Episode Transcript
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0:04
I searched the sky for what
0:06
to see but
0:08
caught myself staring
0:11
back at me. You
0:17
listen to spooks. Stay
0:20
tuned. In
0:33
Michigan, it's your ritual. Late
0:36
fall,
0:37
early winter, ride four hours
0:39
up north.
0:40
Stop the car. Put on your
0:43
orange reflective jacket, your orange
0:45
knit cap, gloves. It's
0:47
cold boots. Maybe
0:50
even a flask of Kentucky's finest to help
0:52
you pass the time. And
0:54
your gun. Trek
1:03
over Hill and Dale to your secret spot, the
1:05
special place only you and your boys
1:07
know about. Then
1:10
you lean, likely against
1:12
your tree. Still,
1:15
silent. Wait.
1:18
Then
1:25
maybe you hear the
1:27
underbrush crackle before
1:30
you actually see the creature.
1:38
Wary, suspicious,
1:40
wild, deer, antlers,
1:43
rays, noble. I've
1:45
walked these four, these Michigan woods,
1:48
dozens of times. Sighted the
1:50
animal, raised my rifle, braced
1:52
it against my shoulder, rested my
1:54
finger on the trigger, checked to
1:57
be sure all is clear.
2:00
I've
2:12
never fired a shot. Never.
2:18
I don't know why. Don't
2:21
know why.
2:23
My friends say I'm too scared. I
2:26
don't think so. I
2:28
think instead I like the
2:31
power in these words,
2:33
the power to decide. What
2:38
if? What if? What if?
2:41
What if? What if? What
2:44
if? What if? My name is Glenn Washington.
2:46
Safety first. Spookstars.
2:49
Now. Now. Today
2:52
we've got a
2:54
story from someone who's been a
3:20
little girl who truly loves being outside.
3:23
Now,
3:26
hunting season, he stands favorite
3:29
time of the year. He and his family, they
3:31
gather at his uncle's farm. Over 800
3:34
acres of Midwestern wilderness.
3:37
And, Dan, he loves the ritual. He climbs
3:40
up to the top of a big, ancient tree, sits
3:43
in his tree stand, and
3:46
looks over the world. It's
3:48
been a cold freezing, but for Dan,
3:51
this is where he feels quiet. This
3:54
is where he feels
3:56
at peace. Spooked.
4:01
a quick note that a story
4:04
is about the darkness and the like
4:06
you evolve suicide and graphic imagery as
4:09
such sensitive listeners please
4:11
be advised
4:23
deer hunting weekend is the one week
4:25
and that's guaranteed to see these
4:27
uncles and cousins and we all
4:29
come together since
4:33
i was thirteen years old it's always been family
4:36
online
4:38
a number of years ago i we had
4:40
one non blood family member
4:43
join our group that
4:45
was my cousins husband
4:48
i his name is andy when
4:52
i was young i didn't have a lot of opinions
4:55
i felt that my opinion really didn't matter a whole
4:57
lot but i didn't really
4:59
like candy
5:05
and he came across
5:07
as an really
5:10
arrogant
5:13
he was occasionally argumentative
5:16
my uncle that owns the land
5:18
and his son my cousin are
5:20
both doctors and
5:23
and a you had no medical training he
5:25
worked in a completely different profession we
5:27
got into a conversation about prescriptions
5:30
one family member that had a specific ailment
5:32
and the to doctors were talking about the best
5:35
drug to treat them and and he
5:37
started arguing with them about that
5:41
the whole family kind of stopped and looked at my
5:43
think are you a hint
5:45
for real right now do these
5:47
are two doctors they you
5:49
know they've been doctors our whole lives we
5:52
can't argue with them on this and that that's
5:54
a that's a no brainer
6:04
Pretty early on in the relationship, I learned
6:06
to just distance myself and
6:10
not respond to comments
6:13
that he might make.
6:15
Andy wasn't a bad person, but
6:17
it changed the feeling when
6:19
we were sitting down and having dinner
6:22
after dinner when we were talking about our day.
6:25
We hunted together for roughly a decade.
6:28
So
6:33
one summer, I got a call from
6:35
family saying that
6:38
Andy had left his
6:40
home one night and
6:42
went to his work
6:44
and decided to shoot himself.
6:55
This was devastating for the family, primarily
6:57
because my cousin, his wife, was
7:00
now left with her kids
7:02
and no husband.
7:05
It was also a revelation for the family
7:08
that he was depressed and we never knew
7:10
that deer hunting.
7:14
But we learned that he had told
7:16
his wife that he was never happier
7:18
than when he was deer hunting,
7:22
that he really, really loved that experience
7:27
and that time with us. That
7:29
was a shock to me because I didn't think
7:32
that I was very nice to him and I didn't think
7:34
that some of my other relatives
7:36
were very nice to him, not
7:38
perhaps rude but not as loving
7:41
as we could have been. And
7:43
so that was a real surprise
7:44
to hear. So
7:53
after Andy died, the next deer
7:56
season came upon us and
7:58
we were...
9:58
but
10:01
i really hope
10:03
you're in a better place right now
10:10
i'm really sorry to hear that
10:13
your life was so full of pain and
10:16
i'm also sorry
10:18
that i was kind of a jerk to you when you are
10:20
alive and hunting
10:23
and years stand it's it's opening weekend
10:25
i hope you're okay with the fact that i'm in your stand
10:28
and and again i just i really
10:30
hope that year in a better spot right now as
10:40
i got done talking day eight it
10:42
was the time i'm warning you know if you've ever sat
10:45
out in the woods there comes a point in
10:47
the morning when i would say
10:49
the world as gray
10:56
and it was that point in the morning and that only last
10:58
for maybe ten minutes in my experience
11:00
but it was that time of the morning when
11:03
i felt my entire
11:05
body it was suddenly
11:08
incredibly close
11:15
it felt like a wave
11:17
had passed through the
11:20
environment and sucked energy
11:22
out of it
11:25
if you've ever broken through ice and fallen into
11:28
modern you have a better idea
11:30
what it's like for your whole body to be
11:32
cold every
11:35
hair on my body was
11:37
standing up
11:43
and his body appeared
11:47
in front of me as
11:50
though it was a movie that was fading
11:52
in and all of a sudden
11:54
was was there i
11:59
could
12:00
see through him. I
12:03
had goosebumps from head to toe. He
12:08
was hovering above the tops of
12:10
those two pine trees. So he
12:13
wasn't at ground level walking
12:15
or moving around. He was
12:18
directly in front of me and
12:20
all of a sudden was was there,
12:22
you know, 20,
12:24
25 feet up in the air.
12:29
I was creeped
12:31
out. He
12:38
was a little bit rough around the edges, like his
12:41
hands and lower legs
12:43
weren't entirely visible but definitely
12:45
the core of his body was was right
12:48
there. He was in the air and his
12:51
back was turned towards me.
12:58
One of the things that I noticed that was different about
13:00
Andy was how he was dressed. When
13:03
we get up to go out deer
13:05
hunting and come down for breakfast, most
13:08
of us are wearing our long underwear and
13:10
then we put on, you know, after breakfast put on our
13:12
winter clothes and go out. Andy was
13:16
wearing a pair of khaki
13:19
pants and
13:21
a short sleeve three
13:23
button polo shirt that
13:26
was
13:28
bluish green in color. And
13:30
so to see him appear in this outfit was
13:33
different. It was unique.
13:39
I could see his shoulders shrugging
13:42
as though he was laughing. I couldn't
13:44
see anybody else but I could kind
13:46
of hear that there
13:48
was a chatter in the background.
13:54
Somehow he communicated to me that
13:56
he was at like a cocktail party, you
13:59
know, standing around. having some hors d'oeuvres
14:01
and you're laughing and talking
14:03
with people. And
14:07
I don't know how to verbalize what
14:10
telepathy would be like
14:13
to experience, but it was
14:15
very, very clear to me that there was other
14:17
people around him. While
14:20
Andy was at this cocktail party, and
14:22
he sent some very
14:25
clear messages. One, he was with
14:27
loved ones. He was in a good place.
14:30
It was very clear from
14:33
him that he
14:35
was okay now.
14:36
He then went
14:38
on to say that he and I were okay. And
14:42
he didn't elaborate on that a whole
14:44
lot.
14:55
After he communicated those two
14:57
messages,
14:57
the other people that
15:01
I couldn't see but I could hear,
15:03
it was
15:06
as though they left the room. And
15:10
it was just Andy and myself at that point. Andy
15:21
turned around very quickly
15:24
and faced me and looked
15:27
straight at me. When
15:29
he did that, I felt that
15:31
I had been punched in the chest. The
15:34
wind was knocked out of me.
15:39
Andy had shot himself in the head and
15:43
looking at Andy, part of his head was
15:45
gone. And
15:47
I won't get into the details, but
15:50
it was clear when he turned and faced me
15:52
that he had had trauma to his head. And
15:58
at that moment, as I felt that
16:00
full body punch, he
16:03
expressed, what have I done? As
16:10
well as a message of, this
16:12
didn't fix anything.
16:22
I didn't have anything to say back
16:24
to him. My eyes were wide open
16:27
and I was just trying to process
16:29
an experience that I had never experienced before.
16:36
Andy was in front of me for maybe
16:39
two minutes. He
16:41
fades away and he's gone and
16:44
there's nothing.
16:47
There's no communication, there's
16:51
nothing visual in front of me. Being
16:56
logical, I was trying to process
16:58
what had just happened and
17:00
I really struggled with that because
17:03
I had no explanation that
17:06
was scientific or
17:10
I had no explanation that I could
17:13
really believe. I
17:19
spent the day sitting in the tree stand.
17:22
I don't know if I even was looking for deer
17:24
after that point. I
17:27
spent the next 12 hours reflecting on
17:30
what had happened,
17:31
what I saw, what I heard, and I'm
17:35
using air quotes, what Andy
17:37
communicated to me.
17:44
12 hours
17:48
later, I saw the headlights, it was dark
17:50
again, it was evening,
17:52
and when I saw the
17:54
pickup truck, I packed up my gear, climbed
17:57
down the ladder out of the tree stand.
18:00
walked a hundred yards
18:02
through the woods and made it to the pickup
18:04
truck.
18:11
When I got there, my dad was driving
18:14
and I got in the truck and I didn't
18:16
say anything.
18:30
And he looked at me and he
18:32
said, what's wrong? What's
18:35
wrong with you? And
18:37
I turned to him and I said, you
18:41
wouldn't believe me. And
18:45
he said, tell me, tell
18:48
me what happened.
18:50
So I told him the story.
18:53
And he said, oof. So
18:58
my dad says, well, it's up to you if you want to share the
19:00
story with the rest of the family
19:02
when we get back to the house.
19:07
Keep in mind that my uncle
19:09
is the patriarch of the family. He's
19:13
your
19:15
quintessential old school
19:17
doctor, just very stoic. Well,
19:22
we walked into the house and the first thing my uncle
19:25
says, Danny, what's wrong? And
19:29
I didn't say anything at first. And
19:32
my cousin, who was making
19:34
dinner, kind of chuckled. Oh,
19:37
would you see Andy's ghost or something?
19:40
And his dad immediately tells him to be
19:42
quiet. And my
19:45
uncle is looking at me.
19:47
He's very serious. And
19:49
he says, Danny,
19:51
what's wrong? And
19:54
so I tell the rest of the family the story. I
20:03
was impressed with
20:05
the respect
20:08
that the rest of the family showed me as
20:10
I was telling this story. They
20:12
were very interested in hearing what had happened.
20:19
When I was done telling my story, my
20:22
uncle said, well, it's up
20:24
to you if you want to tell Susan. Susan's
20:27
my cousin who had been married to Andy
20:30
and is also my uncle's daughter. And
20:33
so he gave the choice to
20:36
me whether or not to share this with Susan.
20:39
Keep in mind this is about six months after her husband's
20:41
died.
20:44
And I decided that it was really important that
20:46
I do share this with her. And I didn't understand
20:49
at the time why I felt
20:51
it was important.
20:55
So I called Susan on
20:58
speakerphone in front of the rest of the family. Now
21:01
Susan's a state away. She
21:03
has no idea of any of this.
21:07
And I said, hey,
21:09
Susan, it's Danny. I have
21:11
to talk to you. Do
21:13
you have time to focus on me?
21:15
Did I catch you at an okay time?
21:18
And she said, yeah. I said, are you
21:20
sitting down? Because I think you need to sit down for
21:22
this. And she said, yeah, I'm sitting down.
21:26
I said, okay, before
21:28
I tell you anything, what
21:31
was Andy wearing when he died?
21:44
Susan replied, you know,
21:47
you think I would know what he was wearing
21:49
when he died, but I don't. I don't
21:52
remember. But
21:55
I'll never forget it. The outfit
21:57
I picked for him to be cremated.
22:00
It was a
22:02
pair of khaki pants and a
22:04
bluish-green short-sleeved
22:06
three-button polo shirt. Now
22:13
there's only a couple of people that know what Andy
22:16
was cremated in. Susan,
22:19
the folks that, you know, at
22:21
the funeral home, and
22:23
Andy. It
22:29
proceeded to tell Susan my experience
22:32
on the story, and she found great comfort in hearing
22:35
that he was okay. She wasn't
22:37
surprised to hear that he had shown
22:39
up.
22:54
About eight months after my
22:57
experience in Andy's stand, I
23:00
was at a cousin's wedding. And
23:04
uncle number two, that, you
23:06
know, is a disbeliever and adamant
23:09
that that never happened, and I imagined it, brought
23:12
a guy over to me. This
23:15
guy's name is Jack, and Jack's
23:17
a friend of the family, and he occasionally
23:20
will, you know, bird hunt on
23:22
our property.
23:24
And uncle number two said
23:26
to me,
23:28
you two need to talk to each other about what happened,
23:32
and turned around and walked away. I mean, he clearly wants
23:35
nothing to do with what
23:37
happened to us.
23:44
So I'm like, I was a little confused
23:47
when they turned to Jack, and I said, so what
23:50
happened to
23:52
you? And Jack said, well, I was bird hunting on
23:55
the, at the farm, and
23:57
I got done for the day, and
23:59
I unluck my phone.
24:00
my shotgun and was getting
24:02
ready to walk out and all of a sudden
24:04
there was somebody else in the woods with me
24:11
and as a okay what do you mean i
24:13
in were in the middle of
24:16
may be somewhat close to the border but you
24:18
know eight
24:19
to nine hundred acres it's not normal to run
24:21
and other people and
24:23
jax again i never saw another
24:25
person but there was somebody else in the woods
24:27
with
24:27
me and
24:34
he said it was walking out of
24:36
the words and i was right underneath and
24:39
he stand when this happened i
24:45
want wow jacket
24:52
never heard of the experience
24:54
and i had in
25:05
i think one reason that perhaps
25:07
he chose me and that time and location
25:10
to show up is because we
25:12
both found nature we find
25:14
it to be a very spiritual
25:17
place it
25:27
was there's absolute
25:29
beauty in sitting in the woods
25:32
and and it's almost like a
25:35
sound deprivation chamber that
25:37
you because you don't hear any man made sounds
25:39
all you hear is the wind if
25:41
it's blowing silence if
25:43
it's not the and knowing squirrel
25:46
that you think as a deer approaching but it's really just
25:48
a squirrel
25:51
you know you you might see a wolf but you never
25:53
hear them because they're absolutely silent
25:56
i mean it it's it's really just a powerful
25:59
place the
26:00
be and it's it's my version
26:02
of a church
26:12
and and it clearly
26:15
was for andy as well to
26:19
this day i still hunt out of his tristan
26:22
honestly he built his a lot better than i don't
26:24
mind so it's up
26:27
a lot nicer place to hang out of the
26:30
other thing that i appreciate is that my
26:35
cousins kid i
26:37
started hunting with me when he was real
26:39
young before he was old enough to hunt he would just
26:41
sit and stand with me
26:50
every opening morning he
26:52
and i speak to andy
26:56
you know we
26:59
wish that and is doing well
27:02
we ask for a successful hunt
27:04
cause if you have a connection
27:06
to the divine why not you know ask
27:08
for a little help and
27:11
that but more so thank
27:13
him for being in a stand
27:16
and in the fact that he built it
27:21
and it's really i
27:23
think a beautiful practice that has
27:26
come from and his staff and the subsequent
27:28
experiences
27:34
and that have a teenager that wants to hang
27:36
with an old fart like me you
27:38
know for twelve hours sitting
27:41
in a stand we provide thanks to the
27:43
world i think that it's just a really good practice
27:45
for both of us to express or
27:47
or thanks and and wish
27:49
andy well
28:05
thank you dan rushing as
28:07
dr spook i got a now
28:10
dan is a listener
28:12
he share this story with us and we knew
28:15
we had to share with you and if you
28:17
have your own terrifying tail tell
28:19
us best from leave want to hear
28:21
an email us spooked
28:24
at snap judgment that will watch you get spooked
28:27
at snap judgment that orgy
28:39
yes it is that time but that
28:42
there we have just set foot on
28:44
was wrong with that even the god france
28:47
season for spooked only
28:48
on woman their it dot com but
28:50
somebody now if you dare spooked
28:54
if you like a storytelling under
28:55
the heat of the new day son juggler
28:57
sister podcast snap judgment storytelling
29:00
the beat snap judgment studios spoke
29:03
was created by the t the refuses
29:06
to climb a tree enforced
29:08
i don't know why was the be
29:10
a of specially
29:13
for stranger is none other than mister
29:15
market research and stuff
29:17
going on she speaks to is allowed to sniff chris
29:19
hambrick eating when alleviate
29:23
suffering no more new son
29:25
jacob winning the ongoing auto
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rental boreal tailed cat risk
29:31
dogs going to weber from a
29:34
typically that and forward air
29:36
fernando hernandez refuses to where
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the proper forest ranger uniform some
29:42
same animals
29:44
with dark would have not been
29:46
branded the power of speech people
29:49
who know this program they discovered otherwise
29:51
still bet you
29:54
no matter what those strange
29:56
voices quest no matter how desperately
29:58
they please no the what they never
30:04
ever never never
30:06
have to out
30:10
the that
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