Mrs. Hagstrom - Classic

Oh, watch your step.

Wow, your attic is so dark.

Dark?

I know, right?

It's the perfect place to stream horror movies.

Flick me.

What movie is that?

I haven't pressed play yet.

ATNT Fiber with Al-Fi covers your whole house.

Even your really, really creepy attic turned home theater.

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

Get ATT Fiber with Al-Fi and live like a gagillionaire.

Limited availability covers may require extenders at additional charge.

I don't mean to interrupt your meal, but I saw you from across a cafe, and you're the Geico Gecko, right?

In the flesh.

Oh, my goodness.

This is huge to finally meet you.

I love Geico's fast-and-friendly claim service.

Well, that's how Geico gets 97% customer satisfaction.

Anyway, that's all.

Enjoy the rest of your food.

No worries.

Uh, so are you just gonna watch me eat?

Oh, sorry, just a little starstruck.

I'll be on my way.

If you're gonna stick around, just pull up a chair.

You're the best.

Get more than just savings, get more with Geico.

See, if I'm on the street and someone slights me, knocks my papers to the ground, calls me names, even raises their hand to me, like what happened the other day,

the truth is, I'm likely to let it go.

To

slowly pick my things up off the ground, to say the calming word, even Even

to turn the other cheek.

Everybody just calm down.

Everything's going to be all right.

Understand, I'm a lover.

Not a fighter, but

if I'm walking with one of my babies,

my good children, my happy kids, my nappy-headed monsters, If I'm walking down the street with one of my babies and someone steps to one of them,

says something untoward,

or God forbid,

raise their hand in my child's direction and I see it, retribution will be immediate, unkind, out of all proportion.

There will in fact be held to pay just like any other parent,

any other parent.

And if the threat to them

is not the crazy dynamic street or the entitled imbecile with a thousand dollar briefcase.

But if this threat,

if this threat comes from beyond the veil,

then the pain

and the retribution,

well,

that's going beyond the veil too.

If you think that being a spirit gives you a place to escape,

think again.

Spook starts now.

Now then,

our first storyteller, his mother, she took her job, her job of taking care of him.

She took it very seriously.

Spooked.

I was actually sitting on the doorstep.

It was summertime outside eating a popsicle, and this strange-looking woman came up to the front of the house, and I was a little bit terrified of her.

She was our next-door neighbor.

She came over to the house to introduce herself.

It was the middle of summer and she was dressed in an old wool overcoat and had a scarf on and a hat and

she was a little bit creepy to a four-year-old.

I immediately just ran inside, got my mom, and my mom came to the door and I sort of hid behind my mom while my mother was talking to her.

At some point in the conversation, she sort of dropped in hints of what had happened in the house.

There had been some trouble and that the lady who had been in the house had died and had been through quite a lot of trauma.

The neighbor told us her name was Lucinda Hagstrom.

Once she had started to describe Mrs.

Hagstrom, My mother remembered finding a photo in one of the upstairs bedrooms.

She had me run up and grab that photo and bring it down.

It turned out that the photo was actually Mrs.

Hagstrom.

Photo of a young woman, probably on her wedding day, she kind of had an unhappy look to her.

Well, at that point, it was more of a curiosity.

My mother, she was just curious.

She's like, she knew she had lived in this house and she wondered what her dreams were for the house.

One of the first incidents that happened was actually to me.

It was a hot summer evening.

I was home alone with my mother.

I had gone upstairs to change my pajamas.

I was walking down the stairway.

I'm about halfway down when I can feel

what feels like a bony hand touch my back.

There was a terrible smell on the stairway at the time that it happened.

My heart started beating, and about halfway down, before I could grab the railing, it gave me a firm shove and pushed me down the stairs.

I looked back at the empty stairs and then I ran into the kitchen where my mother was doing the dinner dishes.

I was sobbing.

I tried to tell her what had happened.

She would have no reason to believe at this point that I was literally pushed down the stairs.

She looked at me carefully, making sure I was okay.

Looking over me like a mother would.

And then gave me a hug.

She's like, oh, it was just an accident.

I think you're okay.

A couple months later, I was also walking down the stairs.

I could feel somebody behind me.

I could sense that there was somebody behind me.

And then the cold, bony hand in my back.

But this time it wasn't just a a gentle shove.

This time it was a full-on forceful push.

And this time I went down the stairs pretty hard, hitting the bottom.

My parents heard me hit the floor.

They came running.

I insisted that I felt a bony hand.

There was something breathing on me before it happened.

It was smelly and scary.

My parents kind of looked at each other.

They probably had no idea was, you know, what was actually happening, but just a few months after we moved in, pretty much everybody had sensed something or heard something or seen something at that point.

There's four siblings.

They would hear voices, they'd have their hair pulled, they'd hear growling, footsteps.

Saw the face of Mrs.

Hagstrom in his bedroom window.

Would often have doors slammed.

We had two giant light fixtures and they started just to sway back and forth.

Somebody tapping on the window.

Lisa, she felt at different times things crawling onto her bed.

Our parents got us together one Monday evening and thought that they should kind of talk to us about what was going on in the house.

My parents' viewpoint at that point was, yes, there are spirits living in this house, but as long as you don't bother them, they are not going to bother you.

After that meeting, we kneeled down and, as a family, prayed with a prayer led by my father.

Him and my mother together instructed us, do not interact and they will leave you alone.

Which didn't sit very well with me because I obviously wasn't bothering them, but you know, I had been pushed down the stairs twice at this point.

Obviously, for me, even at a young age, I was like, I don't think so.

I don't think this is going to work.

The first major experience in the house that my mother had was pretty shocking.

It was a fall afternoon, and she was in the kitchen processing apples.

And she heard what she thought was a kitten in the basement meowing.

She decided to go down into the basement.

As she was walking down the stairs, the air just started feeling colder and colder and heavier and heavier.

She really just wanted to leave the basement of the house at that time, wanted to escape whatever was happening.

As she went down the stairs,

the sound sort of changed into

a baby crying.

It was that sound of the baby that stopped her.

She felt a tingle, like an electrical current, pass through her body.

And there standing before her was Mrs.

Hagstrom in the middle of the room.

My mother knew who she was instantly from the photo that she had seen when we had first moved into the home.

She told me that her...

her skin looked like ash.

as if a breeze would cause her to crumble.

Her hair was just in filthy strands hanging around her face.

My mother said her eyes were the most horrible.

Then suddenly she vanished.

Let me tell you about the online cannabis company that's revolutionizing how we deal with life's challenges.

From sleepless nights to stress-filled days, mood.com has created an entire line of functional gummies that target specific concerns with 100% federally legal THC blends delivered discreetly right to your doorstep.

You can get 20% off your first order at mood.com with promo code spooked for me.

The epic euphoria gummies are perfect for those days when you want to chill and hit the reset button.

What makes these different is how they've paired THC and other cannabinoids with herbs and adaptogens.

you're just not going to find gummies like this anywhere else.

No pesticides, no BS, and they can ship to most states in the U.S.

Best of all, not only does Mood stand behind everything with the industry-leading 100-day satisfaction guarantee, but as I mentioned, listeners get 20% off their first order with code SPOOT.

So head to mood.com.

Browse their amazing selection of functional gummies and find the perfect gummy for whatever you're dealing with.

And remember to use promo code SPOOT at checkout to save 20% on your first order.

Oh, watch your step.

Wow, your attic is so dark.

Dark.

I know, right?

It's the perfect place to stream horror movies.

Play me.

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?

Get AT ⁇ T Fiber with with all five and live like a gagillionaire.

Limited availability coverage may require extenders at additional charge.

Both my father and mother had had their own experiences with Mrs.

Hagstrom in the home.

So one day in June, my dad,

he had a Coleman lantern that he was working on.

And on that door that went directly into the basement, he heard what he thought was a tapping sound.

So he looks over there and he didn't see anything.

Continued to work on his project, continuing to work on the lantern.

And he heard it again.

The tapping kind of changed into a strong pounding.

So he gets up from his seat, goes to the window again, and he sees just beyond his own reflection

the gaunt face of a woman.

It just flashed and then it was gone.

You know, he's telling himself to pull it together.

Takes a deep breath and he just goes back to his work.

Kind of looked around.

Then he felt an icy finger kind of touch him on his forehead.

The finger then traced his forehead and his cheek.

Immediately after that, the Coleman lantern was flung from the workbench.

It crashed to the concrete and shards of glass just littered the floor.

As strange as this sounds, it eventually became normal to us.

We learned to live with what was going on in the home.

We had further incidents, but sometimes we just reacted almost indifferently to them.

But I feel like the fact that I was the youngest child in the family made me a particular target of Mrs.

Hagstrom.

I don't know if she thought going after the baby of the family would be particularly offensive to my mother, but I definitely seemed to be the target of a lot of what was going on in the house.

There was one night where

I was in my room.

I

heard the footsteps outside in the hallway, which we did almost every night.

And they would come and they would go.

I heard start walking into my room on the linoleum floor over to my bed.

I could feel

something pressing down on me.

Starting at my legs and then pressing down on my arms and my chest.

I essentially, I feel like the spirit was trying to

either enter me or kill me.

I was screaming, get off of me, get off of me.

I felt like a car was pressing down on me, basically.

It got to the point where I could barely breathe.

And I was gasping for air.

Like I said, all I know is at some point it did because I went downstairs and asked my mother why she didn't hear me.

Why didn't she respond?

I was screaming for help and she said that they didn't hear anything.

I think this incident was a turning point for her.

Up until that point, Mrs.

Hagstrom was simply an annoyance, but at this point she became a real danger to our family in my mother's eyes.

My mother was, I think, a very typical housewife at that time period.

She was very family-oriented.

Her family and her kids were everything to her, and she would have done anything for them, you know.

After we had lived in the house for many years, we noticed that my mother was starting to act differently.

She would have to go to bed for several days at a time.

As a mother, she tried to fight this, whatever it was, because she felt a strong need to take care of her family, especially with the events that were going on in the home.

Finally, dad told us what was going on:

that she

had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis

and we were just devastated.

She wasn't able to do most of the things that she did with us before so

it came to the point where she had trouble walking, she had trouble walking up and down stairs.

Increasingly, yeah, she spent more time in bed.

and just was unable to do anything.

It was a winter day.

It

a few, I believe it was a few weeks before Christmas.

I remember it well because we had had an ice storm.

There

was no power in the house, you know.

We had had problems with power off and on all that week.

But I remember walking home just feeling

really odd as I walked into the house because it was completely quiet.

So as I opened the door and flipped on the switch, there was no power, of course.

My mother was in bed, and I was the only one that had come home.

First, I went in and checked on my mom to see if she needed anything, and she told me she was fine and gave me a kiss and went back to sleep.

I went out to the kitchen table, pulled out one of my library books, and attempted to read.

It was just deadly, eerily silent in the house.

You could hear a pin drop.

I hear a thump upstairs.

I was just determined to ignore it.

At this point, I'm really hoping that some other member of my family would come home, but

the

pounding upstairs continued.

I just assumed it was Mrs.

Hagstrom up to her normal stuff.

Taking advantage of the fact that I was there by myself, my mother was sick, she was pretty ruthless.

Any opportunity she had to try to intimidate us, she would.

She knew my mother was sick, so.

I think Mrs.

Hagstrom's intent was to make my mother feel like she couldn't protect the baby of the family.

It increased in intensity to where there was just racket, footfalls, thumping.

I mean, I knew it was Mrs.

Hagstrom, but this was worse than it had ever been.

I heard a thunk, but this time the thunk was different.

This time it was the sound of my mother falling out of bed.

She

had originally just tried to stand up, and the first time she tried to stand up, she fell down, but she pulled herself up again.

At this point, my mother had had enough.

Never underestimate the strength of a mother when she's protecting her family, because at that point she's

she's done.

She walks out of the bedroom and I'm right there at the bottom of the stairs and I am like what are you doing?

You need to be in bed.

And she

somehow managed to walk up the stairs one stair at a time.

Each step was probably excruciatingly painful.

I wanted to go up there with her and she's like, no, just stay right here.

And I'm like, what can I do for you?

And she goes, kneel down there and pray for me.

I loved my mother so much that I was able to focus and do what she asked me to do, which was just stay there and just start praying for her, for her strength, so that she could deal with what she was about to deal with.

I'm kneeling on the floor right before the first step and I'm holding this candle because that's the only only way we could see.

She somehow made her way up the steps and

she got to the top of the stairs and

made her way to the storage room where all the racket was coming from.

This was Mrs.

Hagstrom's favorite hangout.

And she threw the door open.

Then the banging immediately stopped.

I don't mean to interrupt your meal, but I saw you from across a cafe, and you're the Geico Gecko, right?

In the flesh.

Oh, my goodness.

This is huge to finally meet you.

I love Geico's fast-and-friendly claim service.

Well, that's how Geico gets 97% customer satisfaction.

Anyway, that's all.

Enjoy the rest of your food.

No worries.

Uh, so are you just gonna watch me eat?

Oh, Oh, sorry.

Just a little starstruck.

I'll be on my way.

If you're gonna stick around, just pull up a chair.

You're the best.

Get more than just savings.

Get more with Geico.

My mother continued to grip the doorway and she had her flashlight and shined the beam of the flashlight into the room.

And at this point she was now fighting for her family, for herself, for everything that she believed in.

She yelled,

Come out, you coward.

Her body seemed to

have a temporary reprieve from her illness.

Her body straightened.

Her pain was replaced with what I would call divine determination.

And she just walked into the room like she owned it with strong strides and she just stood in the center

and that's when something she heard something whizz past her head in the darkness and it crashed against the wall behind her

As she put the flashlight on the object on the floor and she saw that it was that, it was the photograph.

It was the photograph that she had found so early on when we had first moved into the house, the photograph of Mrs.

Hagstrom as a bride.

My mother realized that part of it had hit her and that she had a cut in her forehead and she could feel the blood dripping down on her.

She just couldn't believe that she had actually, at some point, felt pity for this woman, you know.

She originally felt pity for, and this woman had spent all these years

terrorizing her family.

She was done, you know.

She had nothing left for that woman.

My mother screamed into the darkness: I'm not afraid of you.

I want you out of my house, and I want you out of my house now.

The room just was silent, completely silent.

The only sound was my mother breathing.

And then finally, Mrs.

Hagstrom just slowly materialized in the corner of the room.

In the most disfigured and horrible manner, a little more so than the first time she had seen her, her eyes were basically black sockets.

Skin was just gray and crumbly, looked like it was going to rot away from her face.

It was pure evil.

My mother just confronted her.

She's like, I'm not afraid of you, and I want you out of my house.

You need to leave.

Sort of a yellow, I don't know, maybe you could describe it as a yellow blaze, kind of just came from Mrs.

Hagstrom's spirit.

It's like a glow that basically filled the room.

She describes Mrs.

Hagstrom's spirit as wailing, and it was actually like writhing.

It was

fighting, fighting against my mother.

But it eventually faded.

But just before

the apparition vanished, my mother,

for just a brief moment, saw the spirit's face transform into the same young woman who was in the photo.

Just for a moment.

And then she was gone.

This experience, of course, had completely drained my mother.

She fell to the ground.

She was laying on the floor.

Soon after that, my brother had come home, and I remember yelling to him down the stairs to come up, come up, and

we got her into that bed.

And there was literally a change you could feel in the house.

Yeah, that was basically how the situation resolved for us.

It didn't resolve it completely.

She was still definitely there.

But she no longer bothered us.

You know,

don't get between a mother and your family because you won't win.

Thank you, Curtis Meyer, for sharing your story to Spookt.

Curtis would like to thank his parents and his siblings for helping him survive a very unique childhood.

Y'all need to run away more, in my opinion, Curtis.

But if you want to read more about what life was like in the Meyer family's haunted home, check out Curtis's book.

It's called Shadow of Fear.

And don't forget, listeners, if you have a scary story to tell, one you've been holding on to for a long time, drop us a line, spooked at snapjudgment.org.

And know this: if you dig storytelling in the bright light of day, check out our sister podcast.

It's called Snap Judgment.

It's available wherever you get your podcast.

Let the record reflect

the people have spoken.

Your wishes are command.

All new spooked episodes as we count down to All Hallows Eve.

Be afraid.

Spook is brought to you by every single sound you failed to investigate in the middle of the night.

And

Mark Listich and assessment, Eliza Smith, Jacob Winnick, original soundscape for the stories you just heard were by Yuli Morimoto.

The spook theme is by Pat Lacidi Miller.

My name is from Washington.

They say, you know, that they want you to come upstairs for just a moment.

They want to show you something.

Well,

reject their silent song, no matter how they word it, how they cry,

plead, beg.

Just remember this all-important safety tip.

Never,

ever,

never, ever, ever, never, never, ever

turn out the lights.