Episode #58: Ghost Story Special

Nova: Welcome to Mommy’s spooky podcast! (spooky laugh)

Elsie: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess podcast. This week, we’re taking a hard stop from all things cute and cozy and going full spooky with our listener submitted ghost story episode. Whether you believe or not, these stories are undeniably creepy and we think you’re going to love it!

Emma: Or hate it.

Elsie: (laughs) This week’s episode is sponsored by Grove Collaborative. We’ll share more about them later in the episode. So Emma, do you believe in ghosts?

Emma: You know, I knew you’re going to ask. I’ve been thinking about a lot, and I know people just want a yes or no. But I’ve never met a ghost. I’ve never had any experience where I met a ghost. That being said, I feel like there’s so many people who have ghost stories, many of whom I would say are very credible sources, people I think are smart and educated and not…

Elsie: 100 percent not liars.

Emma: Yeah, they don’t strike me as liars. So, you know, some stories you’re like, I don’t know. But then sometimes you hear one from a friend and you’re like, well, that seems probably true. So I guess I feel like probably? I’d give it a good probably. But I have never met one, so I don’t really feel…

Elsie: So you require, like, the personal experience to be 100 percent?

Emma: Well, yeah, I just feel like, I guess I would say I feel similar as I do aliens where I’m like, I feel like statistically yeah, there’s probably aliens, but I mean, am I a scientist? Am I a supernatural person? I don’t know. Not really. But, you know, it seems likely. The world is big. The universe is large. I don’t know. Do you believe in ghosts? (laughs)

Elsie: Ok. So I do believe in ghosts and here’s why. So in the next episode, I’m going to share my personal ghost story, which is more of my daughters. But after, so this happened about two years ago, we had this very kind of, I think, a real ghost story maybe. But after I put it on Instagram, I got like eight hundred comments, I’m going to link back to the place with all the comments.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah.

Elsie: Because it’s interesting, like there’s a lot of stories in there, like keep you up at night. And just reading through the comments and the messages that people sent me made me a true believer because there were so many stories and also a lot of it was like very reassuring. Like people were like, “don’t be scared of ghosts. They’re real, but it’s not scary and it’s normal for kids to see them.” And there’s just so much to it that I learned from that. So hopefully in this episode or the next one, maybe you’ll start believing a little bit more. Maybe everyone will. We took reader submitted stories for the past few months. We had a 60 page document that we both printed out. It really is sixty pages. And honestly, the only stories that, well, OK, we’re going to share about half the stories I would say that we got. So as we were reading through the sixty pages of stories, first of all, some of them are really, really scary and some of them are just kind of funny, like it’s all like full spectrum. And we’ll include some of both. There’s even one at the end where it’s like, gotcha. But there are some themes that kept coming up over and over. And I just want to say what the themes are real fast, because they’re really random. One of them is dogs. There was like a ton of dog ghost stories.

Emma: Mmhmm.

Elsie: (laughs) One of them was elevators, which I kind of would guess that, I guess because elevators are creepy even when they’re not haunted. Do you think so?

Emma: Mmhmm. Yeah, I don’t like being in elevators. You just feel like the cable could snap or who knows, you’re just in a room that’s floating. Yuck. I don’t like it.

Elsie: Yes. And then there was a lot of listeners had like four stories and I was like, OK, that’s not fair, that I don’t even have one, like I do have my one with my daughter, but I don’t have, like, my own where I’ve seen a ghost with my own eyes. I’ve been waiting my whole life and it hasn’t happened for me. So for it to happen to someone else four times, I feel like it’s just completely unfair.

Emma: Maybe there’s something about it, though. Maybe some people are more open to it or the ghosts are more attracted to them for some reason.

Elsie: Maybe. I mean, definitely so, obviously. I know I’m like, why can I attract a ghost? And the last thing I noticed that is so severe is that people will rationalize anything! Like there could be like, you wake up in the morning and there’s a knife sticking out of your kitchen counter and you’re like, well, maybe I left it there last night. Like, people rationalize that way. It’s like unbelievable the things that people rationalize in this, in these stories.

Emma: I think that’s very interesting to me.

Elsie: Yeah!

Emma: Like the psychology behind how we’ll kind of explain anything away or kind of just any change what we accept. Like we’ll just move the bar over and over and over again, I think it’s like a very fascinating thing.

Elsie: It’s human nature, I guess.

Emma: Yeah, I guess so. I find that very interesting and sometimes unbelievable. Like, if you didn’t know the story was true from someone who’s, like, telling their true account, you would be like, no, that wouldn’t happen. You know, like no one would do that, you know, but they do. This story comes from a listener named Caroline. I am going to read her account. (spooky sound) “When I was a little girl, about two years old, my mom and her spouse started looking for a house to move out of our apartment. We are French Canadian. So this happened to be the province of Quebec, which has a lot of history. So they’re looking at houses in smaller villages on the outskirts of Montreal with a commute of no more than 30 kilometers,” which she so kindly told me is eighteen point six miles, because I’m an American (laughs)…

Elsie: So, not far.

Emma: …and I don’t know about kilometers. Thank you, Caroline. “They find this lovely place called Marieville, which has about ten thousand people. This town was founded in 1708. So it has a fair bit of history.” Yeah, I’d say that’s fair bit.

Elsie: Yeah, that’s a lot for the US.

Emma: Yeah. Yeah. “So they’re looking at houses all lovelier than the next. We’re talking the pastel colored two hundred year old wraparound porches just gorgeous little houses.”

Elsie: Oh!

Emma: Yeah, those sound like a dream. I wish, I wish we had some photos like. I’m like, oh that sounds lovely. “So they finally come across this one absolutely perfect gem. My mother’s dream house and the owner even renovated the entire house to modern taste. This was around nineteen ninety one. The gentleman lived alone with his two little daughters and he was a very nice individual. So they’re visiting the house and my mom is all you had me at hello. About this place.”

Elsie: Ooh!

Emma: I know she’s into it, “So she’s about to put down a non conditional offer right then and there she was in love with the place. I cannot stress this enough. And then my stepdad asked about the basement situation because in houses this old, it’s generally just a dirt floor crawlspace,” which I’ve had houses like that. So I can understand that. “And the gentleman becomes visibly distressed.”

Elsie: Uh oh.

Emma: Uhhhh, “he confirms it’s indeed a crawlspace. And my stepdad asked if he can check it out so that he can see the foundations. The guy brings him down and then my stepdad comes right back up after five seconds telling my mom, nope, we’re out of here! And my mom is devastated! She’s asking what’s wrong? She’s like, is there mold or something? So the guy says, no, the house is perfect. But decades ago, another family that lived here buried their granddad in the crawl space.”

Elsie: Nooooo!!!

Emma: “There was a headstone and everything. And the reason I’m selling is that he very much still lives here. He’s not mean, persay, but he’s definitely loud and drunk.” (laughs) “He bangs on the walls and laughs at all hours of the day. And honestly, my daughters and I have had enough. My mom and stepdad thanked him for his time and hightailed it out of there.”

Elsie: OK, what I love about this story is that were you not going to tell them? And then you admitted that you have a drunk ghost? Like you went from like low honesty to full honesty so quickly. It’s so funny.

Emma: And Caroline is a child in this story. So I’m like this gentleman who is supposedly a nice individual, sees there’s this little girl who’s going to live in this house with the drunk ghost and doesn’t even warn them. Like, I don’t know. I mean, I understand he was trying to move, but I think you kind of need to give people a heads up on the drunk ghost.

Elsie: I think that ghost disclosures are definitely a gray area, though, right?

Emma: Yeah. There was once a really good episode of Criminal Podcast. I’ll link it in the show notes. If anyone likes that podcast with Phoebe Judge, I love it. But there’s this one episode that’s kind of about like disclosing a ghost during a sale. And if it was legal, there’s some precedent. So it was kind of interesting.

Elsie: Oh, my God. OK, I want to hear that. Well, tell us like just tell us a spoiler. Is it legal or not?

Emma: Well, this was in the US, so the story we just read was in Canada. So that’s different right there. But basically, yeah, I think they were like, you should have disclosed that it was haunted. So the sellers got out of it and it was because they had kind of like been in a magazine article or something. So even though it was like the law wasn’t saying you have to prove the existence of a ghost, because I don’t think a law could really do that. They were kind of saying, hey, you’ve already been telling the press that your house is haunted, so you needed to disclose that to the buyers. So they got out of it, which was cool, I guess. Anyway, it was interesting because I love real estate and ghost stories are interesting. So it’s a.

Elsie: Yeah.

Emma: It was a fun episode.

Elsie: And whether or not that is a deal breaker for you is kind of like whether or not mold is a deal breaker for you. It’s a personal decision.

Emma: Yeah, you might consider it a perk if you wanted to live in a haunted house.

Elsie: You’re right, actually. OK, this next one’s a good one, OK?

Emma: What is it?

Elsie: It’s Amy, so this is a ghost story coming from Springfield, Missouri. Ok, if you all didn’t know, that’s our hometown where we were both born, where we both lived most of our lives. So I’m going to love this. “This is my hometown. And my parents bought a historic home here about 20 years ago. The house will be 100 years old next year. I’ve known the house was haunted from the very beginning. Not only did it immediately feel a presence, but several little things happened. First, like lights turning on and off by themselves, a table fan turning on and off by itself when it was turned off.” You always check and it’s always off. “Furniture in a different position than how we left it.” Ugh…

Emma: Yeah that’s weird.

Elsie: That’s like creepy to me. “Unexplained old ragtime music playing faintly in the living room.” That’s weird.

Emma: That’s weird.

Elsie: (laughs) “I saw what looked like a sparkly glitter falling down through the air, landing on a staircase one time I was more than convinced, but my parents refused to believe and laughingly explained away all these things” as they always do!

Emma: I don’t know how you explain the ragtime music. I feel like the glitter on the staircase. I’m like, OK, I could be like, this is some really beautiful dust.

Elsie: Yeah…

Emma: But the music?! How are you going to explain that? I guess you’re going to say it’s a neighbor. I guess if your neighbors are close enough?

Elsie: I’ll just say, my lights and my fans don’t turn on and off by themselves. So yeah, but I don’t know.

Emma: Sometimes old houses…I just feel like the music to me is the most compelling one where I’m like, I don’t see how you explain that one very well.

Elsie: I agree. But wait for what’s next.

Emma: OK, ok.

Elsie: OK. “Then came the night around Christmas time a few years ago. My aunt, who knew nothing of the goings on in the house, spent the night on the couch in the living room downstairs. She said something woke her up. When she opened her eyes there was a man and a woman standing over her, looking down at her. She tried to scream, but then nothing came out and then they vanished. She was so shook up and just white in the face the next morning telling us about it. This was the first visual we had ever heard of. But I told her I totally believed her. Sadly, she never came to visit again.” That’s so sad. But who can blame her, right?

Emma: I don’t know if I would visit again, though, I’d be like, I’m a good. One, I had to sleep on the couch. Two, there was a ghost.

Elsie: You ghosts are tearing our family apart!

Emma: Mm.

Elsie: “I don’t know if our residents have left now or if they’re just lying low, but they were kind souls. Curious but kind.”

Elsie: All right, this next one is from Jade. So my dad is from a very tiny village in upstate New York. It’s actually near a national park, so it’s very woodsy and secluded. My parents ended up buying the house my dad grew up in after my grandfather passed away. And now we stay there and visit every summer. That’s really sweet.

Emma: Yeah, that is.

Elsie: “The house was built in 1852.” So an oldie, “And both looks and feels like it. It also has a creepy ambiance and it’s in the middle of the woods surrounded by wild animals and kind of falling apart.”

Emma: Hmm. Ok, getting the picture.

Elsie: I can see it in my mind!

Emma: So you’re saying it’s a haunted house in the woods! (laughs)

Elsie: “I always slept upstairs in the bedroom that my late grandmother had decorated completely in black and white decor. On either side of the bed, there was these old fashioned touch lamps, the kind that turn on when you tap them.” I always wanted one of those, by the way.

Emma: Mmhmm.

Elsie: That is old fashioned now, though. Like, I don’t feel like you see that kind of thing around anymore. “They had three settings, tap once for dim lighting, twice for medium, and three times for the brightest light. They’ve been there ever since I can remember. So one year I was sleeping in this room when I was awakened by the lamp being on the brightest light setting. This was kind of weird because I’m an extremely light sleeper, so I thought I would have woken up with it even at the dimmer setting, but I figured I was just sleeping extra hard on my pillow.” See the explaining. They always rationalize.

Emma: Yeah.

Elsie: “And maybe I touched the lamp accidentally, so I scooted my pillow back and all of my blankets so that it wouldn’t happen again. And I touched the light to turn it off. Then I went back to sleep. I woke up again, same thing. The lamp was again on the brightest setting. Without moving my body, I turned my head to look at the lamp and saw that nothing was touching the lamp or even close the lamp. I was a little freaked out, so I turned over and touched the lamp again. Close my eyes this time still facing the lamp just in case. Immediately it turned back on. It skipped both the lower settings and immediately went to the brightest setting. I opened my eyes very freaked out at this point and touched it off. Same thing. It immediately turned back on and jumped to the brightest setting. I did it a few more times, sort of playing chicken with the ghost in the middle of the night.”

Emma: Weird. Although I do wonder, not to be a skeptic, but what if just the lamp was short-circuiting or?

Elsie: OK, let me finish. Let me finish.

Emma: OK, ok.

Elsie: OK, ok. “Finally I didn’t know what else to do so I pulled out the nightstand and unplugged the lamp. Part of me was afraid to unplug it just in case it happened again, but it didn’t happen. After I unplugged it, it stopped turning back on, telling myself that it must have just been a wiring issue. I was eventually able to fall back asleep. In the morning when I felt braver. I checked the electric situation and tested the lamp over and over and over. And I saw that both of the bedside lamps were plugged into the same outlet. But during the night, only one of them was turning on and off. Both lamps were working perfectly the next morning, they hit all the settings just like they were brand new. It’s also worth mentioning that this happened about eleven years ago. The lamps are still there and they still work perfectly.” Ahhh! Haunted lamp!

Emma: Yeah, I guess it wasn’t short-circuiting thing.

Elsie: Oh. Are you ready for a dog ghost story?

Emma: Yes. We’ve been promised dog ghost stories from the themes you explained. So we need one. We have one yet.

Elsie: Ok, so this is from Madeline and Chris. “I spent weekends at my grandparents house growing up one time as a teen. I was taking a morning nap when a dog ran into my room, jumped on my bed and started looking me still half asleep. I pushed him off. When I woke up, I asked why their outdoor dog was inside. They said he wasn’t. A different weekend, my toddler age sister was asleep with my grandparents for the night when she woke up, saw an angry dog growling at her and began screaming and crying. After talking about these two incidents with my grandparents, whose family seem sensitive to these things, she said that sometimes when she naps, she also has a dog that’s not there jump up on the bed with her.”

Emma: Hmm.

Elsie: I love that. I want to ghost dog! Would you totally take a ghost dog?!

Emma: Oh, man. I wish my dog Lovers who passed away this past August, I wish so bad he was haunting me.

Elsie: Oh… A little snuggle.

Emma: I would love to see him again. Yeah but I haven’t seen him. We had him cremated and I have his remains they’re in a little sugar bowl. That’s where he lives now. But no hauntings yet.

Elsie: Yeah. I want the record to state that Emma but Jonathan Adler Sugar Bowl as the permanent resting place for her dog Lovers.

Emma: I did. He looks great. He looks great up on the shelf. Right now, he’s visiting grandma’s house.

Elsie: Oh, Emma.

Emma: Yep, I’m a weirdo.

Elsie: Alright, Let’s take a quick break to hear from this week’s sponsor. Twenty-twenty has brought a lot of surprises. Our way.

Emma: Oh, is that what we’re calling it? (laughs)

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Emma: This is from a listener named Stephanie, “I had been undergoing fertility treatment, but had stopped and was in the process of adopting our oldest son, who came to us when he was four. My grandma had been undergoing treatment for cancer and went into the hospital for hospice care. She was on a lot of pain meds and was hallucinating. One day I walked into her room and my mom was also there. Grandma recognized me and was talking to me a bit and then suddenly said, Whose baby is that in the corner? We couldn’t tell her something wasn’t there as it would agitate her. Instead, we just said we didn’t know. She then went on to say it was a baby boy and he had beautiful white hair and that he was mine.

Elsie: (gasp)

Emma: I yeah, like oh, this is quite the hallucination. “I, of course, thought, well, grandma is definitely wrong because I’m not going to be having any babies. Grandma passed away a week later on my birthday.” Oh, that’s such a sad detail, she says. Stephanie says, “I was not upset that she died on my birthday, just upset that she’d passed away. It was now mid-February and we had moved from Pennsylvania to Louisiana, adopted our oldest son. And I was so sick. I was nauseous all the time, vomiting and I couldn’t stand smells of any kind. That’s the sounds like…

Elsie: Here we go!

Emma: It finally occurred to me that I hadn’t had a period and maybe I was pregnant. I resisted taking a test for at least a week because I had been through this before. And it was always devastated when the test was negative. Not this time. All five of the tests that I did were positive. When I called my parents, my mom’s first reaction was grandma knew! To which I said no, it’s just a coincidence. I went on to have an ultrasound when my pregnancy progressed and they said we were having a girl, which cemented to me that it was just a coincidence. I had another ultrasound towards the end of my pregnancy due to some complications and they confirmed a girl. Well, it turns out twenty-five years ago, ultrasounds were not quite as accurate. And I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy who had a head full of shocking white hair. The doctor that delivered him said that she had never seen a baby with this much blond hair. I was stunned. Everything that my grandma said was spot on. I was already pregnant while standing in that hospital room and gave birth to a baby boy. That was exactly as she had described. Coincidences?

Elsie: I have chills.

Emma: I know, right? It’s like, whoa. And I’m also like, oh, she had gone through infertility. And it’s just so many things, you know.

Elsie: This is a good story.

Emma: Yeah. So Stephanie says “coincidences happen and can explain away so many things. But in this case, I choose to believe there is magic in the world.” So that one’s like a ghost story, but also just like, wow, you had a baby story. So double whammy. Plus, I don’t know if it really counts as a ghost. It was more like she had a premonition of the future. You know what I mean?

Elsie: I agree. I don’t think it counts as a ghost story. If it were, it would also be like a Disney movie ghost story because it’s so special and sweet. And has a bow ending.

Emma: Touched by an angel! Hallmark movie.

Elsie: Can I read the other part still? Because I think the other parts good too.

Emma: Oh yeah. Go for it.

Elsie: All right. So this is the next sort of like chapter after the baby’s born and everything. Mm hmm. Starting when my youngest son was two and a half years old, he would talk about a lady with white hair that sat on his bed talking to him at night. I always listened, but really thought he was dreaming or wasn’t fully understanding. This would happen periodically over a year. He said she was nice and he wasn’t afraid of her and he liked it when she visited. Jump ahead to a visit to my parent’s house, it was in their living room and they had a built in shelf full of family pictures. The kids were playing in the room and my son came running out with a photo of my grandma and he said, “This is the lady!” And I said, No, no, that’s Grandma Donna. And at that point, I started to realize that he was being visited by my grandma. Ahhh!

Emma: But that is a ghost story.

Elsie: Yeah, it’s a it’s a very, it’s a tale. And I love it. It’s a good one.

Emma: I feel like that would be a good afterlife. Just like hanging out with your grandbabies.

Elsie: Oh, my gosh. I know if I die right before my kids have a grandbaby and I guess the right the correct color of their hair, I hope that I get to come visit them as a ghost. I think that that only makes sense…

Emma: Maybe that’s the reward for guessing correctly. You get to visit all the grand babies. That’s sweet.

Elsie: I know. I love a ghost story. That’s like not even creepy. It’s just wonderful. Full of wonder.

Emma: All the Hallmark Christmas movies. Hallmark should just do like ghost movies, but they’re just sweet like that one all of October. Okay, this next story is from a listener named Laura, and she says, here is my one hundred percent true and kind of dumb, silly ghost story. All right.

Elsie: I’m ready!

Emma: “In 2016, my boyfriend and I moved from Chicago to Providence, Rhode Island. Like most New England cities, Providence has a lot of old housing stock and a lot of great history. We rented an apartment an old two-family house that was built in 1910, which hadn’t been majorly rehabbed and still had a lot of original features and loads of character.” Nice, sounding charming. Love it. “One night, shortly after we moved in, I awoke in the middle of the night, rolled over in bed and came face to face with our ghost. It was a man about sixty years of age, dressed kind of in a raincoat/outerwear for inclement weather. He was very grizzled looking and he gave off major old time fisherman vibes. He was standing next to the bed staring at me with a blank RBF kind of expression.” What is RBF? A blank RBF kind of expression on his face?

Elsie: I’m going to have to Google this.

Emma: I don’t know what that means.

Elsie: One second, please.

Emma: “His presence felt intimidating, but not scary. I somehow knew he was just checking us out and didn’t mean any harm. After a moment, he turned and walked away.”

Elsie: (laughs) It means resting bitch face.

Emma: (laughs) Oh that’s funny!

Elsie: Ok, bitchy fishermen ghost. I love it.

Emma: Grumpy old man fisherman ghost guy. I don’t see how this is a silly?

Elsie: A lot of the ghosts, I know it’s not silly at all. It’s very spooky.

Emma: Yeah!

Elsie: A lot of the ghosts, they kind of just like come up to you stand there and then walk away and it’s like they just wanted you to see them? But then there’s nothing. They don’t do anything. It’s like, why? What did you…tell me more!!

Emma: Yeah. I wonder if they can’t talk or if they just wanted to get like a look to see who you were. And then they’re like, oh, not interested. (laughs)

Elsie: Now that you mention it, I don’t think we have a single story in here where the ghosts are talking, other than sometimes it’s like you hear a scream or you hear, you know what I mean? It’s never like if there’s a ghost that they see. I don’t think it’s ever speaking, so interesting. OK, science, where we’re figuring this out. (laughs)

Emma: We’re getting to the heart of it. We’re journalists now! (laughs)

Elsie: All right, this next story is from Natalie. Hi, Natalie. All right. “When I was a teenager still living at home, my mom and I went downstairs and my dad was upstairs. He was sick and had gone to bed early. We were in the living room when my dad, quote unquote, dad, came through the living room in his bathrobe to smoke a cigaret in the backyard. Not an uncommon occurrence. We didn’t pay much attention, but we both noticed him. When our show was over. It was time to lock up and we realized that dad had never come back into the house. We checked and he was upstairs in bed. Both of us had seen him go out, but when we thought about it, we couldn’t remember actually seeing the door opening when he went outside and when thinking about it later, we agreed it felt a little off, like maybe it was someone pretending to be him. The next morning we asked Dad about it and he said that he had never got up the night before. We’ve had a few other ghost things in the house, but that was the most undeniable occurrence.” That’s pretty good because two people, I feel like two witnesses is so much better than one, right?

Emma: I agree.

Elsie: Because you both have the same experience at the same time.

Emma: Exactly. If they saw the same thing, like the robe and the, you know, or whatever, like, yeah, that makes it a lot more like, OK, I mean, you both saw it, so.

Elsie: Yeah. And I wonder why the ghost was pretending to be the dad? Just to like see if he could get away with it? Maybe he was practicing his shapeshifting.

Emma: Hmm. That’s a question for the X Files. (laughs)

Emma: This is from a listener named Rachel. “My grandma was at the doctor’s with her youngest, Sue, which was my mom, who was just a baby. It was probably for her first checkup. She had already seen the doctor and came out into the waiting room and up to the desk to pay, and she set the baby carrier down by her feet. She glanced up at the glass double doors of the waiting room, and there was her dad standing out there with a big grin on his face. She recognized him right away and smiled back, giving him a wave. She looked back down at her purse and a realization hit. “Dad?”, she said, and looked back at the doorway. And of course, no one was there. First of all, her dad had passed away over a year before. So she picked up my mom, a little baby, and headed out the doors and looked all around. When she got outside trying to see if he was still there, there was no one, not even another man wearing I like hat and clothes like my dad usually wore walking up the sidewalks or in the parking lot nearby. He had come to see her and the baby that he had never met.”

Elsie: Oh, that’s a sweet one.

Emma: It is a sweet one. It’s kind of interesting to see. I’m like I always think of a ghost story is like you’re at your home or you’re at someone’s home. But this one takes place like at a doctor’s office, like during the day, I assume. So I’m like, that’s kind of unusual.

Elsie: I know. I like the daytime ones.

Emma: This next one is from a listener named Kaylee, “if you have kids, you know, you basically don’t sleep the entire first year of their life,” and that’s the whole ghost story. Just kidding. Just kidding. (laughs).

Elsie: (laughs) I’m scared!

Emma: “One night I woke up around 3:00 a.m. when my daughter would normally feed, but I noticed she wasn’t crying. I checked the baby monitor to see if she was awake and she wasn’t and was about to go back to sleep. When I noticed her stirring, she looked to the darkest corner of her room and bolted right up. Mind you, this was an infant who was only just learning to pull herself up and could wave hi when coached, but she shot right up and pointed to the dark corner. I then watched her over the monitor wave hello to the darkness and carry on a five-minute conversation. Yes, conversation. She would babble, pause as if there was a response and then babble again. She never broke eye contact with the blackness. She then pointed at it again and said, Papa, bye bye. Waved.”

Elsie: Woah.

Elsie: I know that’s weird. “waved and then laid right back down and went to sleep. My papa died of Alzheimer’s disease and was in and out of consciousness before he passed. The day before he died, I took my daughter to the hospital to say goodbye to him. After spending the day completely out of it, he used the last of his strength to raise his hand in the air and wave goodbye to her before we left.

Elsie: Oh, that’s another sweet one. I love the sweet ones.

Emma: It’s like, oh, maybe Grandpa came back to say hi. Papa came back to say hi.

Elsie: So another scientific fact we’ve learned is that ghosts like to visit their grandkids. They like to pop on in, and hang out with just the kids and then go on out.

Emma: You know, it would be a fun Disney movie premise if you had, like, ghost babysitters and the kid. It’s like, you know, Grandma and Grandpa Ghost and they’re babysitting for you. And then the kids, like, do things that the ghost like can’t help with, like things keep falling through their hands or, you know, stuff like that. Shenanigans. It’s a comedy. It’s a comedy idea. (laughs)

Elsie: Zing! (laughs)

Emma: Boi-oi-oi-oi-oing! That’s what our grandpa used to say!

Elsie: Oh my God, that is so true.

Elsie: Ok, this next ghost story comes with a picture. You’re going to like it. We will put the picture in the show notes. Yes. It’s the only one that comes with a picture and we like it very much. This is from Devon. “My first job after college was as a resident caretaker at a historic house museum. This meant I got to live on the property, give tours, check the trails and grounds and clean off the dust. I was living alone, so I was constantly trying to keep myself busy and ignore the creepy vibes that I would get on the other side of the house when everyone would leave for the day. My apartment was in the back of formerly the 1810 creamery edition, so it never felt as creepy. Happy cows only, I guess!” (laughs) “I was closing the house after a busy day when I went into the master bedroom to draw the curtains and turn off the lights. I walked in and it was freezing. The house is a saltbox, so it’s south-facing and it was always hot. So I was like, Hmm, that’s weird. While pulling the first set of curtains closed, I was overwhelmed by a feeling that I was being watched. I looked towards the dresser in the front corner of the room by the other window and saw this really dark silhouette. Quickly, I said out loud, OK, I’ll go! Sorry! Bye! And quickly left the room.” I feel like that’s what I would do too. (laughs).

Emma: Yeah, oop my bad, see ya! (laughs)

Elsie: “I was super freaked out, so I made the interns open the upstairs for the next week.”

Emma: Smart.

Elsie: Mean but funny. “Because I didn’t want to be in there afterwards alone. I honestly kept laughing at myself for talking aloud or whatever to whatever I saw when leaving. I was like wow, I think I’ve completely lost it. After the season ended, I got to move out so the next caretaker can move in. I told my friend about this, who always has those weird senses and she was like, Yeah, I didn’t want to freak you out. But when you were moving into the house, I saw the same thing. But in the doorway of your room,”

Emma: Ugh.

Elsie: The end! All right. We will put a picture of the historic home. It is very foggy and it is very creepy.

Emma: That is an interesting job.

Elsie: I know!

Emma: Like to live on the property and you’re like I give tours and I clean this haunted house. Basically, I’m like, that is such an interesting job, huh?

Elsie: I have looked at a lot of historic homes, you know, like real estate, like shopping for a house. Like I used to want to live in a historic home and also,big fan of Cheap Old Houses.

Emma: Right, of course.

Elsie: How do you not wonder? So I feel like if you took a job at a historic home, like you kind of expect it, right?

Emma: Maybe you should tell the listeners about the time that you tried to find out if there was a ghost in the Holiday House with our niece.

Elsie: I have two stories about trying to find out if there’s a ghost. One of them is that I read that you could tell if your house was haunted by using a tiktok filter. So I took the tiktok filter through my entire house, the new one that we live in now. And it was haunted in certain rooms. And I know exactly which ones. And I taught it to our niece, who’s 11, by the way.

Emma: Nice.

Elsie: So on Christmas, was it Christmas Eve night?

Emma: Yeah, I think it was Christmas Eve night. Aunt Elsie was a little buzzed.

Elsie: Yeah, I was a little drunk and I thought it was so important and urgent that we go to diedinhouse.com. This is not an ad. This is not a paid ad. They’re getting this one for free. (laughs) I went to diedinhouse.com, as a drunk lady and I paid like twelve dollars to find out if anyone had died in the house, the holiday house in Springfield, by the way, or not, which they had. Our ghost is called Marilyn and…

Emma: I haven’t met her yet.

Elsie: Emma is living in that house right now so she can tell us if she sees her.

Emma: Yeah, I’ve been very open to it because I figured it’s pretty old. It’s probably haunted, but I haven’t met her yet.

Elsie: Yeah.

Emma: But yeah. Then our niece immediately was like, oh, let’s check all these other houses. And Elsie was just like, no, no, no, I have to pay twelve dollars every time!

Elsie: Honestly, if I was drunk I probably thought that we should do it. But I’m glad someone stopped me. Someone with reason.

Emma: (laughs)

Elsie: It’s ok. There’s worse ways to spend twelve dollars.

Emma: Oh yeah. That was worth it. I just could see you typing in like five more addresses and I was like no no no no no no no.

Elsie: I mean I do think it’s interesting to know if someone’s died in your house or not just in case, especially if you have a suspected ghost.

Emma: Thank you so much for listening. We appreciate your kind of views. Like Sarah, who said, “feels like we’re friends. There’s something about Emma and Elsie in this podcast that just feels like home.”

Elsie: Awwwww!

Emma: This is the whole reason we podcast. Thank you so much, Sarah, for taking the time to leave us to review.

Elsie: That seriously makes my day.

Emma: Yeah.

Elsie: OK, have a good week!

Emma: Bye!