sort of a safe country neighborhood so kids could go out and stay out for long periods of time.

It was around late October, Halloween was right around the corner, so all the leaves were on the ground, everything was cold, old country land.

I went over to Brandon's house, and typically his parents would normally be there, but they weren't tonight.

So, his older brother Aaron was supposed to be watching us.

It was me, Megan, Brandon, and then Nate and and Gage.

I was around 12 or 13 at the time and everybody else was in that 9 to 10 range.

It was getting dark outside, everything starts to settle down a bit and we're like, okay, now it's time to start playing, you know, our hide and seek game.

So we decided to play Ghosts in the Graveyard.

So essentially how this game works is there's one person who's a seeker and the other people who go out and hide and there's this sort of central point that you have to get to as a person who's hiding to be able to be quote-unquote safe once you're in the game.

And that's how you win as somebody who's hiding.

Brandon is, he's a seeker.

And I'm getting ready to, you know, go to my typical hiding zone.

Down the lane, there's this edge of a property line sort of in the back.

And that's where there's this really big cusp of trees that have a lot of things that sort of fall in the bottom.

I'm a minority, so I've got this bigger, bushy, sort of head head on me and

got tan skin so it's easier for me to hide in the woods.

So I'm going over there

and

I see you know there's this little ditch and little ditches are good places for me to hide.

So I'm laying down

and I'm just waiting and I hear rustling over to my left.

I'm thinking like, all right, somebody else joined in my hiding spot like they're climbing up my tree so I'm gonna look up and I'm gonna say like hey get your own spot.

So

I look up and it's it's not any of the kids.

It's not anybody like that and there's instead these

two huge

tall beings and they had to have been like six to eight feet tall.

They're just these huge tall shadow type creatures that are just standing there and staring.

It was almost like the shadow that was their body also connected onto their faces like a hood.

These tall sort of oblong shapes that are just coming straight up almost like plants from the ground and then it's just the white face.

Rob, it's just

part of it.

It's not like attached coming out of it and they're just standing there with with these black holes for eyes and a mouth, but like it's they're not breathing.

It's like when you look at a you know, somebody who's just passed, and then you suddenly realize, like, oh my gosh, they're so still.

And it was that same sort of feeling: like, this isn't something that's moving, this isn't something that's alive, that's living, there's no presence, there's no form, it's just standing there.

the first thing i did when i saw these things was i like hesitantly asked like hello

and there's no response i asked again hello and

Then it was suddenly just like a weird energy sort of was like in the air and it was this kind of heaviness

when you're getting ready for like a storm to come over you know you feel that amount of pressure and that's what it was like it was like oh my gosh suddenly there's a storm here what what am I gonna do

I could feel and I could sense that they were talking It wasn't like talking, you know, like how you and I would talk.

It was this weird abstract form of communication and i couldn't discern what they were saying i just knew they were talking about me i don't know about what i don't know why i just know that they are

so then i look up and then all of a sudden they just go at each other

it was Just like at that moment, there was like some sort of snap between them where it was like they just suddenly came together so it was like two halves of a magnet just suddenly stick together and

it was like I don't know what's gonna happen like they're fighting about me they're fighting something related to me so then at that point I finally like I'm I'm booking it so I'm running I'm tearing up ground as I go.

I'm crying, I'm almost hyperventilating and I'm running out to like, I need to get back to the yard, I need to get back to the yard.

So I run over to the back of the yard and there's Brandon and Nate at this point.

And they're like, what's wrong?

Like, why are you crying?

Suddenly out of the woods, then here comes Megan and she's screaming.

So then we're all panicking and we're running towards the deck.

And then here comes Gage and he's holding his arm out of the other side of the brush on the other side of the house and it's bleeding.

We're all panicking, crying, and then here's Aaron who just got woken up.

So he's like, What's going on?

What do you want?

And I'm like putting through breaths trying to explain what's going on.

I don't even really have the vocabulary to explain, you know, what's going on, what I just saw.

I'm just like, there's, there was two people, there was people out there.

So he and Brandon both played baseball.

So they grab their bats from the garage.

And

Aaron's like, Maggie, you need to take us to where you saw these things.

And I'm like, I'm not not doing that and brandon's like i'll stay right behind you and we'll go

we finally go back to that lot line where they just were and they're not there anymore and i'm like relieved but also very much not relieved because that means that they're not there anymore so then where are they

so then we head back to the house we pulled Megan and Gage and Nate out from the basement and we're like, okay, like

trying to sort of debrief essentially.

Gage is saying, like, you know, they tried to grab me.

And so he's got these arms around his arm and he pulls away and he's running and panicking back into the woods.

Megan,

her experience was similar.

So she had like a group that came in.

and were trying to sort of get at her and that's when she booked it back towards us.

It was just

a bunch of experiences just all at the same time.

Having other people there to experience it, it's a minor relief feeling like you're not alone with it, but it's really, it's kind of that relief is overshadowed by the fact that, okay, if it's not just me, then that means that I actually have to face the fact that this is a thing that happened.

And then we head back to the house.

So then we're just sitting there and then

we look outside of this little back porch window and you know we we look at the tree line and there's like there's had to have been probably like eight to ten of these same types of beings just standing there at the tree line poking out their heads from it and just staring You can tell that they're just watching and waiting and they're just waiting to see what we do

And then feeling that panic wash over you when you're like, oh my god, like what are we gonna do?

We ended up in the basement again and then I got the call from Megan's mom that we had to go, I had to get her back home.

And since I was the one who brought her, I'm also the one who has to get her home.

So, it's like a mile and a half down the road, just right past another huge series of lots of trees.

And so I just, I grab the bat and

we book it, essentially down, and I get her home.

And then I have to go back by myself with this bat in the middle of the night.

So

I

run back, and like, I swear, like, I feel eyes on me in the woods, like as I'm running back, and then I rush back home myself.

And then it's just

really just like a blur, it's like a car crash, and then once it happens, it's over.

And then, what do you do with yourself?

So, none of us really ever went and played Ghosts in the Graveyard again.

We never got together and just played in the woods and it was this white elephant in the room where it's like, okay, nobody's going to talk about this.

Nobody's going to mention it.

Nobody's going to say anything.

But

it was sort of this weird experience like with limited information to go on to be like, okay, what were these things?

I think that the best way to describe them is they were interdimensional beings.

I don't think that they were from our universe.

I just think it was just some sort of break in the matrix between this world and the next.

And then there was something that wanted to see it, wanted to see our side of things.

I was over at my grandparents' house.

It was in winter, so it was around Christmas.

So it was...

like a month or two after this happened.

So then I'm going out to the car because it's our Christmas party, so family's all there.

So I have to go out to the car to put the gifts in the trunk, and you know, just as you do, or leftovers because we're Midwestern people, so you always have like eight things of leftovers of stuffing and turkey and whatever.

So I'm putting it back in the trunk, and I see them.

I see

those two white faces again, just poking out from the woods, like halfway up the tree.

And I just freeze and

try to you know accept like okay this is this is what's happening now

I think they were really just looking to see like if anything was going to happen with us after we had encountered them I don't think they intended for it to happen at all and I think after it did I think they needed to keep caps to make sure that it wasn't gonna go anywhere.

I think if we had spoken out, done something, I don't know.

I might have disappeared.

I still feel like if I were to go in the woods that I could see one of them again.

So I don't go in the woods.

And that's how I live my life.

Thank you, Maggie, for sharing your story with the spook.

Remember, you never know what's waiting for you in the dark forest.

The story comes to us from Spook correspondent, Greta Weber.

The original score was by Da Kim.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, it is that time.

Now, you've heard from other folk, but if you have a personal story that spooked you, where you touched a force, a power, a being that was not supposed to be there, where you had a relationship with the mystery, send us your story.

Spooked at snapjudgment.org.

There is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener.

But don't tell me you saw a ghost.

Everybody saw a ghost.

If you have a real story, though, let us know.

Spooked at snapjudgment.org.

And if you like your storytelling in the bright light of day, subscribe to the amazing Snapjudgment podcast because it might just change your life.

Spook is brought to you by the amazing team that says grace before each and every meal.

Everyone except for Mark Ristich, he just throws salt over his left shoulder.

There's Anna Sussman, our chief spookster, is Eliza Smith, Chris Hambrick, Annie Nguyen, Lauren Newsom, Leon Morimoto, Renzo Gorio, Taylor DeCot, Marissa Dodge, Leah Yates, Zoe Frigno, Greta Weber, Jacob Winnick, Sonic Hahn, Tiffany Lisa, Ann Ford, Fernando Hernandez, and Flo Wiley.

The spook theme songs by Pat McCini Miller.

My name is Lim Washington.

And it's an old trick.

Don't be fooled.

Even if they offer you candy, even then,

remember,

never,

ever,

never, ever, never, ever, never, ever

turn out the last.