105. Pee Your Pants Scary

Music.

When I was like growing up. Like, it wasn't until I moved into that house on Noriega Street and from day one, the stuff started happening. Music. This is the Abbey Normal Podcast, here to tell you that you're weird and that's normal. I still didn't believe it for the longest time. But the one experience I had God scared me so much to my core that I wanted to know what it was, like what it meant. So I would watch like every ghost show trying to see someone else have that same experience.

And I finally saw it once. I don't remember what ghost show it was. It happened to this person in a cabin, but they like exactly described what happened to me. And like when you've had those experiences and you It might feel like crazy to hear somebody else that is a stranger, like, exactly describe the thing that happened to you. Like, I don't know. It's weird. It makes you feel better, you know? Music.

We will get to that troubling incident. But first, let's set the scene. We lived in this two-story flat on Noriega Street with a winding staircase. Dawn was a small-town girl who moved to the big city for college, renting a two-story flat with a variety of roommates. Because, you know, the big city is expensive. And from day one, things are not right in the house on Noriega Street. Music.

Stayed there and they usually say this is one thing i learned when i started watching the ghost shows if it's your house is haunted you're gonna know in the first week yeah like pretty much for sure so first night we were there everything's in boxes just the two of us and there's a bed and we're sleeping and we wake up to the sound and you know when you wake up and you like wake up and it's still happening a sound so you can tell i didn't dream this is still happening outside side the sound of

as though someone took a ton of like tire chains.

And threw them against the wall and they're sliding down the wall like insanely loud not coming from downstairs coming from my room and that was like your first day that was the first night oh hell no so then we leave like a day later go back to bakersfield because i have to get the car that i bought from him and we drive home and we get home at like two in the morning and i walk up the stairs and we had one of those little grates that you open and it was really cute it was really pretty and

i was really tired and i looked at it and i saw a full-on effing demon face and i was pissed i like slammed the door open i like i was like you guys are assholes like i'm so exhausted and they're like what are you talking about and i'm like you like made a freaking demon face like to put in that thing just to scare the shit out of me look at it and and then i go back and there's nothing thing there and they're like we didn't make anything so then I'm like feeling really freaked out I go

to my room and I lay on the floor and I'm crying a little bit and suddenly there's the strongest sound of a woman weeping like coming from my room and I keep I have my head on the floor and I'm like no it's not coming from downstairs it's like coming from the walls in my room, you know? And so after that, it was, like, just kind of constant, you know?

But I didn't believe in ghosts or anything then, so, like, you try to, like, keep telling yourself, no, no. That's just this or that's just that you know but.

Eventually like like there was this girl in the window all the time, like you know when you like come up to someone's house and they have their blinds partially open on the second floor and you can look and you can see people from a certain angle so i came home and my new roommate was sitting right in front of the window with long black hair and i was like oh she's up really late because i didn't get home from top records till like 12 30 at night and i And I was like, oh, but cool. Talk to her.

I get to know her a little more because I didn't really know her. I come upstairs. She's not there. I'm like, oh, she must have run to bed. So then I'm sitting there in the kitchen where if anyone walked past me to the living room, I would have seen them. And my ex-boyfriend and roommate are throwing rocks at the window being like, Lisa, open the gate. Like, we forgot the key. And finally I buzz them and I'm like, who are you talking to? And they're like, Lisa, she's sitting right in the window.

And I was like, we're getting out of here. I literally ran down the stairs and like we went to like go get sandwiches or something.

So I was like, I can't be here right now, you know. So it was always like stuff like that. Like one of my roommates started screaming in his sleep. And the stuff he would scream was upsetting to hear. This is too much. Too many scary things for me. So I'm looking for the most obvious answer.

How much drugs were you consuming during this time period? I wasn't. Little to no drugs? So when we first moved in, I was a complete teetotaler. I'd only had drinks a couple times in my life. And then they would go to bars, but I was too young, you know, and I was just never really a big drinker. Unfortunately for my sanity, drugs cannot be blamed for this horror story. Even though this crazy thing has happened, I was trying to tell myself, these things don't exist.

You know, plus like we talked about in another podcast, your Christian upbringing is that ghosts aren't real, like, you know, blah, blah, blah. So I just had a very deep belief that none of that was true.

And that's what led us to doing the Ouija board. Right. Because someone bought one at Goodwill. A few months in, one roommate convinces Dawn to try out a Ouija board with the pretense that they'll figure out what's happening in the house. And we were arguing about whether any of the stuff was real. And I still was like, there's a plausible explanation for everything. And they're like, oh, yeah, well, why don't we do this Ouija board and find

out? And I said, I don't believe in those and blah, blah, blah. It's just you pushing the plan, Chad. I will stop for a second, though, and say, my mom randomly, for no reason, twice in my life, warned me to never use a Ouija board. Because she had some experience when she was a kid that she wouldn't talk about. And she's like, just trust me. Don't ever do it. And then you immediately disregard it. And then I was like, let me do that.

We have to learn for ourselves, obviously. I'm 19. I know what I'm doing. You know, so I was like, all right, well, if we're going to do it, it's going to be a full experience. So we're going to do it in the dark and we're going to light all the black candles. So we did it in my bedroom. Was this your idea? No, I was arguing that I didn't want to do it. But the other two people were pressuring me.

And I said, OK, this is why I don't want to do it, because I know that this person is going to push it on purpose to try to scare me. So the only way I will do it is if the two of us are blindfolded and the third person writes down what they see and does not say it out loud.

And then I will maybe believe that something happened. So that's what we did. And one caveat I have to say is the person who was the writer is a very sweet person, but another kind of Sharon. Were just no possibility to come up with something crazy to freak me out. Got it. Sure, sure. Not in their nature. They don't have that level of type of creativity. Yes. So I trusted this person. Got it.

That's the setup. Dawn and another roommate blindfolded. Sweet dummy writing down the answers or letters. And the Ouija board seems to be giving them nonsense, which is not surprising to Dawn. So we're both blindfolded and it seems like nothing is happening. It's taking forever, except that he keeps telling us, um, the flames on the candles are jumping high in the air. Like they're not attached to the candle anymore, you know? He's a writer.

Yeah. Okay. And we're like, okay, whatever. What kind of things were you asking? Do you remember? The only thing I really remember was like trying to find out if something was there. And I think he would tell us if there was a yes or no. Because when you're blindfolded, you don't know where anything is on the board. But it was like giving us gobbledygook a lot of time if we tried to get like something specific. Yeah. But at the very end, cautions.

That terrifying noise that seems like it should be sound effects is Dawn's ringtone. That's the original iPhone sound. That's your ringtone? Yeah. It's terrifying. I know, in the store it always freaks people out. Yeah. Sorry for the interruption. The Ouija board was giving them gobbledygook. And then... I said, look, I'm sick of messing around. Is there something here that's not human? And we get the answer, yes. And then we say, okay, what is your name?

And you know you can feel it moving but you're like blindfolded so it like moves.

Pauses for a bit and then moves again and i was like did it say something that makes sense he's all no these these are like nonsense words and i was like that's it i'm done and we didn't know like that you're supposed to say goodbye and close it close the portal or whatever so I take my blindfold off and I'm like let me see what you got here what is this name and it was two words and I was like okay I think these are Latin so I go and it's late at night okay it's late it's

like 1 30 in the morning I go get the giant dictionary because no interwebs then and I look up the first word and it is indeed Latin and it's we had a pact that we would never say these words together okay but if you want me to I don't know if I want you to I'll I'll tell you you can throw it away if you want okay the first word was lux l-u-x and I was like oh that's like the Latin word for light the root word for light and then the second word and why it didn't occurred

to me when I looked at it was I-F-E-R. So I looked up what I-F-E-R was in Latin, and it means a bringer of light. And then it said beneath it, that and lux are the root words for Lucifer, like the root Latin words for Lucifer. And Lucifer actually means like morning star, like the bringer of light in the morning kind of thing. Nope.

I had a complete horror meltdown because there was no way this kid knew any Latin. Of course not. And he didn't even recognize if he read these two words together. It's basically Lucifer. Yeah, even just looking at it. I don't need to look it up. If I saw that on a piece of paper. But I didn't. I didn't even see it when I looked. Because he wrote one on top and then the one beneath it instead of side by side. In her panic, 19-year-old Dawn took drastic measures.

I lost it so hard. I couldn't stop crying. Oh my gosh. I called my parents at 1.30 in the morning. Yes, I did. You were like, I have summoned Satan. What do I do? FYI, the other two were almost more terrified than me. Especially the one that did it. I've got chills just remembering this. I called them like weeping. And I was like, I did something very bad. And they're like, what did you do? You know, I woke them up in the middle of

the night. And I would never do that to my parents if it wasn't something very important. They were like, what did you do? And I was like, we did a Ouija board.

And the root words in latin for lucifer came out and my mom's like it's on i told you not to do it and i was like i just need you guys to pray for me like pray for us pray for this house so they sat on the phone and prayed with me oh my gosh and after they got off the phone i was still so terrified to be in the house and it sounds like i worked myself up but and i'm sure i probably did But there was like this intense terror feeling that it was in your bones. Yeah. And I was like, that's it.

We have to get out of here for a while. And we would always do that when I got scared and leave like other roommates sleeping. Sorry, guys. Hope you can work out whatever we just like brought into the house. So just to be clear, like you guys weren't like, oh, my God, this is crazy. Like goofy, spooky, fun. No, I thought it was BS. And then I just felt pure terror.

I thought it was totally made up nonsense and then i was like shook and shooketh to my core to your core right, so i may have made it worse by doing that and inviting something in and not telling it to leave and closing it like remember how stephanie was talking about right boundaries yeah um So may have accidentally summoned something. Okay. Music.

Things are relatively quiet. Often little things happen while only Dawn is home. Then I started seeing the shadows all the time or the people walking by.

But then a situation happens to the whole household while they're hanging out in the living room. A room with big old windows. Picture this. It was a two-story flat. The only real windows were the front and the back. And so the whole front of the house had this bank of giant windows. Windows and they were so old that they were the kind that you would lift a latch and push it out.

And then the air would there was no screens and then on top of that we had these 1930s 1940s metal blinds which are very thick and very heavy and they make noise when they move like a lot of noise like so we had a whole bunch of people over like you do when you're like 20 and you've gotten some weird movies from Tower and you got some drinks and you're just gonna like watch weird movies, you know?

Twenty-somethings are reclining all over the room. Blinds are closed for movie time, but the windows were open and it was a little bit windy, which then made the blinds rattle. So always a good hostess, Dawn fixes things. I got up and I walked to each of the windows and I can't remember if this was four giant windows or eight giant windows. I want to to say eight, and I used the cord from the blinds to wrap tightly around the latch.

So to unlatch it, you'd have to lift the latch up, but to keep it from moving, I wrapped the cord tightly around and then tied knots. So like when you push the window, you couldn't even get it to make a sound because they were just tied up. Right. And then we continue to watch our movie as everything's great. We all fall asleep about 3.15 in the morning at the exact same second.

That entire bank of windows sucks all the way open with this crazy wind that's making the blinds fly out into the living room and smack against the wall.

And it's making this insane racket. pocket and people are actually screaming because you're like waking up to this and my one roommate peed his pants he like ran from the room all the way to the bedroom like peeing his pants the whole way well yeah because the noise the noise the noise was like shocking but no one was like no one really knew what i had done to close the windows and they were still insanely scared

like they just thought somehow the windows came unlatched and opened together they didn't know No, that I had hand tied off in knots every one of those windows. So something, because even if one person in the room was trying to play a joke, they couldn't possibly make all those windows open at the same time. Right. Well, and I know exactly what you're talking about. You've got the old windows and the latch, and you've got to push it out.

That does not just come undone. That takes some muscle to open up those dang windows. Yeah, even if they weren't tied down, but they were tied down. Out. So, like, the only way that that could have happened is something untied every single one of those knots that I made, unwrapped every single one of those windows, lifted the latches, and threw them all open at the exact same time. Like, and just that alone, everyone was, like, terrified. Like, how could that possibly happen? Like, how, like.

Music.

So my one, the roommate who beat his pants had a friend who was like a witchy gal. Yeah. Because, you know, we were all a little bit, he was really gothy. And he called her on the phone and he was like, oh my gosh, this thing just happened. We're all terrified. What does it mean? And she was like, ooh, that's not, that's not good. You know, she's like, that takes a lot of energy to make that happen.

Oh, yeah. Thanks. Yeah. yeah and and then she said please tell me no one ever did a ouija board in that house and i was like he's like did you did you do a ouija board i was like i may have and she was like oh yeah you got problems and he was like what do we do she's like i'm not even sure you know she could have told us like hey like if you still have the ouija board right this is where you needed the The instructions, yeah. But she kind of just left us with more terror. She was like,

don't call me. And then she's like, it's 3.30 in the morning. I got to go back to sleep. And thank gosh all those other people saw it. Because if I, just even me telling you now, it sounds so implausible. Right. You would never believe it. Music.

She's right. I mean, if I didn't know Dawn personally, I would definitely be giving this story the side-eye. But I do know her, and considering everything that she said about this house, I tend to believe that something was going on. But this final story is actually what convinces Dawn that the evil is real. I was alone. No, I wasn't alone. My boyfriend was sleeping on the futon in the living room, and I was working on term paper on the floor by the front door.

I had to leave the door unlocked because my roommate forgot his key. And so I'm laying there facing the door, and the door keeps opening a little bit. It's just like... But it's like, you know, it's like pitch dark outside there, and I just don't like that. So I kept getting up and shutting it. Every time it would open like a little bit more, but I wasn't scared at all.

Nothing and then I get up and I walk down the hall and I go to the bathroom, and as I'm coming back out of the bathroom I see that now the front door is all the way open like it's all the way open so I do what you would do you're gonna walk by and shut the door as you go by so like I just come striding in on the hall and I grab the door to push it shut and it feels like there's a 500 pound thing i cannot move this door it's pushing back at me and the instant horror and terror

and just like every single thing in my body like exploded in tears internally is like the only way i can explain it and i i and it's pitch dark on the other side of that door and i'm like i'm like i can't i cannot look like you must not look around that door you know and this is the only time i've ever done this but i was so scared that i instinctively, in my head said jesus please help me please make this thing go away and then it was just gone and i fell on the door and the door shut.

But it was like so terrifying that is fully terrifying, so I finally saw that on a show once but it took like four years the door like opening and you can't close it the door opening there's something crazy heavy on the other side and you can't close it but you feel like it felt like it was freaking, something so horrible on the other side of the door because there was definitely things that happened that I felt were like,

that felt so bad and other things where I was just like well that was weird you know but that one was bad. Music. Yeah that's real bad, i really kind of felt like there was something super fucked up in that house like demonic you know but yeah i don't like this story i know. Music.

Did you ever do any research on the house and see i tried but this was like 1993 you know and, pre-internet yeah it would have been library pre-internet but i did always want to go back there and talk to the people that live there now and be like is there anything happening in your house but I also don't because like we don't want to know well we made a pact when we left that we would never talk about that house in the new house because it was terrified it was going to follow us

you know and then it didn't seem to follow us but I also looked at 70 houses before I rented the next house because I was looking for a house that when I walked in I felt safe and when I walked into this house I was like I like saw the Japanese family that like bought it when it was new and and picked out the finishes and they put the boy pond in and they were like this happy family. And I was like, okay, this place is safe. Music.

Two-story of terror into a nice home with a koi pond. No shadow people or wailing walls or banging blinds or impossibly heavy doors. She was safe. So even though they had pledged not to talk about it, she asked her boyfriend one specific question.

So after we moved into that place, we went out to dinner one night and I was like to my ex-boyfriend okay so was there one place in the house that you thought all the bad stuff, lived and he's like yep and I was like okay let's write it down on pieces of paper and then show each other exact same place like and it was this messed up I don't even like saying it the front closet when you walked in looked like someone had converted into some kind of cage at some point.

And I'm sure it was probably a dog cage, but I always pictured some kid was like, it was like some makeshift kid cage, like. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, big no. Music.

Dawn had a tumultuous relationship with her then boyfriend. And so after all of this, She wondered, was it somehow her fault? Did her repressed anger create this? There was just, I was trying to be this sweet, good girl that, like, took care of everybody and, like, turned the other cheek on all this madness. But, like, inside, that's why I'm like, man, that could have been me. A lot of that stuff, that could have been me on the other side of the door. That one, I don't think so.

But, you know, I talked to one girl in real life who was like, that's bullshit. Don't ever let anyone tell you that that was you. You know, you're just sensitive to these things. And that's why you were the only one that always knew when it was happening. me. And I was like, I don't know, man. Some of the things that would happen seemed so pointed to my internal rage that I was like, like there was one time my ex-boyfriend and I were sitting on either side of this gorgeous 1930s fireplace.

And I had these like ceramic hands. Let's say something falls off the fireplace. It falls and it goes clunk.

They freaking like flew across the the room and smashed into the wall into pieces like nothing makes it fly across the room but like at that moment i was feeling this just insane repressed anger like and i felt like i don't know looking back on it a lot of times i'm like i don't know like i think maybe it could have been i'm no expert but i feel very confident saying don did not somehow manifest confessed one bit of the paranormal yuck in that house. And she came to that conclusion too.

But it doesn't mean that whatever was there wasn't happy to inflame already existing problems.

So I think what happened was we moved into a house that already had some negative thing. And all of our stuff was like, oh, I could feed on this. I could explode this. Because he was such a nice guy before that, dude. Really? Music.

House on Noriega Street. If you've listened to the past two episodes, you know that Dawn has felt things since then. She's even had a couple of ghost encounters, but she never felt scared like that ever again. And all those experiences I think are very interesting because they're so different from how the terror that I felt in my house on Noriega. Right. When I was scared there, it was like a terror I had never felt in my life.

And you see I've seen people talk about it on shows, the way they are like, oh, all the hair stands up on the back of your neck. And I'm recreating the feeling a little bit right now. But there's a level of your gut knows something is very wrong. Is the only way I can describe it. Yes. So there were multiple times where the hair would stand up on the back of my neck.

I would start to have this feeling of stress and then dread and then fear to the point where you know something's going to happen and you're listening so hard that you can hear your own like blood beating. And then finally you hear it and it would be something like, I remember a specific time I was near the kitchen working on the floor. I was sitting there in that state for like three or four minutes and then I just heard and.

The sound of my vintage ceramic coffee cup sliding across the vintage tile. And sure enough, I go in there and my cup is in a totally different spot than I had left it like 20 minutes ago. I mean, I do think that that is a good call out as far as like the physical reaction that you had in that house versus other situations that might be weird or even spooky. This was It was different and your body knew it was different. Yeah.

Okay. Sorry. This is like a little bit off topic, but I'm working on some episodes. I'm actually working on a few episodes about what we believe about our bodies, how we treat them and how we listen to ourselves. So I was curious about this intuition piece. Why wasn't Dawn able to really trust herself about what happened? How we feel about ourselves, basically. There's like an intuition component of what you're talking about. out.

And the fact that like, if you were alone, and that happened, it would be so much easier to like doubt yourself to be like, I don't know, I was tired. I didn't tie them down, like come up with all these excuses to like, invalidate that experience that you had. Whereas being in a room with eight people, you can rely on that, like you had witnesses to your experience. So like, why can't we believe ourselves?

Yeah, I know. Well, but I think, I think it's probably the same reason that you're probably addressing in your whatever you're working on which is all the conditioning that you've had to believe a certain thing like in this case to not believe right you know um and in this case to believe that people that believe in those things are nutballs right and there's something wrong with them right and that people that are curious about things like this are like in league with the devil you know like

sure and all those things you know and I probably thought that too like if somebody told me that they felt like their house was truly haunted like when I was 16 I would be like okay yeah yeah enjoy the good for you. After Noriega Street, Dawn learned a little bit better how to listen to her body and trust her gut. What's rightfully scary and what's not? I love that most of the things I experience now, like, I know them for what they are.

I just, I can't stress enough how interesting it is to me that, like, I was so deeply terrified of certain things. And that all these things can happen in my life now. And I'm not afraid at all. Like, it's, like, very, like, never brings that feeling. There are still to this day some things where I feel uncomfortable, and I'm like, oh, okay, like, I don't really want to deal with that right now, you know?

But I even ask myself, why do you have a problem with dealing with it? You know, I don't know. Well, do you mean, like, because you've matured and gone through it, you're less afraid, or? Or I, I honestly think that I just can better tell what to be afraid of and not to be afraid of. But if that shit happened right now, would you be afraid? I would feel exactly the same. The same, right. Yeah. I think that's my point is that I was terrified because it was something to be afraid of. Right.

And I don't experience that now because I just am not experiencing things to be afraid of. But you know the things to be concerned about.

I mean, I just feel like you would too. like yeah yeah right right you just instinctively like anyone who experiences something like the door thing i can't imagine anyone not feeling what i felt in that situation like yeah because like your brain can't even wrap around the fact that like the physics of it like i'm pushing on a wide open door from behind with all my body weight and i can't move it an inch and it feels like there's something five times larger pushing back. How is that possible?

Like your brain is like. Like glitches out. Yeah, totally. Music.

Never experience that. But if you do, just remember it's weird and normal. Music. In conclusion, I have a PSA for anyone who might live on Noriega Street. It's regarding a certain Ouija board. Fast forward to when we moved out. I knew that you couldn't just like throw away a Ouija board. No. But I did not want to bring it with us to the next place.

Not invited i left it in the stairwell what i left it there girl you didn't google like what how to dispose of it i did like light it on fire google then like i had no way of knowing all i knew was the the witchy girl was like no there's like you can't burn it you can't really like there's very few ways but she should have told us to close it i would have like dropped it off at the catholic church and been like y'all deal with it they're like y'all have a history,

you know they're like oh there's a 15th ouija board this week right, and i felt super guilty because i kind of hit it because we were on the second floor and there was a there was a fire escape staircase going down to the first floor and i kind of like tucked it so he wouldn't see it i know how horrible is that that is so horrible and can you imagine like the people that are going to find it at some point or already did.

The place they tucked it was right next to that scary cage closet. Like I almost left it in the scary cage closet. Music.