About a Ghost

[00:00:00] Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Houses can sometimes become our own worst nightmares, affecting our lives, the lives of our families, and even our sanity. My name is Edwin. Here's a scary story. I opened my eyes to the golden light of the sunset.

[00:00:31] Marissa chose the curtains, which I thought led too much light into the living room at one point, but I had grown to love. The light shining in my face for an instant reminded me of the day we got married.

[00:00:45] I looked over to the table in the middle of the living room across the couch and picked up the face down portrait of our wedding day. I put it back where it belonged, trying not to look at just how happy we used to be.

[00:00:58] Those rays of light highlighting the edges of her dark hair. It wasn't always like this. Well, she had always been this way, yeah, with the light and everything. She had always loved sunny days, laughter, and places where there were crowds.

[00:01:15] If you mentioned a crowded mall or a festival, she wanted to go. When we walked around and by pure coincidence we saw a group of people gathered around a street performer or because something was being given away for free, I would let out an audible sigh.

[00:01:31] She would want to go. I was different though. I like rainy days and sad stories sometimes, not all the time, but there's something about cozying up around a fireplace and falling asleep to that instead of the late night comedy shows, the ones that Marissa loves to watch.

[00:01:51] She hated that about me. She was the biggest chicken in the world and could not manage to get through a simple horror movie, even a kid one. When I convinced her to do so, she would make me walk with her everywhere.

[00:02:03] And sometimes in the middle of the night, she would wake me up to walk with her and wait outside the bathroom for her. Yes, she was this afraid of things like that. I use it to my advantage when we got into arguments.

[00:02:18] If I said something insensitive or forgot to take out the trash and she'd be visibly upset and short with me, I would wait until nighttime. I would approach her and come in for a hug. If I saw her pull away slightly, I would simply mention something scary.

[00:02:35] A thing about a ghost. She'd immediately step closer to me and tell me to stop, which I would. But then she would stay close to me. Soon, we would be speaking to each other as we normally would. Those were the days.

[00:02:53] We would laugh about it afterward, but I remember when I stopped joking around that way as much. Like the time we had been sitting on the couch and she found something on Instagram that she absolutely had to show me. Another cat video I suspected. But no, she said.

[00:03:09] I absolutely had to watch it. It was a video of a cave where a small woman was seeing walking around in the dark. And then suddenly she got up close to the camera. The thing made me flinch, I'll admit that. She laughed and I laughed too.

[00:03:26] Talking her by telling her that I would get her back. No you won't she said, sticking her tongue out. Do you want me to talk about the ghost? I asked. Stop it she yelled half jokingly. I knew she was serious though.

[00:03:43] For a while we had been talking about some strange noises in the house. Even though I like to joke about that a lot. I was a little scared of it also. Scared of those simple things. I made a face at her, playing around like children on the couch.

[00:04:00] I missed those moments. We had ordered Chinese food and were eating in the living room couch when Marissa mentioned the light bulb that had gone out in the kitchen the night before. When suddenly, I swear, we both heard something fall in shatter against the floor on the

[00:04:15] other side of the house. We were the only ones in there so I grabbed the iron stick thing that we kept next to the fireplace as I sprinted off the couch and walked up toward the dining room area. I could see nothing there.

[00:04:29] I could feel Marissa against my back, her hands gripping my shirt. As I stepped closer to the kitchen counter I saw it. A thousand pieces of glass of the light bulb forming a tiny hill of white dust against the floor. I looked back toward Marissa.

[00:04:47] Her eyes were open wide. It's probably the ghost I said, trying to ease some of the fear I was feeling. But the shiver that ran down my back gave it away. I was afraid too.

[00:05:02] I grabbed a dustpan in the hand broom we had while Marissa stood behind me holding her own hands against her chest. But what was it she kept asking? How could that happen? I had no clue obviously. I didn't know what to do or what to tell her.

[00:05:19] More things kept happening, mostly with things being misplaced. Part of me believed that this thing that was in our house had something to do with her arguments Marissa and I were having. I stayed out a little later than usual one day at work, less than an hour.

[00:05:35] But the sun had set and Marissa had made a big deal about it. I nearly yelled at her for the first time since we had met. But I held my anger back, simply throwing my jacket against the chair in the kitchen area as hard as I could.

[00:05:50] She was visibly scared and literally ran away from me, leaving the stir fry burning on the pan. I ran up to it and turned it off. The steam was turning to dark smoke when I placed the oversized lid on it.

[00:06:04] When the pan stopped crackling I could hear Marissa sobbing in the bedroom. Our arguments were never like that. But now whenever something came up I would say or do something that would make it worse. Very unlike me.

[00:06:21] She would do the same things, bringing up things that I had been doing forever and finding a fault with them. That was tired of it. She was tired of it. And it had been this way for months.

[00:06:33] Sometimes the only way to stay sane as a couple was to simply not talk to each other or to limit our interactions. Not a great idea, I know. I walked up to the bedroom door that night and got to see her grabbing one of the blankets

[00:06:47] from the closet. I thought it was for me to sleep in the living room, something that I would do for the first time. But no. She walked right past me, ignoring me calling her name. I felt that anger once again.

[00:07:01] The sudden rush to push her away from me, to yell at her for being so emotional or unreasonable or dumb. How many words came across my mind as she disappeared into the hallway. Hate was not strong enough to describe my feelings toward her.

[00:07:16] But again, I knew these were simply rushes of anger. It would go away in a few minutes. That night I felt Marissa get back into bed and turned away from me, sometime in the middle of the night.

[00:07:33] Then I felt her get up before dawn to get ready for work. I kept waking up, adjusting myself over and over. But still I refused to turn around to face her. That anger. There was no way this would last another day. Never had.

[00:07:50] But that other day when I woke up in the living room, Marissa still hadn't come back home. The sun had completely set by that time while I was sitting in there in the dark, not wanting to or unable to turn on the lights in the living room.

[00:08:07] I must have been dozing off when I heard the keys against the door knob. Marissa was taking off her jacket when she peeked into the living room to see me. She ignored my hello as she walked over to the kitchen to drop off some leftovers from

[00:08:20] wherever she had dined. And then she walked over to the living room. My mind went dark with fury. I wanted to scream and destroy the useless curtains she had decided on for the living room.

[00:08:33] I wanted to shred them to pieces and then move onto the disgusting green chair she picked for the living room. Then I wanted to pay her a visit. Hold back, I told myself. I took a few deep breaths. This was going to go away. And it did.

[00:08:54] That night Marissa grabbed a blanket and walked over to the living room once again without saying a word. And again I held back saying what I was thinking as she settled into the couch. And I could see her knowing phone screen still on.

[00:09:09] I knew that I wouldn't be able to sleep well once again. It was going to be her fault. Sure enough at around 2 in the morning I felt her next to me on the bed. Too much for her I figured.

[00:09:24] I really didn't want to look at her face and that came as a courtesy from those pointless curtains that let all of the light from the street lamps outside in. But I needed to use a bathroom.

[00:09:35] I crawled out of the bed not even minding making too much noise, not caring if she woke up. I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway when something caught my eye. It was a light floating in the living room.

[00:09:52] I wrote my eyes and I felt them adjust to the darkness. It couldn't be happening. I stepped closer to it but it flickered off. That's when I saw it. A dark lump resting on the couch.

[00:10:11] I thought of the ghost, the silhouettes I would see, the thing that made random noises and moved things around, an intruder or some type of haunt. My face went cold and my chest ran out of air.

[00:10:25] My socks nearly made me slip on the wooden floor as I ran back to my room to grab my phone. I turned on the lights of the hallway and then the bedrooms as I stepped inside. I looked over to Marissa on the bed. There was nobody there.

[00:10:39] Marissa I yelled out, what? I heard a voice say from the living room. I could hear Marissa moving around over there as she asked, what is it? With fear in her voice. I saw the light of the living room turn on.

[00:10:55] I should crawl out of the dark blue blanket, moving her hair away from her face. I stood there frozen. I turned my head back toward the bedroom, now with the orange lights of the lamp on. What is it? She asked again, worried and about to cry this time.

[00:11:14] I walked over to her with the urge to give her a hug. Everything would be alright. I was hugging her tightly on that couch when you both heard it. The voice from the bedroom. The whispering chance of someone or something taunting us.

[00:11:33] We would get through this, I told her. She looked at me through the tears in her eyes. She nodded and placed her head carefully against my shoulder once again. The man in gray.

[00:12:03] I must have been sitting out in the living room for a few hours, just scrolling through reels and tiktoks. A thing I promised my parents I would stop doing. But they weren't home. And I had the house to myself.

[00:12:15] If it wasn't for the annoying neighbor with the pink house, I would be playing my music at full volume. My favorite group had just released their new album. There were few things to do, no homework, no chores on mom's chore list that she

[00:12:28] kept stuck to the mirror by the front door. But there's a reason why neither me nor my older sister like to stay in the house alone. And that was because of the man in grave we both saw, on separate occasions and once, out of like ten different times.

[00:12:45] We both saw him together. It wasn't like he was scary or anything. In fact he stayed quiet and didn't move. When we told our parents about it they looked at each other and considered taking us to see a therapist to talk about things.

[00:13:01] He blamed it on themselves for arguing all the time they said. But I don't think that was it. My older sister was the one that got upset over their divorce but I was cool with it.

[00:13:12] A lot of my friends had the same thing happen in their families and they all seemed to be doing okay, even better than before sometimes. What that had to do with the man in grey I had no idea.

[00:13:24] We had been seeing this strange apparition for years and my sister claims she remembers him from even before I was born. There's a five year difference between us and I don't know about you but I can't remember things before I was seven years old.

[00:13:38] So she was probably only trying to scare me. I used to have the curse of having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It was terrible and I would wait for as long as possible to stay awake and pee before I fell asleep.

[00:13:52] But even if I did so right before going back to bed, I would still wake up promptly at that time to go once again. I remember one specific night. It was late and I was still very young so everything around me seemed much taller and scarier.

[00:14:11] I didn't want to turn on the light on my bedroom but I did so anyway because it let me see into the hallway before I made it to the next light switch. I squinted my eyes, nearly had them closed actually in order not to wake up completely

[00:14:26] and be able to fall asleep once again without a problem. That's how I stepped out into the hallway. But the cold toilet in the bathroom woke me up and I opened my eyes completely as it looked at the shampoo bottles in the bathtub next to me.

[00:14:42] Anything to keep me distracted I guess. I thought it was me being sleepy still that made me imagine someone moving around out in the hall when I close the door to the bathroom. I heard footsteps and the rattle that are windows made when we were trying to

[00:14:55] open them. For some reason they always seemed to get stuck. Again, I wasn't sure if this actually happened. Those were the longest 30 seconds for me and they happened almost every night when I got up to go to the bathroom.

[00:15:11] My dad used to say that it was a good thing that I woke up because other kids would simply let it out while they were sleeping. That was gross but it was a good way to look at it.

[00:15:20] But on that specific night I remember glancing over to the door when I heard something rattling outside. The wooden floorboards were shiny but I still couldn't see the reflection of the light of my bedroom through the gap underneath the door, you know.

[00:15:35] That space between the floor and the door. Had it been completely dark out in the hallway? You make things up when you're half awake so I had more questions than anything. But along with those came the thoughts to try to get me to stop thinking.

[00:15:51] I would only scare myself and I still had a long journey back until I could shut the door and bury myself in the hopefully still warm blankets on my bed. I was standing up from the toilet seat when I saw the light filling up a gap underneath

[00:16:06] the door. But it wasn't all at the same time. Filled it first from the left, on the edge of it. Then it grew from right to left. Someone had been standing right outside the door and had moved away when they heard me inside the bathroom.

[00:16:26] It froze in place, staring anxiously at the gap under the door for any more movement and sure of what to do. I could yell I thought. Dad would be outside the door knocking on it asking if I was okay in a few seconds.

[00:16:40] I wouldn't hear the end of it from my sister though. She used to tease me for smaller things than this. I don't know how but I simply washed my hands and went straight for the door, opened it and looked both ways.

[00:16:54] Sure enough right by the window was the man in gray. His silhouette wasn't completely dark even though we couldn't see the clothes he was wearing ever. The figure had a strange glow I had never seen before.

[00:17:11] Shivers crawled on my back and down my legs as I held my breath still frozen in place. Suddenly my sister screamed. Her bedroom door had been open at night and she woke

[00:17:23] up to catch a glimpse of the man in gray standing right outside her door in the hallway. My parents' bedroom door opened as my dad rushed out toward me asking what was wrong. I told him it had been my sister the one that screamed

[00:17:38] and he asked me to follow him as he walked over to her room and stepped right in flicking on the light. She had seen the man in gray just like me. There was some strange sense of relief I felt that night as I went back to my room

[00:17:52] the light still on. We talked about it the next day and she stopped teasing me because soon she would be the one to see him more often. Here's the thing it wasn't anything to be afraid of and

[00:18:07] that's what I was thinking that day on the couch, the house all to myself. It was tough to explain but something that was supposed to be scary somehow wasn't for me. I mean yes I could feel the nervousness in the tips of my

[00:18:22] fingers every time I saw him or imagined him but part of me told me that there was no reason to be afraid. Just as I was lost in those thoughts I heard one of the windows rattling. It was normal

[00:18:38] it would stop right away most of the time but not today. The thing sounded like someone was genuinely trying to get inside. I lived in a house on a corner so there was more windows facing the streets and I couldn't tell which one was making the noise.

[00:18:56] I stood up scared this time as I heard it down the hall. Should I go look? Should I call the police? I chose the first one going straight toward the hallway straight to look at the window at the end of it.

[00:19:11] Something was moving. I inch closer to it my heart thumping away like it had never done before. Part of the curtain was covering the left side of it. The window still had the tiny gap open

[00:19:25] from under it a thing we did to let some air into the house. That's when I saw it. The little chain to open the window was moving with the wind tapping against the window glass Suddenly I heard the sounds of glass breaking, a car horn, wood being broken

[00:19:45] into a thousand pieces. Debris falling from the ceiling into the living room. People yelling outside. You could see one of the neighbors crawling into the enormous hole in the wall of the living room as I walked back to the other end of the hall.

[00:20:00] Shattered glass of a windshield and a car with bent tires that was never supposed to be inside a house. Cold tears rolled on my eyes as I stood there, hearing the faded voices of firefighters approaching me

[00:20:15] asking if I was okay and me unable to tell them that I was. Mom leaving her car door open as she rushed toward me inspecting my neck and arms as she held me closely against her. What happened? She asked me but I had no answer.

[00:20:33] It was the same question that my sister made when she got home. The same one dad asked me over the phone a few minutes later but my mind was spinning. Later on that day I saw them put the safety

[00:20:46] structures on the house as they pulled out the driver and the stretcher and soon the blue car being taken out. I kept looking at the pieces of that couch that they took out of the house, the one that had been photographed

[00:21:00] by the local newspaper and the insurance agents. Same couch I had been sitting on just before the accident. The following story is called Sounds and it explores something a little different than my usual stories. Stick around to listen to it after

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[00:22:29] and as a listener of Scary Story Podcast you'll get 10% off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com slash scarystory. Join over one million people taking charge of their mental health. Again that's better help

[00:22:44] h-e-l-p dot com slash scarystory. I'm forced to wake up at five in the morning or even earlier every day which means that I try to fall asleep early most nights. I know everyone says that waking up early is the best thing to do or whatever

[00:23:09] but it isn't really my choice. Ever since I moved away from the city and into this house I have been surrounded by birds of all kinds with all sorts of different songs. I was amazed by them when I first moved here they were nice to listen to

[00:23:26] but the songs soon turned into noise and the noise turned into anger. Well maybe not anger just frustration at hearing them at all hours of the day. There is one time a brief period though that they stay quiet it is the most bizarre thing I have ever experienced.

[00:23:50] Every evening at 5 30 they stay quiet no birds no dogs barking no bugs buzzing outside just dead still silence. At first I didn't notice it and it was nice when I did but the pattern became strange when I noticed just how exact it was.

[00:24:10] It lasted for half an hour. It could be a bright sunny day with birds singing left and right high notes and low notes with every bird song you can imagine but right at 5 30 in the evening the silence was deafening.

[00:24:28] I could feel my mind stretch and go to places it had never gone before and some of those thoughts were dark the sounds of blood rushing through the veins and arteries near my ears the sounds of a muffled throbbing waterfall inside of me.

[00:24:46] I would look out the windows to spot a bird any bird out in the sky or in the branches of the trees in the large empty fields around the house there was nothing except on the ground

[00:24:57] tiny rodents moving about. I started listening to music actually my grandson brought me one of those bluetooth speakers you hear the young ones talk about and I could play music from a cell

[00:25:08] phone or computer not just on the earphones anymore it was nice but even those songs seemed overwhelming to me at 5 30 lyrics about heartbreak solitude and pickup trucks didn't seem to do the trick anymore. Still the music played just to avoid the sounds of my own beating heart

[00:25:29] but soon the music was drowned out by the tiny squeaks of the Ronin's outside just like every evening at 5 30 I would open up the windows and wish for rain at least to hear the tapping of the raindrops against the roof

[00:25:43] but I was cautious to wish for it because I remember the last time it happened and the thoughts that came with it sounds of drops like static in the mind of a madman taking a break between his thoughts of destroying everything in sight and catching his breath

[00:26:01] it was the better of the scenarios until the worst one showed up out into the fields I could see the ground moving at 5 30 patches of dark waves slowly approaching toward me at 5 30 rats they were huddling together planning something against me at 5 30

[00:26:23] there are squeaks growing louder from the outside teaming up to a roar like an earthquake at 5 30 I would press my hands against my ears running to the faucets the shower letting the sounds run around the house like those flies on the fruit basket

[00:26:39] I turn on the music and tap my head against the walls still with the pressure of my hands exaggerating the sounds of my footsteps before everything caved in my vision blocked once again as I slid down the wall into the floor of my kitchen

[00:26:57] I would wake up again to the sound of the birds the sun shining through the windows but this time in a different color I looked at the clock like I did so every evening and every time I sighed with relief

[00:27:16] it was six o'clock now scary story podcast is produced by me Edwin Covarriness thank you very much for listening and for following this podcast on your app and for your reviews together we're making the show a hit by showing up in top podcast charts around the world

[00:27:43] and for that I am extremely grateful if you'd like to get in touch with me I'll leave links in the description of this episode but you can also find me on scary story podcast dot com

[00:27:53] where I will be sharing user submitted stories very soon they will be on the website on the stories link at the top I also make another podcast called a dark memory if you'd like to

[00:28:05] listen to more creepy things I'll see you there until next time thank you very much for listening