S1: EP 18 — " Tall Man is in There.”

first time. Some of you may remember, Sharon and I had to part ways for personal reasons. She personally accused me of verbal assault. Anywho, my new caseworker is some guy named Lord Kingswell Herringbottom. He sounds stuffy, but no one can be as bad as Sharon. All that matters is that he gets me out of purgatory. Up or

down at this point, I don't even care. I've got to run to my meeting, but I'm leaving you in the very responsible hands of Celene, an experienced babysitter who scored the ideal gig, the kind where you show up for bedtime, raid the pantry and veg out to their HBO subscription. Only we don't work in ideals here on Haunting, so instead of a night of pop tarts and Sex in the City, Celene's experience ended up being completely harrowing. Take a listen.

I would see about four to five families a week, and I was babysitting this little girl for the very first time. She was about three and a half turning four. Her previous babysitter dropped out last minute, and I accepted the job. The mom worked nights, so she needed someone later. My boyfriend at the time picked me up and dropped me off to the job. I got there at midnight, right off the bat the house was freaky. It was a little bit of an older house, overgrown garden, just

looked like a haunted house. She met me at the door, gave me the instructions and said, my daughter's not sleeping if you could just help her fall asleep. She showed me in and then she left. I walked in. The stairs were a little creaky. The lights didn't stay on. They would flicker every now and then, so I was already like, oh, that's weird. The little girl was sitting in the middle of the living room playing with her dolls. I tried playing with her.

She's a little quiet, playing in her own world. She would give me like a doll to play with, but not really talking too much. I tried to get her to go in her room so we can maybe work on trying to fall asleep. So I'm like, let's go read a book. She just kept saying no, mm hmm, and I'm like, come on, let's go. It's okay, I'll go with you. We eventually do make it into her room. She had a really cute room actually it was pink,

and she had a little canopy above her bed. She had a little dollhouse to the side with her dolls. As soon as we got into her room, she went straight to her bed, laid down and was stiff, staring at the corner, and said, I can't sleep. The baby's crying. She was just laying there, not moving, pointing her finger, telling me that a baby's crying. She just kept repeating, the baby's crying. The baby's crying.

But she doesn't seem scared, just telling me this. We were both looking up into the corner and nothing was there, but she kept saying that there was a baby in the corner. I'm not really thinking much of it at this point. I just think she's a kid. She's saying there's a baby. Maybe she's talking about her dolls. She just keeps repeating it enough where I want to leave the room and just start over in another room. So I'm like, well, maybe she'll sleep in her mom's room.

I said, let's go to your mom's room. She got up off of the bed and led me into her mom's room. Her mom's room was just right across the living room in the other room, and she stopped when we got in there. It's almost like the closet catches her eye out of her peripheral vision. She hesitated for a moment, looks into the dark closet, points her finger and says Tall man. Tall Man's in there. The lights go out. It was just complete darkness. The

lights came back on. I picked her up, ran out of the room as fast as I can and close the door. I did not look into the closet. I was terrified, goose bumps. I didn't see anything at this point, just scared because this little girl is freaking me out. We went to the living room and there is a big couch, a TV in front of the couch, and she has a bookshelf to the side of the couch. So we both just sit down and turned the TV on. I think the news was on that late. She grabbed

her dolls and we just sat on the couch. I'm not relaxed, but she seems completely unbothered, still not saying too much to me in her own world. We watched TV for about an hour. She is still not tired. She's awake. I was texting my boyfriend at the time, saying something's not right. No text back. She's playing with her dolls on the couch. She stops. I'll never forget this. She gets up slowly from the couch, and she turns around to the window behind us, almost like she's realizing something.

She pointed to the window and started yelling, hat Man, hat Man, hat Man. So I got up and I turned around, thinking it's a person. I don't know. But when I saw the reflection of the TV, I saw the little girl's shadow and my shadow, and next to our shadows was this huge shadow figure. It looked like this thing was wearing a wide brimmed hat, and it had red eyes, almost like they're glowing. You had to be at least seven eight feet doll just standing there.

It wasn't solid. I could see that it was translucent, so I knew it wasn't a person, and it looks like it's observing us. Once I saw it, it kind of whooshed away. It's just gone. I'm shocked. I'm questioning what I'm seeing right now. And then, all of the power went out, the lights went out, the TV went out. Fight or flight? I'm flight. I picked her up quickly and ran into the kitchen with her. I felt safer in the kitchen because there were no windows, no doors,

no closets. I'm asking her, what's hat man? She had like a little snack bowl of cereal. She says nothing, and she just was eating her cereal. That little girl is unfazed. She did not even acknowledge that we saw anything. We literally sat in the kitchen for that last hour. At this point it's maybe three am, I was texting my boyfriend, you need to come by the house. I saw something. I at least wanted him to come by the house so he could look around outside or see something.

Wait there until the mom got home, but I never got a text back. I'm counting down the minutes until four am hits when her mom comes home. I keep peeking out the window. At four, mom pulled up. I see that my boyfriend gets there. I said, Mom's here, and I rushed to the door. Met her at the door. I told her, yeah, she's not sleeping, and I ran as fast as I could across the lawn. I was just about to get into the car. The mom had to come get me. I forgot to get paid.

I was so scared. I wanted to get out as soon as possible, so she had to come hand me the cash in the middle of the lawn. I said thanks and I got in the car and I said go go go. I reached out to her a couple days later. I wanted to tell her what her daughter was telling me. She never texted me back. About a month later, I went past the house and it was

for sale, so I know that they left. I think the mom probably was ignoring it for a while, and then I think all these babysitters leaving and the things her daughter is probably telling her, she wanted to move. I did some digging. Apparently there had been some deaths, specifically suicides in that house. I just always tended to lean on the skeptic side. I would always be like, it's not real or no such thing as ghosts. But

once you have an experience, that changes your outlook. I am definitely a firm believer in the paranormal.

was real chemistry. First of all, he's incredibly handsome. He does dress like a wealthy medieval child. Well, I mean he is a wealthy medieval child, but it doesn't bother me. He has that swoopy hair like Leo in Titanic, and his is so square. Well, his entire face is square. Gone really from the typhoid, but by today's standards it's hot. He's been dead a long time, but even when I was alive, I always went for older guys, so this kind of tracks. Not to mention, his fiefdom made a

killing in the spice trade. Plus we both love the beach and reading.

Our next story comes to us from Kate, whose supernatural experience at a house in Oklahoma was the answer. Len not necessary!

at their house having a family dinner. Me and Sarah had gone to play outside after dinner and we were playing Simon says, so I was copying every single thing that she was doing. We can see into the kitchen through the window and she sees her dad, Tom, just collapse, I mean, just a full grown man, I think He was like six three, falls straight to the ground. She screams, Daddy, really loud and playing Simon says, I scream, daddy.

She takes off running into the house and I'm running right behind her, and we open up the door, and when we got to the kitchen, we saw her dad laying on the hard linoleum floor and there was just a big pool of blood around his head. He had cracked his head open when he fell. It was very chaotic. Sarah was hysterical. She was just kind of screaming and crying and calling out his name. My mom was crouched over him. She was screaming for nine one one, trying

to perform CPR. She went in the ambulance with him to the hospital. At some point in the melee, the neighbor came over and took all three of us girls, so me, Sarah, and then my baby sister over to her house. She was you know trying to do her best to console us. We came home and my mom told me that he had died. It was definitely traumatizing. I remember feeling upset for my mom and feeling, you know, scared for his daughter. I had a lot of questions that grown ups probably did

not want to answer at the time. It was very much like okay that happened, and so we're going to move on. There wasn't as much conversation about like Hey, really talk things through with your kids, you know, let them really process that out. Death, sudden death brings so much uncertainty, Like there are not a lot of answers.

I couldn't ask my mom. I didn't want to burden anybody because I knew that it was a really awful thing that happened, especially to my mom who had been a single mom and was, you know, in this new great relationship. She'd just lost so much. During her grieving process, my mom actually had a place in her bedroom where she had like an altar for him. She asked for his presence to come and help her through this time.

When I was growing up, my mom was also big into Al-Anon and alcoholics anonymous, which, like in the twelve step program, there is a God, but it is kind of just like a higher power, it's palatable so that anybody of any religion can partake in those practices. Alongside that, my mom went to a humanitarian, universalist church, not for any religious reasons, more just for the community aspect of it. And so I think that she just never really found

a home with any particular religion. So I had grown up hearing about a higher power and kind of going to church, but there was no Jesus so I did not relate to any social norms around Christianity or even Christmas or anything like that. But there definitely was like an idea about God and praying. I was just so curious about what the hell had just happened, and I didn't have anyone to ask these questions to. So I was like, you know what I heard about this God guy,

heard about this praying thing. I know someone who was dead, so that dead person might know that God person, and maybe between the three of us we could get some understanding in my little tiny brain, and so I said this little prayer in my head, like if you're real, if this is real, can you just show him to me one more time? Just show him to me one more time? And that was it. I didn't really think about what that would look like or how that would actually make me feel. I would go to the bathroom

and I would just kind of say it. Sometimes I would take it more seriously than other times. It was almost like an intrusive thought more than it was a prayer. I couldn't get it out of my head. A lot of times the prayer would sound like I would be talking to him directly, so I would say Tom, Tom, Tom, if you're there, show me yourself, if this is real, if you're really gone, if people could meet ghosts, if I was kind of throwing all the different religious elements

stories that I'd ever heard. I was like, then just be here, like show me you. And I wasn't asking for a sign. I wasn't asking like show me a butterfly. I was like, get down here. I said, this little prayer I'll call it for years. I just wanted to get some understanding. So years later, me and my sister and my stepmom, we were visiting my grandparents in Oklahoma. We were staying at their house with my cousins. My grandparents lived in a farmhouse. It was a very long house, all one story,

big family room, big kitchen, and lots of bedrooms. Me, my stepmom, and my sister. We were staying in the last bedroom on the right end of the house, and all of the yard space was on the left. The house was elevated and there was a drop off down on that right side, so you couldn't walk around that side of the house. We were there with all my cousins, swimming, playing on the farm, riding horses, and going fishing, just

having a really nice summer. The last night we were in Oklahoma, we were watching some scary movies with my cousins, just having a good time having fun. But I definitely went to bed that night just feeling maybe a little bit ready to go home. It's getting late, so I climb up to the top bunk. We were sharing a bunk bed, so the bottom had like a queen size mattress. My stepmom and my sister in the bottom bunk. We turned out the lights and I slept actually really well

that night. I woke up in the morning everyone else had already woken up. I was sleeping in and right as I opened up my eyes, I looked at the window and there was a man's figure looking at me. He was very, very tall, and he didn't have a face. It was just his silhouette, but it wasn't an outline like he was dark. I hate to say I just knew, but I did. It's Tom. He was so tall, he was like six foot three, and he had a very

particular hairstyle. And his silhouette was in this window. He didn't look like he was standing inside the house or outside the house. He was just there at the window looking in at me. But like I said before, that whole right side of the house was on I don't want to say a cliff, because that sounds very dramatic, but there was a drop down. There's no way for anyone to stand on the other side of the window. I shot up in bed and I felt really scared,

but I also knew that I was responsible. I was terrified. I felt like I had summoned something that I didn't mean to what I had been asking for all these years. There it was. And then I thought, this is scary. I've bit off more than I can chew, and I don't know what I've stepped into. I said out loud, Hi, Tom, thank you so much.

I'm like climbing down the bunk bed ladder talking at the silhouette in the window, and I think I said, this is a little too scary for me right now I got to go, and I ran out of the bedroom. I did not look behind me when I left the room. I knew that no one was following me out of there, because nobody was in there. Just the way that his shape took form, I knew that was not a person. No body was in there. And then I was calm, cool and collected poker face. Go outside, see my grandparents,

see my stepmom, my sister, just talking. I think I had this sense like I don't want to be in trouble. And I did get in trouble a lot, but I did feel a heaviness. I remember just kind of walking through the afternoon feeling like I wanted to tell my stepmom right away, but I didn't really know what to say. We were just kind of talking throughout the day, and I ended up saying to her like I think I saw a ghost in the room, and she was like,

I believe you. And then she told me that she'd woken up around twilight and she just fixed the blanket over her and my sister, and when she pulled the blanket up, she saw a man standing at the bunk bed looking up at me at the top bunk, and so she just saw legs and she said that she'd peeked out and looked in that he had been standing there looking up at me. But of course, in the

moment she thought she was sleeping. I told her that I had also seen a man at the window, and I explained for everything that I had seen as well. She was like, okay, we saw same thing. And I was like, I've been asking to see him. Actually, I summoned him. That was Tom. I've been praying to see him for years. I never saw Tom again. This situation, with him dying in front of me, with my mom being so grief stricken, I clearly had a lot of thoughts and feelings about it that I was keeping to myself.

And so to have my stepmom, who didn't know this man, who didn't know that i'd been asking these questions, share experience with me, I felt like I had tapped into something way too big. I was like, I will never ask for anything like that again. I don't want to dabble in that. I don't want to see anything ever again. I'm like, God, if there's a god, if there's a way, keep it all from me. I don't know why certain

things happened to some people, and certain things don't. I know I've heard about some people just having more of a sensitivity to things. I don't know why he was at my bedside. That is one of the questions that I am okay with never knowing the answer to, and so I've just like found comfort in the not knowing. There have been times in my life where I have gone to pray again and I've been like, I need you to tell me what's going on with the situation or what I need to do, and I'll like wake

up the next morning just boom answered Like. I've probably only done that five times in my whole life because it really freaks me out. I haven't even wanted to like dive deeper into any of that. So I never have seen a psychic. I've never seen a medium. I've pretty much shut out anything paranormal that I can.

And if you've ever been Haunted on the job. Email us at [email protected] and you could share your story on an upcoming episode. I'll keep you guys posted on how things develop with Herringbottom. I'm gonna go read the Gutenberg Bible so we have something to talk about my next case management meeting. See yuh.

hosted by Lauren Lapkus as their character Therésa. The show is directed by Aleah Welsh and produced by Trey Morgan. It is written by Aleah Welsh, with additional writing by Nancy Glass, Trey Morgan, and Ben Fetterman. Additional production support by Curry Richman and Todd Ganz. Additional voice acting by Trey Morgan as the character producer Len Walker, additional voice acting by Kaitlin Goldin. Editing and sound designed by Matt

Delvecchio and mixed by Dave Saia. Operations and production support by Kristin Melchiorre. Haunting's theme and original compositions were composed by Oliver Baines and Dorry Macaulay of Noiser. Music library provided by Mybe Music. Special thanks to Speakeasy Sound Studios in Burbank, California. For more shows from iHeart Podcast and Glass Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,