S1: EP 4 — "What Did We Sign Up For?"

my caseworker, has been pretty tight lipped on those details. So, from the bottom of my no- longer- beating heart, thank you to all the Hauntingers haunters? (mumbles) Haunter- sizers? Hmm, okay, we'll keep pitching on it though. In honor of all our new friends. I thought it would be a good time for an AMA. (mumbles) People know what that is, Len! (mumbles)

Fine? Fine, it stands for ask me anything. It's when you that yet to be named Listeners comment your questions and I answer them live on the pod or I guess unlive. Okay, let's get into it. Josh from New England. I used to date a Josh from New England. Maybe it's the same one. Hmm. We'll have to listen and see if he's constantly talking about his seventy seven classic Ford Bronco. Anyway, Josh makes

some pretty serious late night accusations against a ghost. Like my nanny Mildred used to say, nothing good happens after midnight. Turns out that's when she would take my mom's value and pass out with her schnops. Ugh.

the US as well. Because we were together for a long time. We would talk about lore and folklore. But once we were dismissed from our class structure, we were pretty much unsupervised for the rest of the day. We'd hang out and we'd kinda just talk and bond over fries and just kind of watch the world go by. We did a lot of other stuff and then just sit inside the classroom. We went on field trips. Our leader's name he was Donal. It's a pretty common

Irish name. He was a ringleader and he was very smart. One day he comes in, he goes, all right, guys, we're going somewhere and you're gonna have to pack an overnight back. We were like, "oh cool, what are we doing? Are we're going camping?" He goes "kinda." There was nine of us, seven girls and two guys, and Donal's not telling us really anything. I remember a couple of people being super excited. I'm like, cool, whatever happens happens. We pile in the van. We drive from Cork to

like right outside of Galway. We had crossed the point of no return. We went to this pub and we sat down and we were all getting ready to eat dinner. As our food comes, he starts to tell us we're going to a haunted house. We're gonna spend the night. The story of the house is kind of sad. It was around the time of the famine. A family had moved into it and it was a young family. The mother just gave birth. The baby and The father was working on a farm and as the famine came, there

was less and less work. It got to a point where, you know, he got really frustrated, so he turned to drinking and he's not around to help provide for the family. One day, he's out and the mother goes to the money lender without his knowledge. She needs money to put food on the table for the family and for the child. He comes back in the middle of the day and

he reaks of booze. He comes in, he turns to her and says, "what are you doing?" She says, I went to go get money from the money lender because we can't sustain our family. At this point, he was feeling shamed. The next day, the mother goes to the money lender. She leaves the baby with the husband and is having this really deep, in depth conversation with the money lender that apparently went on for a couple of hours. During that time, the father has a couple of drinks.

Baby's asleep, it's fine, another drink won't hurt. So, he has a couple of more drinks. And he has a couple more drinks, and the baby wakes up and he's drunk. He's absolutely drunk. And the baby starts howling, screaming, crying through its lungs. The accounts that were written said that the baby was

howling screaming like a banshee. He's trying to do the fatherly thing and takes the baby to his chest and he's just holding the baby to him and he's just rocking back and forth in the chair and he pulls tighter and tighter as the baby gets louder and louder, and he pulls harder and deeper into his chest. Then it's quiet, completely silent. Then he puts the baby back in its bassinet. And about ten minutes later, the mother comes in. The father is sitting visibly drunk in the chair, and she says,

how's the baby? He said, all the baby was crying and crying and crying, and I, you know, I was a good father, and I put it to my chest and I was rocking it. The baby eventually fell back to sleep and I put it back in its bascinet. So she walks over to the bacinet. She looks in and she sees that the baby isn't moving. She looks closer, she sees that the baby isn't breathing. She touches the baby, the baby feels cold, and at that moment something changed

in her. She picked up a knife, walked over to her husband and screamed to the heavens as she stabbed him multiple times, and then she cut her own throat. We're being told this story over dinner. Donald goes the reason that we're staying in this house is because it's haunted, and then he proceeds to tell us what the actual haunt is. He said that builders their tools have gone missing. If there are any knives in the house, they're stuck into things, like they're picked up and they're moved, and

they're driven into wood. If there's any change on the floor, it usually ends up by windowsills, and there's a baby that cries. The nine of us were just like, "oh man, what do we sign up for? What are we doing?" So, we finish our food and we go into this small house. We're all sitting and he asked us to bring something. Some person brought a stress ball, another person brought like a journal and a pen. Another person brought

like a fashion magazine. The only thing that I had was a permanent marker, like a sharpie, and I left that in the pocket of my cargo pants. We're all hanging out and we're having fun and we're talking about stuff, and we're talking about music and this and that, you know. Talking about how oh Galway is, you know, so pretty. Maybe we'll go into the town tomorrow before we leave, Yada, Yada. It's getting a little bit late at this point, so

people start going to sleep. We're all in sleeping bags. Mind you, the sharpie that I have is in my pocket inside the sleeping bag. At about four am, somebody woke up. They woke a couple other people up, and they were like, do you, can't you hear the baby crying? Do you hear there's, the baby, it's crying? Can you hear it? I'm still asleep. So they told me about this secondhand, and then everybody woke up, like around five thirty, six when the someone's coming.

The stress ball was ripped in half, like it was absolutely ripped in half. The journal had like scribbles on it that didn't make any sense, like what a child would do on a piece of paper with a pen, scribbles. The change that was around someone else was scattered all over the house, all by windowsills. Some were stacked, somewhere a line. It was wild! Wild because this stuff was not far away from these people. Somebody would have woken up. Somebody would have woken up.

Now we get to me. I woke up, my shirt is off. I went to bed with a shirt on. I go to the bathroom and I look in the mirror. There was writing on my chest. Unintelligible writing, more than scribbles, but less than words. And I just looked at it for like ten minutes. So then another person came in and said, "Oh what?" I was like, "I know, right? This is weird." She was like, "you told me your thing was inside your pocket." I was like, "yeah, but I didn't tell anybody else."

I went to go in my pocket to find my purnent marker, and it was gone. There really is no way that if a person did that, I wouldn't have woken up. Like the steps that a person would need to take to get to the marker, you would have to unzip the sleeping bag, find what pocket the marker is in, extract the marker, then pull my shirt off, then write it on my chest. Wet ink on my chest! I should have woken up. It was after that night, after that experience, that solidified the feeling that I always

kind of had. The supernatural ghosts are real.

you die? Naomi, I said, we're not doing these ones. Remember, I don't care how many people ask, We're not doing that, got it? Here's one! From All- Things- Alyssa- XO. Hi Therésa, Alyssa here from Cincinnati pre- mortem fan, post- mortem caller. I cannot express how much I look up to you and appreciate what you do. Your videos, product res and ootds are always the best part of my day. And since you've started haunting, I've even begun dabbling in the occult.

I've really come into my power, the divine, feminine and supernatural, and it's all thanks to you. Stop! No, that is so sweet. Light a candle on a pentacle under the next full moon and I might just pop by to say, hey, ideally something earthy or a light floral Santall twenty six if you have. But I'm not picky. I love that. Let's send her some swag. Well we still don't have swag. You guys are really testing me today. Moving on, this next time totally true story is more

of a feel good moment. Our friend Lindsay lost her dad a few years back. But just because someone's passed on doesn't mean we'll never see them again.

which one at this point. I think it might have been Pitch Perfect or something. And the movie ended. It was way past my bedtime, like around eleven thirty. Before I went to bed, I asked my mom when Dad would come back. She actually sounded a little worried, and she was like, I don't know, he should have been home by now. I didn't really think too much about it, and then I went to bed. The next thing I remember is my mom waking me up.

This wasn't like when she or my dad would wake me up, because I would oversleep for school a lot. She was frantic. She goes, We've got to go get dressed. I was barely awake and I did not want to get out of my bed. I mean, it's like the middle of the night. So there I was like okay, confused, like okay, where do we have to go? And she just stopped and looked at me. And I'm telling you, I will never forget that look. I mean, I can't even describe it. I was like, I don't know, like

terror or something like that. She just said, Dad's been in an accident. When we got to the emergency room, they told me he was driving home from work. It had been raining and someone apparently had run a red light or something.

The cop said that when the guy saw my dad, he slammed on his brakes, but because the roads were so slippery, he lost control of his car and slammed right into the driver's side door of my dad's car, and then it started spinning all through the intersection until it hit this lightpole like, head on. My mom and I were devastated. Like I saw my dad that morning, but the next time I saw him it was at the funeral. He was like my hero, he was my protector, and then he was just gone.

So I had been having a really hard time sleeping. I just kept thinking about my dad. The night after the funeral, I had this dream. I was at a park, totally normal sometimes I cut through there when I walk home from school. And then I saw smoke coming from where there were like a bunch of trees. The whole thing felt so real. I started looking for the smoke, but I couldn't even find it. You know, It's like when you're trying to get to like the end of the rainbow or something like that,

there's nothing there. When I would get close it would move, and then finally I turned around. I guess i'd like given up or something, But then I saw my dad. He was just standing there like ten feet in front of me. This felt so real. I mean I could even smell his cologne, like that's how real it was. So, I walk over and I asked him. I said, Daddy,

is that really you? And he didn't say a word, but all he could do was just not So then I started to ask another question, and then he put his finger in front of his mouth, like to say, like be quiet. I think they used to call it and you know stop sign in kindergarten, and then he holds out his hand. He was holding like a toy car. It was like this bright red SCV and with a

black stripe along the side. And then he moved his finger away from his mouth and then made the no motion like he was waving it back and forth. I don't even know what it meant, but I knew that there was something clearly about this toy car that wasn't right. So when I woke up, I thought that I had been to like the car, and that everything that I dreamt of was completely real. I mean, obviously it was a dream. But then later that afternoon, I was walking home from school,

and you know, I did what I did. I cut through the park. The park is huge. It had all of these baseball fields where my softball team would normally practice, and then there's like this football field. It's a huge park. On the other side of the parking lot, they were all of these trees, almost like in like a forest.

I mean, I never went to that part of the park, but I'm walking towards the parking lot and then I see a friend of mine from school and her brother had just gotten his driver's license and was going to pick her up since we also lived nearby. She asked if I wanted to ride home, and of course I said yes. And then her brother pulled up, and then I started a freak out. Her brother was driving a red SUV and it had a black stripe that went all the way down side. It looked exactly like the toy car

from my dream. It was the one that my dad was holding. I felt, literally all of the hair is on my arms and my neck stand straight up. My friend was probably noticing that all of the blood had rush on my face, and you know, asked if I was okay, But I wasn't okay. I didn't get in the car. I didn't even give a crap what they thought of me. There was just no way I was not getting in the car. The next day I found out that my friend got into an accident on their way home. They were okay.

But I'd like to think that my dad came to me in that dream to let me know that he was still looking out for me. I still think he's always looking out for me.

That's our show for today. I always love answering your question, so keep writing to me in the comments, and if you have a scare to share, hit up Len at [email protected] and your experience could be featured on an episode. A dialogue between the living and the dead is absolutely crucial, so let's keep the portals open and the veils thin until next time.

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 Lynn 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 Banes 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 dot com. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts and Glass podcast visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.