Speaker 1: Caloroga Shark Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to Ghost Scary Stories. This is the
showing episode two previous tenants.
Speaker 1: I started researching the house the next morning. David had
gone to work, his first day back at the office
since we moved. I was still on leave bereavement technically,
though my boss had called it personal time when she
approved it. I had three more weeks before I had
to go back to pretending I was functional. Three weeks
alone in this house. I sat at the kitchen table
with my laptop and a cup of coffee that had
gone cold hours ago. The January light through the windows
was thin and gray, the kind of light that makes
everything look high outside. The oak tree in the backyard
stood skeletal against the white sky. No birds, no movement,
just stillness. I typed our address into the search bar.
The first few results were real estate listings. The house
had been sold seven times since nineteen fifty two, seven
families in seventy years. That seemed like a lot for
a house this solid, this well maintained. I dug deeper.
The property records were public, available through the county assessor's website.
I found names, dates, a timeline of ownership that told
a strange story. The Henderson's nineteen fifty two to nineteen
fifty nine seven years, the Marshals nineteen sixty one to
nineteen sixty three, two years, the Oconquo family nineteen sixty
five to nineteen sixty six, fourteen months, the Prices nineteen
seventy to nineteen seventy one eleven months, the Santosis nineteen
seventy eight to nineteen seventy nine, nine months, the weather
Bees nineteen eighty nine to nineteen eighty nine four months,
the Linz two thousand and five to two thousand and
six eight months, and then Us. Each family had stayed
for a shorter time than the one before, and the
gaps between owners were long, years, sometimes decades. When the
house sat empty on the market, I searched for the names.
Found obituaries, social media profiles, fragments of lives scattered across
the Internet. The Hendersons had moved to California, One of
the Marshall children had died in a car accident in
nineteen eighty seven. Missus o'conquo had published a book of
poetry in nineteen ninety four. But I couldn't find any
record of why they'd left, no news articles, no complaints
filed with the city, just families who had lived here
and then suddenly hadn't. I found a phone number for
Margaret Weatherby, the woman who'd owned the house in nineteen
eighty nine. She was in a care facility, now a
memory care unit, in a town about forty minutes away.
I called asked if I could visit. The nurse who
answered sounded surprised but said yes. Missus Weatherby didn't get
many visitors. I didn't tell David where I was going.
I just grabbed my coat and my keys and drove.
The facility was clean and quiet, and smelled like industrial
disinfectant and something sweeter underneath air freshener, maybe trying to
mask the scent of age and decline. A nurse led
me down a long hallway lined with identical doors, to
a room at the end. She has good days and
bad days, the nurse said, today's been pretty good, but
don't be surprised if she gets confused. Margaret Wetherby sat
in a wheelchair by the window, looking out at a
courtyard where nothing grew. She was smaller than I'd expected, fragile,
Her white hair was thin, her hands spotted with age,
but her eyes, when she turned to look at me,
were sharp. You're from the house, she said, not a question.
I stopped in the doorway. How did you know? You
have the look? The look they all get. She gestured
to a chair beside her sit Tell me how bad
it's gotten. I sat, tried to find words. We just
moved in, I finally said, a week ago, and things
have been strange, strange. How I told her about the boxes,
the footsteps, the drawing I'd found, the feeling of being watched.
She listened without interrupting, her sharp eyes fixed on my face.
When I finished, she was quiet for a long moment.
You've seen it, she said, haven't you. I don't know
what I've seen. Yes, you do. You've seen it, or
almost seen it. A shape in the corner of your eye,
A shadow that moves when it shouldn't. She leaned forward.
Have you looked at it directly? Have you let yourself
really look? No? I I thought of the closet in
the small bedroom, the window at the top of the stairs,
the darkness in the hallway outside our door. No, I
always look away. Good. She sat back. Some of the
tension left her shoulders, that's good. Don't look at it.
Whatever you do, don't look at it directly. Why what
is it? She turned back to the window. The courtyard
outside was empty, dead flower beds covered in frost. I
don't know what it is. I don't think anyone does.
It was there when I moved in. It's probably been
there since the house was built, maybe before, she paused.
My husband saw it first. He was in the basement
looking for a water leak. He said, he felt something
watching him. He turned around, and it was there, just
standing in the corner, looking at him. What did it
look like? He couldn't describe it, said, it was like
trying to remember a dream. The harder he focused, the
more it slipped away. But after that he couldn't stop
seeing it. Every room he walked into, it was there, watching, waiting,
her hands twisted in her lap, old hands, thin skinned
and trembling. The more he looked, the more solid it became.
At first, it was just a shadow, a suggestion, but
every time he looked at it, it got clearer, more real,
like it was feeding on his attention. What happened to him?
She didn't answer. For a long moment. We tried to leave,
packed our things, called a moving company. But Robert, my husband,
he couldn't go. He got to the front door and
he just stopped. Said he couldn't leave, said it wouldn't
let him. Her voice cracked. I should have stayed, I
should have tried to help him, but I was so scared.
I ran. I left him there. Where is he now?
I don't know? Tears ran down her weathered cheeks. I
went back a week later with the police. The house
was empty. All our things were still there, clothes, furniture, photographs,
but Robert was gone. They never found him. She grabbed
my wrist with surprising strength. Don't look at it. That's
what it wants. It needs to be seen. Every time
you look at it, you give it power, You make
it more real. And once it's real enough, she swallowed.
Once it's real enough, it won't let you leave. How
do I stop it? How do I get rid of it?
You can't. You can only escape. Leave now, today, before
it's too late, Before you see it clearly my husband.
Bring him with you, drag him if you have to,
but go before the house takes him the way it
took Robert. I drove home in a daze. The sky
was darkening by the time I pulled into the driveway
four point thirty in the afternoon, and already the light
was failing winter, pressing down like a weight. The house
loomed against the gray sky, windows, dark oak tree reaching
toward it with bare branches like grasping hands. I sat
in the car for a long time, watching the house,
watching the windows. Nothing moved, nothing watched, but I knew
it was in there, waiting. David was already home. When
I went inside. I found him in the living room,
standing in front of the window, staring out at the backyard. Hey,
I touched his shoulder. I didn't see your car parked
in the garage. His voice was distant, distracted. He didn't
turn around. Seemed easier, David, you okay, fine, just tired.
He was still staring out the window long day. I
looked at the window, at the reflection of the room
behind us, in the dark glos at David's face, pale
and strange, in the reflection, at the corner of the
room behind him, where something dark seemed to gather in
the shadows. I spun around. The corner was empty, just
walls and floor and the last gray light of afternoon.
When I turned back. David was looking at me. What
he said nothing, I just I forced myself to breathe,
let's go out for dinner. I don't feel like cooking.
I'm not hungry, David, I said, I'm not hungry. His
voice was sharp, wrong. He turned back to the window.
You go if you want, I'm going to stay here.
I watched him for a moment, my husband of six years,
standing in our new living room, staring at nothing. No,
not nothing. His eyes were fixed on something, following something.
I could see the slight movement of his pupils tracking
back and forth across the window, like he was watching
something pace. What are you looking at? Nothing? But his
eyes didn't stop moving, just the yard. David, please look
at me. He didn't look at me. I left him there,
went upstairs, sat on the edge of our bed and
tried to convince myself that everything was fine, that he
was just tired, that the move the stress, the grief
we were both carrying, it was all just catching up
with him. But I kept thinking about what Margaret had
said about her husband Robert, who saw something in the
basement and couldn't stop seeing it. After that, the more
he looked, the more solid it became. I stayed upstairs
until it was fully dark. When I finally came down,
David was still standing at the window. He hadn't moved
at all. That night. I couldn't sleep. I lay in bed,
listening to David breathe beside me. His sleep was restless, twitching, murmuring,
his eyes moving rapidly beneath their lids, like he was
watching something in his dreams. The house was quiet, too, quiet,
that same thick silence i'd noticed the first night, pressing
against the walls, like something trying to get in, or
something already inside holding its breath. I thought about what
Margaret had said, don't look at it, that's what it wants.
But I couldn't stop thinking about the previous families, seven
of them, each one staying for a shorter time than
the last. All those people who had lived in this house,
all those belongings left behind. Where were they now? I
slipped out of bed. David didn't stir. I took my phone,
turned on the flashlight, and crept out into the hallway.
The house was different at night. Shadows pulled in corners
gathered on the stairs, filled the spaces between doorways with
darkness that seemed almost solid. I kept my flashlight pointed
at the floor, afraid to see what the beam might
reveal if I aimed it at the walls. I went
to the small bedroom at the end of the hall,
the one Patricia had suggested would make a good nursery,
the one where I'd seen something move in the closet
on the day we toured the house. The door was closed.
I didn't remember closing it. I opened it anyway. The
room was empty, just four walls and a window, and
that closet, its door standing slightly ajar, darkness visible through
the gap. I made myself walk toward it. My hand
was shaking as I reached for the door. The wood
was cold under my fingers, colder than it should have been,
touching ice. I pulled it open. The closet was small, empty,
just bare walls and a wooden rod for hanging clothes,
and a floor covered in dust. But on the back
wall something had been scratched into the paint. I leaned closer,
shining my flashlight on the marks, names, dozens of them,
carved into the wall with something sharp, a knife maybe,
or a key, Names and dates layered on top of
each other, some of them so old the paint had
grown back over them. Henderson family, nineteen fifty two to
nineteen fifty nine. Janet Marshall, age seven, nineteen sixty two.
The Oconquos were here, Thomas Price, November nineteen seventy one.
Don't look at it, Maria Santos. It sees me everywhere.
Now I can't close my eyes. Robert Weatherby, I'm sorry, Margaret,
I can't. And at the bottom, fresher than the others,
the paint still roar where it had been gouged away.
Lynn family. We tried to warn you. It's always watching.
It never stops. I stumbled backward out of the closet.
My phone slipped from my hand, flashlights spinning across the floor,
throwing wild shadows on the walls. That's when I heard it.
A sound from the hallway, soft, deliberate, the creak of
weight on old floorboards. Something was coming. I grabbed my phone,
aimed the flashlight at the doorway. The hallway was empty,
just darkness and silence and the faint gray shape of
the window at the far end. But the darkness wasn't
quite right. It was thicker in one spot, denser, A
shadow that stood where no shadow should be between me
and the stairs. Don't look it, that's what it wants.
I looked. I couldn't help it. Some instinct, some terrible
need to see what was there, overrode every warning, every
rational thought in my head. I looked directly at the shadow,
and the shadow looked back. It was tall, so tall
it seemed to bend beneath the ceiling, folding in on
itself to fit in the space. Its body was wrong,
limbs too long, proportions that hurt to look at, like
a human shape drawn by something that had only ever
seen humans from a distance. But the face was the
worst part, smooth and pale and almost featureless, like a
mask that hadn't been finished. No nose, no mouth, just eyes,
two dark pits where eyes should be, fixed on me,
with an intensity that felt like pressure, like weight, like
something pressing against my skull from the inside. I couldn't move,
couldn't breathe couldn't look away. And then, slowly, impossibly, it smiled.
Not with a mouth, it didn't have a mouth, but
something in its face shifted, rearranged, and I knew, I
knew that it was smiling at me, that it was
pleased that it had been waiting for this moment for
a very long time. The scream that came out of
me didn't sound human. I ran down the hallway, passed
the thing that stood there, smiling, down the stairs and
through the living room and out the front door into
the january cold. I ran until I reached the end
of the driveway, and then I turned and looked back
at the house. Every window was dark, but in one
of them, the window of the small bedroom at the
end of the hall, I could see a shape, tall
and pale, pressed against the glass, watching me, still smiling.
David found me twenty minutes later, sitting on the frozen
ground at the end of the driveway, shaking so hard
I couldn't stand Emma, What the hell? He wrapped his
coat around me, pulled me to my feet. What happened?
Why are you out here? I tried to tell him,
tried to find words for what I'd seen, But every
time I opened my mouth, all that came out was
a sound, a broken, keening sound that didn't seem to
belong to me. He brought me inside, made me tea,
sat with me on the couch while I shook and
cried and tried to explain. There's something in this house, David,
something that's been here for decades, something that watches. Emma.
I saw it. I saw it, and it smiled at me.
It's real. It's real, and it wants us to see it,
and I don't know why. But we have to leave.
We have to leave right now. He was quiet for
a long moment. His face was unreadable in the dim
light of the living room. I know, he finally said.
I stared at him. What I've seen it too. His
voice was calm, too calm. It's beautiful, isn't it. The
way it moves, the way it watches. I can't stop
thinking about it, David. That's not We need to go.
We need to get out of here. I can't. He smiled,
and the smile didn't reach his eyes. I don't think
I can leave any more, Emma. I don't think it
wants me to. He turned to look at the window,
at the darkness beyond the glass, and I realized, with
a horror that went deeper than anything I'd felt in
that hallway, that I'd already lost him. He'd looked too long,
and now the house was looking back. Ghost scary stories
is a production of Calaoga Shark Media. Some elements of
AI may have been used in this production, but it
was written, edited, mixed, and produced by Real Live People.
Speaker 2: Executive producers Mark Francis and John McDermott