Night of the Living Bed

There was a time when we lived in small clans

before lanterns or constables are helped

where near the end of each day before the sun sets you have to hurry back to the safety of the group

Because darkness is not your friend bad things happen at night.

But even twilight,

the almost dark, that can be tricksy as well because on the trail, on the path,

it can be very difficult to distinguish between friend and foe.

Specifically at this time, seeing only the silhouette, the shadow,

it can be impossible to tell a wolf

from a dog.

Well, as we walk this dark path and we see that dark shadow,

I'm gonna just cut to the chase

that figure off in the distance

that ain't no cocker spaniel

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I look over.

He's got this small burlap pouch.

Tiny like half the size of his hand.

He's holding it to his ear like he's listening to something.

I'm trying to keep my eyes on the road.

What you doing?

Don't worry about what I'm doing.

But him, it is always something.

We get to my place.

He puts his stuff in my guest's bedroom.

Takes out the pouch reverently.

Pulls open the string, pours the contents into his hand.

Looks like cheap glass marbles with a few rocks.

Like trash.

He notes the disdainful look on my face, smiles.

You'll see.

I follow him back to the guest room where he breathes on each little marble, then sets it down on the carpet into a circle.

Some kind of summoning.

His movements are eager, practiced.

This is a ritual.

He's done this before.

I kneel down on the floor across from him, wondering what new religion it is this week.

And he says,

I'm gonna turn out the lights,

and then

you're gonna see.

See what

see.

He turns out the lights,

and I look

into the dark bedroom

where I see

nothing.

Okay.

Maybe my eyes need time to adjust.

I don't know.

I sit one minute, five minutes, and I'm getting annoyed.

Sitting here in the dark with my crazy brother.

Do you see?

See?

Nigga, what do I see?

What?

After a few more minutes, he flicks on the lights, snatches up his baubles, no ritual about it this time, shoves them back into his burlap sack.

Now he seems angry,

furious, not at me.

It's like he's mad at the sack in his hand.

Holds it up to his lips, hissing, just me, huh?

Taunt me.

Trying to make me look like a fool.

I don't know what all this is for.

He turns, walks out of the apartment, comes back about a half hour later.

Bruh,

what's going on?

I buried it,

but

in the back.

Look, man,

I don't know what you're playing at, but you can't be burying stuff here.

The property manager is going to be all in my case.

It has to learn.

What are you talking about?

I found magic,

but

it might be the wrong kind

it might be

the bad kind

and then

for the first time since we were kids

his mask falls

and I see something like fear

Like terror in his eyes, wild, a mind desperately trying to make sense sense of pieces that don't fit

and i'm scared too

more afraid than i've ever been

because i've been missing something

for a long time

we are all strange in my family i know my brother is odd he always has been but

As the closest person to him,

I should have understood that this

is not that.

This is different.

He's not okay.

He's not alright.

He's not.

And I've been blind to it.

Maybe even

made myself blind to it.

I gotta give him some help.

I don't know what to do, who to call, but I've got to get him some help.

The rush of fear in my ears is so loud I can barely hear him.

He tells me that

more often now

his magic assumes the form of a man.

That he used to be a handsome man, radiant, loving, but lately sometimes the man arrives covered in scales, speaking in riddles, cloaked in huge leathery bat wings.

My brother retrieves his sack from the buried hiding place outside, says he wants to start the ritual over, says he wants to summon the magic forth, says he wants me to speak with it.

That I need to see it for myself, that maybe I could talk to it for him.

Please, he says, please,

brother,

I think you need to leave this alone.

Instead, he starts placing marbles in a circle

and turns out the lights.

In the gloom,

his eyes focus on something.

Something directly in front of us.

He asks me again, desperate, pleading, do you see?

Can you see?

Yeah.

I see.

Spokestars

now.

You see, often

the universe sends us signs.

Warnings, for sure.

Sometimes though, those signs, they're saying something very different than we first suppose.

We travel now to Jammu, India, to meet Rina.

And Rina lives in a big house with her brothers and cousins, but there's no time for playing.

Reena's always busy studying.

When night comes, Rina just wants to rest.

But one night, sleep doesn't come very easily.

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One day, I had been studying until very late at night, and I decided that it was time for me to go to bed.

I put my nightclothes on and I sit up on my bed and I take out my mala.

A mala is like a rosary with wooden beads on it.

I was praying on my bed with my eyes closed and totally into it.

That was a routine.

I had never wanted to miss my praying for even a single day.

It was something which gave me a lot of peace.

Suddenly,

I felt that the bed was shaking slightly.

I thought I was imagining it.

Maybe I was tired and I am a little dizzy today.

But I was so deeply gone into the prayer that I did not want to open my eyes.

And suddenly, it just grew.

It felt like a gentle earthquake.

And I'm thinking, this is not my imagination.

So I jumped off the bed and I look at it

and I see it actually shaking as though somebody was moving it.

It was moving sideways

and I'm just looking around the room.

Nothing else was moving.

Only my bed was.

That spooked me out.

And after a time, it could have been like 20 seconds, it suddenly stopped the way it had started, like out of the blue, without any warning.

I was very alarmed, and I was very scared.

This was a solid antique wood bed, and it required a lot of strength to make that shake.

But who could be moving it?

I'm alone in my room.

I wanted to go to my mom's room, but I didn't want to disturb her because it was really late.

I did not want to create a ruckus.

So I just sit on the sofa and stare at the bed until I was just too sleepy

and I fall asleep.

This started started happening on a regular basis.

I would be sitting on my bed, I would be doing my rosary

and I would feel the bed shaking gently.

After the first few incidences, I could not dismiss it.

My bed does seem to have a mind of its own.

I tried talking to my father about it, but

he just looked at me and he laughed.

And he said, Okay, that's a good story.

Just calm down.

Maybe I'm just too tired.

My mom, she thought that it was something that was playing on my mind,

but she started teaching me new prayers, which did put me at ease, but the bed did not stop shaking.

Everybody thought that it's something that I was imagining.

Around that time, we had some people working for us.

We had two cooks.

They stayed with us for years, but they would be like forever complaining about sighting somebody walking in the backyard during the night.

When we would ask them, they would say it's a man dressed in all white

and he's walking across the backyard

and coming from the wall towards the shed.

To the far corner in the left we had a shed where we kept the gardening tools.

I started wondering if that was the same spirit that was making my bed shake every night.

I was tired that nobody believed me.

So one day I went up to my sister and I told her, Hey,

could you sleep in my room tonight so that if the bed shakes, you can feel it too.

She was my elder sister sister, and she did not want me to be scared, so she agreed.

So that night, there was a massive storm brewing outside, and there was a lot of rain.

We got into our nightclothes, we sat on the bed, and we started chit-chatting about what was happening in her college and other stuff.

Suddenly, the bed starts to move

and I'm looking into her eyes and say okay

this is what I've been talking about.

She looks at me with her eyes wide open and she says oh my god

the bed shakes gently at first

and then it started shaking violently.

We both jumped off the bed.

Suddenly, there was lightning.

We turned and we looked towards the window.

There was this black shadow on my window.

We both screamed.

Dad came to my room.

He looks at us.

He says, why are you screaming?

What's going on?

Both of us were like clutching each other.

And we said, Dad, look outside the window.

But when we looked back, there was nothing.

There was no shadow there anymore.

So he opened the door and he went out in the veranda and he starts looking around.

Suddenly he starts screaming, thieves, thieves.

Me and my sister, we rushed to the veranda and I looked down and I saw two men dressed in black trying to climb up to my veranda with the help of the water pipes.

It sends a shiver down my spine.

My dad yells, thieves, thieves, thieves, and they both fall to the ground and they start running towards the backyard.

They ran away.

We couldn't sleep after so much excitement, so we just stay up

and I'm thinking about

how we managed to stop the thieves.

It was all because of the bed shaking.

But this time the bed was shaking so much more violently.

Maybe there is a connection, but I couldn't really explain it.

Months later, when I was

getting ready to sleep, I closed my eyes and I

felt the bed start shaking.

As usual I just waited for it to stop

but it wouldn't

and it started shaking even more violently.

I was so scared that I ran to my mom's room.

I knew she was sick but I didn't care.

I just needed to be with her.

I opened her door and I saw her and immediately I felt something's not right.

My mom is lying on her bed and she has her eyes open but she has her mouth also open.

She just looks as though she's choking.

That sent a shiver down my spine because I had never seen her like this.

I screamed for my dad, for my brothers.

Come, come quickly, quickly, come quickly, something's wrong.

Everybody came.

My uncle down the hall, my aunt, everybody was standing in that room in no time.

They were saying, oh, something's not right.

She's not breathing.

Press on her chest.

Press on.

No, no, no.

Call the doctor.

Call the car.

Get the car out.

My mom gets admitted to the hospital.

My dad stays with her.

And we all get back home.

I knew she was in good hands, so I go back to my bed.

I started making a connection.

This presence in my room sent me to my mother's room and

helped me raise the alarm on time.

Also, the bed made us spot the thieves,

so it may be a good presence.

The next morning, we call the hospital and

they tell us that she is doing much better.

She would be alright.

At this point, my bed has been shaking for almost a year and a half.

I have just started living with it.

I have just started accepting it.

So this one day this sadhu came to our house.

Sadhu is a sage,

a monk kind of a person.

He was friends of the family and he used to visit us at least twice a year.

We were told that he comes from the Himalayas.

And most of the times he would be away somewhere in the hills meditating.

He would wear orange clothes, a loincloth, a tupatta on top and he was one of the most loveliest persons that I have ever come across.

We would like offer him food and he would regale us with stories.

This sadhu, he also had spiritual powers.

If something was lost in the house, he could tell us exactly where it was located by just closing his eyes.

So we were like very fascinated by him.

We gather in the main hall and we sit in a circle to talk to him.

I sat close to him.

I thought there would be no better person to tell me what exactly was happening.

Maybe he could see the presence that I was feeling.

I work up the courage and I say,

I've been feeling my bed shake violently at times and nobody believes that this is actually happening.

Some of my family members are laughing.

Some of them are

serious.

He looked at me

and when he looked at you, he would really look at you.

Then he smiled and said, Okay, take me to your room.

He just looks around, he touches the bed.

Then he went out to the balcony that looked towards the backyard.

He took a good look and he said, What's that shed over there?

Take me there.

So we all went downstairs and we took him to the shed where we kept the gardening tools.

and he says I can feel something here.

He stepped inside, started rummaging through the stuff that was there

and then he took out something which looked like a camandal.

A camundal is an open pot with a handle

and he took out a tattered mat.

He said,

whose are these?

Who's put them here?

These objects are special.

And my dad says, we don't remember putting these things here.

They've been here since forever, I mean, since the shed was built.

He said, dig, dig, there's something down below here.

You need to dig here.

Construction workers were called in and they started digging.

My whole family is there.

That sadhu is still there.

And while I'm watching these people dig the ground, I'm hoping to get some answers.

They didn't really have to dig very deep.

They found some khadamas,

wooden sandals which saintly people used to wear.

The sadhu called everyone to gather in the backyard.

He told us that this was the place of a saint who would come and pray here every day,

which continued in his afterlife.

This was a person who had made a lot of prayers during his lifetime and was on a spiritual higher plane than most people get to.

He had claimed that piece of land as his own, and then we made a shed there where we put all the gardening tools.

So basically, we had made this soul very angry.

It was all in his path.

And he pointed towards that wall where the cooks used to say that they saw him.

The sadhu said that this saintly figure was a good soul, but when annoyed, can be a force to reckon with, and

people have been known to die mysteriously.

You have been saved because this girl praying in her room every day has kept this spirit calm.

Maybe that has pleased him and he has spared your family.

And that's why he helped me and my mom.

When I heard the sadhu say this, it all made sense now.

I felt a sense of gratitude towards this spirit.

But my family is in awe and they look scared.

They are also asking the sadhu, what do we do now

he said this is his resting place so you need to clean this up and you need to build a shrine

which people call Darga.

We made a small block in the shed

and we covered it with a green cloth.

We put the sandals, the bag and the mat

and the usual stuff for prayers that we use, the lamp and some oil.

The first night after we had built the shrine, I remember sitting down there, lighting the candles, pressing the sandals and asking for forgiveness if we have done anything wrong or annoyed him in any way

and just

doing this over and over and over again.

I go back to my room and then lie down on the bed,

and suddenly I realize

nothing is shaking at all.

I slept undisturbed after that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Arina, for sharing your story with Spookt.

We are so glad you can sleep through the night now.

That story, the scouted by Edith Amatu,

was scored by Doug Stewart and it was produced by Eric Yanez.

Now,

walking down the street, people often stop me to say, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, I've got this story.

I was thinking about maybe telling you for the spook.

What do you mean?

Thinking about?

What do you mean maybe?

The best thing, the very best thing is a spook story from a spooked listener.

If you have one we need to hear, don't just think about it.

Let us know, spook at snapjudgment.org.

Spook is brought to you by the team that must uncover the mystery at once if the bed starts shaking.

Except, of course, for Mark Ristich.

He'd be surprised if the bed wasn't shaking.

There's David Kim, Zoe Frigno, Ann Ford, Eric Yanez, Teo DeCott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina Creeke, Elizabeth Z.

Pardu, Aditya Matu, and Lulu Jamaimo.

The spook theme song is by Pat Machidi Miller.

My name is Gun Washington.

From the time I was little, I tried to use the force.

Well, let's just be honest.

I tried to use the force last week to move objects to get inside someone else's mind.

These are not the joints you're looking for.

It hasn't worked yet.

But I think I still believe in the force.

Or at least maybe I believe in a force, some force, holding it all together and tearing it all apart.

Perhaps two forces.

I am often of contradictory thoughts.

I don't see why this force should be any different.

I've come to suppose

that the force is an amplifier of what you're already doing, of what is already there, that when you feel in a groove, when you feel you are doing what you're supposed to be doing, walking the path made for you that you made,

you feel the force.

The problem, of course,

is the dark side.

It is just as much a part of us as anything else.

The shadow has a calling for us, just as natural as our better angels.

A choice

is to choose which part of ourselves we want to feed.

What do you want to feed?

Which of course is just another way of saying, what do you want to be?

I like to think that one reason

I slept with my lightsaber turned on as a child was so that I could fight monsters, yes, but also

so that I would never,

ever,

never, ever, ever, ever, ever, never, ever

turn out

the lights.