(Part 1 of 2)
Hello edi and nick! I’ve recently discovered your podcast with my husband, and we love listening to you guys on roadtrips! It's fun to hear the crazy stories you find and it's interesting to hear about fan experiences as well, something that has made me comfortable with sharing our own with you. This is an ongoing story, it's not just one thing but a collection of experiences that have happened to us since being married, which has officially been one year this month!
I have always been a big fan of horror and the paranormal, but purely for entertainment. I love going to haunted houses, watching scary movies and hearing scary stories because it really does fascinate me. Though I don’t always believe what I hear and have never been one to want to experience it first hand.
That first changed back when my husband and I were still dating.
We were going on a camping trip with my family. We have a tradition of sharing spooky stories each night, most of which came from my uncle who sort of collects ones he likes in addition to some crazy stuff he’s witnessed as well. After he had finished my then fiance decided to share one from his childhood.
It took place one night when he was younger and sleeping over at his grandparent's house. He was out in the living room on the couch and heard knocking at the door. He didn’t answer but heard the voice of a little boy say, “I’m cold, let me in.”
The knocking persisted and eventually woke his grandpa, who came out to see what was happening. He told him to stay back while he answered the door. Making sure to keep the screen shut, he opened the door to see a little boy standing on the porch.
“Let me in, I’m cold,” he repeated again.
“You need to go home,” his grandpa moved to flick on the porch light. As soon as he did, however, the boy vanished.
“I’m cold,” my husband heard behind him as the room lost all its warmth.
Behind him stood the little boy and immediately his grandpa began praying to cast it out. It worked, but ever since that moment, that little boy has been following him everywhere.
My husband served a 2-year mission for our church in California and explained the different times he saw the boy. Including one instance as he was heading back to his apartment with his mission companion when a church member ran out asking them for help. They explained that their son wasn’t breathing and that he had been complaining about being cold all night up until that moment. They gave him a blessing and eventually, the son started breathing again.
My husband saw the figure of the little boy and continued to hear “I’m cold,” the rest of the night.
When he finished his story everyone seemed a little freaked out, I mean I was too because his tales seemed so outlandish. I didn’t believe him at first, but there was something in his voice as he spoke. I could hear the fear as he recounted those events and see the uneasiness in his eyes. Though I still didn’t want to believe it.
A month later we traveled to Idaho so I could meet his family. I got to sleep in his bedroom while his mom made him sleep in the basement. It was the second night there that I had my first experience in the form of a dream. To this day it was the most vivid, realistic dream I can recall ever having.
It was from my point of view and took place inside of my house. My mom was there, standing in the corner watching me. But she looked older because her hair had turned completely gray and thin. She was covered in wrinkles and looked emaciated like I could poke her and accidentally break a bone. It was terrifying to see her that way, especially because at the time she was battling cancer.
I looked away from her and then down at the floor. I was standing inside a pentagram drawn in blood and there were other images drawn around me that I didn’t recognize. In one hand I was holding a knife and in the other I was holding my cat. Slowing and against my will I started cutting into my cat, her guts spreading across the floor. It horrified me and I tried desperately to wake up but to no avail.
Eventually after whatever ritual was taking place seemed to be finished, I woke up. It was the kind of dream that left your body tingling, like thousands of needles poking all over my skin.
There were spots in my visions that were hard to see, similar to how blinded you’d feel after staring into a bright light.
When my vision settled I shut my eyes tightly, too scared to actually sleep but too scared to keep them open because for a moment I swore I saw something moving in the room. But that seemed crazy to think, after all it had just been a dream.
The following morning I mentioned it to the family and immediately his sisters reacted, claiming they had either seen or been attacked by a demon that lived in that room. I refused to sleep in there after that.
A few weeks later my fiance moved down to Utah and into our new apartment that we’d be living in after we were married. He started complaining about the closet across from the bed claiming that the double doors would randomly open and close all night long. Inside he’d see the little boy standing and staring at him while he tried to sleep, sometimes even pulling him down the bed. Even after what happened in Idaho I still didn’t want to believe but felt uneasy about hearing his stories.
Fast forward a few weeks later and we were finally married and working hard to get our apartment unpacked and in order. After getting all of my things moved in and building all of our furniture, we reached a point of tiredness where we decided to put everything we still needed to unpack into our second bedroom, making sure to stack the many boxes against the wall so we could still walk into the tiny space. We started hearing sounds from this room at random times of the day. It was like someone was raffling through the boxes, pulling things out or even dragging the boxes across the floor.
At first I’d freeze up, waiting for the noise to stop and catch whoever was doing it once I built up the courage, but whenever we went to investigate, no one was there. However everything was always out of place.
Though over time I noticed that this would only happen when my husband was home from work, something I found really strange. It was during this time that I believed every story he had told me about this boy because more and more I started experiencing things myself.
I could recall a night where we were getting ready for bed and my husband took off his shirt. I gasped at the sight of scratches all over his chest. He had three sets of three scratches across his skin, one more set of three on his back. He seemed as confused and freaked out as I did because we couldn’t figure out how that had happened. The scratches were so prominent and red, one set even seemed to break skin.
“Did you feel that happen? Did you scratch yourself?” I kept asking but he didn’t remember doing so and didn’t feel any pain from it.
Another night I had been out late with friends, but my husband decided to stay home and get some sleep. When I finally came home I heard the closet doors creaking from the bedroom and instantly got excited because I expected my husband to still be up. I walked over to the bedroom, already starting to tell him about my night and what he missed but when I opened the door he was fast asleep.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the closet doors moving, though as soon as I made direct eye contact with them they stopped. I continued to stare, wondering if maybe I just imagined it, but then they slowly started to shut until they were fully closed. The closet door didn’t align well with each other and they required great force to yank open and force shut. But to my amazement, they were forced shut. I froze in place and didn’t know what to do or where to go.
The safest place felt like being beside my husband even though it meant sleeping in that very room. But I hurried into bed and squeezed my eyes shut hoping it wouldn’t happen again.
This happened several more times, the door swinging open and close by themselves. We tried to turn it into a joke as a way to cope with the fear and I’d leave them open as a way to punish him for not doing the dishes, but regret that decision once one of our phones went off.
The notification illuminated the room just in time for us to watch one of the doors swing shut causing us both to scream.
After that we made it a rule to always keep the door shut because it seemed to happen less when they were tightly closed. Though I know what you are thinking, I’ve tried to see if they will swing set on their own, but its hard to explain how they are forced shut because to do so often requires me ramming into them full force.
Another night my husband decided to charge his laptop in the bedroom, which gave off a soft glow, almost like a night light. Sometime in the night I had woken up and noticed a shadow by the side of the bed. I could see the outline of my husband's shadow as he lay in bed against the wall and above him looked like the shadow of a man.
He was standing straight but had his arms in the air with his hands and fingers outstretched as if he was getting ready to grab him. The shadow didn’t move so I tried to write it off as it just being the shadow of some laundry we had on the dresser nearby and went back to bed.
I had woken up again around 5 in the morning, an hour before I had to be up for work. Again I noticed the shadow over my husbands, but this time it had moved. It was crouched lower down towards him, reaching for his face. I could make out each long finger as they curled in almost a comical sort of cartoony monster sort of way. I still tried to convince myself that it was only the shadow of the laundry but used my fist to make a punching motion towards the shadow in a poor attempt to fend it off before going back to sleep. When I woke up again for work, the shadow was completely gone.
Just a few nights later I witnessed another shadow, this time it came directly from the closet which my husband hadn’t closed all the way. He had already started falling asleep as I noticed a faint blue light from the crack in the closet door. Then I watched as a small shadow darted out, rushing over to my husbands side of the bed before disappearing.
He turned over, half asleep and asked, “What did you say?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You just whispered something to me,” He insisted.
“No I didn’t.”
“Oh, that's unfortunate,” he seemed to realize what may have been the cause of it, but just shrugged and fell back asleep.Not long after I had another dream that felt almost as real as the first.
In this dream I was woken up while in bed, by my bedside was a little boy. He was pale with dark curly hair and he seemed frantic for some reason because he kept motioning me with his hand to follow him. I told him to go away and tried to sleep again but this time he grabbed my hand and tried to pull me out of bed. I began to get frustrated with this, trying to yank myself away from him until I actually woke up and realized nothing was actually there.
A little confused I looked around, making sure it really was a dream before I attempted to sleep again. Throughout that whole night I kept being jerked awake because every time I shut my eyes, I saw that little boy trying to get me to follow him. That morning I explained the dream to my husband. His eyes widened and he asked what the boy looked like.
After I gave him a description he froze.
“That's the boy I see. Whatever you do, don’t follow him. Just ignore him and eventually he will go away. That’s what I do.”
Originally the dream didn’t scare me, only mildly annoyed me until he told him this and I seem to go into high alert. But it didn’t end there.
As it turns out, he had had a dream as well, something he didn’t share until we were at a family party talking about some of our experiences with my cousin. She had been dealing with seeing spirits all her life and my husband always seemed comfortable sharing his stories with her. He started explaining the dream I had and then followed it with one I hadn’t heard yet.
The boy had tried to get him to follow as well, this time however he did and ended up in a forest standing just a few feet away from the little boy. He got upset and asked him why he was doing these things to us and what he wanted. He addressed my husband by a name only my husband knew and introduced himself properly for the first time, Though my husband refuses to tell me the name the boy goes by, he says he won’t ever say it aloud.
Calmly the boy started to explain that before this life they were friends, very close friends.
Some context to understand this next part, a belief in our religion is that before we were born, we lived as spirits in heaven.There was a war were we all decided to follow God’s and Christs plan to come to earth with the ability to make our own choices and be tested to one day return back to heaven when we passed. Or follow Satan’s plan but we would not have the ability of choice on earth. A third of everyone chose to follow Satan and were cast out, because of this they are never to receive bodies. Most people tend to think of them as demons.
The boy explained that he had not chosen to follow Christ and was cast out, but that he was so close to convincing my husband to do the same. He followed him around because he wanted his friend back and wouldn’t quit until he got him to come to his side.Hearing that sent chills down my spine, but it was cousins reaction that shocked me even more.
“I’ve had the same experience!”
And she rambled off into story after story of encounters she had with other spirits. My husband joined in with more of his own, some involving other spirits I hadn’t heard of and how they both constantly saw things.Things started making sense as I listened to them talk.
I had only known about the boy but now I understood why things happened in the home only when my husband was around and never when I was by myself. Or when he felt so uncomfortable in my cousins home or even in other places that made him uneasy for what I thought was no reason. I had even been warned before we were married that it would be my responsibility to make sure he was staying on the right path in life because there were forces trying to lead him astray.It still scares me to this day but we’ve learned to ignore it, it almost keeps it at bay.
Recently we moved my cat in, who had previously been living with my mother, and things have calmed down quite a lot, or maybe it's just easier to say that the cat did it. Our most recent occurrence happened just a few nights ago as we were winding down from work. Our second bedroom was more organized now but still had a few boxes on the table. Underneath the table we keep the cats litter box and food bowls. There's a chair as well making it easy for her to hop up on the table and get into things she shouldn’t.
So when we started hearing the boxes move and papers shuffling I reassured my husband, “Don’t worry, its just the cat.”“No its not,” He pointed to the side of me where the cat was currently laying as we heard the noises continue on.
There have been a few times our bedroom door has closed, again I try to say its just the cat but she's been on the bed watching it happen with us.
I asked him if he’s ever tried to get it all to just stop, but so far has not been successful.
(GOATMAN EPISODE)