Muse

the room is old the locks are gold this is the key i have to hold inside the door that takes the key hey hey what are you doing don't open the door fool you crazy do you want to get ate up Listen to the scoop. Stay tuned. Now, you may not know this, but when I was a kid, same as today, You could order live chicks, baby chickens in the mail. Special delivery. And this is what my father did. One bright Sunday morning, I'm sitting on the stump reading Encyclopedia Brown when I hear the mail truck. I run to the front of our trailer. You can see a red-faced man unloading a stack of boxes addressed to our small farm. My father signs the paperwork and I stand next to the pallets where you can hear this high-pitched squeaking. Can I do it? Can I do it? Pops gives me the nod and I pull the lid off the top box. Fifty yellow balls of fluff in individual cardboard squares, cheeping indignantly. I reach in and pull one tiny baby chick to my face Grin at it She blinks back at me, chirping, squeaking Like she's got something important to say I laugh with joy Ask my father, can I name her, can I name her? He looks at me serious then No Why not? You don't name food, boy, ever And chickens are food. You understand me? Yes, sir. Do you understand me? Yes, sir. But I didn't understand him. So I name her Birdie. And I raise Birdie. I play with Birdie, feed Birdie seed directly from my hand. Fatten her up with her brothers and sisters for nine weeks. and we send most of the birds out for processing. Birdie and a few others we keep for ourselves. And one day,

my father grabs up his axe. He says it's time, but no. No, I tell him, I tell him I'll do it. I walk with him out to the coop. Hold her up to my chest. Tell her her name one more time softly. So my pops can hear. Bertie. I hand her to him. On the stump, my father holds her still. Pusses her head between the grooves. One special for just this one task. I mark the spot on her neck because I'm only going to do this one time. One time. I raise the axe and bring it down. Hard. It slices clean. Her feathers quiver. Her feet claw at the air. But Pop squeezes her body fast. Doesn't let her flap. just holds her headless upside down as her blood sprays to the earth to the stump and that very night roast chicken dinner and i can't i can't eat pop doesn't force me i go to bed hungry i don't eat the next morning or the evening or the day after that my mother cries baby baby you have to eat something my father says leave him be he'll eat when he's ready three days later I venture back

Back out to the stump where I had betrayed her, sacrificed her. I tell her, I'm sorry about that. I'm so sorry. But I'm probably going to have to eat something now. I tell her other things too at that stump, that place where I murdered her. And there I bring a handful of the seed. The seed she left to peck out of my hand.

I spread it on the stump. When I return in the morning, the seed is gone. Slow stops.

Nah. Thank you.

That stump, that place, that altar, it's magical, it's scary for me, even today, so many years later and so many folk they have their own place where the air hangs thick with echoes and our next storyteller katie katie and her pops they're headed to one of these places for a little father-daughter bonding time and they're taking us along with them Spooked.

Thank you.

So, around 2017, my dad had started a battle with some skin cancer. It was on his face, his neck, his ears. He was starting treatments. And I thought, you know, it'd really be cool is to get his mind off of doctors and surgeries and medicines and, you know, all of that kind of thing with a Gettysburg trip. You know, it's always kind of been on his bucket list. Something that my dad and I had really connected with while I was growing up was his love of history. Specifically, his kind of love of history around battles and war and, you know, that kind of thing. We were a military family, so he really gravitated towards kind of like military-type history. One of the things I did to make this trip a little bit more special was to find somewhere to stay that wasn't your generic best Western, you know. I really wanted to find somewhere unique, somewhere that had a lot of character and history just within the grounds. And I found this farmhouse. I was looking through the photos and kind of the description from the host, and it seemed perfect. It had been built before the battle happened. So it was very, very, very old. It looked like it had a really gorgeous yard. And it really seemed like the perfect fit. Somewhere we could go, we could go do touring and then come back and have a little bit of tranquility and relaxation. It's a very rural Airbnb, so we did get lost. We had to turn around and find where we were going. But we drove up and it was this long drive through some fields. we pull up into the driveway and we can see the large kind of stone farmhouse so we got out and the host meets us she was you know sort of middle-aged very nice very gregarious she's like let me take you around let me show you the property and she kind of walked us around, and it's Gettysburg in the summer. It was hot. I mean, it was muggy. She took us to the pond, and she said you could swim in it if you'd like. It was kind of scummy. I wouldn't have swam in it, but you could if you wanted to, if you were brave. There were fish in there. You could hear the frogs croaking.

She walked us past the barn. The barn was big. It was old. She had these cows, right? It was this cutest cow you've ever seen. And it would just come right up to the fence, and we were petting the cow, and there were farm cats. My dad's a big cat guy, and so he was just loving all the animals. He was petting them. They followed us around. He thought that was really fun. She took us inside the house. So when you first walk in, you see the kitchen, and in the kitchen, the wall is the original brick of the original house. And my dad geeked out over that. He just thought that was so cool, right? He said, this brick's been here longer than Idaho was a state, right? He was just very excited about all of this stuff. So we walk upstairs. There was kind of a spiral-y sort of narrow staircase. You know, it was built back in the day. It kind of creaked. And there were two bedrooms. I chose the smaller of the two bedrooms. It had two twin beds in it. and then the bedroom next to it was larger. It had a big king bed. The wood on the doorways was original. There was the original wood floors. You could just tell that this room was steeped in history. My dad just sat in the bed and was like, wow, look at this room, Katie. Look at this place. He was so grateful. He just was like, thank you for finding this place for me. Like, this is so unique. So we do the little tour. The host leaves. She says, you know, bye, I'm out of here, right? Enjoy the space. Let me know if you have any problems. And we kind of spent the first hour settling in, getting unpacked, and then sort of walking around the property. So it was becoming evening. She had a gorgeous bench set up by the pond that you could sit on. And so we sat there for just a little bit and rested, listened to the frogs, the cicadas. It was loud, but in a relaxing way. And then we played some cards and we said, well, we're getting kind of tired and our tour guide's coming in the morning. The first day was going to be pretty much as much as we could pack in in that first day. And so we said, love you, have a good sleep, I'll see you in the morning. And we went to bed. You know, I settled down. I was thinking, wow, you know, I can't wait for tomorrow. Really excited to see where this tour guide takes us. I'm excited to see my dad, you know, how he reacts to seeing all this cool history. You know, I went to sleep feeling very positive about everything. And then I'm feeling something, metal, brush against my body. My arms, it's running up and down my legs.

There wasn't any pain involved, but it did feel sharp and hard. And I look down and realize it's a straight-edge razor. And the straight-edge razor is shaving me. I couldn't see a hand shaving. I was focused on the blade. It's shaving legs. It's shaving torso. It's shaving the back of my head. I am terrified heart racing and then I woke up almost like I could still feel the razor scraping on my skin it was dark the house was quiet And I thought, what was that? It just was a strange dream to be having. It wasn't something that I normally would dream about. It freaked me out. And then I sort of brushed it off. Oh, well, you know, you're in a strange bed. You're in a strange place. You're tired. You know, you just had a weird dream. And I rolled back over and went back to sleep. I wake up relatively refreshed for having woken up in the middle of the night. We get ready, and we drive to breakfast. We sit down, and we order our food, and then we just kind of start having your generic morning chat. How'd you sleep? How were the beds? Were the pillows comfortable? You know, that kind of thing. And I said, yeah, no, I slept pretty okay, but, you know, I kind of had a weird dream. And my dad looks at me and says, oh, what was your dream about? Because I had a weird dream too. It's not really something we would normally bring up, but the fact that we both had these strange dreams, it felt like we needed to talk about it. And so I told him about my dream, and he says, that's really strange. I had a dream where I was laying in bed. He said, I felt like I was being held down, like something was holding my shoulders down, my arms down. And in my half-awake state, I lifted my arm up to brush whatever was holding me down off. Like, get off of me. And that's when something grabbed my wrist and firmly slammed my hand down. And he woke himself up by hitting himself on his chest. and he said, I looked around, and there's nobody there. The room's empty. It's just me, and I thought, well, that's weird, huh, and then he went back to sleep, just kind of like I did, and so we both kind of looked at each other and just thought, well, that's really

interesting, you know, that in the light of day, it's not as scary, right, and you're like, that's kind of interesting, that we both just had a really weird dream, and then we started talking about the rest of our day, what we were going to do with that tour guide. We had an amazing day. We really did. This tour guide knocked it out of the park. He took us to all of, you know, the big hits, but he also took us to some little hidden statues that were in the woods that you could only get to if you knew where they were. He showed us some really cool old paths where you could see the walls that were built by the soldiers to, you know, help guard them from bullets and things like that. We went around, saw all the things, and just had a great day. We ended up picking up dinner, taking it back to the house that night. And we ate outside. There were ducks on the pond, so you could hear the ducks kind of quietly quacking and settling down for the night. he said you know I think I'm ready to head in and I said great let's go get some sleep and then we went to bed I settled in and I just kind of like drifted off to sleep a few hours go by and I'm dreaming that I am hearing the Lord's prayer our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And it repeated. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. But I kept getting to give us this day our daily bread and then it would start over. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And it just was a loop. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Father, who art in heaven, on earth as it is in heaven, give us this day our daily bread. Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. And then I'm waking up, and I realize it's me sleep-talking. I'm the one who is saying the prayer. Once I realized it's me, I immediately stopped saying the prayer. But it just made me feel uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable.

The Lord's Prayer is not something that I've said since I probably moved out of my house at 18, you know, and by now I was in my late 20s. And I'm not a sleep talker. I felt very anxious. The air felt heavy. But I just kind of tried to talk myself down from being uncomfortable. I rolled over and I said, you know, that was a weird dream again, just a weird dream. You have a long day tomorrow. You need to get your sleep. The crickets and the frogs were actually fairly loud, but I find that a comforting sound, and I was able to go back to sleep. I am running. I'm running through these woods on a dirt path. I can feel the grittiness of the gravel beneath me. and I am just running as fast as I can to escape. I was being chased by this soldier and I ended up being chased up against a rock face. My back's against that rock wall and I look up at this person's face who's walking towards me. redhead no hat but he did have a blue uniform on and the thing that stuck out the most is this grin this just malicious grin that almost took up this guy's whole face it felt like this is going to be bad this grin felt so malicious in what this person was going to do to me and i start saying the Lord's Prayer in my dream. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. You know, I'm panicking in the dream. It's breathy. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come. It will be done. And he gets in my face and looks at me, biggest grin you could imagine, and says, you think that's what I say to you? I woke up heart pounding, sweating, terrified, thinking, like, thank God I woke up, right? I wouldn't have wanted to have dreamed what happened next. Like, it was going to be bad, whatever it was. There was something about it that was more real than any other dream I'd had in my life.

And I did not go back to sleep that night. Getting ready for the day, I wake my dad up. We go get breakfast, and he says, You look kind of tired. Do you not sleep well? And I say, You know, actually, I had some pretty strange dreams again last night. And he said, Me too. I tell him about my dreams, and then he tells me about his dream. He was again laying on his bed, and he could feel something cutting into his face. He could feel like a scooping, cutting motion all over his face, his scalp. His eyes were closed. He said he didn't see anybody, but he could just feel things like scooping flesh out of his face. it was almost like they were cutting out his skin cancer i felt very like wow that's really weird but you have skin cancer it's on your mind you know we were looking at all this horrible war history yesterday maybe i just incorporated into my dream and that's why I was being chased. You know, I was even trying to kind of dismiss it. That was just a strange dream. That's all it was, nothing, you know, to worry about. And we could just kind of move on and go enjoy the day. We had a half day left with this tour guide. So he picked us up and we did a couple other little things, little site visits, bought a couple souvenirs, you know, had a quick snack and then went back to the Airbnb. We're packing up, we're taking our bags out to the car you know, kind of cleaning up the rooms a little bit when the host comes back in. She walks in, sees us packing up and leaving, is like, oh, good, I caught you. How was it? How was the stay? We were telling her, oh, yeah, we really enjoyed sitting out by the pond and listening to the ducks. You know, we were just kind of having those general, like, we really enjoyed our stay at your property kind of conversation. And then offhand, you know, we said, yeah, it was really comfortable. We just had some weird dreams, though. And she stops and says, weird dreams. So we're like, yeah, you know, just some unsettling dreams, but it's a strange house. We're surrounded by history. She says, well, let me guess. She says, were you dreaming that you were being chased? Did you have dreamed you were having surgery done on you? And the blood rushes out of my face. because she's describing what happened to my dad and I.

And she just kind of seemed like, yep, yep, I've heard it before. And so we asked about the rooms then. We said, well, could you explain, you know, maybe why people are having experiences in these rooms? And she says, well, I don't normally advertise this in my posting, but the house was used as part of a field hospital. and the rooms you stayed in were the surgical suites. Katie, the room you were staying in was the general room for where they would do amputations. They would come in, cut off an arm or leg, whatever, and toss it out the window. Dad, your room was the officer's surgical suite where the officers would go to have surgery. And then they would go to the barn to recover. and I was shocked. I was shocked, like, again, blood out of my face, because then the dreams suddenly made sense. They suddenly made sense. Why I was being shaved. Maybe I was being prepared for surgery or an amputation. Maybe the Lord's Prayer was stopping because they're dying halfway through saying it was last rites. she said my sister was staying in the room my dad was staying in and she was having ankle surgery she had had some pins put in and she was dreaming all night that someone was trying to dig into her ankle to pull the pins out she's like we think they thought her pins were shrapnel and they were trying to get it out. My stomach dropped because that's kind of what my dad experienced. You know, he experienced somebody doing surgery on a thing that was wrong with him. We said, well, that's really cool. You know, we were trying to be nice about it. We were freaked out, but we were like, that's, oh, that's really interesting. That's really cool. We got to go. and the drive back was almost completely silent. We were processing. Being chased. What did it mean being chased by the good guy? You know, the redhead soldier was wearing that blue uniform and they're the good guys in this. Is it that I was reliving the moments of a Confederate soldier, and they had somehow brought me to this room, this field hospital, and then I died there? And that was my last memory, was being, you know, attacked by this Union soldier. Or maybe it was the memory of the Union soldier who had gotten brought to this surgery suite.

and maybe passed away. Maybe this was his last memory. When we get back to Massachusetts, we sit down and we're able to start talking about it. And we just looked at each other and just said, wow, that was wild. He's a therapist, you know, he's very pragmatic and logical, But without a beat, he was saying, this is something that happened. He said, I'm going to think about this for the rest of my life. So I recently went back to look at the listing, just to kind of verify dates and things like that. And I noticed she had added a little blurb. and it says I will be your only living host. But there are many others who reside with me. They have lived at the farm for many, many years, some for hundreds of years. Yes, the house is haunted.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, Katie, for taking us to Gettysburg with you and sharing your story with the spook. The original score for that piece was by Nicholas Marks. It was produced by Zoe Frigno. understand this journey this chronicle this form is a search for secrets because knowledge of the shadow has been hunted burned it's been hidden so much and so much has been lost but so too so much is being found if you know a secret a secret place a secret power a secret creature or a secret story please let me know spooked at snapjudgment.org because there's nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener where does spooked reside wherever you are look behind you go ahead that shadow just out of vision there lies the spooked shadowlands deep beneath KQED in San Francisco absolutely no Snap Studios content that will be used for training testing or developing machine learning or AI systems without prior written permission spooked is brought to you by the team that refuses to eat chicken dinners except for Ms. Mark Ristich she's always going on about how the colonel really knows about his 11 herbs and spices. On Team Spooked, the union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers, a member of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Network of America, AFL, CIO, Local 51, and there's Davey Kim, Zoe Ferrigno, Eric Yanez, Tao Ducott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Suyi Chu, Evan Stern, Yves Jeffcoat, Isha Lopez, Jack Daryl, Doug Stewart, Nicholas Marks, the spooked theme songs by Pat Mercedes Miller. My name is from Washington. And I would love to go on a trip with my dad to Gettysburg, to anywhere, to 7-Eleven, even if the monsters came out at night because I know that time is a thief. that every moment is erased to put aside these hurts long enough to say what we want to say while we're both here to say it I do not wish to tell his ghost that which I was never able to tell him that I love him

that I'm sorry for this distance that I never knew why I always seemed to provoke his rage But these walls are deep These scars cut quick And there will come a day soon When I'm sorry will be too late I know this I know this Still I dance with time Hoping tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow The moment will emerge when everything is healed Knowing full well that tomorrow Is a lie Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, turn out that.

Transcription by CastingWords