Walls

Hello everyone, Thank you for having me today. My name is Gabby, and today I'm going to share with you some interesting, scary stories while I lived in Columbia as a child. For the purpose of this memoir, I decided to write down the stories so I could keep the thread of the story without getting lost in time. So here I go. When I was about ten years old, my family and I lived in a colonial house or ined by my paternal grandmother. My family moved to the country, away from the bc life of the capital city and found refuge and the quiet and beautiful midlands. My story is take place in the late nineties in a small town called Chadala in the heart of Columbia's rural areas, and most of these experiences took place in one particular house. These house was I would say, about two hundred hundred, two hundred and fifty years old and had seen absolutely everything the outbreak of cholera, independence, row from war, from Spanish colonization, civil war, and several ownerships throughout its life. The architecture showed the Spanish colonial influence of the eighteen hundreds, i'd say, and it featured a wonderful square courtyard in the middle lined with pavers in all draining systems. Around this courtyard. There were open corridors with high ceilings and white clay walls, and I remember there were beautifully decorated with perfumed bogambilia. The floors were unevenly covered in terry quarter tiles, and I clearly remember how fresh they felt on my feet during hot, long days. I love the simplicity of it, the white contrast of the walls against the age look of the roof tiles, and in between crevices sometimes you could hear the gentle murmur of pigeons building nests for their chicks. The kitchen was spacious enough, and the dining table was placed in front of an old wood fired stove that was no longer used. The rooms were fresh and grand, with decorative window frames and all the heavy doors. If you picture the house are square, you'll find the kitchen in the upper right corner are dark and sometimes moldy visible room in the upper left corner. The entrance was at the bottom left corner, exposing a wide entry corridor with beautiful green and peach tiles, and in the bottom right corner, gosh, I'm getting lost now, you could access an old generous storage room, which might have been I don't know, used to smoke food. Maybe the walls were weathered with ash and black coal. My parents' room, mine and my leader brothers were distributed to the sides of these big square. I hope I didn't get you lost or confused. Just picture of very big square. There were in many glass windows in the house, only ornamental, big wooden window frames that opened directly onto the streets, and to shut them down you had to draw the wooden chatters block them with a little stick. Across the main door was an ancient brown red double door with a tiny wooden chatter to check who was on the other side when unexpected visits arrived. The wood was so cracked that if you stood close to it, you could actually see people walking outside. The house. I remember had both an eerie and an empty feeling that it yearned for better times, but also a welcoming and playful aura that sort of invited you to explore and wander. It was really strange to feel both attracted and slightly unease in the house at the same time. We moved in, and I don't remember how long it took, but experiencing the manifacets of these house didn't take that long. Mum has always been slightly more connected to spiritual beings than Dad, and I think I inherited her trades. When things, let's say, began to oc, she often pretended strange sounds that came from I don't know different parts of the house. They were because of creaking ceilings or cats chasing pigeons on the roof, but I think we both knew the house was in a way speaking. One day, Mum was cooking in the kitchen while my brother and I were coloring drawing books on the dining table. It is customary in these towns to leave your front door unlocked in case visitors came by, and they always announced themselves by saying something like buenos dias, or when a statist good morning or good afternoon. And we heard my cousin have announcing himself as he walked in the house. But we also have overheard him saying, Hi, uncle, how's your day. Mum walked out of a kitchen and she jokingly said, who are you trying to scare have yet? And he was surprised and said nobody. I just said hello to my uncle, but he just walked past me and didn't say hi, is he okay? Mum had caught chills running through her body. I guarantee you that, because that's exactly how I felt. Dad had left the day before for a business trip, and in the house it was on my mum, my little brother, and myself. Have You quickly explained that a man had just walked out of a storage room across the courtyard and into the visitors room, and Mum was paralyzed. Havevi Hat quickly rushed to the room to make sure a thieve wasn't hiding in there, but as he entered the room, he discovered that there was no one there. Aavier came out of the room and said, I literally saw a man walking out of the storage room wearing black farming clothes, and he rushed to check the door where that man had come from, and he realized that the door was locked, locked from the outside and no one had touched it his Handele was really unwell and had to sit down to take it all in. Mum was really worried. At the time. We realized there was something living with us in that house. My cousin was shocked to say, to have seen a ghost then playing daylight so vividly. He recalls seeing my dad and it mimicked his appearance very very accurately. But he also said that this ghost wasn't particularly welcoming. Were happy to seem man. Before that incident with a man wearing those blacks farming clothes, I had a pretty terrifying experience. On a weekend we stayed at my parents' farm. It wasn't too far from these places. The farm was right in the middle of the Andes Mountains. It was gorgeous on the highest peak in a small valley that's where the house was. The weather was beautiful, but very unpredictable, and often my parents dealt with electric storms and really wild windy weather. The house of the farm had to undergo regular repairs for that reason. One night, I was in my room, just about to fall asleep. I loved seeing the stars or the moon from my window and always lay the cans open. I think, at the stage of my life, fearing monsters or ghosts it wasn't entirely a thing for me just yet until that night. Rain began to pat her gently on the roof, and soon it was raining really heavily. I think within twenty minutes, lightning was striking nearby, but I was enchanted by the flashing white light through the window. In one of those bright flashes, a figure, big figure of a man, just appeared in front of my window. He appeared to be wearing black clothes, and he just stared right at me. Instantly, his eyes shone in a kind of a bright white color, and he seemed huge, with unusually broad shoulders. But for some strange reason, I don't know, the danger, in almost violence of it all didn't actually register in my head, and I got up, drew the curtains, clothes, and I went back to sleep. I slept well, I guess, with no dreams or nightmas. But when I woke up, I felt strangely lighter, And when I got out of bed, I felt a rush of absolute horror running down my spine. As I moved my sheets and my blankets, I discovered that they were covered in mud and grass, and when I saw my feet, they were dirty. My hair had twigs and wet patches, and I just knew in that moment I had gone out in my sleep. After the storm, I couldn't remember anything, and I kept trying to find something in my memory that would give me the slightless clue to find out what happened. I was really really worried that that man wanted to take me with him. I was scared of getting in trouble too, and almost didn't tell my mother about it. But she found me hiding in my room trying to clean the sheets desperately with a soapy bucket of water. I told her I thought it had slept walk the previous night in the rain, and I cried, but I didn't tell her about the man I saw. She was really worried, and from then on she locked the doors at night and hid the keys to stop me from going out. It didn't happen again. So back to that story. When my cousin saw that man wearing those black clothes, I decided to tell my mom about the man I saw at the farm. She was desperate to reach out to someone. There was actually a white witch in town and also a local spiritual group. They offered to help us to understand if there was a spirit to or a dimon and I guess they were trying to get it out of the house, but before they could try to get rid of him, he came back. This time. It happened in this colonial house, so I described earlier. The pattern was repeating itself, and it was again another rainy night. There were no glass windows, so the men couldn't actually watch me from the outside. My bed was right next to the door, and the door itself, Oh gosh, you're so old. The log had somehow rusted away, so I used one of those heavy metal blocks to hold the door shut. It was really rudimental. The storm and lightning started, and surprisingly I was just falling asleep amongst the noise and gradually closed my eyes. I felt heavy and warm under my colors, but suddenly I started to feel a gentle breeze and tiny raindrop splashes falling on my forehead. And when I opened my eyes, ah, that man was right there, almost above me. I could see his arms stretched out holding the door half open, and his head was sort of looking down at me. His eyes shone again in the darkness, just like the last time, and I was just perplexed. Astonishingly, I did not feel anything. I felt numb, I had no fear. I remember getting slightly annoyed actually, and being disrupted from my sleep, and I was kind of angry at the time, I reached the door close to shut angrily and I just kind of just shoved that metal blog where it was just to hold the door shut. I went back to sleep, and I was just like, God, damn it, what was that? But I just fell asleep straight away. The next morning, when I woke up, I remember the whole thing, and that's when my fear really crept up. I checked my feet quickly and my covers again, but this time it looked like a stayed in bed in bed because they were perfectly clean. That I screamed, and I told I told Mom about it. I get goosebumps every time I go back to these stories. She held me in her arms and she told me that she was going to look into it, and she understood that I was scared, and she assured me that things were going to get better. They didn't. That evening, a group of really friendly people came home. I think it would have been that spiritual group I mentioned before, and Mum told me they were going to try and talk to their spirit. It wasn't good for young kids to be around spiritual sessions. And when I left to visit a friend next door, they were getting ready, sitting in a circle light lit up with candles. It was quite interesting, sort of like what you see in the movies, but it was such a surreal experience as well, to be witnessing that world and gradually losing that sort of childhood innocence. Afterwards, when I came back, Mum told me the spirit was going to stay away from us, but he wasn't going anywhere. They couldn't get rid of him. His connection to the house was so strong they could only keep him obey from me, from us, She said she couldn't explain it. Perhaps she was just trying to protect me from some grusome story to give me a sense of calm. Later, oh gosh, we discovered why the house also felt joyful and friendly. Gabby's story continues Right after this. My brother was growing up and starting to play with soccer bowls and larger sort of plastic toys. M was encouraging my brother to leave his toys in a tiny toy room we called it, and he was supposed to leave everything there after he played them just to keep being stardy and organized a few occasions. Though, when she got up to get us ready for school, she began to find toys left in unexpected places. There were some left in the key, other times there were near the entrance or amongst the pop plants in the courtyard. She asked us a few times if we had waken up and played at night, but my brother and I confirmed we didn't, and we usually slept really well throughout the night. He was too little still and often slept throughout the night without making any noise waking up or even going to the loof, so it was really unusual for toys to be found everywhere. As time went by at night or even at dusk, you could hear my brother's toys being played with randomly, usually in dark forms of the house where the white from limbs or house light bulbs couldn't reach. His sucker ball will just bounce on its own, and sometimes, if it was quiet enough, you could hear a little feet tapping away on the corridors to record a hile. It was a freaky the air. You usually felt heavy when it happened, and you couldn't help but feel as if someone was trapped in time. It was scary and sad at the same time. Easter time arrived and my maternal grandmother visited us from the city Easter in Colombia is particularly religious, and a whole week is dedicated to prayer, gratitude to God and acknowledgment of Jesus sacrifices and love. It's called the Semana Santa or a holly week. Mum was not particularly religious about it, but when grandmother visitors, we made the effort to please her by going to church faster or land and eating fish on me. Yeah, there's a lot to it in Semanasantha. Mom was hopeful that Samana Santa was going to give the house a bit of peace and quiet, but it was actually the opposite, and we soon found out. My grandmother decided to coke a big feast for us, and she sent Mom to the local bakery to get a nice dessert. We my brother and I behaved well that day, so we were allowed to eat something sweet before dinner, and so we decided to go with her. We all left and took a bit longer than expected. We ran into a neighbor who Mom talked for talked to for ages, and when we went back, we actually found Grandma sitting by the front door looking really worried. Mum asked what happened and Grandma said, the kids, the poor kids. So she then went on to tell my mom that after we had left, she began hearing kids running around the courtyard laughing loudly. She heard my brother's soccer ball bouncing hard against the floor, and she even heard his big plastic trag being pushed around. He used to feel it with pebbles and rocks, and she could hear the bouncing pebbles on its stray while the plastic wheels moved around the courtyard. She felt happy because she thought he was us, and then suddenly she realized it was really dark outside him, and she thought my brother and I decided to stay in the house and play while mom went out, so she yelled from the kitchen kids turned the light on, you might troop in the yard, But the kids said, not listen, so she repeated what she said, and she was walking towards the courtyard turned the light on for us, only to find the courtyard dark and empty, while giggling voices still filled the air. She quickly turned the light on, and when she did, the voices disappeared, echoing in the distance. While the toys gradually stopped moving. The track slowly stopped in front of her and she saw that soccer ball lightly bouncing until it went to a stop. She fell shocked, but it also really sad that such spirits were trapped in the house. She said a prayer, but started to gradually feel the horror of it. Decided to wait for us by the door facing people walk by. Yeah, dinner was a little sober after that, I would say. A couple of months later, other things began to happen. So modern computers and other systems were being brought to town, and while we lived in a beautiful and sometimes relaxing location, we often felt isolated from technology. There was no internet in the house or even a landline. So my mom, wanting to learn more about technology, she enrolled herself in a night course at the local library, and sometimes I got to come with her and played games in other computers. One night, my mom put my little brother to sleep. He was still little and like I said, slept literally like a baby all throughout the night. She put him to bed, and after he was sleep we went together to the library for her client. When we were on our way home, my mum's friend was walking by and was headed towards the main part. He looked confused. When he saw us and he came to us, he said, you two are so cheeky. I could hear you behind the door, you know. Mom was like what. She was so confused, and she said, what do you mean? He then looked even more. He looked more confused and hesitantly said, well, I just I just came back to came by to visit, and when I knocked on the door, you came all the way to the door. He was pointing at Mum, but you just stayed quiet behind it, almost like looking at me through the cracks. Mom's face dropped and she said, I am so sorry, but we were not home. We just got here. So we rushed back to the house, and after quickly checking to see if my brother was okay and confirming he was still sundly asleep, Mum invited her friend in for a cap of tea. He then explained in detail what happened. When he knocked on the door. He could hear someone coming towards the entrance dragging their feet on the tiles, almost like dragging old slippers that sound, and he heard someone getting closer and closer to the door, but instead of being greeted by someone he just overheard a faint female voice mumbling prayers. He said, these female voice stayed for a couple of seconds in front of the door, and he could feel her watching him through the cracks. She then slowly retreated back to where she came from, oh gosh, dragging her feet like an old lady that she sounded just going away. The mum usually asked people what they felt when they encountered things at our house, and he said he didn't feel particularly threatened, but rather watched. And she said, well, at least she can look after the house while we're out and about. I think jokes became a way of coping with their paranormal activity in this house. Her friend was quite intrigued, actually, and he dragged some old residents in town to inquire about the house and to see if they knew who owned it in the past, just to make sense of who these old lady was. He found that an old couple had died in the house when the collar of virus broke into and since they're passing, stories were told around town amongst stalled people that our house was wounded. People didn't tell us about it. Our second Easter was just around the corner, and Mum was worried about how the spirit's living in the house would behave. Dad was for most of my childhood away for work, and we dealt with the house and the spirits pretty much all by ourselves. Things unfortunately, never improved for us. On another occasion, Mum was doing some grocery shopping and she was taking longer than usual since I'd became a very active hour around the house and the hours that followed, I'd like to have the TV on, you know, having that chatter on the background. He'd always fill the house and it was loud enough to musk away any any strange sound. My brother was starting to pick up on the weird vibes of the house, and he also preferred the lights and the TV on. We felt comforted in each other's presence, but chose not to talk about the house. I like being with him, and I was actually afraid he'd see something and get really scared. It was around seven pm and we were playing near Mum's room, which was closest to the entrance, and suddenly every light in the house was turned off and it all went dead quiet. Oh gosh, I checked quickly if it was our house or the entire street. The street lights went off to which we could usually see or at least their glow from the courtyard, and I was relieved at least to know that it was a power outage. But the darkness immediately I opened the door for things to get really weird. It didn't take long for noises to appear. I tried to grab a light from the kitchen. I was scared I had to go across the courtyard in the dark. But before I reached the entrance of the kitchen, I could hear the chairs of our dining table being dragged across the floor, and it was violently. I just froze. I also began to hear the metal empty sound of pots and leads being moved. I started to walk back to my brother, and things got louder and louder. I remember just panicking. My brother started crying, so I grabbed his hand and rushed to the door. I sat him on the footpath outside his outside with his favorite toy. We all just sat in that footbath. Goodness me and we waited outside and watched people lighting up candles by the doors. The sounds of cars and bicycles passing by was just so reassuring it was the only normal thing. I left the door open because I didn't want to lock myself out. But the eerie thing was that those sounds, those metal sounds, continue to come from the kitchen, and it was just as if someone was just frantically cooking in the darkness. Mum arrived and she knew something that happened for us to sit outside, and minutes later the lights came back and the noises simply disappeared. What was happening at Gabby's please up next the discovery. So around the Easter time things got more physical. The week before our second Easter, my mom had a friend staying over. She was part of that spiritual group I told you at the beginning, and she was interested in connecting with the spirits, so it was like a perfect work feel for her. In our home, Mum had decided to lock the visitors room that molding one whether man with the all black clothes disappeared into, and so she decided to offer her friend her own bedroom while Mum slept in mind with me. The next morning, Mum's friend was unusually quiet, and she shared over breakfast that in the middle of the night, someone had actually come the room. She felt as she was living someone's stream, but going in and out of reality. She said. The person got in the room and ready themselves to go to bed. Hearing the sounds of clothes being removed and folded away, she knew it was a mum because she felt a heavy, almost male presence. She felt how the person gently lied on the other side of the bed with her. It was the weight of an adult, and the presence was definitely a male one. And then she could move. She froze. Fear actually paralyzed her, and she just stayed there, wide awake, without making any move or noise. She felt movement on the mattress, and then some time later she felt the presence get up. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the door opening on its own and shut again. She thought the male presence in the house was in a way warning her and showing that it was his house, his room. He's dead. So she never stayed at our place ever again. The next and final stories the most vivid one in my memory, because I remember clearly my mother's fear through her trembling hands where she clenched mine with force. This is exactly at Easter bloody easters. I'm so sorry, but it was just so intense, and Mom decided to take up praying. She heard a neighbor saying that when she prayed at home, the spirits would calm down, so Mum decided to try that. Now I understand her. The situation at home was becoming unbearable, quite literally. Mom's room and mine were connected by a door, and she got that door removed so both rooms would just be internally connected all the time. My brother sat sleeping in my bed while I slept with Mum in hers. My room had that remember that dodgy wooden, creaky door that wouldn't close well if she had it changed by then, and she got a closing system installed just after that incident with the staring man. Her bedroom door led to the main corridor near the entrance. It was a beauty, full, great wooden door double door that opened in both directions. To lock these doors, there was a little silver latch to connect both doors together, and even when he was locked, you could gently push or pull the doors without the latch coming off. It had its own little shutter that you could open sometimes to display or air the room without having to open the doors. Entirely, and during hot nights you could just leave the shadow open to let the fresh air in. But that particular night, Mom closed all doors and all shatters before bed, and we were getting ready to sleep. As we hopped in bed, Mum said we were going to say a prayer, and I could feel she was not herself. She was really really nervous. She was making me so nervous. I think she must have seen something in the kitchen or in the courtyard, so she brought that fear in the room. It felt so heavy. It was really quiet, and Mum was whispering gentle prayers, and then the room felt oddly steell, and the warn sounds coming from the street. It was just so quiet. Something didn't feel right at all. As she prayed, we started hearing giggles and childish voices outside the room in the corridor. They were loud and clear like never before. Those children playing with my brother's toys they were there now. They were just making noise and laughing and enchanting. I turned anxiously to Mum, who then grabbed my hands and asked me to continue praying, and I did, but somehow the voices were getting louder and louder. We heard them singing songs and playing with their hands like my brother and I often did, and tension just kept growing. And then we began to hear the old lady praying too, and you could hear her bloody slippers as well. It was just too much loud outside. But Mom kept on and it wasn't working. I just wanted her to stop. And suddenly, when we heard when we thought everything was outside, we heard adult heavy steps running from the courtyard towards the corridor and into our door, and a loud, creaking male voice screamed. It worked up then again. He then violently kicked the doors with such tools that they moved forwards the backwards, and the only thing keeping them together was that small silver latch. God bless that piece of silver thing. The voices of those children playing outside just da simply scuttered around and became really faint screams, disappearing under the voice. It was the most terrifying experience of my entire life. Every other thing had come together to lure outside the door attracted to what prayers? Who knows. My only thought was just thank God for the strength of that little door latch. We would have seen these angry men staring and heaving at us. Mum eventually stopped raying, and he gradually walked away towards the courtyard and potentially into the locked visitors room, that all moldy, scary room. I had a night missed about it. Sometimes I could feel Mom's absolute horror, and quietly she hugged me and told me everything was going to be fine. She turned the light on to check on my brother, but surprisingly the noise didn't reach him, or perhaps he never heard it. Who Mum called a friend to come and stay with us, and they both stayed up all night just talking. After that awful incident, Mum went on to find out what happened in our house and if children had lived there, and she felt really saddened by the idea of children's spirits trapped in the house with such violent and negative energy like mens. So she found that a while ago, a while back, sorry, two children lived in that same house a long time ago, and sadly they have both died. In the house, there used to be a well in the middle of a courtyard, and one terrible day they both fell in and drowned. After that, the well was sealed forever This is according to my grandmother's story. When mum found out, she checked the round garden bed in the middle of a courtyard and saw exactly where the well had been. It's interesting because she tried to grow veggies and plants in it, but nothing really grew, and that could perhaps explain why anything she tried to grow in it just never succeeded. It was just a sad patch of wheats and dirt. She asked the friends in the spiritual group to come back and help them, so they playful spirits would move on and stop leaving trapped in that monotonous reality. Soon after that, we just left the house for good. Thank God for that. Mum told that that she was sick of a house and couldn't live there another day, so we're packed up and left. Some people said the house never had a spell a negative force or aguaca. Aguaca is often described as a burial of gold or precious jewels protected by the spirits of the dead. It's an interesting one. It's it's guaca. We're sort of native indigenous practice in the area, and I presume it was kept for quite some time to still be practiced. Aguaca is identified by an increased paranormal activity around a particular area, and often people rating terms look for them to find their treasures. But they not only found jewels and gold, but also the negative energy and the curses attached to them. There are stories about people going crazy and sadly ending their lives to escape the horrors of being haunted by these attached negative spirits. Another theory was that inside the house some of the walls may have been used as burials. I mean, this is freaky. It's like sandwich people pretty much inside of war. So in most regional towns of Columbia, there is a construction technique for walls that involved mixing mud, cattle manure, and clay stuck to layers of dry sugar cane, and this process was repeated, layering the mix and dry cane until the wall was about thirty or forty centimeters in thickness. It was and it's still amazing for insulation to keep places cool in the summer and warm in winter. But people began to bury within their walls bones, hairlooms, and other remains of their loved ones. They hid in their walls protective spells with the intention to keep thieves and ill intentioned people away. This way, the spirits of the day would then protect the house from anyone, causing fear and sometimes physical calm to those strange to the house or the owners. Later, after my paternal grandmother passed away, the house was abandoned. The family decided to sell the property, and he was sold to a construction company wishing to build a hotel, perhaps in that I can't remember, but what we know is that the project was never completed. Twenty years later, I returned to that town with my husband, who's heard these stories several times and hates them, and we went to see what remained of that all property, but unfortunately it was an abandoned construction site. My auntie, she moved there some years after my grandmother passed, to remember her mother, and she told us that during construction, the work has found both aguaca with old gold coins buried in the ground beneath the kitchen, and also human remains in burials on some of the wards. So the theories were correct, and these finally explained two years of misery and fear. It was just like solving the final piece of a puzzle. So apparently the gold coins were so valuable that it was estimated to be around five million American dollars, suspiciously low. After the treasure was found, the construction was completely halted and it was said that the company had gone bankrupt. I don't know who knows what happened to those people. I would have hated to inherit such I don't know, haunted piece of gold, coins and things. These, I think is probably one of the most paranormal period of my entire life, and since then I have seen and have experienced other sort of paranormal experiences. Gosh, I'm being redundant here, but this was really scary and unknown, and it gave me a different outlook on life in the afterlife. I think these experiences opened a door to an intricate sort of energy connection strong enough to give you joy or sometimes make you completely paralyzed with horror. To share your own true scary story, be sure to visit true scarystory dot com and fill out the form. You can also send me an email that's in the description of this episode. Thank you very much for listening. See us soon.