I'm Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of Grit, the power of passion and perseverance. Together, we host no stupid questions, a podcast about the weird and wonderful ways that humans behave. Each week we tackle questions like, is it okay to be average or would you rather be a big fish in a little pond or a little fish in a big pond? Join no stupid questions each week or ever you get your podcasts.
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I grew up sitting next to my brother in the church watching people be healed. We nodded together in faith as a preacher, preached no disease, and faced the power of our Almighty God. The sickness is just another name of Satan. Come out, Satan. I command you in the name of Almighty God to vacate this person, cancer. I cast you out in firmly. I saw people begging a preacher to please, please place his hands upon their forehead. To please make the pain go away.
They expected a miracle. A miracle. And later as a grown man, I stopped believing in miracles because instead I'm angry. For the time wasted in the company of charlatans, but men who twist God and faith and healing into fancy cars and gold during liars telling lies. I share this with my brother and he agrees we laugh at the foolishness of it, the stolen time. Later, he asked me if I have stolen from him, the millions of dollars and jewels we had buried together under the sea.
I laugh again, but this time he does not laugh. Later, he grows angry, asked where I've hidden his secret daughter, rages to know how I sneak messages into his food. He tells me he knows that I edit his thoughts and promises revenge for my treachery. He calls me preacher. At first, I don't know the name of this melody, the vowing him. I beg him to remember I am your brother. I have nothing but love for you.
He screams back in rage, deep. And no medicine, no doctors, no therapy can cut through this darkness and it's almost by accident as he hurls abuse. That I retreat into the practice I had abandoned in my youth. I've reached out with both of my hands and command healing into him. I pour every ounce of power, I possess every resource, every bit of me, I channel into him. Heel brother. Heel. There's no surprise in his voice. Of question. Hey, you didn't steal my millions, did you?
No. And I don't have a hidden daughter. And mind control. Better, really even the thing. No. I'm crazy here. And we laugh together this time and we talk. We talk like we could in the before, except I speak quickly as fast as I can because I'm scared. I love you brother. I love you man. And several minutes later, just like I fear this window, this brief glorious sliver of lucidity, it slams shut.
I raise my hands to try again to infuse him with my newfound healing power. But this is a one time single use magic. And as much as I mourn, as much as I weep for what it cannot do, I am forever grateful for the dead. Because amongst many gifts was an acceptance of the darkness. A certain knowledge that even as I seek understanding the mystery will remain that this path, this journey does not have a destination.
I will never know what we're going. I can only count what we've been. And where we've been, what a journey you have asked and you've been patient. And today, your faith is rewarded. We proudly present, Spooked, the final reckoning. A celebration of supernatural storytelling from SNAP's evil twin program, Spooked. My name is Washington. Understand. Healing. You're the most powerful magic of all. Spooked stuff. No. We begin. Where we always begin. In search of the mystery.
Jan is in her junior year of college and she's just about to start an internship at a museum. It's called the Hoyt Institute. Now, the Hoyt is not a typical museum. It's built inside two old historic mansions. By this time, the original owners of these two old homes are of course long gone. Right? I'll let Jan take it from here. I was very excited because they had given me a tour of the two homes as part of my interview. And I was just so excited to get to work there.
I thought it was so cool that my office was going to be in the May its quarters. So I just really thought it was going to be a fun place to work. During her first week on the job, Jan started to learn about the history of the two old mansions. Originally they'd been the homes of a pair of very wealthy siblings. But even though they lived next door to each other, they weren't exactly close.
So it was very well known that the brother and the sister, May Emma and Alexander did not get along. May Emma was more of a happy, go lucky, go as I may type person. Alexander, on the other hand, was very conservative. He cared a lot about appearances and what other people thought of him and his family. And he was terribly embarrassed by his sister. It was during the 1920s prohibition was going on.
She completely ignored the bands on alcohol. She had what was considered wild raging parties at the time. I picture something out of the great Gatsby. She was not married and had sleepovers with both men and women. So definitely on the edge for that time period and it is well known that there was a lot of tension between the brother and the sister. After May Emma passed away, her brother had come in and sold all the furniture in the home and it was very spiteful.
He used to completely undersold her possessions and then there was a secret compartment in the dining room that hid May Emma's fur collection and she collected fur coats. And that was one of her prized possessions. He took all of her fur coats out of the secret compartment and put them in the dining room and let them on fire. When Alexander passed away himself, the mansions were turned into museums and a glass walkway was built between them.
Most of the day-to-day operations took place in May Emma's house, which was called Hoi-T-East. So my office was in the Old Maids' quarters, which had its own separate set of stairs off the kitchen. And at the top of that set of stairs was this box that had bells that came down out of it and each of the bells was labeled with a room. And throughout the house you would see these little levers and when one of those levers were pushed, the bell outside of the Maids' bedroom would ring.
So about my third or fourth day being in the office, I was sitting at my desk and I heard and I turned around and I looked at it. It was the dining room bell that was going off. My first reaction was that it must be a guest in the museum that is pushing the lever that's on the wall. And I went downstairs and I looked in the dining room and there was no one in the dining room. There were no guests in the museum at the time.
I figured, well, maybe the receptionist called me using the bell system just to be silly or to show me what the bell system was like. And so I went to the front office. The receptionist told me, oh, don't worry about it, that happens all the time. And I said, well, what do you mean? And she said, oh, well, you know, everybody that works here has strange experiences. And again, I said, what do you mean? And she said, everybody has run-ins with some kind of ghost here.
And so I took that information and just didn't know how to react and went back to my office and sat down thinking to myself, okay, I'm working in a haunted mansion. Shouldn't they have told me that during my interview? After working at the museum for a few weeks, I started to notice more and more activity. One day I was in my office, I was sitting at my desk and my back was to the door.
And the immediately on the other side of the door was the small hallway and the set of stairs that went down to the kitchen. And all of a sudden I hear steps on the stairs. And I slowly turned around and there was nobody there. But I clearly heard very distinctive footsteps continuing up the steps. I kept watching and I heard. But no one appeared, no head showed up, no body showed up. It was just the sound of the footsteps on the stairs and no actual person.
And the sound just eventually stopped. It was like someone came up to the top of the stairs and just we were looking at each other but there was nobody there. And I wasn't scared. I was a little more intrigued than anything else. Over time, Jen came to realize that everyone who worked at the Hoi D'Institute felt the same way. These little encounters were just part of the job.
So the museum staff would always get together and we would go into the kitchen and there was a big table in there and we would gather around the table and have lunch in there. And that's when a lot of stories were swapped of, oh did you hear the music in the ballroom today? Kind of a big band swinging type of music. And the sound of what sounded like people dancing like a big party going on. No, I didn't hear that but I heard footsteps on the stairs. The bell system went off again.
To me it makes sense that it was me Emma that was doing those things. I feel like she was just a real socialite and still wanted to be a socialite and have fun and play pranks and get people's attention and be the center of attention. And that personality is shining through in the things that happened after she passed away. Now on the other side, I did not spend much time in Hoi West which was Alexander's home.
The stories that I was told during those lunches of people that spent much more time over there was that it was a little bit of a darker, more oppressive atmosphere over there. And that makes sense because his personality was like that. People that worked in Hoi West would notice when they would come into Hoi East a very strong smell of smoke in the dining room. And they believed that it was reminiscent of when Alexander burned May Emma's first in the home.
One time I was alone in the kitchen for lunch and you know I'm sitting there watching the microwave like we do. I felt like somebody was watching me like somebody was in the doorway of the kitchen. Just it felt like somebody was there and I turned around and there was no one there. And then when I moved over to the sink to get some water, that's when I felt this intense cold spot. And again it just felt like somebody was watching me over my shoulder. I felt unwelcome.
It felt like I was in somebody's territory, somebody was being territorial from the other side and they did not like what I was doing. My heart started racing. I definitely felt like a heightened sense of fight or flight. Like I think I need to get out of here. Maybe there is somebody else here besides May Emma. Ask yourself, will Jen encounter the infamous Alexander in Hoi West? I'll bet something deep inside you already knows the answer. Stay true.
The report for this podcast comes from the San Jose Museum of Art. Christina Fernandez, multiple exposures, features richly layered artworks that convey complex stories about migration, labor and more. On view through September 22nd, tickets at SJMUSA RT.org. Welcome back. The Snap Judgment's underground catacombs featuring supernatural storytelling from our sister program, Spooked. Be Afraid.
In the last few years, Jen experienced some interesting encounters in Hoi East of the Hoi Institute, a Pennsylvania museum set inside two old historic mansions. But now, now Jen's about to discover what or who is in Hoi West. Spooked. Jen worked at the museum for a semester. During her time there, she organized a poetry competition for local kids.
And then I put together this award ceremony, which was going to be held in Hoi West, aka Alexander's house. It would be Jen's first real time working over there. I had everything lined up, everything done, I had gone to the store and bought the cheese and the crackers and the juice. And it was great because these kids came all dressed up in their finest clothes to get to the award ceremony. And they were so excited to be recognized for their creative writing.
Just as the party was winding down, Jen's boss told her that she had to leave and she asked Jen to stay and lock up the museum on her own. So, my boss leaves and I'm alone in the house. And I begin closing up chairs and winding up cords from the microphone. And the last thing that I do is get ready to take care of the food. Jen grabbed a platter of cheese and crackers. She made her way into the Butler's pantry and then threw a set of swinging double doors into the kitchen.
And then when I went to turn around because I had another platter to go get, the doors were swinging. The door swings fully open and there was a man in the Butler's pantry. He was wearing a gray jacket with a tie and he had gray hair and he was pretty tall. His face was filled with disdain. He definitely did not like me and I could feel it and I could see it in his face.
I'm thinking that this is a man that got into the house and has been hiding and he is laying in wait for me and he's going to hurt me. I was terrified. I was freezing cold. I was shaking. I felt like I wanted a scream but it felt so tight. I couldn't scream. I was terrified. And because I was in such fear, I had an accident and it ran down my legs and into my shoes and it was a mess but it was the last thing on my mind because I was just so fearful that I was going to be attacked.
Eventually the doors slowed down and they stopped and I couldn't see what was on the other side of that door. I was standing by the island counter and there was the knife that I had used earlier in the day to cut up the cheese was still there and I picked up the knife and I called out. I have a knife and I will defend myself and I opened the door. I pushed open that door and there was nobody there.
And that's when I realized my brain started to process what I had seen. I realized the man wasn't totally there. He was translucent. I work in a haunted museum. It's a ghost. A adrenaline is pumping through my body and I'm thinking I got to go. I got to protect myself. But it didn't want to let my boss down so I did what I was told which was turning off lights as I was leaving the house.
Even though I was terrified, I really wanted to make sure that I lived up to my obligations with this internship. I got to the door that went to the glass tunnel that went to Hoi East. I just started to run. And as I was going through the glass tunnel, I smelled the very distinctive smell of smoke in the dining room. It didn't smell like a campfire. It smelled like burnt animal fur. That very heavy, stinky smell that just kind of sticks in your nostrils.
And it added to my fear and I just was desperate to get out at that point in time. Jen finally made it outside. She ran to her car. My hand is shaking as I'm putting the key into the ignition. And as I'm backing up out of the spot, I can see Hoi West in my rear view mirror. And there is a light on in the kitchen at Hoi West. I know for a fact that I turned off that light. And I can see a shadow cross in front of the window. It's just, it's person going in front of the window.
And I'm sure that that shadow that I saw was the man that I saw in the pantry. All Jen wanted was to be home, safe inside her apartment. When she got there, she ran up the stairs and burst through the door. And my roommates came out to their bedrooms and being like, what's wrong? Because that's not, wasn't my usual way to enter. And the concern on their face because they said, I was just so pale, all the color had drained from my face.
I had been wearing mascara and tears had made their way in black down my face. And it was very obvious that I had had an accident and wet myself. Jen's roommate helped her calm down and urged her to clean up and take a shower. I had the number from my boss on our refrigerator door. And my one roommate said, I'll just call her and explain what happened.
When Jen got out of the shower, her roommates told her that her boss wanted to talk to her. And so I called her back. And she, she 100% reassured me that there was no way that somebody could be in that house. It was not a real man. It was Alexander watching me, not happy that I was in his house. She told me that she'd seen him too when she was alone in white west.
My boss was telling me that it always seemed that people who worked more with me, Emma's side of the house, when they would enter into Alexander's home, he seemed to appear more frequently with that look of, of, disliked, disgust, almost like, why are you here? You're associated with my sister and my sister is a terrible person. And it seems like that tension between the brother and the sister from life was continuing on past life.
I might have been two days later. I went back to the museum to pick up my things and to have my final evaluation. My boss offered me a job. I thanked her profusely and told her how much I really had enjoyed working at the museum. And I needed to think about the position because it certainly was coming out of the blue. I had no inclination that that offer was going to come. Ultimately, I made the decision not to take the job.
Partially because of what happened in white west because I had never been so scared in my entire life. Thanks to Jean for sharing her story with us today. Best believe, Jin is a spook listener, a spookster. You know, you love hearing from our listeners, and if you have a story, drop us a line, spook. Let's snap judgment, that'll RG. Visual score, for that piece was by me, I'm more in Motu. It was produced by Zoe Furnow. Hey, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm.
After the break, a nurse is contacted by former patients who have left their earthly plane. Stay tuned. Welcome back to Spooked, a special staff judgment presentation. I'm going to be in Washington and let's just know that some people they have a gift of sight. They can see the fallen. They can talk with them. Sometimes I can even help them out. This is not news. We understand that here. Instead, I want to ask you, how do you decide if you want to use that gift in the first place? Spooked.
My dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I was about eight years old. My sister was a nurse and I would always see her taking care of him. I wanted to take care of him, but I didn't know what to do. Often times, I would feel helpless because I wanted to know how to make him feel better. Unfortunately, he ended up passing away about a year later. That kind of steered my course to become a nurse or just being a medical field.
I'm a new nurse and I get hired at this hospital through a job fair and I'm just super ecstatic about it. It was definitely not my first choice to be a night shift, but it was the only one available. I'm being oriented onto the floor. The nurse that's training me is just kind of showing me the ropes. This particular wing is somewhat v-shaped. The hull is pretty well kept. The floors are super shiny. We try to be as discreet as possible during the night.
We're walking slowly through the room by the way. Kind of peeking our heads into the patient's room just to make sure that they're okay. As we continue to progress down the hull, I just notice there is a shift in energy. At first, it's subtle, but then as we approach towards the end of the hull, it gets heavier and heavier. I could feel it start from my feet and slowly rising up and crawl up my spine. I felt like little tingles. We finally approach the end of the hull.
Our backs are turned towards room 323. I felt this sense of anxiety emanating from that room. It was dark, the door was open. It doesn't make sense though because it wasn't occupied. I tried to ignore it, but I just couldn't. The nurse that's training me, she's going over the task and the computer, but I'm not even paying attention because my attention is toward that room. I wanted to ask her, like, hey, is there anything going on in that room?
I didn't want to come off as crazy on my first day on the floor, so I just waved it off at that point. I finished my shift after my orientation, so I'm going home. This memory just popped into my head. I was around nine years old and I was outside in the backyard. This was early in the morning. I'm taking care of my dog and then I start feeling somewhat dizzy. Not only my head, but pretty much throughout my whole body. All of a sudden, I just feel that there is someone behind me.
And then right next to my ear, I hear someone just breathe out. Like, I thought it was my brother just messing around with me, but then I look and then there's no one there. My whole body just lit up, my heart dropped and I just had to get out of there. I just ran back in. Turn up, my mom would tell me, don't be alarmed. It's just, sometimes spirits just come passing through and they don't mean you any harm at all, or they just want to pass a certain message on.
The very next day, I go back onto my shift and it's roughly around 3 a.m. finished my tasks, so I'm just sitting on my computer on the workstation on wheels, charting away. I hear some sniffling. It's kind of subtle at first and then all of a sudden I hear sobbing. So I'm thinking, where is this coming from? Like do they need help? I'm looking around and then I look behind me and it's coming from room 323.
I want to make sure that whoever's in there is fine and they need anything, I'll help them out. Sometimes I'm getting closer to that room, I'm feeling that same sense of dread again, but now it's just growing more intense. The room is completely dark. My knock on the door, is anyone in here? And that's when sobbing stops. So I step into the room, I start feeling this dizziness.
It's not as bad at first, but with each step I take, that dizziness gets more intense and to the point where I actually have to lean against the wall a little bit. I'm looking around me, it's still dark, but I can see the room is perfectly clean, perfectly set up. The bed was made, that room was obviously ready to take in a patient. So no one should have been there, but there's someone standing in the corner. She has her hospital gown on barefooted, long black hair.
I could kind of see right through her. I couldn't really see her face though. I get this overwhelming sense of confusion, but it's not coming from me, I think it's coming from her. I actually see her take a step back even further into the corner. I'm really pleased, don't disturb me, and I feel like she is actually frightened of me. I felt the only logical way to respond back was to just kind of project that I wasn't there to hurt her, but I just didn't know how to verbalize that.
So I just, I just decided it in my head, hey, look, I'm not here to hurt you. As I turn toward her to face her, I blink and then she's just gone. She just completely disappears. And as soon as I see that, I feel every terror in my body just stand up, and I knew at that point I just had to get out because this is the first time I've actually really seen an entity. I've never seen someone so clearly. As soon as I get out, the dizziness is completely gone. It's like as if it wasn't even there.
After that, I see one of the nursing assistants just walking down the hall. Curiosity overtakes the threat for me. And I ask him, like, hey, is there anything going on in that room that I should know about? He asked me like, what just happened? I'm like, I just saw something in there. I felt something. He's like, yeah, no, we all have is like, just not even a big deal. Oh, yeah, the room's haunted. That's why usually that's the room that's last occupied.
We try to avoid putting anyone in there unless we really have to. I'm just kind of, how is this not a big deal to you? It was slightly upsetting for me. I definitely did want to help her out. I just, I didn't know how. Like how does one help out someone that's not alive anymore? Like how do you ask, hey, can we get that room to be cleansed? Obviously, you can't sage the place because you know, smoking allowed. Roughly around three weeks later, I'm nearing my lunch break and it's around 2.30 a.m.
Usually, I like to nap during that time because oftentimes I'm not even that hungry. Anyway, I really couldn't find a place until one of the other nurses told me like, you can take an nap in the family room. There's no one there. There's a big set of windows straight across from the exit. There's a TV in the corner and then the wheelchairs are set up facing the windows. I'll walk into that room. I do a little check. There was no one there. I just want to take a 30 minute nap.
So walk on over to the couch, set up my alarm, and then as I lay down, I start feeling that sense of dizziness. I sit up again and I just have to like take a couple deep breaths. Like maybe I lay down too fast. I don't know what's going on. So as I'm sitting there, I look over to my left and then I notice there's an old person sitting on the wheelchair looking out the window.
I see his hands on their hand rest and I just see the back of his head, you know, slightly balding and he's just looking out. I feel this certain chill go down my spine. I knew from then on that it was an entity like my hairs were standing up. It's every bit of my body telling my logical mind that this person isn't supposed to be here right now. And I just get this sense of I really wish I was out there right now. I want to leave but I can't. I miss my family, but I can't see them.
I start tearing up a little bit. I wasn't even thinking about any sort of sadness. All I wanted was just to kind of lay down. All this sadness had to be coming from him. Oh, geez, he's probably one of those people that passed away here, but he's trapped. He doesn't know where to go. I just kind of closed my eyes a little bit. The process was going on and I opened my eyes again and he was gone. There's still that residual effect. There's still that sadness that's kind of lingering around.
I didn't want to deal with it anymore. I was too tired. So I think I'm just going to go nap in my car. I stand to get up and that's when the door opens and I see one of my coworkers walk right in. I guess she was on her break too. She looks at me. She's like, hey, are you okay? I couldn't really verbalize how I was feeling at that point. She tells me you look kind of pale. She's like, you saw something, didn't you? I'm like, well, yeah, I just saw ghosts.
I just saw an old man just sitting on the wheelchair. She's like, yeah, we've seen him too. I'm like, why aren't you guys telling me this? Why am I left to discover this stuff by myself? She's just like, well, I mean, if we told you you wouldn't believe us, I decided never to nap there again. And I was thinking, you know, this can't keep happening while I'm at work. It was definitely at that night where I did make that decision that I want to be able to choose who and what I see.
I would love to learn what to do, but at the same time, I cannot bear that responsibility. Because what if I do learn what to do? Is everyone just going to come at me at once? It leaves me helpless. So I'd rather just not be in that situation. I actually did a little bit of research and that's how I came up with meditation. Through your power of your mind, you can actually form a white bubble of positivity that prevents any sort of unwanted energy or entity trying to, you know, get to you.
At the point where I know that my meditation was working is that certain parts of the day, I'll feel a chill again, like something crawling up from my foot or crawling up my back. And before I would just kind of let that feeling continue, but I make a conscious effort to say, no, I'm going to stop you from progressing that way. They can't interact with me or I don't see them. It's like, yeah, maybe my mom was right. It's just a person walking down the street, but I would only care.
I don't even want a live person following me. So how much more for a person that's already passed on, you know, I did see an opportunity to go to the day shift. I just went there. I feel like I'm making up for helping people not get to that point yet and do everything in my power to help them out while they're still alive. I have specific nine to five business hours only. Big, big love. The dinners for sharing a story with the spook, the original score, poor that story, was by Doc Kim.
It was produced by Chris Hammbrook. Oh, it happened. That was just one walk down the dark path we called spook. You have a story of your own battle against the darkness. I want to know about it. I want to know all about it. Email us your story. Spookt. Snapjudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener. Plus yours. Spookt. Snapjudgment.org. Spookt was created by the team. The team that behaves respectfully when visiting the museum.
Everyone except for Mark Ristich who keeps pointing at artwork telling everyone he painted that. There's an assessment. Eliza Smith, Chris Hammbrook, Annie Nguyen, Lauren Newsom, Leon Murtou, Wenzel Gori, Tail De Cof, Mercedage, Zoy Fugno, Tiffany Gileza, and Ford, Doug Stewart. The spookt theme song is by Pat Masini Miller. My name's Van Washington. And if you hear a knock on the door, the door is inside your house. Never open it. Back away slowly. Slowly.
This situation can only be confronted in the daylight hours in the meantime. Get yourself a hard chair, a strong drink, and a sharp stick. And remember, please remember, to never ever, ever, never ever, never, never ever. Turn out. The lights. Support for this podcast comes from the San Jose Museum of Art. Christina Fernandez, multiple exposures, features richly layered artworks that convey complex stories about migration, labor, and more.
On view through September 22nd, ticket set SJMUSA RT.org.