S1: EP 23 — "She Doesn’t Like When You Bring Other Girls Here"

out of it, so that doesn't count. Len, did you ever have a supernatural encounter when you were alive?

Chi Town [CHICAGO SOUDTRACK] Len, I don't, I don't. No no, no, that is not your cue to play the Chicago soundtrack and you've upset Merlin. He hates a brassy overture, Oh Merlin, Merlin, It's okay, It's okay, baby.

an elevator. In 2022, I was working as a luxury leasing agent in Chicago. When you think of luxury leasing agent in Chicago, most people think of the high rises and the skyscrapers, which is mostly what I worked with, but once in a while we would get clients that would be like, we want a historic building lumped in with all of these modern glass skyscrapers. So I got this client. She specifically wanted to know if I had

any connections with this one building. She really wanted to see this building because she was from Europe and it was built after the First World War for the German American Cultural Society members to gather to promote German American heritage. She's like, I just want to go to see this older building, and that was like amazing. The tower apartment

building is in The Loop. If you're not familiar with the Loop area of Chicago, there's breweries and bars and restaurants and a lot of really old buildings that were built around the time of the World's Fair, and there's also a lot of sad stuff that happened. Chicago's famous for our river that runs right down the middle separating the loops. A couple of years after the Titanic sank, there was a huge, huge, huge boat disaster, hundreds of people died.

That's probably six blocks away from this building. And then there was the Iroquois Theater fire, which was devastating, hundreds of deaths there too, that also is not far from this apartment building. The Loop area just has a ton of haunting stories. It's a very interesting area. So we go to this building. My client and I were chatting. She's like, oh wow, this is just what I wanted. This is tall and it has character, but it's not like a soulless glass tower. We walk in.

The lobby is just stunning. It looks like if 1920s met a modern interior designer. It was just gorgeous. It's decorated very funky inside. It's very very cool, very modern, very hip. The way that it works, there's a leasing agent assigned to the building that shows you the unit. They show you everything, amenities, units, the gym. The leasing agent went into the history of the building and was like, we're in the National Register of Historic Places. I was sold.

My client really was just obsessed with it. We started with the tour and we come to the elevator bank and there was a portrait on the left of a man and a portrait on the right of a woman, and I was like, okay, this is really cool. We started with the unit. We get in the elevator, We walk in and there's lots of light. They preserved most of it, like the rounded windows, really cool, like old doorknobs.

My client thought it was really really interesting. So we leave the unit and we take the elevator up to the pool, which was on the top floor. And this pool is just insane. It looks like a Turkish bath house. It's just like stepping into a time capsule, perfectly preserved historic 1920s pool. It's not like any pool you see anywhere in Chicago. And then we get in the elevator. We go down to the ballroom. It looks the same as it would have looked a hundred years ago. They've

just moved gym equipment into the ballroom. My client is just like going insane. She's like, it's like a high rise with character. So as we're finishing the tour, we get into the elevator. It was me, my client, and the leasing agent. We press a button to go back down to the lobby, but the doors are still open, and at the very last second, this lady just comes into the elevator. I was shocked. There was nobody on the floor with us. She just sort of appeared.

When this woman walked into the elevator, the temperature dropped twenty degrees. I mean, it was a freezing wall and it was instantaneous. My client even said it's getting cold in here. It was as soon as she was in the elevator car, everything got cold. It was a big change. There was just something about this woman. She was very short, probably five feet tall. She was wearing this vintage maroon buttoned down jacket with like the button cuff, very reminiscent

of like the thirties. And then she had a pleated skirt that went down to like mid calf length. It was like a dark brown. She was wearing shoes with a really small thick heel with a rounded toe. But the kicker was the hair. She had very short hair. It had finger waves. It's like the very shellacked down bang that looks like a wave. That's not anything you see now. It was a hairstyle that I would best describe as you would see on your grandmother's portrait from

the thirties. And then her lipstick. It was like heart shaped with a really defined cupid's bow and hella a dark lipstick, almost flapper style. She was just an interesting, kind of harsh looking woman. And she doesn't hit a floor. We asked her what floor she was going to, and she did not answer, so we did not hit a button for her. We hit the button for the lobby. So the elevator doors closed, and my client starts talking to her, asking like, how do you like the building?

And then I'm like, yes, how do you like the building? Because I'm like, you know, all weirdness of this put aside, what does she think about the building? And she's just staring straight ahead. She's not talking, she's not responding to any of our questions. I'm just thinking this is really odd, but I'm asking our questions. I'm just like, do you like the neighborhood? No answer, She's just staring straight ahead. Like okay, cool, how long have you lived in the building?

No answer, literally, not really registering that I'm in the elevator with her. I ask her what she does on the weekends. Just nothing. She's not looking at me, just looking straight ahead. And then she did turn her head slightly towards me, but it wasn't like a full turn, and then it went right back. That was when I noticed her skin. It was almost like an oil painting, like gray, kind of waxy. It did not look like living skin. It didn't have the

coloring that like a person would have. I couldn't see through her, but she also wasn't solid. It was just unsettling. I look over to the leasing agent and I can see that she is visibly freaked out. She was not making eye contact with me, but she looked like she was having a crisis. She's looking straight ahead, watching the numbers go down, and it just felt like everything was moving so slow. It felt like every floor was a mile.

Time just slowed down. And then the elevator just stopped on this random floor and the doors open, which was weird because we hadn't pressed a floor aside from the lobby. It stops on the ninth floor, and then the woman gets out of the elevator. She just like walks out, but it was like a glide. I take a beat and I decide that I want to follow her. I was like, I have to get to the bottom of this. So I walk out of the elevator right behind her.

She turned right. I turned right, but she's gone. There was no one there. There's not a single person in the hallway. This woman has vanished. There wasn't like an exit staircase, and there was not enough time for her to have unlocked an apartment door and gone in. We would have heard a door slam. This woman was just gone. I walked back to the elevator. My client is like chattering away. She's like, ah, like that lady was really quiet, and I was like, yeah, she was. I get in the elevator.

The leasing agent is still like traumatized in the corner, and the temperature is back to normal. Before we hit the first floor, the leasing agent was like, I am so sorry about that woman. You know, people sometimes see her. She's harmless, she doesn't do anything, but sometimes people see her outside of their doors, like she

just kind of wanders around. When we walked out of the elevator, I see those portraits again, the pictures, and I'm like, oh my god, I think that's the woman I saw in the elevator and I'm looking at these portraits of this man and this woman. The leasing agent is like, that's John Dillinger and his wife. Have you seen the movie Public Enemies? And I was like, oh yeah,

because I'm all about history, that's my thing. And she's like, okay, well, the scene where Johnny Depp's character, John Dillinger, met his wife in the movie, that scene happened in real life at our building because he was a German American citizen and he was part of the Steuben Club and they met in the ballroom at this building. So we have the pictures here because he liked to hang out here a lot. And I was like, really, that was just like my aha moment, that's exactly who it was. The

lady in the elevator was John Dillinger's wife. There was like not a question in my mind. It was the same lady. It was the same lipstick, same eyes, same hair, same aura, same person. My client is like, oh my god, Oh my god, I didn't Oh my god. She's like, that's why she wasn't talking. I'm like, okay, this makes sense that she would hang around here because this was kind of their home and they did have an apartment there. I do personally believe that John Dillinger's wife does still

roam the halls of the building. My client called me later that night, obviously to tell me her decision, and she did not go with that building. I think she was a little freaked out, but I don't think it was ultimately would cause her to not rent there. But I would move there. I still would. It was a great building. It has a ghost. If it was the freaking conjuring ghost, it would be another story.

through time and space, you beautiful, tortured soul. Now, like any good influencer, here comes the part where I try to sell you things. Ah, what I wouldn't give to participate in capitalism again. But there's no time to dwell on it. Well, I mean there's infinite time to dwell, but we're not doing that today. Now. I find this next story to be just as, if not more relatable, than the last. See if you can guess why.

and probably the oldest house in the neighborhood. It has three different floors, one being a basement apartment as well as a coach house that used to be stables. This house is very, very old, and with that there's probably

many stories, many things that happened. My whole family down the line are all musicians, so naturally, with the basement apartment being vacant, I turned that into my own studio when I was in college, so I would go down there to practice and compose, but a lot of times I would just go down there at to chill, watch some movies. But I noticed that during the day, especially when I was alone down there, I never felt truly alone.

At first, I kind of brushed it off, but I noticed this trend as time went on, and then I realized that after kind of sitting with this odd feeling, I felt as though something was watching me. I come from the Romani culture, more widely known as the Gypsy culture,

which is very much in tune with supernatural. We are descendants of an ancient culture from India that, through diaspora and just through many centuries, we were nomadic people that eventually landed in Eastern Europe and at least with my family in particular and the majority of Roma today, they're all very creative and musically inclined. We're also very much

in touch with our spiritual side. We believed in the ability for people to sense positive, neutral and negative energies from an unnamable amount of entities that may cross our paths. Although we're Catholic, we do believe that there is the ability for spirits to sort of linger family members to visit things like that, and when I was in the basement, I felt the presence of a young girl that essentially

was just sitting there watching me. I just kind of figured this is just a passing individual on a very old plot of land, and if it just happens that I have somebody who's just listening to my music as I play, hey great. It didn't necessarily register as like something to be worried about. For the next few months, whenever I would go down there, I would feel that presence. And then one night I happened to be at a jazz jam session with a friend of mine, a wonderful singer.

She and I got to a point where we agreed that, you know, we should become like a singer songwriter duo of sorts. I'd play guitars, she would sing, and I decided that we should get cracking and start recording something. So I brought her over to the house. As soon as we got everything set up, guitars tuned, mics set, I was grabbing us some water. She looks at me, and she looked very off, and she says, I have

like this really weird headache. I don't feel comfortable right now, and she told me, I feel like we aren't alone. I didn't want to tell her that I thought maybe there's a ghost down here in the basement, and I didn't want to spook her, so I just kind of played it off. I said, let's give it a few minutes. Let's maybe see we could get a song in, and if it comes to the point that you still feel

this way, we'll go upstairs and figure something out. So we try to get through one song, but I noticed that what started as just a look of uncomfort turned into a look of fear. At that moment, I realized that what I thought was a neutral presence suddenly became negative, but it was just directed towards her. I decided to grab everything. We ended up going upstairs, set the whole thing up. Somehow we get through a song, and I remember she

basically says, yeah, I'm not feeling this whatsoever. Something doesn't want me here. It's a very like negative presence. So I took her home, but she made it very clear that although she had fun, she would not ever come back to that house. She never came back, and I started to question whether me being comfortable with this presence was a smart idea or not. But being sensitive to

these energies, I wasn't afraid. It just felt very neutral, felt like if I was sitting down on stage performing to like, you know, a couple, or maybe one particular person in an audience. You know. I didn't mind her, she didn't mind me. So I never really thought anything about it. But that is until a couple of years later on Halloween. My girlfriend and I decided to go bar crawling. It happened to be a very cold and

rainy night, so we weren't out long. We decided we'd rather grab a couple of burgers and just sort of spend the rest of the night watching some scary movies at my place. We walk in the house head to the basement and I'm starting to get the TV set up. She was sitting on the couch and as I'm messing with the TV, she tells me, Pierce, I don't want to be down here. I don't feel comfortable. And then she says, there's a little girl with us. That just

gave me goosebumps because she's also a Romani. She just happens to have a little bit more of a heightened sense than I do. And I said, well, tell me, what are you feeling? What are you seeing? She says, Pierce, I see this little girl with dirty blonde hair, and she's wearing a white linen dress with like a black bow in the front, but it's dirty, little disheveled. She has bruises up and down her arms and legs. She said, she had like these very sunken in eyes, and the

pupils were a glowing yellow. She said, she doesn't want me here. She doesn't like when you bring other girls here. Then she describes to me what she's seeing. She tells me, Pierce, this girl is on the ground now and she's contorting. Her limbs are up like spider legs, but they're twisting. Her head is facing directly towards me, and she's smiling with these glowing eyes. The way she describes is that

this girl does not want her there anymore. And I can see that my girlfriend is completely petrified at this point. She says, Pierce, we have to leave, and seeing the sheer terror on her face, I start to feel that same amount of terror that she does. So I grabbed the food, packed everything back up, took her home, and even on the car ride home, I can tell that my girlfriend was physically and just mentally terrified for what she saw. So I get pissed.

I'm mad now. I head back, and my first thing that I did is I went back to the basement. But I still did not see this girl. All I know is that the presence was there, and I lashed out, screaming my head off, like in anger. I talked to her like a little girl, and I basically told her like, shame on you. Why are you doing this? These girls aren't here to harm you. I do not want you here no more. You are not welcomed ever again. I don't want you on this property. Be gone. This past August,

it was my twenty eighth birthday. I'm sitting down with the family and my brother happened to be going through my TikTok and stumbled upon this video that I made telling the same exact story. He looked at me, he said, what is this video about a ghost girl in the basement? So I looked at him and I told him, you don't want to watch that. Just ignore that because he spooks easily. He's not like me. Warned him, it's pretty intense.

He doesn't listen. He finishes the video, his mouth agape, and he says, why didn't you tell any of us about this little girl? The way you described her, with the dirty blonde hair, the white dress with the bow. I've seen this girl pass my bedroom in this house, and I looked at him stunned. As we're sitting there and talking about this, my father chimes in and says, yeah,

I've seen so many different things in this house. That's why I keep the picture of Jesus near the archway that leads from our living room into our kitchen, because I think that that archway, for some reason, is a portal between our world and theirs. And he says, I can't tell you how many times I've seen different people, different shadow figures, and a little girl walking in the house. We all just kind of stood there, just realizing that

we're not the only ones who live here. A lot of people say this ghost had a crush on you and took a liking to you, because anytime there would be a girl around, she would make her presence known and it would be malicious.

but this episode got me inspired to venture Midwest. Maybe pop by a little ghost town or abandoned speakeasy and see who or what is lurking about. You guys know the drill. If you've ever found yourself in a haunted love triangle or a spooky scenario of any sort, write to us at [email protected] and you might be featured on an upcoming episode. And if you haven't been lucky enough to be graced by a ghost, then send me your best looks for Coastal Proletariat Winter to add to my

Q-1 mood board. See you next week.

hosted by Lauren Lapkus as her character Therésa. Producer Len Walker is played by Trey Morgan. Haunting is written by Aleah Welsh, with additional writing by Nancy Glass, Trey Morgan, and Ben Fetterman. Editing and sound design by Matt Delvecchio and mixed by Dave Saia. Operations and production support by Kristen Melchiorre. Additional production support by Curry Richman and Todd Ganz. Haunting's theme and original compositions were composed by Oliver Baines

and Dprry Macaulay of Noiser. Music library provided by Mybw Music. Special thanks to Speakeasy Sound Studios in Burbank, California. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts and Glass Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.