No Ghosts Here

Welcome this Scary Story podcast. In today's story, your family is falling apart and the reasons are something that could never be explained. My name is Edmond, and here it's a scary story. It was in the middle of the night in November, my daughter's birthday, when I was woken up a scream from down the hallway. The stuff of nightmares, right well, a lot of parenting is. It was Ellie, probably having another nightmare. Laura didn't even budge this time. Whether she was awake or not didn't matter. It was my turn to check up on her. All groggy, I got up and opened up the door, wondering how bad of a father I would be if I just stopped by the bathroom now before heading to her room. Going straight there would mean that I would have to wait those twenty minutes or so up with her again for the third time this week. I took a deep breath and walked over to her room. I could see the beam of the flashlight from underneath the door. I stepped inside to the bright light of it shining against my eyes, and another short scream that startled me. When she moved it away, I could see that she was leaning against the wall by the head of her bed, a blanket covering her up to her chin to tear again. She screamed, throwing her blanket to the side and unscrambling her legs to run toward me. When she finally managed to get off the bed, I was already halfway to her, so I picked her up and put her back on top of her tangled sheets. Poor Ellie, I could tell she was terrified, but we had to do something about these nightmares once and for all. But as always, I asked her what the matter was. It had happened before, and I can't quite explain where she would have gotten a story like that at such a young age, but she said that she was trying to get to sleep. Was woken up by the floorboards creaking by her bed. She opened her eyes slowly and was relieved to see her mom walking over to the closet and standing by it. Curiously. Ellie looked over to her mom, pretending to be asleep because she didn't want to be in trouble for staying up so late, But after about a minute she noticed that her mom hadn't moved. She was just standing there, staring at the closet doors. Ellie pretended to wake up. She lowered down her blanket and called out to her mom. But even with just barely in a flight coming in through the window, she could tell that it was in her mom's face looking back at her, her mouth open wide, her face completely destroyed. When Ellie screamed, a thing simply vanished into thin air. No child should ever describe the things she did. It still makes me sick to my stomach. The way she explained everything, that part of her face was hanging off to the side. The smell, she said, a thing she had never smelled before, but described it similar to the time when we were fixing the toilet at her old place. Well, there's a creepy image, for sure. I was always a fan of horror movies, and I'm used to pretty gory imagery, but this one made my blood run cold. Still. I knew that horror was fun because it wasn't real, and she, of course had imagined the whole thing. That's when he got her a flashlight to take to her bedroom, and every night she would check the batteries of it. I knew that no ghosts were going to hide in the closet, no hands were going to come up crawling up the bed. No, no one put a curse on the house to summon a demon to possess. You just couldn't and wouldn't happen. And of course Zelly had sat around the living room to see parts of those movies, with me sometimes falling asleep right over the screams and flashing images of witches and creatures crawling out of haunted forest. Laura always warned me that this would happen, but it wasn't the movie's fault. There were just movies, and Ellie knew that. Plus Laura always found a way to make me feel guilty for doing things that I liked, sometimes going the extra mile to annoy me. We had been arguing for some time, mostly about little things that added up fairly quickly, five good years of marriage quickly rotting away in the span of several months. We thought of a separation that was bound to happen, but neither of us wanted to make the first move toward it. It seems like she always won these types of arguments, remaining still until I moved, Just like this with Ellie's night terrors in recent weeks, she had been getting up soon after I would fall asleep. She would turn off the TV something that she knew that I I needed to fall asleep. She would grab her blanket and pillow and go sleep in the living room at the other end of the hallway. That was our thing now, pretending that everything was all right for Ellie until we would fall asleep. Sadly, reality has a way of seeping itself out, no matter how much you try to hold it in. I would lie there awake for hours, sometimes wondering where it all went wrong, wondering when we changed. Two nights after that, I woke up again at the scream coming from Ellie's room. I sighed and looked over at Laura, lying there completely still waiting for me to get up again. There was no point in talking, not at that time anyway, so I got up, dragging my feet, and ever so slowly, I walked over to the door stepped out into the hallway. This time I was going to go to the bathroom first. Ellie had stopped screaming by this point on the light to the hallway, used the bathroom, and came back out quickly before walking to Ellie's room a little bit faster. Now the door was cracked open I got it. You can go back to sleep, Laura said, in a stern voice. You would assume that she would be talking to Ellie with that tone, but no, she was talking to me. Try and distant, Ellie, you are right, I asked, completely ignoring Laura. Ellie's eyes opened up wide. I saw her again. She said, about to get out of bed and start walking toward me. Laura held her back and looked at me dead in the eye. Go back to sleep. Sleep. I'll take care of this too too. There was something in the tone of her voice that I didn't like ever since we started having problems. Indifference, I think, is the word saying things without realizing that they hurt. Something I knew I would never admit to her. Ellie looked over at me until I turned around and stepped out of the door frame and flicked off the light to the hallway. I could hear Laura whispering to Ellie. For the rest of that night, Laura stayed out, probably sleeping in the living room or with Ellie a bit of a relief. To be honest, I could turn on the TV if I wanted to. It wouldn't annoy anybody, but I decided against it, even though I couldn't sleep the whole night. It was absurd to me that Laura would believe things the neighbors talked about, most of them old and already losing it. By that point, ghost stories, hauntings in their homes, and strange noises had been heard apparently for decades. Laura's argument was at the cemetery behind the alley by the house made her uncomfortable. When she was helping with the Christmas light, she spotted tombstones, something that the high walls wouldn't let you normally see. But who goes up on the roof anyway? We couldn't see them from the window. The area was quiet all day and night. But I think there was more to that. A couple of my close friends I spoke to about these problems told me that it might have been more about the way we got the home, something Laura never felt a part of. The previous owners did a direct deal with me, owner to owner. They had purchased a home recently too, but had to move due to one of them moving out of state for work, and just over a week we had most of the paperwork done. We were just waiting for the money to be transferred to them. It's true Laura had practically no say in it. I could understand that, but if we really wanted to, we could sell again turn a profit. The place was a steel compared to the houses in the surrounding areas. Thanks to these stories from the neighbors, the previous owners knew that, which is why they had such a tough time selling. Laura rarely talked to me about it, although when I look back now, I don't think I was ever open to it, but it was bound to happen eventually. Not sure when, but she changed. I lost her. Her eyes would sometimes be aimed at mind, but I could tell that she wasn't looking at me. She became quiet, distant, and would spend an abnormal amount of time sitting on the couch by the living room, no phone in hand, the TV shut off. At times, I would come back home from work and she would be standing by the window, been there for god knows how long, and then she would go back to the couch. She found the time to do things around the house, though everything was tidy, organized and dead. Conversations were one sided, but I didn't realize it back then. It wasn't like I wanted to revive them anyway. I think that was part of the problem. The rest of the story is coming up right after this, stay with me. A few days later, I was woken up by a scream in the middle of the night. Once more, I opened up my eyes wide and stared at the ceiling for a bit. I took a deep breath while looking over at Laura, her dark hair now all over the place. The screams got louder. Of course, Laura had to hear it, and yet she wouldn't budge. It was that level of indifference I was talking about, and it was with everything she knew that I needed the television sounds in the background to fall asleep. She said that I helped her too. At one point we would set it on sleep mode to turn off after an hour, and at one point she started getting up to turn it off while I was still trying to fall asleep. Little things like that that turned into a large pile of and I wasn't sure exactly when it happened. I of course think of this now, but not back then. The level of hate I felt for her was hard to define. I wanted to shake her awake and tell her that her daughter was screaming that it was her responsibility too, that fixing everything was not going to fall only on me. She had no ideas, never any new ones about how to move our family forward. It was up to me to decide on something and get criticized if I got it wrong or silence if I got it right. It was just up to par just what I should be doing anyway, No decisions, zero from her. How could you be wrong that way? I remember the time when she told me in front of Ellie that the strange things around the house were my fault, telling her about the cemetery just behind the house. Why would she scare our daughter with that? Wasn't it just adding to her night terrors. At one point, Laura was afraid of staying in the house, talking about a woman that roamed around it, that she would hear her own voice calling her name, and at other times it would call mine. I tried to piece a story together for a while, when I realized that the whole thing was just a waste of time. I had never seen anything, and the cemetery behind the house was well kept, looking more like a park. But I didn't know how serious it could get, and I don't mean the ghost stuff, but Laura's state of mind. She started talking to people online, communities on Facebook or whatever, of people who were into this kind of thing, people with answers. Someone was trying to communicate, she would say, back when Laura was somewhat normal, an entity trying to find its way back, trying to find the light. I held my mouth shut, quite literally when I came home one day to see a group of women by the center table in the living room, flowers and leaves directly in front of them, barely visible through the smoke and strong smell of pine and seeds. The sands was spreading around the house. I looked over at them, smiled awkwardly, and rushed to the bedroom. How much was that thing costing her? And when were they going to leave? She never asked me about that, She never brought it up in conversation. We just ignored it, pretending everything was okay. Or the time when she got this crazy group of people from the community center to come by with their cameras in audio recorders, poking around her house, shouting at the walls in attic space. The proof they showed me was hilarious. A fly or something had gotten in front of the camera. Literally a four second clip of this thing moving there, or how about this other thing of the wind moving the curtain of the living room. A ghost? They said, that's proof. And don't even get me started on the hissing sounds. The recorded and played back that the phrase was saying, Teresa's back, Teresa's back. I couldn't hear anything, but yet they said it was a whisper from something paranormal. At least they never charged just anything. I don't think they did. If anything, the only time I was doubtful and maybe ready to admit that there was something there was when this little old woman visited the house. She wore a flowery dress and was drinking tea at the kitchen table with Laura. When I got home from work on a Friday night. I sat with Laura and this woman for a couple of hours, talking about what we were going through. Nothing ghostly or paranormal, but about how our marriage was at risk of dying. Places sometimes take the energy out of you, she said, looking directly at Laura. I never admitted it, but she was right about more so the things she said. Laura was changing. She would stay up late sometimes or get up very early, spending all of her time looking up things about the neighborhood, talking to everyone about the house, hearing more and more stories about how there were things around there, things that were haunting the entire neighborhood, that our house was not the only one. Laura and I were still talking somewhat normally when she learned about a certain type of entity, a mimic. She called it a thing that would look and sound like her, trying to get her to follow its instructions. It matched what she was talking about, and I was certain that it was her telling Ellie about it. That's what made these night terrors worse for her. A thing that looked like Mom was going into her room at night. Oh my goodness, Ellie, I whispered to myself. She had screamed again, and I rolled out of bed, upset about everything, this time angry not at Ellie, but about what I had let myself turn into. There wasn't anything at the house. The waste of time and energy talking about these ghosts that were ruining my life. I don't know how I would ever explained to a lawyer the reason for our divorce. Ghosts broke us up. My wife sees ghosts and it bothered me. So yeah, let's divide our assets evenly. Made no sense. I looked over at Laura again, upset. I could never think properly when I was angry, and this time I wanted to turn on the light and set the TV at the loudest volume annoy her just the same. The whole thing was over. It was decided already, and I was going to be the one to make the first move. I looked at Laura on her side of the bed. Once I got to the door and grabbed the doorknob as hard as I could and swung it open. It was completely dark except for the light coming from the street shining into the living room. My eyes were all aready adjusted to the dark, thankfully, as I saw the switch on the wall just three steps ahead. When I looked up at it, I saw something move by the end of the hallway. Hey, I said, rushing toward the switch and flicking on the light. I saw it turn the corner and get into the living room. I rushed straight ahead, my heart beating faster as I thought about what I would do to confront this intruder in the house. I thought for an instant about the ghost. Laura had talked about the thing in Ellie's bedroom. What if someone had been sneaking into the house, some weirdo living in the attic, or something a velly sleepwalking of some other person investigating the house late at night. Laura wouldn't tell me if it was another one of her friends. We're just two strangers sharing a house now, each with their own decisions, their own plans. I turned the corner and saw the silhouette of the figure against the white sheets on the couch. What it said it was Laura fixing the pillow. I took care of it already, at least fine. If Laura was in the living room, who was lying on the bed? I rushed back toward our bedroom and turned on the light. The bed was empty. In the weeks that followed, we placed the house up for sale, sold for much lower than I was expecting, But I got so much more out of it. Laura and Ellie only them in our new house now. Scary Story podcast is written and produced by me Edwin Kovarubias. You can find out more about all of our shows on TikTok and Instagram by finding our username Scary dot Fm. You can also get in touch with me with my username Edwindcove. That's E. D w I n coov. Scary Story podcast is also on YouTube now in case you want to share the show with anyone there, I can tell you more about that and more about the stories that are coming up, as well as more behind the scenes information about Scary FM via email for free, and I can even link to it in the description of this episode. Thank you very much for listening, Keep it scary everyone, See you soon.