Speaker 1: Now, put your chair a little closer, friend, and listen
Speaker 1: to the wind rattling, the wind of panes. We put
Speaker 1: a lot of faith in the walls we build, don't
Speaker 1: We We buy heavy dead bolts, We leave the porch
Speaker 1: light on, and we locked the doors when the sun
Speaker 1: goes down, trusting that the wood and brick and mortar
Speaker 1: will keep the dark at bay. But what happens when
Speaker 1: the dark doesn't need to break down the door? What
Speaker 1: happens when the things that go bump in the night
Speaker 1: just slip right through the keyhole and pluck you right
Speaker 1: out of your own safe haven. Now, if you want
Speaker 1: to know how fragile that fault sense of security really is,
Speaker 1: you only need to travel down to the foothills of
Speaker 1: the Ozarks, head on over to Springfield, Missouri, and let
Speaker 1: the locals tell you the ghost story of East Delmar Street.
Speaker 1: It's a true story, and that's exactly what makes it
Speaker 1: so bone chilly. Now. It was a night of June six,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two. The air was thick with humidity and
Speaker 1: the sweet, heavy scan of bloom and honeysuckle. It was
Speaker 1: a night of beginnings. Over at Kickapoo High School, the
Speaker 1: senior c had just thrown their caps into the air.
Speaker 1: Among those bright faced graduates nineteen year old Susie Streeter
Speaker 1: and her friend, eighteen year old Stacy McCall. These were good,
Speaker 1: vibrant girls, with their whole lives stretching out ahead of
Speaker 1: them like an unpaved highway. After a night of hopping
Speaker 1: between graduation parties, laughing and celebrating the way youth does,
Speaker 1: the girls decided they were too tired to make it
Speaker 1: to their final plan sleepover. Around two fifteen in the morning,
Speaker 1: they pointed the car towards Susie's house at seventeen seventeen niece,
Speaker 1: Delmar Street. Waiting at home was Susie's mother, forty seven
Speaker 1: year old Cheryl Levitt. Cheryl was a hard work and
Speaker 1: single mom, a popular local hairdresser, and a woman furiously
Speaker 1: protective of her daughter. She'd spend a quiet evening at
Speaker 1: home painting a dresser, talking on the phone with a friend,
Speaker 1: and getting ready for bed. So the girls arrived, barked
Speaker 1: their cars in the circular driveway, and walked through the
Speaker 1: front door. We know that they made it inside. We
Speaker 1: know they locked the door behind them. Evidence told the
Speaker 1: story of a completely normal Monday and end till long night.
Speaker 1: The girls took off their makeup. The washcloths in the
Speaker 1: bathroom were still damp. The next morning, they took off
Speaker 1: their jewelrys. Cheryl had climbed into bed, her book resting
Speaker 1: on her nightstand, her glasses folded neatly next to it,
Speaker 1: and then, somewhere in the dead quiet hours of the morning,
Speaker 1: the veil between the safe world and the nightmare world
Speaker 1: simply tore open. When the sun came up on June seventh,
Speaker 1: the Missouri heat was already starting to bake the asphalt.
Speaker 1: Around eight am, a friend of the girl's named Janelle
Speaker 1: came knocking on the front door. The girls were supposed
Speaker 1: to be at a water park that morning, and Janelle
Speaker 1: was there to wake them up. But when she walked
Speaker 1: up the concrete steps, the first sign of something wick
Speaker 1: had presented itself. The glass globe of the front porch
Speaker 1: light had been shattered out. The bulb mind you, Oh no,
Speaker 1: The bulb was perfectly intact, still burning bright in the
Speaker 1: morning sun, but the thick glass covering it was smashed
Speaker 1: to pieces, glittering on the welcome mat like scattered diamonds.
Speaker 1: Janelle knocked no answer. She turned the knob, and to
Speaker 1: her surprise, the front door clicked open. It was unlocked,
Speaker 1: so she stepped inside, calling out their names. The silence
Speaker 1: that answered her was deafening and heavy, the kind of
Speaker 1: silence that rings in your ears. Now the house wasn't ransacked.
Speaker 1: There's no overturned furniture, no broken lamps, no muddy footprints,
Speaker 1: and absolutely no blood. Everything was perfectly, unnervingly still. The
Speaker 1: only moving thing in that house was Sheryl's little Yorkshire Terrier, Cinnamon.
Speaker 1: The poor dog was pacing the floor, trembling and whining,
Speaker 1: deeply distressed by terror. Only the animal had witnessed. As
Speaker 1: Janelle and other friends now began walking through the house,
Speaker 1: the hairs on their arms started as tand up lined
Speaker 1: up perfectly. On the bedroom floor were all three women's purses.
Speaker 1: Inside were their keys, their wallets, and their cash. Out.
Speaker 1: In the driveway, all three of their cars were part
Speaker 1: cold to the touch. On the nightstand, Cheryl's cigarettes and
Speaker 1: lighter said untouched. In the living room, the television had
Speaker 1: been left on, buzzing a steady, droning static into the
Speaker 1: empty room. It was a Maurice Celeste on dry land.
Speaker 1: It was as if Cheryl Susie and Stacy had simply
Speaker 1: been erased from existence mid breath. Now Here's where the
Speaker 1: tragedy of human nature makes the mystery even darker. Unaware
Speaker 1: that they were standing in what was likely a major
Speaker 1: crime scene, the well meeting friends began to clean up.
Speaker 1: Janelle's boyfriend got a broom and swept up the shattered
Speaker 1: porchlight glass, during it in the trash and wiping away
Speaker 1: any fingerprints it might have been left on the shards.
Speaker 1: Worse still, Stacy's mother, Janice, arrived at the house, sick
Speaker 1: with worry. Checking the answer machine for clues, she pressed play.
Speaker 1: There were a few normal messages and then a bizarre,
Speaker 1: chilling recording. Janis later described it as a strange, gruff
Speaker 1: male voice saying things that didn't make sense. Enter panic
Speaker 1: state and fumbling with the unfamiliar machine, she accidentally hit
Speaker 1: the delete ld. That ghostly voice, perhaps the voice of
Speaker 1: the very man who took them, was wiped into the
Speaker 1: ether forever. So when the Springfield Police and later the
Speaker 1: FBI arrived, they were completely baffled. Three grown women, one
Speaker 1: of them a fiercely protected mother who had fought like
Speaker 1: a cornered wildcat to protect a child had been taken
Speaker 1: from a small, cramped suburban house without leaving a single
Speaker 1: sign of a struggle. Another neighbors heard a scream. Another
Speaker 1: neighbors heard a car peel out. So how do you
Speaker 1: force three women out of their home in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night. Did the intruder have a gun, did
Speaker 1: he know them, did he trick them into opening the door?
Speaker 1: Or did he already have a key? So the investigation
Speaker 1: dragged on, from days to months to decades. Over five
Speaker 1: thousand tips pored, The police dragged lakes, dug up farm fields,
Speaker 1: and interviewed every known criminal in the Tri state area.
Speaker 1: And then, years later came to the most terrifying rumor of all.
Speaker 1: Just a short drive from the house on East Elbour
Speaker 1: there was a large medical center called a Cock South Hospital.
Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen ninety two, right when the
Speaker 1: women vanished, they were pouring the concrete foundation for a
Speaker 1: brand new parking garage. A tipster claimed that the killer
Speaker 1: had taken the women, disposed of them in the construction site,
Speaker 1: and the next morning the heavy cement trucks rolled in
Speaker 1: and paved right over them. In two thousand and six,
Speaker 1: a mechanical engineer took ground penetrating radar to that very
Speaker 1: parking garage, and wouldn't you know it, the radar hit
Speaker 1: upon three distinct human size and obelies, very deep beneath
Speaker 1: the concrete, three shapes resting side by side in the dark.
Speaker 1: But for their own reasons, the police refused to dig.
Speaker 1: They said the radar was a conclusive that core drilling
Speaker 1: would cost too much and compromise the structural integrity of
Speaker 1: the hospital's garage, based on a wild conspiracy theory. So
Speaker 1: to this day, hundreds of cars park over that spot
Speaker 1: every single afternoon, completely unaware of what or who might
Speaker 1: be resting quietly beneath their tires. Thirty years have come
Speaker 1: and gone. The house at seventeen seventeen East Delmer still stands,
Speaker 1: looking just like any other house on the block. But
Speaker 1: the folks in Springfield they know better. They know that
Speaker 1: on June seventh, nineteen ninety two, the Boogeyman didn't hide
Speaker 1: in the woods. He walked right up the concrete steps,
Speaker 1: shouted the light, and took three instant souls into the
Speaker 1: dark with him. So when you go to bed to night,
Speaker 1: lock your doors. But remember the Springfield three, and know
Speaker 1: that sometimes A lock is just a piece of metal
Speaker 1: after all, and the dark always finds a way in