Hello, my haunting honies. I've been looking forward to getting back in the booth all week. It's been a while, I think maybe longer, or maybe it hasn't been long at all. The linearity of time is hard to grasp here, so we'll just say a week. I've been waiting to tell everyone that I'm finally getting the hang of the haunt. My first few weeks in purgatory, I was so like, where am I I'm dead? Kill me! Oh wait ha-ha.
But now I'm really getting my sea legs, kind of like the time I got motion sickness on Leo's yacht. Until the Aparall Sprints' and Dramamine kicked in. Fine. It was a pontoon boat called the DiCaprio and the captain's name was Leonard, whatever. Point is, after being in perg for a while, I've learned you can just pop in on whoever, whenever. Len, do you ever pop in on the living?
(mumbles)
Your wife? Okay, sad. I've found it's fun to pop in on the people who are least expecting it. It's like crashing a party. At first, everyone's confused, then freaked out, then they demand you leave but at least the next day they've got a great little story to tell. Like our next guest, Jill, whose weekend in the woods was ruined by a paranormal party crasher.
We're driving up the mountain and it's so much later than we'd expected, and so it was already much darker. And then, out of nowhere, this figure all of a sudden appears in the middle of the road. All of us were terrified. I'm Jill, and I felt like I was living in a real- life horror film. At the time, I was part of an event bartending company.
We would host events from weddings to Oscars parties, to Halloween parties to these retreats, and we would curate cocktails specifically for the event and show up and be part of the entertainment, per se. It was five years ago. We were hired to host and provide the bar experience at Camp Navarro for these camping and outdoorsy social media influencers. The atmosphere of Camp
Navarro lent itself to be just utterly stunning. Camp Navarro is in northern California, which is right around the Sequoia National Forests, where you have the largest trees: redwoods, sequoias. It's beautiful. It's perfect weather. It was right in early fall; at night, there was just a hint of crispness in the air. There were twelve of us going, actors, models and musicians.
You know, this is one of our side hustles. Nine of us rode in the sprinter van, and three rode in the front of the box car truck that held all the supplies. About two- thirds of the way up there, the box car truck realized they'd missed some supplies, so they ended up pulling off, and so that made everyone start to get a little nervous, just because we didn't know exactly where we were going, and you don't like to set right the group. We were already behind schedule because we're
from Los Angeles, and we're always late. As we're going around the mountain, it's pitch dark, and so you're going, of course, quite slowly. Off to the side, like down the slope, you start to see these eyes glinting. There's something that is staring at us, and it's not just one or two. You just kind of see these little flashes just looking at us, and it's so eerie. And then out of nowhere, three deer jumped across, almost hitting our sprinter van. Everything
comes to a screeching hall. We all lurch forward. There has been an entire herd of deer staring at us. They're wild animals in the forest, but this was weird. It's like they were welcoming us ominously, which was terrifying. We continue driving. It's pitch dark, but at this point, we don't know where we are, nor does anyone have cell-service.
Nobody had printed out a map, so we're relying on the old data that is left on somebody's phone to make sure that we're kind of going in that general direction. We realized we'd passed a camp. Okay, so we back up. As we're entering into the main entrance, this shadowy figure appears in the middle of the road. It was this really old country man with a hat, long white beard, cowboy boots, and a trench coat. All of us were terrified. We were like, do you have a
hook on one hand? Are you going to kill us? But then he motioned us to enter the camp. He was like, are you the bartenders? He was the maintenance worker for Camp Navarro, so we were in the right place. But truly, this is not a good sign. I was sitting in the back of the sprinter ban going, well, this feels like at the beginning of a horror film. All these really pretty people driving up to this random job that nobody knows them. We could just easily be picked off.
The scary old maintenance worker at the camp then directed us into the main clubhouse, where we would unload everything and finally meet the event organizers. We had been told that we were sleeping in the main staff house, but we ended up being put in the main cabins. They tried to make it sound like it was really a step up, but we were like, this will be fine. And the organizers said, oh, you're cabin number thirteen. Of course we're in cabin number thirteen.
That old man was terrifying, and now we're in cabin thirteen. Sounds right. Well, all of us grab our things to trot ourselves down to cabin thirteen. It's a traditional camp log cabin. Just imagine the creaky door sound as you push the door in. There are two sets of bunkbeds immediately on either side of the door, and then more sets lining the sides. Directly across from the open door is a big full length- mirror.
There was no hallway, no bathroom. You had to trek through the forest to get to the large main bathroom, and it was a good like two- minute walk in the dark with people you don't know around you. Which as any woman who has ever been taught anything it's like, you don't go anywhere by yourself in the dark with people you don't know. It's probably like two in the morning. We're finally in the cabin. My bunk bed was the first one on the right- hand side, right next to the door, and
I was a top bunk. Everyone's like, we got to get up at like eight the next morning. We got to call it the night. But because there had been so much going on, my brain is just going a mile a minute, and I am lying there in the dark, taking myself through calming exercises and relaxation exercises to just tell my brain to shut off. Even though I'm keeping my eyes closed, I am very much wide awake. As I start to feel sort of relaxed, I hear the door open, and I immediately feel this cold breeze
wafted over everything. I looked across into the full- length mirror at the other end of the cabin. What I saw in that reflection was definitely not a member of our group. I saw this shadow figure right in the middle of the doorway. This figure was female. She had a very pointed face. Was very slender. Her hair was parted in the middle, straight back into a bun. She was wearing round aviator goggles, like old- fashioned flying goggles like Amelia Earhart goggles. And a coat.
She was just standing there. She didn't speak out loud, but I could feel her energy shift towards my direction. This cold air just kind of lingered there for quite a while, even though our heater was on. It shouldn't have stayed as cold as it did. At this point, I am very scared. As gently and as softly as I could, I started to slide my body towards the wall and away from the edge of the bunk bed so I'd be as far away as possible from whatever
this was that was coming in. There was a palpable sense of her telling me, or yearning to be, like, you need to turn your head over and look at me. And at that point, it wasn't a friendly energy. It was an angry energy. I reached out for my phone and just clicked on the home screen, and it said 3:14 in the morning, right in the middle of the witching hour. That lit up our cabin. The entity is no longer there.
I shut my eyes hard, and I started praying because I did not want to let that cross into my world. It was almost like this creature was searching for something, wanted something, wanted an answer to something, and when I didn't respond, it felt angry that I was refusing to listen to their command of looking over at them. And this sounds weird, but afterwards, I kind of felt bad.
It almost felt like this lost soul. The lines between the living and the dead and the spiritual world, I think are probably closer than we'd like to admit.
I'd give anything to get drunk in the woods just one more time. And I know what you're thinking, Therésa, there's no way you'd sleep outside. Well believe it. I was something of a girl scout back in the day. That's right, I camped Coachella weekend too. But for our next true tale, we're leaving the wilderness behind and making a beeline for New York City. Our friend Jen got in a little over her head dabbling in the occult when surprise, surprise, she got haunted.
But you guys don't invite us in and then get upset when we show up. It's like the time I pity invited my annoying friend Mallory to our Hampton sharehouse for Memorial Day weekend, knowing she was supposed to be in Palm Beach with her family, but then she ditched her family and came with us instead. And it's like, yeah, that was my fault. Sure, I hit her with the non- vitation, but what can you do send an un-vitation?
Morgan was looking for a roommate, so wethought, let's try and live together. We found this really beautiful apartment in Harlem. We were right across the street from Central Park. I think that's what sold us on the apartment. This apartment was very much an upgrade, and I had room for a bigger bed. I didn't want to buy a new bed, so my parents offered to give me the bed that I used in my bedroom when I lived with them. I brought this beautiful, old- new queen sized
bad into my apartment. Everything changed after that.
My name is Morgan, and I am Jen's roommate.
My name is Jen, and I invited something evil into my home. Jen and I actually met at work. We were working in digital advertising. We were actually on the same team and quickly became fast friends. Going to happy hours after work and hanging out. We moved into that apartment in January 2017 . The apartment was so beautiful. It was in this really old building on 110th Street in Harlem. It was a two bedroom and the bedrooms were on opposite sides. We had really high
ceilings with beautiful molding. There was a washer/ dryer, and it was right across the street from Central Park North. This is actually the first time that I lived in an apartment building that was basically back to back with another apartment building. I am, you know, definitely a spiritual person. Over the years, I had gotten a little more involved in some occult practices, tarot reading, astrology, meditation and setting intentions and burning candles.
On the flip side, my roommate Morgan, is a very devout Christian. I don't really dabble in tarot cards or anything like that. Even though we, at the time, were practicing very different things, had very different beliefs about the world and God. We had really interesting conversations about these very topics, and we respected each other a lot.
I wanted to set an intention for myself for that summer, to be more in touch with my spirit guides or just more in touch with the universe, and kind of be able to see what I'm doing and how that's affecting me and how it's affecting people around me. At this time, I was really interested in the chakras, which are energy centers in your body. One night in 2014 , I did a tarot reading. I lit a candle that I had bought that was supposed to allow me to
get more in touch with these spirit guides. I said a mantra that I wanted to be more in touch with this, and I went to bed. The morning after, I was laying on my pillow, and I lifted my head up. I saw immediately a bunch of scratches on my headboard that were definitely not there the night before. And the scratches were really concentrated in an oval shape about
four inches tall, and it was all white. I immediately thought it looked like that famous painting the Scream, where there were two eyes and a screaming mouth. They were really, really shallow. I actually tried to use my fingernail right next to some of those scratches, and it left a much deeper imprint. And the scratches almost looked like they had white residue on top of them. I had no idea how they got there, and I immediately thought that I had a ghost. I've always loved ghost stories,
and I was like, this is so spooky. I just did this candle ritual asking to speak to spirit guides, and I wake up and all these scratches are on my headboard. It freaked me out to my core. So that night, I saged the whole apartment, every corner, every room, in the cabinets, in the shower, like every single tiny part of the apartment. And then, at that point, I said basically a prayer and just said, please let this evil leave my home. It's not welcome here. This is where I live, you have to go.
I was pretty confident. I went to sleep, and I was sort of excited to wake up, and I thought maybe the ghost would be gone. The next morning, my alarm clock had been unplugged overnight and I was late for work. As I got ready for work, I felt like I was being watched. I didn't feel like I was alone. I was kind of looking over my shoulder. That was the first morning that I felt real fear in the apartment. I started sleeping on the couch, because I got really scared.
I would be in bed at night and hear the floorboards creak. It would feel like someone was there. There was one night I was changing to get ready for bed and the light turned off while I was changing. I was standing alone in my room with the door closed, in the pitch black, getting dressed. I was absolutely horrified, and I was so scared, I ran out of the room. I was like, I can't ever go back in there. So this was around the time that it started to
really escalate and started to feel really scary. At this point, I had not told my roommate. I felt like it was my fault, and I was scared to tell her because I thought that she was gonna be mad at me. The next day, at work, I was really upset, totally sleep deprived, and I called my mom for some comfort. She was immediately concerned and kind of wanted to help me out. She was like, get rid of the bed, tell your roommate, maybe go to a local church.
I was at work getting a text from Jen with the picture of her headboard with very clear scratches. I think she was kind of looking for a reaction of me being like, oh my gosh, like what the heck happened, which just like, oh, you must have had a bad dream and you scratched your headboard up. We hopped on the phone and talked about it was very clear that, you know, something else was going on. She was definitely freaked out and was very clear to me that she wasn't going to want
to sleep in that bed again. I said, you know, let's plan to meet at the apartment. We'll talk about it. Being a born again Christian and very active in my church, I was like, I'm not going to allow this to bring fear into our apartment. I called up my friend who is part of the church. Morgan called me back after talking to her friend and said, Okay, this is what we're going to do. I was like, hey, would you mind coming over and helping us deal with what Jen believes to be a spirit.
When my roommate and her friend came over, we decided to do group prayer. We opened the door to my bedroom, but we didn't go in and we stood just outside of it. Their idea was to use holy oil, and to put the sign of the Cross on all of the doors and the windows in the apartment. At that point we would hold hands and do a group prayer, similar to what I had tried when I was alone, saying that it wasn't welcome here. This is a place of love and light, and it has to leave our home.
As soon as we say amen. The woman in the building behind ours starts screaming bloody murder. This apartment behind ours, they always had their windows open, all the way open. We could hear her clear as day, just screaming like, "help me get me out of here." It was really like a blood curling scream. It was disturbing. You couldn't unhear it. We had goosebumps all over our arms. There was no doubt that her wails and her screams of agony felt related.
We told it to leave, and immediately she's crying and screaming, and it was so incredibly chilling. All three of us just looked at each other with wide eyes. So we go about taking the bed apart while she screaming bloody murder. She screamed the entire time we took it down to the sidewalk, which was probably ten minutes. I felt guilty because I think that this entity was torturing her, and I think that I drew it in with my little
ceremony with the candle. And once I got rid of it, I got it out of my space, it was now attacking her. After we got the bed out, the screaming dies down, I'm starting to calm down, feel a little normal. I get a phone call from my dad. He said, your mom tells me that you're thinking about getting rid of this bed, and I was kind of like, "yeah, we already got
ri d of it. It was haunted." He responded by saying that when my grandparents bought their summer house on Lake Erie in the fifties, the bed was actually in that house when they bought it. That house is one hundred percent haunted. Everyone who's ever been there has a personal experience of something freaky happening. One night, two of my own sisters were trying to fall asleep and they both felt that they were being watched.
One of my other sisters was on the third floor and blinds would snap open, we would hear floorboards creek. My cousin had friends up one weekend and they fled in the middle of the night. And when my cousin woke up called them and they said that they were trying to fall asleep and a spirit like a ghost, walked through the door and charged into their bed and then disappeared. They were so scared that they literally packed up all their stuff, didn't wake up a single person, and just left.
So for me to find out that the bed was already there when my grandparents bought it, it was like something clicked. I always believed in the paranormal prior to this, and I think it's probably because of my grandparents haunted house. I look back now and I think that me lighting that candle sort of akin to someone messing around with a ouija board and not knowing what they were doing. I think that at that time I didn't think that there
were evil, malevolent spirits. I thought ghosts were just people who passed and didn't move on. But now I really think that I invited something evil into my home.
The second I heard washer/ dryer and a queen size bed in New York, I knew there had to be a catch. They say the West Coast is kind but not nice, and the East Coast is nice but not kind, but foisting a demonic spirit on your neighbor doesn't sound nice or kind. Kidding! I would have done the same thing. Anyway, that's all we've got for now. If anyone is in the mood for a scare, I would absolutely love
to be invited somewhere cute. Maybe like a rustic cabin or a haunted chalet moment a little purgatory pied-à-terre for when Len's being a huge bummer. (mumbles)Messing with you, Len, You're the best.
(mumbles)
As always, shoot us an email at [email protected] if you or a friends got a haunting they'd like to share on the pod. Oh Naomi, where are we with merch? What do you mean? Look, let's be ready next week? Okay, because I feel like this isn't the first time I've asked you about it and you said you were on it, remember, or you shrieked it. I don't know whatever that sound is that you make, you did that. It's okay, I'm just I'm
saying for next time. Well, stay tuned for updates on merch and we'll see you next incalculable stretch of time, possibly a week, on Haunting.
If you have a Haunting story to share, please email us at HauntingThePodcast@ gmail.com. Haunting is a production of Glass Podcasts in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. Haunting was created and executive produced by Nancy Glass, Andrea Gunning, Ben Fetterman, and Lauren Lapkus. It is hosted by Lauren Lapkus as her character, Therésa. Haunting is directed by Aleah Welsh and produced by Trey Morgan. It is written by Aleah Welsh, with additional writing by
Nancy Glass, Trey Morgan, Ben Fetterman, and Kristin Melchiorre. Additional production support by Todd Gans. Additional voice acting by Trey Morgan as the character, Producer Len Walker. Editing and sound designed by Matt Delvecchio with additional editing by Nico Aruoca. Mixed and mastered 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 Mibe Music. Special thanks to Speakeasy Sound Studios in Burbank, California. Follow us on social media by searching for Glass podcasts, or by visiting glasspodcasts.com. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts and Glass Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.