Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Today's story is about a house and about how
paranormal investigation isn't just about capturing things on camera. My name is Edwin,
and here is a scary story. It was a nervous kid calling my office
to talk to me. That's all Barbara told me in the beginning. But
when I called her back when I got back from lunch, I found out
a little bit more. Yes, I could tell she was nervous, but
I mean today people aren't so used to talking on the phone and prefer doing
their little Internet things like zombies endlessly swiping their thumbs upwards on a glass screen.
There was a house down the road that I had not heard about.
It was on a huge lot and apparently had been known around the internet as
being, as she said, super haunted. There were a few amateur investigators
coming to the area soon after the craze on the internet, and they wanted
to be the first to bring along a professional as much as kids nowadays like
to go viral on the internet. For me, it's brought nothing but trouble.
I said the wrong thing during an interview once and Barbara and our audio
guy ended up getting harassed for weeks. Every once in a while there's a
little wave of them as people continue to watch that interview, But it has
calmed down a lot since obviously I wanted nothing to do with it. Kids
exploring and filming themselves as a trespass was not the type of thing we wanted
to be associated with. Here at the Sweet Lake Paranormal Crew, we conducted
serious things and were actually in contracts with agencies, something you would be surprised
to learn about. Real scientific experiments are being made with things like telekinesis and
communication with entities on other planes, or as they liked to call them,
e ops. But there was something in the way that she pitched it to
me that made me wonder what would happen if I said no, Like there
was so much weight and emphasis on getting a yes that declining an invitation to
help her out with a project might make her quit altogether on the topic.
As an investigator, I would do anything I can to support this misunderstood profession.
I told her that I would research on the place and get back to
her in a week, which she protested yes was enough for her, but
they wanted to get the video out in two days. I said fine,
I mean, I really only asked for a week to give me time to
work on other things. First, things were so slow, so I pretended
to look around through my calendar or whatever, and I said, yes,
I'll get to it now and meet up with you and the other guy tonight.
It sounded like they were driving in a car to sweet Lake during that
call, but I didn't think about asking her anything about it, and then
explained to Barbara what we would be doing, and she called up the owner
of the property, a man from out of state who referred us to his
cousin, a woman named Sarah. Now Sarah had access to the property and
legal authority to talk about any sales and negotiations in the future. I think
the guy thought I wanted to buy the property, but Sarah lived in sweet
Lake, so I figured she might be a bitter contact. And so we
did what we usually did. Barbara talked to this woman and they set up
a time to meet. It's tough to tell us someone about a ghost in
their house sometimes, but if you don't say it right off the bat,
you just waste everyone's time. And so Barbara was doing her normal questioning and
explanations of what we do here at SPC. Suddenly she went qu I asked
her to put her on speaker that I wanted to know what was happening.
Then it took her a bit, but I was suddenly able to hear this
Sarah person over the phone, asking if this was regarding the police report.
Well, police report, Sarah explained that there were a group of trespassers kids
coming into their property upon seeing it completely empty. The electricity had been cut
off from the enormous house by this time, but that was about it.
The furniture was still there, dishes were still in the dishwasher from that place
that desperately needed to have its windows opened at least to let some air in.
Thankfully, one of the neighbors saw them get in there and saw their
flashlights, so she called the police, which showed up and gave them a
citation for trespassing. They came for the ghost, Sarah said. I took
over the phone call from my desk. Sarah, my name is John and
I work with the Sweet Lake Paranormal Crew. You got a call about a
short investigation that a team that's coming up from out of state wants to do
for one night over at the house. What do you think about that?
Sarah asked about how she would come out on camera and if it would be
okay to share her family story, which I of course agreed to. I
mean, that's how it should be, That's how it should have been.
That investigation with the kids from the phone call was something else completely. Her
name was Zandria and the other guy was named Chris. They were both in
that awkward gap between high school and community college that were sorting out what they
wanted to do with their lives. They told me that they wanted to go
in there to quote film and stuff and then post it YouTube, TikTok reels
the whole thing. Then they had another trip planned a little up north,
up to a campsite that had been known to have haunt of its own.
We had done our own investigation there and had detailed everything over on our website,
although not like them, with their cell phone holders and iPads. Not
like that. Chris was pointing his phone at my face the whole time I
talked with Andrea, which honestly didn't seem as nervous in person. Her green
hooded sweatshirt and faded jeans torn at the knees reminded me a lot of my
knees. Well, Chris looked a little more like he was missing a large
pair of headphones something to really give him a look. They were very,
very talkative and would say words I didn't quite understand, but they were able
to communicate with each other just fine. I looked down at my watch,
and before I could look up, Chris leaned against the minivan they were on,
and Andrea started talking. She said something like, okay, guys,
so I'm here with John form SPC here at sweet Lake and we're going to
be doing a complete paranormal investigation tonight the famous sweet Lake House, whereas we
all know, has a haunted past. Follow us on Instagram or whatever,
and then she said I love you guys, and then did a kissing the
screen motion and that was that. She then just went back to normal.
She asked me if I had any questions, but then rushed my answers as
I try to tell them about what the place was about and of our own
conversation with Sarah. They didn't seem to care. They said they were about
to grab something to eat and would meet me at that place at nine in
the evening, and if that was cool, I said yeah and walked back
into the building where we rented out our office. I wanted to tell Barbara
about what was happening, but wanted to make sure to remember those silly words
I had been using to talk to each other, but I ended up forgetting
about them. Barbara knew that I didn't like this sort of thing, and
after clearing up some things about other investigations we had planned for the upcoming month,
we stayed quiet as she wanted me to explain what I was going to
be doing over at the house on East Lane apparently also known as the Sweet
Lake House. Barb had looked up all this info on it already, but
not through websites or through Sarah, but on Instagram. Different versions and reactions
to one video were being uploaded, with upwards of one million views. I
think that's the one that went viral. It was a group of four or
five kids that were roaming around the place with flashlights in the house, which
looked like any other house with decorations and everything. They were talking and walking
out of the door to the backyard when the hood of the kid's sweater got
lifted up in the air and he got pulled back. He freaked out and
ran outside, unable to speak. Now I know what this feeling is like,
and it's a very difficult reaction to fake, even for paid actors.
In once, we were part of a short movie with a lot of them,
and we were there to sort of answer any questions on equipment and basically
get their movie to come out as authentic as possible. And even those actors
weren't able to recreate the reaction to something otherworldly. It isn't fear, and
it isn't panic. It's kind of like a blank confusion, although just for
an instant, and then it's followed by a flight response, basically just wanting
to get the heck out of there. This kid's face was warped with fear
and his eyes widened before he ran out. I watched it everything in slow
motion. He was the last one there at the house, and absolutely nobody
was behind him. It wants active instagrammers who's actually stopped posting for several weeks
since the incident. The other young people that were there with him that night
started reacting for him, saying that he was all right and that he was
just trying to process what had happen. Had this been recorded on film cameras.
With proper audio capturing devices, it would have been classified as actual paranormal
activity caught on tape. I was obviously intrigued by the whole thing, but
I knew by that time what Andrea and Chris were looking for, and it
wasn't a ghost. Part two of Alone in Passing is coming up right after
this stay with me. It was supposed to be a simple walkthrough. Still,
looking back on it, it's hard to call it a paranormal investigation because
it wasn't. I knew it wasn't going to be, and that's why I
packed my most basic equipment along for the ride, as well, a thermal
camera, an audio recorder, and a night vision camera. Sarah showed up
to let us in, and I remember being so embarrassed to explain to her
that the two young people with me were going to be recording things for the
internet. Sarah was a little worried about it, but seemed to trust me
a little bit more now that we had met in person. We stepped into
the front yard, now full of weeds and overgrown from the corners of the
property. Grass that I knew had at one point been green was now yellow.
And with patches of dirt. The sun was barely setting behind us.
We were supposed to meet at nine, but we ended up showing a couple
hours early. I know Chris had said that he wanted to get some b
roll for his video and needed the light to be at just the right angle.
I mostly stood behind the front gate with Sarah as I asked her about
the family that used to live there. She was always hanging out with her
cousins right there at the house when she was little. They didn't live far
from each other, and this was her uncle's house. I interrupted to ask
if that was the man I had spoken to, and she looked away and
shook her head. No, her uncle was dead. It was quiet for
a few seconds before I asked her to continue. The house had been abandoned
for almost three years. They never got together to figure out what they were
gonna do with the house after the owner, mister Jones, passed away.
Sarah was the one closest to him, as she was the one who would
visit him more frequently, having only to walk for ten minutes or so to
get to the house. Chris and Andrea interrupted us here, saying that they
were ready to go inside the house. Sarah looked at them as she fumbled
through her keys to find one that matched. The front door. Streams of
light were coming down the tall windows above the front door and into the living
room. The way the dust flowed through the light made it seem like tiny
waterfalls, something that Chris quickly caught on to and took out his phone to
record semi circles. That's what he would do our round objects that he liked,
Like when he stood along the table, the one with a broken vase
in front of the staircase. He started on the right side and side stepped
in a semicircle to his left as a phone focus on the table, then
his head would turn to look around for the next cool thing he wanted to
record. Sarah showed us around the play, starting with the second floor and
the three bedrooms upstairs. The downstairs area had the living room, a large
dining room and kitchen, and two other rooms. I had been used for
storage and for laundry and stuff like that, but it was a dead place.
Few locations had given me a similar feeling. My mind kept going back
to the Yantris Elementary school. It had been suddenly abandoned due to a fire
that led to the discovery of toxic materials left behind. Nobody went back,
and twenty years later, there I was with my crew, walking up and
down the halls of classrooms, with stacks of papers on the teacher's desks,
drawings on the walls, and even the lunch menu schedule on an announcement board
by the front office. Sarah said she would come back at around eleven that
night to close everything down and asked if I could wait until then. I
agreed. I mean, there was no point for her to be there if
the kids weren't interested in her story. Then again, there was no point
for me to be there either. I needed to find out what was up
with that place and the tugging of that sweatshirt. I wanted to find out
more about those people that claimed to have also broken into the place, had
explored it only to be chased out, or actually quite the opposite. Pulled
into the empty house and so I put down my hard case and loaded up
the new batteries into the recorder and camera. Then I set off on my
own way. I could hear Chris and Andrea upstairs talking about what shots to
get and from what angle. Well, Suddenly Andrea would burst out another Hey
guys, all right, so blah blah blah. I mean, it was
their thing. I decided to just keep the thoughts that Sarah had triggered to
myself. Besides, I just kept thinking this house was the story of a
family. I walked around the house, angling the cameras in different directions before
setting them to look out into the entire living room on top of a shelf.
You know, not many paranormal investigators talk about the feelings that they get
inside themselves as they're investigating. I mean, for obvious reasons, right,
But I think those are the biggest indicators that something else is sharing the space
with you. Too bad, they don't show up on detectors or sensors anywhere.
As I walked through the house with Chris and Andrea's voices echoing through the
halls, giving it a type of artificial life to the place, I wondered
about what went on inside that house. Despite it being so big, there
were no signs of a family. A single cup was still on the counter,
the couch seats was dipping only on one side of it. It was
probably a place of routine when Chris and Andrea stepped out into the yard,
I turned on my recorder and roamed around the place on my own. Even
though the sun had set a few hours before, it still looked well illuminated
by the moonlight because of those skylight that the house had. For the first
time in many years, I roamed around with only the recorder on, mesmerized
by the silence that surrounded me was only the sound of my footsteps as they
echoed slightly against the walls of the house. Once I stepped out, we
waited for Sarah, and we only had to wait a few minutes because she
showed up right on time. Chris and Andrea thanked her and then thanked me
before turning around and heading over to their van. Sarah and I decided to
grab a coffee at a diner not far from the house to talk about what
happened. At first, Sarah wanted to know how paranormal investigating worked because she
wanted to tell a few things to her uncle, mister Jones. Although she
referred to him as uncle Bob every now and then, things suddenly started to
make sense. Mister Jones was a good man and his children were successful.
Sarah told me about them and how much they changed once they got into their
own professions, but they were so involved with their own thing that one year
they forgot about his birthday and they started spending Christmas on their own. Mister
Jones still had his wife at nan she called her, but when she passed,
mister Jones was all alone. The neighbors became his only friends for a
while, and his only tasks were to get everything ready for his passing.
He would invite people to visit him, and yes, he tried going to
an elder facility care center, but he could never stick around for more than
a day. Sarah would go visit him almost daily to help him clean and
cook, something he appreciated but felt was bothering her for it. For two
years, he spent his time at the house, same routine every morning,
same morning walk, and same breakfast. His conversations turned into asking about his
adult children and how they were doing, and he would always seem so proud
of them when Sarah would update him on their latest post on Facebook or wherever,
things like one of them got a promotion, the other one out of
state at a conference right now, and mister Jones was a smile at the
thought of his children being able to take care of themselves. That's the way
he would say it every single time. One morning, Sarah showed up and
opened the front door with her key as usual, but didn't find her uncle
sitting at the breakfast table reading the newspaper like he usually did. She called
out for him, and she went upstairs and found him completely still on his
side of the bed. Once she got near him, she realized that he
was dead. He loved company, Sarah said to me, It was so
sad the way he left. He never wanted the house to be sold.
In fact, he wanted it to stay in the family. But his children
couldn't wait to sell it or rent it and move on with their own lives.
I mean. Sure, they showed up to the funeral and felt sorry
for the whole situation for a while, but it had already been so distant
that the effects didn't hit as hard. Sarah had been dodging the calls for
potential buyers all this time while she figured out the situation with a loan in
order to be able to get the house for herself. When I get asked
about the strangest investigation I've ever done, that's the one that comes to mind.
But I always tell the tale of another one, maybe one of the
museum or the camping grounds by the lake. Chris and Andrea got their views,
and Sarah got to tell her story for the records of Sweet Lake and
our archives. And I didn't know it yet until I analyzed the recordings,
but I also got something I've kept it to myself all this time. It
was the recording of a man who was alone when he passed come back.
Scary Story podcast is part of the collection of shows by Scary FM. You
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on our Apple podcast channel. We're just as happy with the review though,
so don't worry if you can't join us there. You can get in touch
with me over on social media at edwin Cove. That's E. D w
nCoV. Mainly on Instagram and Twitter, but also I'll be launching soon on
YouTube. Up next, check out Scary Mystery Surprise, where my co host
Michelle and I laughed about creepy things that we find around the Internet. Check
out Origin Stories Childhood Fears. That episode is fun. What were you afraid
of as a kid? Anyway you can find it by typing in scary mystery
surprise on your app right now. Thank you very much for listening, See
you soon.