A Friend In The Forest - Classic

Speaker 1 The best kind of friend does exactly what you want, laughs at all your jokes, and never asks for the last piece of pizza.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 you might have to settle for someone a little less easy to get along with.

Speaker 1 You're listening to Spook.

Speaker 2 Stay tuned.

Speaker 3 The day begins at the Chase Sapphire Lounge by the club at Boston Logan Airport. You get the clam chowder.
In San Diego, it's tostadas. New York, espresso martini.
It's 10 a.m. Why not?

Speaker 3 It's the quiet before your next flight, the shower that resets your day, the menu that lets you know where you are. This is access to over 1,300 airport lounges and every sapphire lounge by the club.

Speaker 3 And one card that gets you in. Chase Sapphire Reserve, the most rewarding card.

Speaker 4 Learn more at chase.com/slash Sapphire Reserve. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank and a member of FDIC, subject to credit approval.

Speaker 6 Carl's Jr.

Speaker 7 is the only place to get the classic Western bacon cheeseburger.

Speaker 6 Those onion rings, all that bacon, that tangy barbecue?

Speaker 7 Well, have you tangoed with spicy western bacon?

Speaker 6 Can you ride out the jalapeno heat? Take a pepperjack punch. Hmm?

Speaker 7 For a limited time, it's high time for a spicy western reintroduction.

Speaker 6 Rankle the best deals on the app.

Speaker 9 Only a Carl's Jr.

Speaker 10 Available for a limited time. Exclusive app offers for Register My Rewards members only.

Speaker 11 This is Marshawn Lynch. You and I make decisions every day.
But on prize picks, being right can get you paid. So I'm here to make sure you don't miss any of the action this football season.

Speaker 11 With prize picks, it's good to be right.

Speaker 9 Download the Prize Picks app today and use code Pandora to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That's code Pandora to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.

Speaker 9 Prize picks, it's good to be right. Must be present in certain states.

Speaker 12 Visit prizepicks.com for restrictions and details.

Speaker 14 Check out an internet.

Speaker 13 Video, like,

Speaker 13 obtain Wi-Fi in Mazuin with local connection fiber with Al-Fi. ATNT connectar locambia.

Speaker 13 ATNT Fiber is connected to the maiden salads. So here the visa covertura wife extended TTN concerned.

Speaker 1 Our farm was in rural Michigan, surrounded by woods and swampland. And when my parents' screaming inside our trailer grew too loud, those woods were great to get lost in.

Speaker 1 I'd follow animal trails through the brush, beat back swarms of biting flies, knowing that no one else in the history of time had ever cut through as far or dug in as hard, ever.

Speaker 1 So one day, deep along an Almost Trail, I came across a well.

Speaker 1 And this well, made of crumbling brick set into a circle,

Speaker 1 had the heavy metal lid sealing it from the top.

Speaker 1 And I thought I could lift it, maybe have a drink of water,

Speaker 1 when I heard a knock.

Speaker 1 Clear as that bright summer day, a knock from inside the well, as if someone

Speaker 1 inside

Speaker 1 wanted to get out.

Speaker 1 And I sat and heard the knock again

Speaker 1 and again, but

Speaker 1 no.

Speaker 1 Of course,

Speaker 1 I didn't lift that lid.

Speaker 1 Instead,

Speaker 1 I backed away.

Speaker 1 I turned and I ran home. Didn't tell anyone.
Still,

Speaker 1 I trekked back out there the next day and heard them knocking again.

Speaker 1 More frantic, maybe?

Speaker 1 Maybe, maybe?

Speaker 6 Not.

Speaker 1 Hello?

Speaker 1 Hello?

Speaker 1 And again, I did nothing.

Speaker 1 Then the next day,

Speaker 1 I made the trek all alone, sweating under the sweltering Michigan sun, and once again

Speaker 1 I sat to wait on the sound.

Speaker 1 But this time,

Speaker 1 I heard nothing.

Speaker 1 I strained,

Speaker 1 pushed up close against the well.

Speaker 1 Nothing.

Speaker 1 Nothing.

Speaker 1 Nothing.

Speaker 6 Even then it was so hot

Speaker 1 and I was so thirsty.

Speaker 1 But I knew inside

Speaker 1 this well

Speaker 1 was water that

Speaker 1 I would never drink.

Speaker 1 You're listening to Spooked. My name is Glenn Washington.
Question Everything.

Speaker 1 And of course,

Speaker 1 this goes without saying,

Speaker 6 never

Speaker 6 open the well.

Speaker 1 Today we begin Spooked in the land next to the Vale, Ireland. where Shane Dumphre spent years working with kids as a social worker.

Speaker 1 Shane thought he'd seen it all until he met a little boy named Gregory.

Speaker 1 Due to the sensitive nature of this story, some names have been changed.

Speaker 15 There's a small coastal town in Ireland that locals call the most westerly point in Europe, but it can feel like the last place on Earth. To the east, it's cut off by miles and miles of dense woods.

Speaker 17 The Finnegans, they lived just on the edge of these woods, so I found it extremely difficult to get there.

Speaker 15 It was 2007, and Shane Dunphy was fairly new to town. As he made his way to the Finnegans for a house visit, he couldn't see any clear street signs to follow.

Speaker 17 You go off one little country lane, down another by road, off another little laneway. The trees seem to close in overhead as you come up to the house.

Speaker 17 This tiny little sort of two-up, two-down workers' cottage, which looks like something out of Grimm's fairy tales.

Speaker 17 It was quite eerie.

Speaker 17 So I arrive out and I meet Gregory.

Speaker 15 Shane had learned that Gregory was continuously sneaking off at night into the woods.

Speaker 17 He had reddish blonde hair, grayish blue eyes. He was maybe a little bit on the small side, and he doesn't really want to talk to me.

Speaker 17 Everyone imagines when you work with kids that, you know, conversation flows immediately, and it didn't at all. He pretty much froze when he saw me.
And what I did was I played this game with him.

Speaker 17 Okay, I'm going to ask you questions.

Speaker 17 You can shake your head for no, nod for yes okay so you go to school in the village and he nods for yes and i say okay and your teacher is a six foot tall blue bunny rabbit and of course he laughs and says no and we go on like this and eventually he admits that he does go out at night into the woods to play and that he snuck out at night to meet this other friend

Speaker 17 And he told me that this other little boy was called Thomas.

Speaker 17 Now, this is the first I'd heard of this. Certainly, Orla the mum hadn't mentioned it.
So I thought, right, this is interesting. And so I ask him, Where did you meet Thomas?

Speaker 17 Did you meet him in school? Did you meet him in church? You know, did you meet him on the internet?

Speaker 17 But he shakes his head no to all of these questions.

Speaker 17 Look, Gregory, you're going to have to tell me where did you meet this guy? And he tells me that he heard him. And I said, What? You heard him?

Speaker 17 And so he brings me up to his room.

Speaker 17 His bedroom is a tiny little space. There's some posters up on the wall of like football players and Formula One cars.
There's a little dresser.

Speaker 17 And then there's a window looking out onto their little backyard which exits out through a little gateway into the woods.

Speaker 17 And he says, I heard him. calling me from down there

Speaker 17 and he said i got up and i went to the window and I looked out and there was this little boy standing just under that tree over there.

Speaker 17 The little boy saw him and beckoned to him and he told me that Thomas was living alone in the woods.

Speaker 17 I told him, maybe I should meet him. Maybe he's hungry, maybe he's frightened.
Gregory was absolutely adamant that Thomas did not like adults, was afraid of adults.

Speaker 17 Their world was just between the two of them.

Speaker 17 I'd worked an awful lot with kids who were habitual runaways, and they're either running to something or they're running away from something.

Speaker 17 I felt that this was a very lonely, very isolated little family. You know, the dad, he had left them.
The mum was working three jobs. He was lonely.

Speaker 17 So I thought it was absolutely normal and reasonable for Gregory to create a little playmate for himself. Gregory Gregory has an imaginary friend.

Speaker 15 Before leaving the Finnegan's that evening, Shane told the mom to start inviting Gregory's friends over or have him join a soccer club or youth group.

Speaker 17 Anything to get him an outlet so that he doesn't feel the need for this. And I reckon that the running away and the imaginary friend will disappear.

Speaker 17 About two weeks later, just I think it's over the lunch break actually that I got the phone call and it was from a police officer who immediately said, you've been doing some work with the Finnegans or the mum said you might have some input into what's happened.

Speaker 15 Gregory had disappeared the night before. The cops didn't find him until the next morning, miles away from home in the thick of the woods.
Gregory said he'd been playing hide and seek with Thomas.

Speaker 15 and that Thomas was still nearby. But the cops found no trace of the boy.
Well, except for one thing. When they got back to Gregory's house, they searched the area outside his window.

Speaker 17 And they discover two sets of footprints.

Speaker 17 The guard Harry showed me a photograph of one of the sets of footprints with some measuring tape beside it for scale.

Speaker 15 One set of footprints was larger than the other, but they both clearly belonged to children.

Speaker 17 My heart dropped because I thought, oh my gosh, Thomas is real?

Speaker 17 And that really frightened me. Is Thomas being used to lure Gregory into something really, really sinister?

Speaker 17 I've been involved in cases before in the past where children were used to literally draw kids into paedophile rings, child abuse situations.

Speaker 17 Now that doesn't happen every day, but these are realities.

Speaker 17 So the big question on everybody's lips was: who is this child?

Speaker 15 Shane talked to Gregory's mom again and told her to put a bolt or a padlock on all the doors and to hide the keys so that Gregory cannot escape anymore.

Speaker 10 Oh, Oh, watch your step.

Speaker 6 Wow, your attic is so dark.

Speaker 16 Dark?

Speaker 6 I know, right?

Speaker 16 It's the perfect place to stream horror movies.

Speaker 16 What movie is that?

Speaker 6 I haven't pressed play yet.

Speaker 16 ATNT Fiber with Al-Fi covers your whole house, even your really, really creepy attic turned home theater.

Speaker 14 Jimmy, what have I told you about scaring your guests?

Speaker 16 Get ATNT Fiber with Al-Fi and live like a gagillionaire.

Speaker 10 Limited availability coverage may require extenders at additional charge.

Speaker 4 At

Speaker 8 After 8 p.m. for $5.99, get a Cali Classic single, fries plus chicken stars.
Or get a spicy chicken sandwich, onion rings plus chicken stars.

Speaker 6 This deal is stacked.

Speaker 8 Don't hit the sack. Hit the drive-thru.

Speaker 6 Build your own bag.

Speaker 8 Just $5.99.

Speaker 6 Only at Girls Jr., you build it, you eat it. Order your bag on the app and unlock even more Burgers Insides.

Speaker 20 Available for a limited time at participating restaurants. Tax not included.
Price may vary, not valid in the offer discount or combo. See ya for details.

Speaker 21 Feeling drained, foggy, or just not yourself? This could be the effects of low testosterone levels. Henry Meds has you covered.

Speaker 21 Our testosterone replacement therapy, or TRT, is available in pills, injectable, or daily creams. Many patients report improvements in energy, mood, and focus.

Speaker 21 Though individual results may vary, TRT may support sexual function. Go to henrymeds.com/slash TRT to consult a healthcare provider to see if TRT is right for you.

Speaker 21 Take the first step to feeling your best again and get $50 off your first month at henrymeds.com/slash TRT.

Speaker 17 I was starting to feel a certain sense of responsibility towards the family at this point. And also, I was starting to, I liked Gregory.
I thought he was a nice kid.

Speaker 17 I thought he was interesting and funny. And, you know, I kind of started to quite enjoy hanging out with him.
So, one afternoon, we went out for ice cream.

Speaker 15 Shane wanted to see if he could get Gregory to open up a bit more about Thomas, and he did.

Speaker 17 Gregory, he was really at that particular time enjoying games on his PlayStation. And then he said, actually, Thomas doesn't have a PlayStation and he doesn't have an Xbox.

Speaker 17 And I said, well, what does he like then? What games does he play? And Gregory told me that he had a specky.

Speaker 17 I immediately said to him, do you mean a ZX Spectrum? And he he said, yeah, that's it. That's what he has.

Speaker 15 The ZX Spectrum was a game console popular in the 80s.

Speaker 17 And this is what really jarred with me. He said, the two games that he says are his favorites are Manic Minor and School Days.

Speaker 17 Now, these were the two big games. when I would have been about 13 or 14 years old.
So we're talking 1984, 1985.

Speaker 17 You know, I was really fascinated by this. What else? And he said, well, what's the A team? Thomas tells me it's his favorite show.

Speaker 17 Again, I'm bowled over. The A team.
I said, well, that's like an action show that was on, again, when I was a kid. Gregory.

Speaker 17 Gregory mimicked one of the catchphrases from Mr. T.
Because he said, I pity the fool who doesn't like the A team.

Speaker 17 What the hell is all of this about?

Speaker 17 This child Thomas, who was a huge dilemma and mystery and a cryptic something that I couldn't even understand, who was engaging in all the things that I engaged with, there was a part of me that was drawn to it.

Speaker 17 But hang on a minute, we've stopped you getting out. I said, so how are you seeing Thomas then? And he said to me, that Thomas is getting in.

Speaker 17 How do you mean he's getting in? Explain that to me. He said to me, I wake up at night and he's in my room.

Speaker 17 Now that sent a chill right down my spine. I felt a very powerful sense of urgency that we needed to get to the bottom of this before something really terrible happened.

Speaker 17 And I did. I pushed him again, you know, look, I really need to meet him.
And he's just like, no, absolutely not.

Speaker 17 I had come home quite late one evening. I'd had a really rough day at work and I'd kind of fallen asleep.
And I remember being woken up by my cell phone ringing.

Speaker 17 It was Orla on the other end and she was really upset, very agitated and she asked me, could I come out to the house really quickly because something had happened.

Speaker 17 I said to Rina, look, should I call the police on my way out? Has somebody tried to break in? She said, no, the police can't help us with this. Now that kind of freaked me out a little bit.

Speaker 17 I thought, oh my gosh, what has gone on? I got in my car, got out there as quickly as I could. She brought me into the kitchen and she had an old cassette recorder sitting on the kitchen table.

Speaker 17 She said play that. So I played it, had to actually pick it up and almost put it to my ear to hear what was being said.

Speaker 17 Gradually I realized what I was hearing was two distinct voices, one of which was clearly Gregory's. Gregory saying, no, mommy gets afraid when I go outside to play with you.

Speaker 17 But the other was slightly lower and sounded almost as if it were coming from an older child. And I could hear the other child's voice becoming quite annoyed, quite agitated.

Speaker 17 You know, look, you know, you have to play fair. It's your turn.
You need to come out with me now. She got the sense that he had stood up.

Speaker 17 And at that point on the recording, I heard Orla, Gregory's mother, bursting in. I heard her saying, you know, Gregory, are you all right?

Speaker 17 She told me that when she went into the room, Gregory was on his own, but she said the window was open and on the rug on the bedroom floor, there was soil and pine needles and little twigs, as if somebody who had been walking around in the woods had been standing there.

Speaker 15 Shane went out back and he did see a drain pipe running up the side of the house right beside Gregory's window. He figured that was how Thomas was getting in.

Speaker 15 For the sake of the mom, Shane threw out another possible explanation.

Speaker 17 Could it be Gregory pushing the fantasy to a new level where he's creating these two voices himself?

Speaker 17 But usually when children do that, they're very, very deeply psychiatrically disturbed. And that just wasn't Gregory.

Speaker 17 I was just telling myself that these were just two frightened little boys who had found each other and somebody needed to help them.

Speaker 15 Shane sat down with Gregory again. He had to ask him who he thought Thomas really was.

Speaker 17 The words he used was Thomas was from the woods, almost as if he was a part of the woods.

Speaker 17 To be honest with you, it kind of slightly gave me the creeps to hear him say it, because I felt that maybe he did understand an awful lot more than we assumed he did.

Speaker 15 Shane hadn't really talked about this situation with with anybody outside the family, so he confided in the school principal, who was also a friend and could perhaps shed some light on this mysterious boy who lived in the woods.

Speaker 17 He kind of suggested that I had somehow stepped into kind of like a rural legend about a girl who had become pregnant by her father.

Speaker 17 The father had brought her out into the woods to a cabin and he had kept her there and made her have her child in this shack.

Speaker 17 And the story went that she gradually became crazier and lonelier and more estranged and she took to wandering the paths of the forest.

Speaker 17 If she were alive today, she would have been the closest neighbor to the Finnegan family.

Speaker 15 Shane dug up some newspaper clippings about this local legend that dated back to the mid-1980s. One mentioned that the woman's child had been 10 years old.

Speaker 17 We were never given the name of the little boy. However, the name of the man who had allegedly fathered this child was Thomas.
The third article told of her suicide.

Speaker 17 This woman had taken herself out into the woods and had hanged herself. And there was a photograph of the living room of the house that this woman had lived in.

Speaker 17 And it showed the TV and the couch and a coffee table. And sitting on the coffee

Speaker 17 this little square black box with the grey keys and a little, um, literally a spectrum rainbow pattern in the corner, was a ZX Spectrum home computer.

Speaker 17 What the hell is going on? This is just too weird.

Speaker 18 JPMorgan Payments helps you drive efficiency with automated payments and intelligent algorithms across 200 countries and territories. That's automation-driven finance.
That's JPMorgan Payments.

Speaker 12 JPMorgan Internal Data 2024, Copyright 2025, J.P. Morgan Chase ⁇ Company, All Rights Reserved, J.P.
Morgan Chase Bank, and a member, FDIC. Deposits held in non-U.S.
branches are not FDIC insured.

Speaker 12 Non-deposit products are not FDIC insured. This is not a legal commitment for credit or services.
Availability varies. Eligibility determined by J.P.
Morgan Chase.

Speaker 12 Visit jpmorgan.com/slash payments disclosure for details.

Speaker 17 I wondered had Gregory somehow overheard a conversation about the case?

Speaker 17 Maybe were the Finnegan's in some way related to this family?

Speaker 17 But again, I realized I was grasping at straws and I was now starting to think, I really don't know what's going on anymore.

Speaker 15 But Shane kept poking at it. According to one newspaper clipping, there was a local priest who had befriended the woman and he was still alive.

Speaker 15 But when Shane went to see him, the man didn't want to talk. Shane was running out of Leeds to chase.

Speaker 17 I got a call from Orla. She was borderline hysterical.

Speaker 15 Gregory was gone, but this time it was different. Orla had been preparing breakfast in the kitchen when suddenly Gregory shot past her and out the back door.

Speaker 15 She called after him, only to see him run into the woods. And he wasn't alone.
There was another boy. pulling Gregory by the hand.

Speaker 17 We did call the police, but

Speaker 17 their reaction was: look, you know, literally, he's only gone. He's gone an hour, he's run away before.

Speaker 17 If he's not back by this evening, give us a call again, kind of thing. They were growing weary of the case at that stage.

Speaker 17 I called George Taylor, the principal of the school, who was my friend and who knew the woods intimately.

Speaker 15 And he had the principal guide them through the woods to try and find the two boys.

Speaker 17 We could see two distinct sets of tracks and they were heading north. Eventually, after a couple of hours, we came across a kind of a hollow in the woods.

Speaker 17 In that hollow, there was an old shack, an old stone ruin. Gregory was lying up against the wall of this shack asleep, which I thought was very strange why he would have gone to sleep, but he was.

Speaker 17 I went down into the hollow to Gregory. I remember I kneeled down beside him and woke him up.

Speaker 17 As I did that, suddenly we heard the sound of a child crying. This seemed to be coming from all around us and kind of in my head as well.
I said to Gregory, you know, where's Thomas? Where is he?

Speaker 17 He said, he's over there. I looked over and there was a child standing a distance away in the trees.
I could see that he was wearing a kind of a, like an anorak with buttons and he had a hood up.

Speaker 17 I remember I took my eye off him to say something again to Gregory and when I looked up, he was closer. Impossibly closer.
He couldn't have bridged that distance in the time that it took.

Speaker 17 And I looked again and he was closer again and at this stage I could actually see him quite well. You know, I could actually see kind of grass stains or moss stains on the knees of his jeans.

Speaker 17 And the sound of the crying was was even louder. It was so loud it was hurting at times.
I remember I picked up Gregory and gave him to George and George said,

Speaker 17 we have to get out of here. You know, we need to go.
But there was still part of me that wanted to help this kid. Here he was, he was standing right in front of me and he looked like a boy.

Speaker 17 I held out my hand. I said, come on, come with us.
You know, we can talk about whatever's going on.

Speaker 17 As I said that, something crossed his face.

Speaker 17 I don't know whether it was a look of fear, or a look of anger, or a look of uncertainty, but it was like a rope had been tied around his waist and suddenly it had been pulled back through the trees.

Speaker 17 He was gone.

Speaker 5 Just whoosh.

Speaker 17 The sound stopped. The crying wasn't there anymore.

Speaker 17 We took Gregory and we started walking back home. And I remember him saying to me, Is he gone now? Is Thomas gone?

Speaker 17 I didn't have an answer. I didn't know what to say.

Speaker 17 One afternoon, I'm in the office, and suddenly I look up, and Father Malone is standing in the doorway.

Speaker 15 Father Malone is a local priest Shane had tried talking to days before.

Speaker 17 And he's clearly very distressed. And he tells me that he had to come clean.

Speaker 15 He did know more about the woman in the woods. Father Malone had visited her often.

Speaker 17 She told him that she had been having violent thoughts towards her son. She had been thinking about killing him.
He said that he hadn't really known what to do, so he just offered a listening ear.

Speaker 17 Then, this one afternoon, he arrived out to the house. He knocked on the door, and there was no answer, and he was about to leave when he saw the woman walking out of the trees.

Speaker 17 There was blood on her clothes, smears of blood on her face. She told him that she had murdered her son.

Speaker 15 When Father Malone went to the police, they didn't bother to investigate.

Speaker 17 Everybody believed that the boy didn't exist, that this was a figment of the woman's imagination.

Speaker 15 A month later, the woman hung herself.

Speaker 17 Father Malone told me, sort of, that what we were seeing was

Speaker 17 the unquiet ghost or the spirit of this little boy who had been murdered.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 17 I kind of didn't really know what to say other than it added up. It, I suppose, kind of almost completed a circle in terms of everything that had been going on.

Speaker 17 A couple of days later, Father Malone and Orla and Gregory and myself went into the woods and we had a candlelight ceremony.

Speaker 15 They didn't go too far into the woods, just about 20 yards from the Finnegan's house, and they stood in a loose circle.

Speaker 17 Gregory held candles, which during the ceremony, Father Malone lit them from a sacred candle that he had brought with him. Now, to be clear, this was not an exorcism or anything like that.

Speaker 17 Father Malone wanted to acknowledge what had happened to Thomas. And I know that closure is quite important, but as to what the outcome was going to be, I really had no idea.

Speaker 17 He said a few words, just blessing Thomas, and,

Speaker 17 you know, that we all wished for him to be accepted into into heaven.

Speaker 15 Shane had explained to Gregory that they were saying goodbye to his friend.

Speaker 17 I think he felt glad that Thomas had gone somewhere where he was happy and safe. At one point, out of the corner of my eye, I fancied I might have seen a little figure among the trees, but

Speaker 17 you know, I don't know whether any of that was just what you expect in a situation like that. Then we went back to the house and had tea.

Speaker 17 That was the last anybody saw of Thomas. He didn't come back.

Speaker 1 Big thanks to Shane Dumphy for sharing this story with the spoot.

Speaker 1 You gotta know, there's so much more to this piece, so much more. We'll have a link to Shane's book, The Boy They Tried to Hide, at spookpodcast.org.

Speaker 1 That's the story we have for you. We want to hear the stories you have for us.
Some spooksters have already hit us on the spook line. Let us know your story.
Record onto your phone device.

Speaker 1 Then you send it to spooked at snapjudgment.org.

Speaker 1 The spooked Ghost Hunter squad includes Mark Ristich, Nancy Lopez, Eliza Smith, Anna Sussman, Jasmine Aguilera, and Taylor DeCot.

Speaker 1 Original music by Pat Messidi Miller.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 if it's close to midnight and something's evil lurking in the dark, and under the moonlight, you see a sight that almost stops your heart, always remember and don't forget to never, ever,

Speaker 1 never

Speaker 1 turn up

Speaker 1 the lights.