WEBVTT
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A rocking chair in an empty house. Bones rattling overhead.
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A pumpkin patch where something is growing that should be buried.
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This Halloween, we have three twisted treats just for your
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candy bag. So keep the porch light burning, my spookies,
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because we're taking the long way home.
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Trick or treat. There's a chill in the air. Must
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be fall. Join me for a tale of Halloween.
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You will experience tales of horror, ghosts, and death. It
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is not recommended for the weak at heart, but who
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really listens to warnings anyway?
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This is Weekly Spooky.
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Hello, my spookies. It's not Wednesday, no, no, it's Thursday,
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and we have some extra spooky to add to your
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weekly courtesy of the brilliant and bizarre and mysterious Gary D.
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up in Toronto, Ontario. But before we get to that,
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I want to say thank you all so much for
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making Weekly Spooky a part of your spooky season celebrations.
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It really warms my heart to know I'm helping keep
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the Halloween vibe going for you and Hopefully a friend
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you might share this with. Tonight we have three scary
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stories to make sure you're in the spirit, so to speak.
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But before we get to that, I want to say
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thank you all so much for joining us, and make
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sure you're subscribed if you haven't already, because we have
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something spooky every day of the week, and sometimes like today,
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twice in a week, to make sure that Halloween stays
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at the front of your mind. And while you're at it,
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leave us a five-star rating on your favorite podcasting app.
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It really makes a big difference and helps new spookies
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discover the show. And hey, share this with a Halloween-loving
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friend to help them get hooked as well. But now,
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as for tonight, the jack-o'-lanterns are lit, the leaves are
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rattling down the street, and there's a bowl of candy
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waiting on the porch. But only take one. The scarecrow
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is counting. Tonight we're taking the long way through the
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neighborhood with three wonderfully weird little treats. We've got an
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old house, a very bad game, and one last stop
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at the pumpkin patch. Keep your candy buckets handy because
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you never know what somebody might drop in. Our first
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tale starts with two curious kids, and a boarded-up house
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beside the park. Most people only see yellow caution tape
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and keep on walking, but these two see a clubhouse.
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I mean, everybody needs a place to hang out, right?
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Off Her Rocker by Gary D. up in Ontario, Canada
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Pull up a chair, order us another round, and I'll
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tell you a little story about something very strange that
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happened to me back when I was a kid. My
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name's Gary. I live here in Southern Ontario, Canada, and
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I've been dragging this needy, high-maintenance meat sack body of
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mine around through life for several decades now. but along
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the way still managed to see some pretty cool things.
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Cool as in strange, peculiar, mind-boggling, unexplainable, weird, frightening, and yes,
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sometimes even just straight-up bizarre. This particular childhood experience of mine,
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which I'm now going to walk you through, wasn't necessarily
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what I'd call freakishly scary or over-the-top horrific, but what
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I would say is that it was definitely plenty creepy
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and disturbing. When I was in my mid-teens, a friend
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and I one day noticed that an old, rickety house
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that we'd probably walked by hundreds of times over the
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years now suddenly stood boarded up and completely surrounded in
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bright yellow caution tape This ancient and somewhat decrepit structure
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stood alone at the edge of a heavily wooded public park,
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which had been around since, like, the 1910s. And as
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we found out later, this quaint little dwelling had for
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many years housed the parkground's custodian, along with his wife
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and her elderly mother. being the curious and irresponsible young
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boys that we were, after just a couple of days
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we decided to simply duck under the caution tape when
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nobody was looking, and then entered the house through a
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poorly secured and slightly standing ajar back door. For several
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weeks thereafter, we'd often go there just to hang out inside,
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of this now abandoned and boarded-up old house. It was
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a neat place to escape to, you know, just get
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away from everybody and everything, and was kinda like having
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our own private clubhouse. The entire structure, including the main
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and second floor, we found to be completely empty, with
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there being no furniture or any household items whatsoever. And
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so we soon discovered it would be in that damn
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creepy basement where we'd get our oversized serving of the heebie-jeebies.
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The very first time we descended those steep, noisy wooden
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stairs down into that dirt-floored cellar, and after having wiped
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cobwebs off our heads and faces, both of our mouths,
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immediately fell open. There, silently sitting upon row after row
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of crudely constructed wooden shelves, stood dozens and dozens of
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dust-covered mason jars, as well as some larger jars, all
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filled with an array of different contents, including some pretty
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freaky shit. A few jars held your typical things like pickles, onions, carrots,
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and what appeared to be boiled eggs, but many of
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them contained items that were far more disturbing. Grotesque things
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like chicken heads, chicken feet, pig fetuses, cloudy clusters of
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forever staring eyeballs which we guessed came from cows. as
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well as brains, intestines, lung tissue, and many, many other
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random bodily organs, which we just assumed must have all
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come from various animals. And the kicker in this whole
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dark and creepy abandoned house equation was that we oddly
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and quite by accident unexpectedly discovered that we were not
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alone in this home. There, sitting in a darkened corner
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of a tiny upstairs back room, and barely illuminated by
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narrow slivers of light shining in through a filthy window,
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sat this tiny, frail, shriveled-up old woman, slowly rocking back
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and forth, in her wooden rocking chair, filling the room
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with a highly annoying and continuous, god-awful creaking. We tried
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speaking with her a few times, but she never, ever
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spoke a single word, nor responded in any way at all.
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We assumed that she must have still lived there, and
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for whatever reason, Just like nothing better than to sit
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and rock in that room. And during our four or
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five visits to that house over a span of about
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a month or so, she did nothing but quiet. hum
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a creepy, repetitive little melody while continuously rocking and staring
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off into space as if looking at something or someone
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that we couldn't see. Getting back to the jarred preserves,
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given the overall stillness of the air in this damp
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and dank basement, all we could ever smell was the strong,
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tell-tale reek of formaldehyde, damp soil, and something else that
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we just couldn't identify. The musk of one ripe old granny.
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I clearly remember once holding one of the many mason
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jars up to a shaft of light and looking closely
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at its contents. It looked an awful lot like a
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partial human jaw, complete with several teeth, including one that
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seemed to have a silver filling. Like already mentioned, The
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two floors above us were completely empty, void of all furniture, beds,
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or anything else that would suggest someone was actually living there.
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Other than that creaky rocking chair, of course. So then,
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where the hell did dear old Granny sleep at night,
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we thought to ourselves. We figured that her husband, son,
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or daughter... must have been dropping her off every morning
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and then picking her up every night, maybe because she
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wanted to spend her final days in the house where
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she had grown up. Just to sit there and rock
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and reminisce about old times, perhaps, this seemed like a
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plausible theory anyway. Seeing as we were basically breaking and
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entering into this now condemned house, which also had a
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notice posted on the front door to that effect, we
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made sure not to tell our parents or anyone else.
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It seemed as if as quickly as we'd discovered this
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neat little new hideout of ours, it just as quickly
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came to an abrupt end and evaporated. After spending a
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couple of hours once again hanging out in the cellar
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and spending time listening to Granny hum her hauntingly creepy
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song and enduring the constant creaking of her ancient wooden
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rocking chair, we eventually left. A few days later, when
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my friend and I made our way back over to
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our favorite hangout house... Our whole world, all at once,
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came crashing down. We arrived and were both stunned when
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we saw that the house was now gone. There, instead
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of the house, now stood nothing but a brightly colored
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yellow bulldozer, moving slowly, back and forth, carefully leveling the ground.
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and sitting right on top of where our clubhouse used
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to be. We approached cautiously and walked right up alongside
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of a heavyset worker in a bright neon orange vest.
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He quickly twisted his head around to face us on
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noticing our presence and immediately screamed, Hey, you boys shouldn't
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be here! Followed by, You have to leave right now!
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It's very dangerous. Please go. Concerned, I yelled back up
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to him, but the very loud motor noise made by
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the bulldozer drowned everything out. He then leaned down and
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put his ear close to my mouth. I repeated, Where's
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the old lady? When did she leave? He stared at
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me with this totally confused and puzzled look on his face.
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and responded, What the hell are you talking about? What
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old woman? This house is condemned and hasn't had anyone
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living in it for like two years now, and the
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only old woman that ever lived here died eight years ago.
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Ever since hearing him say those last words, and to
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this very day, I can't help but wonder what really
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happened to that rocking, humming granny. Was she buried alive,
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or was she in fact nothing more than just a
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ghostly apparition? One that somehow clung to that small upstairs
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room in the house, like the smell of long-ago burnt toast,
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which somehow manages to linger in the air. and remain
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for a long time into the future. Well, my spookies,
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I hope nobody mistook those basement jars for Halloween treats,
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because that would be a jarring experience. Keep those candy
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buckets close, because there's another house on our trick-or-treat route,
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and the children upstairs have a game to show us.
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So close your eyes, stay very quiet, and whatever you hear,
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don't peek. Bones in the Attic, by Gary D. up
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in Ontario. This is just one of those weird early
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childhood experiences that can't help but stick with you forever.
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It makes me wonder and question as to what really
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happened because what I think I saw that day sure
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as hell doesn't make any sense and couldn't have been real.
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When I was a preteen, I used to go up
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into the attic of an old house with my girlfriend Zita,
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as in friend that was a girl that her mother owned.
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This was back in the day when folks really weren't
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aware of the dangers related to fiberglass insulation. This cramped
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and awkwardly peaked little space located just under the roof
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was literally jam-packed with the stuff. lying all over the
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floor in massive, roughly six-foot-long by four-foot-wide, three-inch-thick sheets. These pink-colored,
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what at the time appeared to us as fluffy, cotton-candy
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mattresses were far more dangerous than they looked, and we
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ever imagined. We often spent two or more hours up
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there at a time, running around and playing, mesmerized and
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in complete awe of the glistening, sparkly snowflakes that we
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saw floating in the air, lit up by the small
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shafts of light coming in through the only two small
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windows that were up there. Little did we know that
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we were in the process inhaling clouds of tiny glass
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fibers into our fragile little lungs. How were we to know?
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I'm actually quite shocked that I'm currently not dependent on
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a pure oxygen-emitting respirator. We weren't young and stupid, but
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more like young and naive, or better yet, young and uninformed.
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And if that doesn't already sound scary enough, then what
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I'm going to tell you next is nothing short of terrifying.
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Being young kids and having short attention spans, we naturally
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got bored very easily. Tired of all the typical games
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we often invented our own. One game in particular we
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called Don't Peek. This game was best played on dark,
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overcast days when light conditions were very low up there
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and everything was in shadows. Or at night, once the
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sun had fully gone down. The rules were very simple.
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Both of us would shut our eyes, promise not to peek,
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no matter what, and, most importantly, keep absolutely still and quiet,
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swearing not to say a single word. it was a
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fun game and we sure giggled a lot whenever we
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did this we'd usually just hear all the typical house
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noises that you'd expect to hear walls and floorboards creaking
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and crackling either from others walking around downstairs or in
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the winter because they were contracting from the extreme cold.
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Other than that, not much else, really. We'd make it
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more fun, well, more, like, creepy, by warning each other
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during the game not to dare open an eye to
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peek and sneak a look for fear of seeing something horrifying,
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a sinister creature that would steal our souls and then
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drag us kicking and screaming into the abyss. Over the months,
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we probably played this stupid game like dozens of times,
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till we got bored and then moved on to something else.
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The fun lasted until that one fateful day when shit
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suddenly got way too real. While playing our made-up game
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of Don't Peek for like about the umpteenth time, and
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just as we were getting ready to call it quits,
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the proverbial heart, lungs, liver, and intestines suddenly hit the fan.
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I remember Zeta giggling and at one point calling out
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to me in that hot, stuffy attic, Don't you dare
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look or they're gonna get ya! Followed by an excited
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and happy high-pitched squeal. Having grown rather tired and bored
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of this game by now, seeing as it was so
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lame and predictable, the silly notion popped into my head
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to crack open an eye, just a hair, and playfully
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take a quick look. Like, what could possibly go wrong?
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Big mistake. As soon as my eyelid opened, just a sliver,