TrueAnonPod

Crackpots #53: Spooked (Patreon)

Published:

2025-11-02 21:19:50

Imported:

2026-09

Tags:

crackpots jordan brown

Content

This week's entry comes from Jordan Brown, who brings us spooky stories and portraits from attendees of TrueAnon's October 30th performance. Jordan is a photographer living in Flatbush Brooklyn. He is currently developing a body of work examining the aesthetics of the political landscape of New York City in place and form. He is on Instagram at @Imurhucklejordy and is available for private engagements, events, and personal portraiture on commission.

*****

I heard them before I ever saw them. Ghosts on the wires. Little gumshoes, tipper-tapping, sticky-snapping their way up the wet concrete rivering up Broadway. Curling round Columbus Circle, creeping 'neath the amber black shadow of President Donald J Trump International Hotel & Tower to slide in line for the Hallow’s Eve live show of TrueAnon. A podcast about spectres, ghouls, and goblins, and the women who love them. Fitting then, that so many handsome ladies were there—some with, some without their hirsute goblins, many who had done their best to put on something nice and comb said hir. Tempted by these treasures, and curious to better know each better half and worse, each special strange little Gumshoe, I ventured out to greet them and hear what tales they might tell.

For as well it was this Halloween occasion that my services were secured, in bond and triplicate, by messrs Y. Chomsky, Liz, and Brace to investigate more than just my bawdy tastes, but an urgent matter of the supernatural.

The hosts had wagered, quite literally on prediction markets, that the ancient folklore was true—that on the Samhain the misted veil that drew the boundary of death from life became thin, and like a car window left open overnight, was liable to let in all manner of nasties. Some sweet, some foul, yet all Mystery unreckonable to earthly ken.

But markets bear no mysteries, and Liz wanted an informational edge before loading up on mega-orders of Ghost-trade. And so I was hired, ripped quite rudely from my feed nest dug well beneath Michael Bloomberg’s Ballyshear back garden in the Shinnecock Hills of Southampton—jacked to the motherlode, as it were—pulled roughly from my wires, sprayed heavily, and given a Sony PX333 voice recorder and a mirrorless camera (vampire proof).

As I pressed their flesh, I heard all manner of things. Some tales were quite remarkable. Many horrors, but also such wonders. Some stories were duds, but I took their portrait in any case to feed into Brace’s ‘Grok-Bank of AI Scanned Listener Faces for Reasons’.

The following is what I recorded as a dossier. I have left nothing out, for fear nor favor, except everything that might implicate the hosts and proprietors of the TrueAnon Podcast in any crimes—these passages I will keep.

Hunter

Hunter: I can share one about my auntie.

Jordan: Please.

Hunter: She was a police officer on the res. She said she saw a witch when she was working patrol on the Isleta reservation.

Jordan: Isleta, where's that?

Hunter: That's just like three miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It's very popular because they have a casino there. It's not too big. I'd say it's just maybe like ten by ten miles or so. I remember she said...well, there's two things she saw.

One, I guess was like a real and physical thing regarding people who aren't native, and one where the witch she saw, apparently, it was like in the middle of the night. And she just saw... I think it was like a half... not like a centaur, but like a half-horse, half-man. And she heard like some wild-ass scream and he just ran off.

Jordan: Off into the distance?

Hunter: Yeah, it was off in the distance. I said... 'cause there's not that many hills where Isleta is, but wherever there is one, it's like a couple miles away from the actual...

Jordan: What would that distance look like? If you were there and you were seeing it, like, what's the landscape like?

Hunter: So, New Mexico landscape, especially the south, it's usually just like desert and some hills.

Jordan: So a rolling, burmy type of thing?

Hunter: A little bit. There's hills, but they're kind of lone, you know? They're just like very spaced out. So I'd say a mile and a half out away from the street. So I bet what she would have seen was like very, like, vague almost. Like, there's no way she could have like pointed out severe details.

Jordan: But she saw it?

Hunter: Yeah.

Jordan: A centaur, with what—

Hunter: It was like, like a... half-horse, half-man. A little bit. She said it was a witch because a lot of people say, well, Skinwalker is like a Native American folklore, whatever, but that's like... I'm not sure if that's Navajo or Apache. We're Pueblo, so like, it's sort of the same, but they're like witches. I don't know what the actual name for them are, but that's what my auntie said.

Jordan: Remarkable.

Hunter: And then the real, I guess, the real thing she saw once on patrol was, uh, well, some guy killed himself.

Jordan: And this was in, like, the same timing as seeing the centaur?

Hunter: Uh, I'm not sure. She was an Isleta police officer for a while. Like, I'd say for a couple of years. I'm not sure when she saw them. But I remember, I remember her telling me a story. I'll ask beyond those details. But apparently, yeah, it was actually gnarly 'cause she said, I think he used like a 12 gauge... just straight to the... off the trail... uh, right by the... the Rio Grande river. I think like where the RV park is in Isleta. Yeah. So, I think like around, around there. Yeah.

Miss. Tery

Miss. Tery: Okay, so my first one is, I have sleep paralysis sometimes.

Jordan: Me too.

Miss. Tery: Terrifying.

Jordan: My wife has to shake me awake.

Miss. Tery: Oh my god, yes. My mom will come into the room, like every time she thinks I'm being murdered. And I'm like, "No, no." But now I've moved out, so it's just me. And it's terrifying.

But anyway, one time when I was still living at home during undergrad, I had what I thought was sleep paralysis where like a man in a devil mask came into my room and started punching me on my side repeatedly. And I couldn't snap out of it and like, I could like see his mask, and it was really scary. And it felt like a sleep paralysis thing.

So I was like, okay. So I woke up, and then there was a huge bruise right here. And I asked my mom, like, "Did you come into my room? Did you see anything this morning?" She's like, "No, what are you talking about?" And that's the only time I've ever had something like physical appear that's related to like a sleep paralysis thing.

Jordan: That’s terrifying.

Miss. Tery: And then the other is during undergrad, I went to Villanova and we had this building that has burned down two times. And they just kind of rebuilt the burnt-down half. It's the same half of the building that has burnt down each time. And the basement is super, super scary. And I love to like freak my friends out a little bit. So I got about five of them freshman year, and I said, "Let's do a seance in Tolentine Hall."

So that's the building. And they were like, "What the fuck are you talking about? That's insane." I was like, "No, nothing's gonna happen, nothing's gonna happen." So we went down, and I know where the boiler room is, and it's obviously super hot in there. And when I got down to the basement, the door was rattling by itself, which is fine. Like that happens, that's doors. So for the seance, we had a candle and a granola bar as an offering.

Jordan: That's a terrible offering. An awful offering. You're really tempting fate here.

Miss. Tery: It was terrible. So then the five of us got together and we did like a WikiHow article on how to do a seance. So we lit the candle, we put the granola bar there, and we called out to the spirits. And then the candle went out. And then we all got super freaked out. And then the boiler started making a bunch of noise. So two people left, and I was like, "You have to do the ritual! Like, you have to close the gate!"

Jordan: That's right. You can't leave midway. That's how you really tempt the spirits.

Miss. Tery: So we closed the gate. And then I'm not even Catholic, but I went to the church on campus after that 'cause I felt so shaken. Um, I'm sure it was nothing, but...

Jordan: Are the two friends who left okay?

Miss. Tery: One got arrested for smoking pot.

Jordan: That's what did it.

Miss. Tery: It's crazy. And then his girlfriend broke up with him... because he got arrested. Yeah. The other two people, I'm still great friends with to this day.

Jordan: That's why.

Miss. Tery: Yep.

Jordan: You stayed inside the magic.

Miss. Tery: Exactly

Lena

Lena: Well, my grandma, she lives in Algeria, and when I would visit her, the whole family would visit her. She has a big house, and so we would all live together. So I lived in the living room with my female cousins. And one time it was just me and one of my female cousins sleeping... Not sleeping, like talking. And the living room also has the family computer, where sometimes in the middle of the night, my uncle, her dad, would come in the middle of the night, doesn't give a shit that we're there, and would just play solitaire.

Jordan: Okay, that's actually genuinely very spooky.

Lena: That's not the spooky part.

Jordan: Okay, well, I'm already spooked, okay?

Lena: So, we're talking and I'm hearing clicking. We're talking... it's a big living room... and I'm thinking he's over playing Solitaire.

Jordan: Solitaire.

Lena: I look over, there's nobody there. And I'm like, "What's up? Like, why... do you hear that clicking, too?" And she looks at me and she's just like, "I thought it was only me." And she said the night before, while I was sleeping, she and our other cousin had heard it. Like clicking. Clicking like a computer clicking, like typing, mouse, like two different types of clicking.

And she had heard it with our other cousin, and didn't want to wake me up because she was afraid that I would be paranoid. I'm looking at her like, "You're trying to scare me. You're making this up."

Jordan: Right, you’re being fucked with.

Lena: Yeah, but she's frightened. Like she's straight-up frightened.

Jordan: Okay.

Lena: So we're like, "We need to wake somebody up because we're scared." We can't figure out where the clicking sound is coming from. It's not coming from outside. It's coming from inside.

But we're thinking it's maybe a bug. But we've never heard the sound before. So it's clicking all throughout the house. Like if you start moving to other rooms, it's echoing in the house.

So I need to go wake up my dad. Her dad is like in a different part of the house, like inaccessible without opening the door.

Jordan: Not playing Solitaire.

Lena: Not playing Solitaire. And so I have to wake up my dad. My problem is my dad when he wakes up, he wakes up like someone's about to kill him.

Jordan: The home defense wake up.Lena: Yeah, so I'm also afraid of waking him up. So I tell her, "Okay, let me wake him up by myself 'cause I need to coax him into waking up in a way that's not like..."

Jordan: In a way that doesn't kill you.

Lena: Yeah. So that fails. He wakes up like freaking out. Literally the second he woke up, like the millisecond that he woke up, the clicking stopped.

Jordan: Okay, that's kind of fun.

Lena: So he comes with us to the living room and he's sitting there, like doesn't want to be here. And we're freaked out. And he did a whole tour around the house. Like outside the house, inside the house, like did like a whole walk. And this is Algeria, right? There are thieves, there are people who would actually come and try to break in and try to kill you. And so he's actually concerned at first, but then he can't find anything. And he's like, "Okay, so next time you hear it, just record it. I'm going back to bed." We're like, "Okay." We literally could not go to sleep that night. We were like fourteen.

Jordan: Fourteen is old enough to not be making up clicks at night.

Lena: Oh, we're not making it up. Because we have the wherewithal to be like, "It should be like a bug." But it's two different types of clicking.

Jordan: Are there crickets in Algeria?

Lena: No. And it's two different types of clicking and it sounds very techy. It sounds like a keyboard and a mouse.

Jordan: Right, right, right. Mechanical.

Lena: Yes. We never found out what it was.

Jordan: But you're here.

Lena: I'm here.

Jordan: You're here.

Lena: I left the next day. I left Algeria the next day. She was like, "You're leaving me behind?"

Jordan: With the click?

Lena: Yeah.

Kenneth

Kenneth: Actually, first, do you know about the website Liminal Earth?

Jordan: No, tell me about it.

Kenneth: Okay. My friend, Garrett, who co-founded a radio station in Seattle called Hollow Earth Radio with his wife, he started this project called Liminal Earth, which started as Liminal Seattle, which documents supernatural stuff around the Pacific Northwest. And then eventually that snowballed into like a... Liminal Earth. So it's like people from, you know, wherever. He got really into this guy called Shrimpy from Bremerton. Or not guy, it's a cryp—

Jordan: A cryptid.

Kenneth: A cryptid, yes. Thank you. Uh, Shrimpy. Yeah. You should email him about it. I can, I can give you his email.

Jordan: Email?

Kenneth: Um... just 'cause I want to transcribe this. It might be [FRIEND’S EMAIL REDACTED BUT KEPT FOR FURTHER ANALYSIS]. All right, so he did that project. Uh, let's see. Ted Bundy. Okay. So... Just really quick, Shrimpy... cryptid.

Jordan: Large, small?

Kenneth: Large. Humanoid shrimp.

Jordan: Humanoid shrimp. Okay. I was really hoping...

Kenneth: He appeared in a woman's basement in Bremerton when she was doing laundry, and she screamed, "Ah!" and then she ran. And Garrett got so into this, he started... he got a shrimp costume and he started basically like representing Shrimpy, the cryptid.

Jordan: Now I have to ask, are we sure that Garrett wasn't Shrimpy... himself?

Kenneth: No, 'cause this was years ago.

Jordan: That's a great... that's a great switcheroo. You're like, "Oh my god, there's a shrimp."

Kenneth: He would love to talk to you. He'd love to talk about it. He even freaked out a state representative a little bit 'cause he like, he introduced himself as Garrett, and she's like, "Are you the guy that's been posting on Facebook about Shrimpy? Are you the shrimp guy?" or whatever. Okay. So, um... with Ted Bundy. Okay, so I grew up on a farm. Yeah, So Walt, who's now dead, he was very old. He sold his bees. When I grew up, originally we grew alfalfa, which you use leaf-cutter bees for. And there's many types of leaf-cutter bees.

His daughter disappeared in Utah around the time Ted Bundy was there. They never found her. It's pretty sad. There's a house that some friends lived in in Seattle, around the U-District, that they were having a pot party at, and the cops showed up.

They're like, "We got to shut this party down." They're like, "Uh, okay, whatever." And then the cops offhand mentioned like, "Oh yeah, I think this used to be Ted Bundy's house." They're like, "What the fuck?" And then, I don't know. I guess the way that went is like, they all got freaked out, they broke the lease, whatever, left.

I ran a DIY space called Heartland Gallery in the U-District, across from the Monkey Pub, next to a venue called Dante's that Ted Bundy used to hang out at and maybe do a little of his picking up thing. Yeah to be, you know, crude about it. Anyways, so the slumlord that we leased the venue from, he had an article on his little office on a bulletin board that had some sort of old headline like, "You know, don't trust all handsome men," or something. It had his fucking mug on there. I was like, okay.

Oh, yeah my best friend, Catherine, her mom's friend, when they were going to University of Washington back in the day, right? Ted Bundy had given her friend a ride home.

Jordan: And...

Kenneth: And... nothing happened. But he knew where she lived. And she...

Jordan: She got a ride home with...

Kenneth: She got a ride home with Ted Bundy. And then, at some point later, maybe the next week...

Jordan: Did she know him at the time?

Kenneth: I don't know. I don't, I don't remember. But then Ted shows up sometime later... at her house. My best friend's mom's friend's house. And she was there, but her boyfriend answered the door. And he got spooked, Ted got spooked and left.

Jordan: Moral of the story is, have a boyfriend.

Kenneth: Yeah. Even if he's a college student, you know? His academics are...

Jordan: Well 'm thrilled about this 'cause I got both Shrimpy and Ted Bundy, and a moral. So.

Kenneth: Yeah. Do you want Catherine's email?

Jordan: No, that's okay.

Kenneth: All right.

Daniel

Jordan: What's your name, sir?

Daniel: I'm Daniel.

Jordan: Daniel? You had a ghost in your house one time?

Daniel: Yeah, I lived in Birmingham, Alabama, and my friend's parents bought a house, and we were in college, and so we all just like rented from their place. And for probably like twice a week for two years, the back part of the house, where the laundry and stuff was, was an addition. And the door would just lock itself. And I mean it, like two 250-pound guys, like me and another guy, would kick it, we would slam it, and it would not open.

We one time, when this happened, we went to the back, there was like a back patio, we walked all the way around the house, there was a glass door, we broke the glass with a hammer, and we tried to open it from the other side, but it wouldn't. And the lock was like completely unlocked. And sometimes when it would happen, uh, we would hear noises, almost like the laundry turned itself on, but then it would sometimes feel like things were shuffling around. And then you would wait like 45 minutes, the door would just open. Uh, which is super fucking weird.

Eventually, we just got used to it. We would just be like, "Oh, I can't do my laundry right now." And then I was in school for history, so I looked up the house, and we found out that it, well, to put it mildly, there was a ‘Servants' Quarters’ downstairs, in our unfinished basement. And the place had a reputation for some pretty abusive ownership of the house. And it was where that addition would have connected down to what used to be the quarters for enslaved people. And I was like, "Oh, that makes sense."

That if a ghost was stuck in its routine as an enslaved person, it would have gone up, gone through this addition, 'cause it wasn't connected to the main house, and done the work of like laundry and cooking, and then gone back down.

And I like straight up do not believe in ghosts, but that was the one time where I was like, I fucking can't find any way to explain this.

Jason

Jason: In Connecticut, I live right next to a state forest, and I was hiking in the woods. I had had my dog off lead like a fool. This is when I was kind of younger. And it was probably like maybe, like 10:00 or 11:00 at night. My dog runs off, she gets spooked by something. So I run after her. We go deep down this one trail. And I grab her and we're coming back, and I hear something walking in the woods next to me.

And it seems big, so I think it's either a deer or a bear or something. But I'm listening to it and it sounds uh, bipedal. Like it has two legs. So I'm walking, and then I stop, and then it stops moving. And then I start walking, and it starts walking. And it kept following me.

It freaked me out. And I don't know what it was. Could have been some kind of uh, Wendigo, like some kind of demonic...

Jordan: What's your theory?

Jason: So, I think it was a guy. I think it was either a hunter or, you know, somebody who was like out there for whatever reason.

Jordan: Getting stalked by a hunter in the woods may be worse really.

Jason: Yeah, you know, you could think it's a monster or a ghost or something. I think it's freakier if it's just a man. But I mean, you know, it could have been a bear, a deer. It could have been... I dunno. But getting followed like that, I'll never forget that. That was terrifying.

Ally + Margaret

Ally: We had just moved into an apartment, and she had made the bed up and fixed it nice, like put the pieces all together and everything like that. And we're like, "Okay, let's test it out." We jumped up on the bed, and we were sitting there, laying there, just the two of us, and we hear, "Hey!" And then I looked at her, and she looked at me. And that was it.

Jordan: You heard a voice say...

Ally: We heard a voice.

Jordan: A third voice.

Ally: A third voice, and we were the only ones...

Margaret: We were looking at each other.

Jordan: And neither of your mouths were moving and someone said, "Hey."

Ally: Yeah.

Jordan: That's fucking crazy.

Ally: We were looking at each other... and, "Hey!" Just like that.

Margaret: Like someone just whispered it in our ears.

Jordan: Why do you think, "Hey"? Of all things.

Ally: Just to get our attention, I think. You know what I mean?

Noah

Noah: I was an excitable kid, but it was just because I was, you know, like a, like a Scooby-Doo cartoon scared me.

Jordan: A Scooby-Doo cartoon scared you.

Noah: Yeah, I didn't need ghosts. Like the TV scared me.

Jordan: Because the world was scary enough.

Noah: Exactly.

Amy

Amy: My uncle used to live in a house that was like malevolently haunted. The straw that broke the camel's back for him was like he was fixing something on the stairs, and his toolbox was at the top. And the toolbox flung itself down the stairs essentially, and the screwdriver embedded right in the wall next to his head. And he was like, "This has got to be some sort of shot across the bow. I'm getting the fuck out of this house." So, I think that's it.

Carrie

Carrie: So, I lived in New Mexico when I was a teenager.

Jordan: Second New Mexico story.

Carrie: Really? Yeah, 'cause it's fucking spooky as fuck. New Mexico is filled with spooks, ghosts. It's just so much blood in the soil and so many dead in the land. And I was at a friend's house who had an apartment in a big structure that used to be a hospital during the Spanish-American War.

And so it was already kind of spooky. And the setup was weird, and it was like a place where old hippies had lived, so there was like, freaking dirty murals on the wall and stuff. And I just remember walking... I was walking up to a loft room, and I was certain there was someone behind me. And I kept turning around, there was nobody behind me. Nobody behind me. Fucking felt like there was somebody, you know, right on your ass. You know? Like how you feel.

Jordan: You know, you can feel it.

Carrie: Yeah, it's on your ass. And then I walked up into the big room where all the people were, and two people were like, "Who's with you?" How spooky. It's not that spooky, but it's spooky. And I was like, "Fuck, right?" Fucking, yes! There's someone behind me, but then there's nobody behind me.

Jordan: You're also, you're the third, like, sort of quiet apparition story.

Carrie: Oh, good.

Jordan: People are having quiet apparitions.

Carrie: Yeah, quiet apparitions.

Jordan: It's happening, which is good. It's better to not be so malevolent, but quiet apparitions.

Carrie: I think I'm going to call my next art show "Quiet Apparitions." Thank you. I've been racking my head for what I'm going to call this thing.

Jordan: Are you an artist?

Carrie: Yeah.

Jordan: What do you do?

Carrie: Uh, right now I'm making these little creatures.

Jordan: Someone should be. Someone needs to be making...

Carrie: I just kind of stopped myself, and I was like, "Maybe there's enough little weird creatures in the world." And a friend of mine was like, "But are there?"

Jordan: My mom was an art teacher—elementary K through 6.

Carrie: Me too.

Jordan: Oh, yeah?

Carrie: Yeah.

Jordan: Michigan, southwest. We'd do a lot of clay stuff at home. She'd bring it for us, and she could fire it back at school. She used to love that I made these little faces, little weird guy faces.

Carrie: Yeah, little guys.

Jordan: Weird guy faces. And when I was twelve, she said, "You'd clean up at an art fair." And developed other interests. But now I wonder, maybe I would have cleaned up at an art fair with weird guy faces.

Carrie: You might need to start making faces again.

Jordan: Weird guy, little weird little guy heads.

Carrie: I'm telling you, man, in this spiraling empire, like playing with dolls, it's the way.

Jordan: It's time for weird little guys.

Carrie: It's fucking, that's it. It's all we got.

Josh

Josh: I have a condition where I faint sometimes. And one time I fainted and I like... I don't really believe in like spiritual stuff or anything, but when I was passed out, I opened my eyes and there was like a... I was in a still lake. It was very dark. And I don't know. I don't know if it was like limbo or purgatory or something. And then I came back to, I came to, I woke up.

Jordan: What do you think you touched?

Josh: I have no idea. I don't know.

Jordan: You touched the other side, maybe?

Josh: Maybe. Yeah. Maybe my brain was just like trying to process something or, yeah. Or maybe it was something...

Jordan: Or maybe it was...

Josh: Or maybe it was, yeah. I don't know.

Sophie

Sophie: So, I lived in this house, we're from San Francisco. And the people who lived next to us, like in the apartment next to us, the person before the people who moved in had passed away. I think they committed suicide inside the apartment. And so the mom—of the new residents—they had a balcony, and she was outside on the balcony.

And me and my family were also on our balcony eating dinner, and we look out and she falls. And it was sort of high up, and it was really scary. And she landed on the ground, and my dad ran down stairs outside. And she was totally okay, but she had these weird marks on her body, like she had been caught, and bruised. And it was the craziest thing.

Jacob

Jacob: I went on a ghost tour in Savannah, Georgia with my parents when I was probably like 12 years old. And you go around to all these different places and they're like, "This place is haunted by this ghost who died in this way." And midway through the tour, we get to this old-timey theater, and they're telling the story of how the ghost who haunts it is some bellboy from this theater in prohibition era.

And there were rival mobs bootlegging and fighting each other. And one day, one mob came by and shot up the place, and you can still see the bullet holes in the side of the building from when the mob came and shot up a rival gang or whatever. And so the ghost that haunts it is like this dead bellboy ghost or whatever.

And right as she's getting to the part of the story where she's talking about them shooting it up, we just hear a giant loud crack and turn around, and some guy on our tour was like, I don't know, six feet tall and had a neck brace on. It was the sound of him falling over like full-scale, and his neck brace cracking against the concrete.

He was alive, but then his family was like, "Oh, it must have cut off circulation to his head. It was too tight, so he must have just passed out." But it was timed perfectly with where they were in the story, talking about like the cars rolling by and the bullets getting shot.

David

David: I was walking in Bushwick once at night, back from my studio, it was probably like 1:00 AM in the morning, and all of a sudden some kids started shooting paintball at me.

Jordan: That's scary.

David: Yeah, like in the middle, I was crossing the road, and I was like—I look over, and there was a dude with a gun. It hit my shirt, it was like paint.

And I was like, "Whoa." And I kind of like froze and just like went into panic mode.

Jordan: You make eye contact?

David: Kind of, but like my instinct was to ignore that it was like happening and just walk as if nothing...

Jordan: As a de-escalation measure.

David: Yeah, and just like walk quickly, and went home and washed the paint out of my shirt. But it was like—as it was going on—you see the gun and you're just like, "Wow, this is like, you know..."

Michael

Michael: I was in art school in Providence, Rhode Island. And I was trying to get myself spooked up 'cause it's a very haunted place. And I was determined to see a ghost. This one night I was like, "Tonight I'm going to see a ghost."

Jordan: For sure.

Michael: And I was just pulling an all-nighter. And the buildings were empty. I was walking around, but I didn't find anything spooky. I had given up eventually. I got too tired. On the ride home, there was something in the middle of the road. So I stopped, and it was like a mound of a thing. I pick it up, and it was a T-shirt with a printed picture of a ghost on it. It was a ghost jumping out of a treasure chest. It was kind of like a stupid T-shirt. But...

Jordan: You found a ghost in the middle of the road.

Michael: I found a ghost in the middle of the road. Yeah.

Shaun

Shaun: So, when I was a teenager, I did an exchange program in Argentina and they put me in this really rural area and I was walking alone at night and across this like... they have these really wide highways with no crosswalks that are just really dangerous. And I was crossing one and it was the middle of the night and as if out of nowhere this motorcyclist came within inches of hitting me. And it was a couple, like the woman on the back and the guy driving the motorcycle. And I remember she yelled like, "Be careful, honey!" And like they literally almost killed me and they just kept going.

Jordan: "Be careful, honey".

Shaun: Yeah. And they have like motorcyclist—I don't know if pickpocket's the right word exactly 'cause they they drive by and they grab your purse and yank it off your shoulder, so it was like extra scary and I didn't know where I was. It was like they literally almost killed me.

Jordan: Harrowing.

Shaun: By myself in another country. I was like a teenager. I had like barely left my state.

Josephine and Darrin

Josephine: So, my mom's best friend had a room in her house that was always cold. And she had a new baby, and the baby just wouldn't sleep, she would just cry. And no matter what, like they put a space heater, they tried all these ways to heat the room, and it didn't get warm. And then at the same time, they had an au pair who lived in their attic, I guess, and she kept feeling the presence of a man. And so they had to hire an exorcist.

Jordan: An exorcist was hired because the au pair was feeling the presence of a man?

Josephine: Uh-huh.

Jordan: And she convinced them that this was serious enough to hire...

Josephine: Well, no. So, Nancy, my mom's friend, told their book club or whatever, and someone in the book club said, "Oh, I think you need an exorcist."

Jordan: At the book club they said, "You need an exorcist."

Josephine: Yeah.

Jordan: And she was like, "Okay, that's right. You do. We do."

Josephine: Yeah, so she found an exorcist. And the exorcist said that there were two spirits in the house. There was a very sad man in the attic. And then there was a little like demon-type troll thing in the baby's room. It wasn't in the room, it was like looking in the room, and only the baby could see it. And so the exorcist did some ritual, and she said the man was at rest, and she got him to go to rest. He was just...

Jordan: But not the demon?

Josephine: Well, so the demon, she said she dislodged it, and it got really angry. And so it started going after the exorcist. So, she had to get in her car and drive around for two hours...

Jordan: And lose... it...

Josephine: ...until the demon lost...

Jordan: ...lose the demon.

Josephine: Yeah, lose it.

Jordan: It's a chase scene.

Josephine: Exactly. And then the room was warm after that.

Vinnie

Vinnie: So, one night I was home from college. It's about my mother. Brought up by my mother. She's beautiful. I love my mother. Came home from college and I was out with friends. I came home late, at like 3:00 in the morning, the car was on in the middle of the driveway and my mother was sitting in it.

And in her hand was a little individual like pudding cup, like a snack pack, with a vegan hot dog in it, 'cause it was like 4th of July, and I had bought hot dogs for me and my friends, and she's had it in there, and she was dipping it in and eating it.

And then I said like, "What?" Like, I got dropped off at the end of my driveway, so I walked up and I saw her. I said, "What are, what is going on? What are, what are you doing?"

And she said, "I'm going on a ride."

And I said, "Going on — what do you mean you're going on a ride?"

"I'm going on a ride."

And then I tried to open the door and it's locked.

"Leave me alone. Leave me alone."

I said, "What the fuck?" What?

So I tried to flag my friend down who was leaving, and I was like, they're gone. And so I was like, "What the fuck is going on?"

She said, "I'm going on a ride." And she starts putting the car in gear.

And I say, "No, no, no, no." So I get in front, she stops. And then I go to the passenger side, which is open. I put it in park. And I end up getting her out of the car. There's pudding everywhere and vegan hot dog.

Jordan: Everywhere.

Vinnie: And then I found out that she had took Ambien for the first time. But at first I thought she was just a suicidal nut job.

Jordan: Or she was possessed.

Vinnie: Yeah, possessed. I thought, I—well, I had no idea what was happening.

Jordan: You know what I think was a really important part of the story you shared?

Vinnie: What's that?

Jordan: It was when you said it's important to know that she's a beautiful woman.

Vinnie: Yeah, she is beautiful. She's incredible. Now, you need to imagine a beautiful woman behind the seat of a car.

Jordan: With hot dogs and pudding.

Vinnie: Yeah.

Jordan: This is a really important...

Vinnie: Red convertible.

Jordan: Red convertible? What kind of convertible?

Vinnie: A Chrysler Sebring. So...

Jordan: Chrysler Sebring. Wow, very important. Yeah, good emphasis.

Vinnie: Jersey, New Jersey. All right. So, yeah, you're getting a little bit of a picture there.

Jordan: This is a very Jersey scene.

Vinnie: Yeah, it's very Jersey. "I'm fine," with a veggie dog in a cup of pudding.

Jordan: Jersey.

Vinnie: And so, just imagine that tableau.

Mario

Mario: All right, so without without getting too into it, uh, my grandfather had a long-time girlfriend after getting divorced and remarried several times throughout his life. The back end was this 30 years with this woman named Jewel. And she eventually kind of got dementia and started hitting the service—like the nurses they had to be at the house and they had to separate them.

And weirdly, right before he died, she was in the care home and was like, "Oh, this is the end," like she's slipping. And they died within days of each other, totally randomly. And she asked to speak to him and she didn't get to because he was just, he was also incapacitated. It was just like not going to happen.

So she was just gone and he was just gone. And like two weeks of going through his house—and I now live at this house—but two weeks after everything, everyone's there, we're cooking all the time, we're doing the service, everything, whatever. It's all done. The very last night, everybody leaves, I'm the last one out the door. And I close, I'm like, "Wow, what an intense feeling."

The next morning my sister's like, "I forgot some shit at the house. Can you go get it for me?" Like, "Yeah." So I go back in there. And as soon as I go in there, right in the middle of the floor, like in the center of the skylight, is one picture of the two of them that I have been looking at for my entire life on this wall, flat on the ground, smashed, broken, with the glass, with the picture slipping out of the glass. Like the two, her and the two of them sitting right there.

And it scared the shit out of me. Like I was like—it like totally sent a shiver through my spine. I'm like, "Nobody's been here, and the doors are all locked." Like, this picture just came off of the wall and smashed itself. And I have a picture of it, but yeah. Yeah, it is kind of wild. So that is the spookiest thing that's ever happened to me.

Faith

Jordan: What's your name?

Faith: My name... Or I'd rather... I'd rather not.

Jordan: That’s okay

Faith: Now I'm on the record saying I'd rather not. Uh, so, when I go to sleep at night, I see demons.

Jordan: Currently?

Faith: Always.

Jordan: Is it like a... I have sleep paralysis, and I also sometimes see like a sleep demon. The hat guy.

Faith: So, I have had a few irregular events where I have the sleep paralysis thing. Those are terrifying, but it's very, very rare. It's not like something that happens to me. I'm more like talking about like when I close my eyes at night, I start to have visions of demons.

Jordan: Wow. How's that going? Are you winning?

Faith: No.

Jordan: Okay. I'm sorry to hear that.

Faith: That's all right. I'm a person of faith.

Jordan: It's gonna come around.

Faith: I hope so.

Jordan: It's gonna come around.

Faith: Thanks.