The Ghosts are Unionizing | Your Urban Legends 120

We are offering our services as ghost mediators. It seems like something some of you need. Also featuring ghost unions, the most useless form of clairvoyance we’ve ever heard, and a creepy white-eyed grandma. Y’know, the usual. 

Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of sexual content, family death, and pregnancy. 

Housekeeping

- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests’ books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books

- Call to Action: Send in those urban legend emails!

- Submit Your Urban Legends Audio: Call us! 617-420-2344

Minneapolis Spotlight

If you are a podcaster and want to join us in this effort, please go to bit.ly/mnpodcastads

- Please support the Modern Times Cafe in their efforts to feed neighbors regardless of income at postmoderntimescafe.com!  

Find Us Online

- Website & Transcripts: spiritspodcast.com

- Patreon: patreon.com/spiritspodcast

- Merch: spiritspodcast.com/merch

- Instagram: instagram.com/spiritspodcast

- Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/spiritspodcast.com

- Twitter: twitter.com/spiritspodcast

- Tumblr: spiritspodcast.tumblr.com

Cast & Crew

- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin

- Editor: Bren Frederick

- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod

- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman

- Multitude: multitude.productions

About Us

Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.

Transcript

AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.

JULIA: And I'm Julia.

AMANDA: Julia, the sun is up, the weather is warming up. Some of us might be having some beach days some time soon but you know where I want to be?

JULIA: Right here talking about Urban Legends?

AMANDA: In the dark. In a dark and very specifically lit room, inside on a beautiful day, talking about fucking ghost stories with my best friend.

JULIA: Now, Amanda, you bring up a really interesting point because there was recently a horror movie that came out. I haven't seen it yet. I only saw the trailer that is about essentially what we do.

AMANDA: Oh?

JULIA: Which is record podcasts about spooky supernatural things.

AMANDA: Do we have to get our lawyer, our fictional lawyer who we don't pay because we're an independent podcast on the line?

JULIA: I don't think so. think we're probably OK. I'm looking up the name of it right now so that I can I can tell you because watching the trailer, I was like, we don't that's not how this goes. So, it was called Undertone. It came out, I believe, last year. It might have like premiered at like a festival first last year and that it came out this year. But it's essentially like the host of a popular paranormal podcast becomes haunted by terrifying recordings that are mysteriously sent her way.

AMANDA: Oh! Fascinating.

JULIA: And in the trailer for this movie, she is recording her podcast fully in the dark. I'm like, ma'am, ma'am, put some lights on! Why are you doing this to yourself?

AMANDA: These days you're probably also gonna need some social video, my girl, if you wanna grow.

JULIA: Listen, I respect the desire to not conform to the need for video podcasting.

AMANDA: Sure.

JULIA: I respect it. I like the hustle. I like that it's about sound as a sound designer. That interests me.

AMANDA: True.

JULIA: However, if you're going to listen to spooky shit, why are you doing it in the dark?

AMANDA: You best have some warm lighting in that room, okay? I don't wanna see a little light bulb measurement in the thousands, whatever that thing is called, on the dark side of things, on the bright, on blue side of things. This is not a hospital.

JULIA: Exactly

AMANDA: This is not a morgue. Actually, morgue's probably pretty well lit. All right, Juliet, I think it's time for an urban legend.

JULIA: Okay, let's do it. Would you like to hear one from me first?

AMANDA: Yes, please.

JULIA: Would you like to hear one that features another Julia?

AMANDA: Oh! I mean, is the best, but yeah.

JULIA: Alright, this is from Kendra she/her, titled, A Ghost Tries to Steal My Tooth.

AMANDA: Oh, no!

JULIA: Hi, Julianna Manda. I started listening to Spirits this year and I love it. I also happened to have grown up in a haunted farmhouse, so I figured I should probably write in.

AMANDA: Let's go.

JULIA: My entire family has various stories about the ghosts that occupied our house, and though creepy, they were all fairly tame haunting. We thought of the spirit as our very friendly ghost, practically a member of the family. We called him Wagner because it was the last name of the house's previous owner, an old man who had supposedly died in the master bedroom.

AMANDA: Okay, great, and then Julia, would you remind us just a little bit of the people who owned your house before you and their weird sex mirrors?

JULIA: Well, when you pose it as weird sex mirrors, that makes it seem... Well, honestly, I don't know. I don't know. The house was built in the 1950s. They owned the house, like, from the get-go. Like, it was constructed and these were the original owners. And then we bought it from their son after they passed away. When we walked into the master bedroom for the first time, it had Pepto-Bismol pink ceilings. Most of the walls were covered in what I would describe as a metallic and yet also felt wallpaper, including extremely heavy closet doors.

AMANDA: Now you guys might be thinking to yourself, there's no way a texture could be velvet but also mirrored. It was.

JULIA: It was. I'm going to come back to that. And then also a third of the room was covered in just like square mirrored panels.

AMANDA: A DIY job.

JULIA: Now it does seem like they were kind of freaks. I'm not going to go into any more details about that, but it seems like they were kind of freaks. But a actual update to that, and I'm so glad you asked about that, Amanda, our neighbors next door are a lovely gay couple who have bought the house from their mom and the one son grew up there and everything like that. They've been doing a lot of reconstruction to the house and everything like that, like trying to make it more their style. And they sent us a photo the other day where they were like, you'll never guess what we found in the attic. And I said, “What?” And they sent a photo of the same closet doors that we had from our master bedroom in that same metallic yet velvet wallpaper. But theirs was deep red, where ours was just like a metallic silver.

AMANDA: Strange.

JULIA: And I was like, it must have come with the house. Like that must have been like the standard, like, ooh, we'll put a luxe, like sort of luxury wallpaper on each of these bedrooms.

AMANDA: That is so fascinating and I hope that anytime anything spooky happens, you blame the freaky, parentheses appreciative, past owners of your house.

JULIA: So, let's see how haunted this is compared to my freaky sex dungeon house. So previous owner, Wagner, old man who supposedly died in the master bedroom. We assumed that the ghost was his spirit trapped in the house between life and death for whatever reason. So, while he spooked us occasionally, I wouldn't say any of us were truly afraid of him. He wasn't malicious in any way. However, I did have one encounter with him that still makes my skin crawl to think about. My little sister, whose name is Julia—

AMANDA: Eyy!

JULIA: -and I shared a bedroom when we were growing up in the house. We slept in bunk beds, myself on the top bunk, Julia on the bottom. When we lost our baby teeth, we would put them in little plastic bags under the pillows on our bed, and our parents would swap them out for some change or a couple of dollars while we slept. Sometimes they would let the tooth sit for a couple of nights, teaching us patience, I suppose.

AMANDA: Okay, whoa, because one time my dad definitely forgot to do it and my mom was fucking pissed and I woke up the next day and I was like, she didn't come. My mom was like, she must not have been working. And I could tell in her mind, she's like, fucking Brian, come on!

JULIA: Brian, no! You say she wasn't working the night shift that day.

AMANDA: You know, apparently.

JULIA: So, continuing into your point, Amanda, they said that the tooth fairy was busy collecting teeth from all over the world, so there might be a delay. I was never much of a believer, though, and I knew that my parents were the ones making the swap, even though they tried to keep up the charade.

AMANDA: Okay

JULIA: One night, while I had a freshly lost baby tooth under my pillow, I was awoken by a strange sound. It was the crinkling of the plastic bag holding the tooth as if someone was rubbing it between their fingers.

AMANDA: Okay, so now the tooth fairy's a little freak who's very excited to pick up those teeth.

JULIA: I thought at first that one of my parents must be taking the tooth, but they had never woken me up before while doing this, and the crinkling didn't cease. I didn't feel a hand underneath the pillow; there was only the sound. So, I opened my eyes and I saw a figure standing in front of my bed. Now keep in mind, top bunk.

AMANDA: Oh, shit, that's right. Okay, so we're at least what, five, six feet off the ground?

JULIA: Mm-hmm. It was so dark in the room that I could not see any physical features. Just a dark outline of a man, as if he was merely a shadow. I got the feeling that he was looking at me, though, even though I couldn't see his eyes. I stared for a moment and then squeezed my eyes shut, holding my breath. The figure was not my dad. I knew this because my dad had to look up at me when I was in the top bunk, the bed being taller than he was. The figure, on the other hand, was looking at me at eye level. He was probably a whole head taller than my dad would be if he was standing in the same spot.

AMANDA: Oh, shit.

JULIA: I prayed that the figure would be gone when I opened my eyes again, and sure enough, the crinkling sound stopped. I opened my eyes and the room was empty. I heard no retreating footsteps, not a single sound in our old creaky house besides my sister's breathing on the bunk below. I gradually fell back asleep and in the morning the bag with my tooth was below the pillow where I had left it. I asked my parents if either of them had tried to take it during the night, to which they said, that's the job of the tooth fairy.

AMANDA: And you're like, guys, cut the shit.

JULIA: When I said that I had seen someone in my room, they gave up the charade. While they admitted that they normally do take the teeth and leave some money, they insisted that they had not come into our room at all that past night. I had been visited by a Wagner.

AMANDA: Who was apparently extremely tall.

JULIA: Kendra finishes with, sorry this is a long one. It's fine, I like the long ones. But let me know if you want to hear more Wagner stories. Obviously, of course we do.

AMANDA: Yey!

JULIA: My family lived in that house until I was 12, so I have over a decade of spooky incidences. Stay Creepy, Kendra.

AMANDA: So good, Kendra, I love that. And I'd be really curious if your Julia has any memories that she wants to share.

JULIA: Yes, ask your family members, see if any of them have stories that they want to share that they wouldn't mind being shared on the podcast. I want to hear all the Wagner stories.

AMANDA: In fact, Julia, as always, we find wonderful segues between our urban legends. I am going to read you a story from the sister of someone else who has submitted to Spirits before.

JULIA: Yo!

AMANDA: This is from Louise, they/she, shout out. And the message is titled, Grandma White Eyes, Astral Projecting Babies and the Shadow Man. Don't like that?

JULIA: I was swallowing some coffee, but that was bad.

AMANDA: This email has everything. I feel like I'm in Stefan mode. Louise writes, hey everyone, I have been listening to you guys from Montreal ever since my sister Angelica from Episode 77 of Your Urban Legends showed me the episode where she wrote in about our chronically haunted childhood home.

JULIA: Oh, hell yeah, dog.

AMANDA: I have been meaning to write in because I thought you might enjoy this follow up with ghost grandmothers and babies astral projecting. FYI, Angelica's episode was the ghost with the hairy leg.

JULIA: Oh, no! I hate that.

AMANDA: Hate it. I'll start with the creepy babies as this all ties together in the end. From around 10 months old when I started forming words, my mom would walk into the room to hear me chatting about nothing in particular, but fully pausing, listening, and responding to something.

JULIA: Okay, so I do have somewhat of a theory about this

AMANDA: Okay.

JULIA: Which is I think if babies are developing their language and a lot of that is mimicking behavior and like sort of affect of the people around them, right?

AMANDA: Totally.

JULIA: I think maybe if babies spend a lot of time with people who do a lot of phone calls, they might think like, this is how you have a conversation. You talk and then long pause and then you start talking again.

AMANDA: True.

JULIA: I don't know if that's anything. It might not be anything, but that was my first thought. was like, why would that baby be pausing? I'm like, maybe the person who spends a lot of time with them also spends time on the phone.

AMANDA: I think that's completely valid and even in conversation with someone in the room, you are talking, pausing, the other person's talking. And I if a baby is like quite ready to focus on just the behavior of one or the other person, but I completely buy that, Julia.

JULIA: Interesting.

AMANDA: You ever see babies pretend to use a phone? They fucking love that shit, man.

JULIA: Have you seen babies like just staring at phones, because now parents often do that as well, like, you know, be like, I have to go to work and then pretend like they're on a laptop.

AMANDA: Not yet, but I think I will.

JULIA: Yep.

AMANDA: I'll keep reminding. All right, back to Louise. As I started speaking better and more clearly, my mom could catch my side of entire conversations with someone she could not see. Eventually, she tells me when I was about one, she asked me who I was talking to. And my answer naturally was, Grandma Ma, you blank, which means Grandma White Eyes.

JULIA: Uh-oh! Uh-oh!

AMANDA: Now, I'm sure she expected me to tell her about my imaginary friend, but I don't think she was ready for me to talk confidently about an old woman with white eyes. In fact, I kept seeing this old woman until I was at least four, maybe even five.

JULIA: Is that based on memories or the fact that your mom was like and you kept talking about this white-eyed old lady for years and years?

AMANDA: I am not sure, let's see how it ties together. While still a baby, this wasn't my only creepy kid moment. My mother and I were once eating in the kitchen with my sister asleep in her high chair. Everything was peaceful until I started giggling and pointing at the ceiling.

JULIA: Children love to do this. Children fucking love to do this.

AMANDA: They don't even know how creepy it is, but good god is it. My mom thought this was cute and of course said, what's so funny? What are you laughing at? Only to be met with the answer that it was my sister, because she was being so funny up there. As I pointed again at the ceiling.

JULIA: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

AMANDA: My mom didn't really push me in her questioning and woke my sister up, but never forgot about that moment. And when I ask about her to this day, she is genuinely pretty freaked out.

JULIA: Uh-oh.

AMANDA: So, I guess Angelica was astral projecting up to the ceiling and Louise caught it.

JULIA: Apparently.

AMANDA: And now for the shadow man and the great grandmother. I too saw the shadow man in the middle of the night standing almost leaning against the doorframe of my bedroom.

JULIA: I don't like how casual the lean is.

AMANDA: The lean says, I live here and shadow man, unless you pay rent, no, you don't. Now, Angelica and me had different bedrooms, mind you. So, this shadow figure was pulling a double shift out here, haunting both of us. I would wake up from a nightmare and find the shadow at my door, just standing there motionless and this overwhelming feeling of fear and dread would come over me.

JULIA: Oh, boy.

AMANDA: Even when I made sure to close my door before bed, he would be there, but inside the room this time, closer to me, unmoving.

JULIA: No. Bad

AMANDA: With time, he got comfortable or something and started getting even closer to my bed. At that time, I was entirely team ignorant and hid under the covers sobbing and, you know, hyperventilating myself until I, exhausted, fell asleep.

JULIA: Okay, listen, it's okay to be afraid when you're a child. If you are hyperventilating and sobbing in your bed, where are your parents?

AMANDA: Yeah.

JULIA: Can they not hear the sobbing child?

AMANDA: Come on, where are we at? Julia, you're not gonna be happy to hear that this continued until Louise was about 17.

JULIA: Hey, you should not be sobbing and hyperventilating, I would assume, multiple times a month, a year. Even multiple times a year is bad.

AMANDA: Too many. Baby, you deserve SSRIs and or support and or anything else that will help you out here.

JULIA: Word.

AMANDA: So, Louise continues, I suspect the difference between my sister's paralysis experience and my sort of standard haunting experience was that I had something else visiting me as well. From early on in life, I could feel someone sitting at the edge of my bed, not for the whole night, but for a good while. And it was that way consistently on and off for years.

Now, it was the same familiar and warm feeling that I'd felt as a child when one of my parents would check in on me. So, I didn't necessarily mind the feeling, but it definitely happened. It took years for me and Angelica to connect the dots and conclude that this ghost was probably the same one as my imaginary friend, Grandma White Eyes. But now we think that she was our great-grandmother, somehow bound or at least temporarily tethered to me because of our shared name. She was a Louise too.

JULIA: Ahhh.

AMANDA: I've not seen or felt her since moving out of that house, so she may have been strongly attached to my mother, who was her first grandbaby.

JULIA: Sure. Makes sense.

AMANDA: By the way, we have more stories. We Spooky Kids with Spooky Kid Parents. We will be happy to share them. Stay creepy, Louise.

JULIA: I need to check in with your parents.

AMANDA: Yeah.

JULIA: I need you to specifically ask your parents, hey, did you know about me sobbing and hyperventilating all the time because a ghost was visiting me? Like, were you aware of that fact? It was happening a lot.

AMANDA: We need to do a little retroactive wellness check. And if I want to hear the answer, and if you and your parents and Angelica want to write back in, we would love to hear from you. Yes.

JULIA: Yes. I would love to hear that.

AMANDA: All right, Julia, I have so many more things I'm excited to talk to you about. But first, do you want to go grab a quick refill?

JULIA: Let's do it.

The Refill

AMANDA: Hey, everybody, it's Amanda. Welcome to The Refill, where I would love to thank our newest patron, Maria Paz. Thank you so much, Maria, for joining the Patreon and making sure that you are helping make this show an ongoing part of your life. Folks, we're so close to Episode 500, and I am very excited for some of the celebratory stuff we have going on. So, stay tuned.

Remember, if you are spending less time on social media these days, you can always go on over to patreon.com/spiritspodcast and become a free member. We post stuff over there for the free members as well. We obviously have every episode and then any announcements about like live shows, merch, exciting stuff going on, we will let you know over there. As I said, much to come in that area. So, stay tuned. Thank you to our supporting producer level patrons whose support truly sustains the show,

Uhleeseeuh, Hannah, Scott, Anne, Matthew, Lily, and Wil, and our Legend Level patrons, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Audra, Sarah, Bea Me Up Scotty, Morgan, Rikoelike, Chibi Yokai, and Smolive. Thank you so much, and if you want your name to be read in that beautiful, venerable, hot list, come on over, patreon.com/spiritspodcast.

I would love to tell you about one of my very favorite shows over in the Multitude Podcast Collective. It's Simple and Clean. This is a show where our friend Mischa Stanton and our new friend, Mayanna Berrin and their friends talk about Kingdom Hearts. Now, if like me, you vaguely know about these fellows from Tumblr or something, let me tell you, it is so much. It is a little video game franchise about really big feelings. And it is one of those cult fandoms, cult followings that if you're not in it, you don't know how important it is to so many people. So, get into it, get in there, enjoy it, enjoy their enthusiasm as Mischa, Mayanna and friends discuss the plot, characters, fashions, music, societal impact of a thing that like by all means probably should not have existed in the first place. So go on over and check out Simple and Clean. They have new episodes every Sunday wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hey folks, Minneapolis, one of many cities in the US that is still being taken over by ICE and our fascist regime, has many small businesses and mutual aid groups pushing back and making life better for themselves and their neighbors. As usual, we are reserving some ad space to make sure we tell you about some of these wonderful places. And today I want to tell you about the Postmodern Times Cafe.

which is a restaurant that decided recently to switch to an entirely donation-based model. That means they are providing all of their food for free to their neighbors in Minneapolis. You can donate to the cafe at postmoderntimescafe.com, and I highly, highly recommend it because they're amazing and you should support them. The food looks great. When I am next in Minneapolis, you know that I am going to go there. That's postmoderntimescafe.com or follow them @moderntimescafempls, that's Minneapolis, on Instagram.

JULIA: Amanda, are back. Hey, what's been you drink choice lately?

AMANDA: I got treated to a IRL Julia cocktail yesterday and I'm telling you girl, this is gonna be my new favorite. Can you tell people all about it?

JULIA: Yes. It is called the Midnight Bramble. It is a twist on the bramble, which is a cocktail that I think was invented in the eighties. So it's basically like all bramble versions or like twists are at least like somewhat blackberry flavored. So in this case, it is a mezcal base. It has a little bit of agave syrup. It has blackberries, like whole blackberries that you then like muddle and shake as well as sage and some lime juice. So was like kind of like a mezcal blackberry margarita.

AMANDA: It was a little bit sweet, very, very drinkable and the most gorgeous color. So you are an excellent bartender, as we all know. And anytime I can sample your wares, it's delicious.

JULIA: Thanks, bud.

AMANDA: Have you been drinking anything recently?

JULIA: No, that's probably about it. I've been really liking the bramble. It's been good.

AMANDA: Julia, normally we try to take turns with our urban legends, but I was so excited about this next email. Would you mind if I go again?

JULIA: Go ahead.

AMANDA: Alright, Julia, this comes in from Shen she/her and it's titled, I Think I Once Had a Vardiger.

JULIA: Ooh! Okay.

AMANDA: Do you remember the Vardiger, Julia, from the following spirit urban legends episode in 2024?

JULIA: Yes, I do. Yes, I do.

AMANDA: Can you remind us a little bit of the lore?

JULIA: It's basically like a sort of doppelganger, but mostly sound, if I remember correctly.

AMANDA: And in advance, it's kind of like a prologue or a prelude to something that is going to happen.

JULIA: So like, for example, I remember a couple of these stories where like, I heard my husband come home and called to me, like saying like, I'm home. And then you go out into your living room and no one's there. And then 10 minutes later, you hear the same exact thing, but not your husband's actually there.

AMANDA: Hey everybody, I've been listening to Spirits for so long and fell a little bit behind. But as I worked on catching up, I just heard the following Spirit episode from 2024 and it stopped me in my tracks because I think maybe I used to have a Vardiger.

JULIA: Ooh.

AMANDA: I've thought about writing in with these stories before, but they seem kind of small and insignificant, so I didn't think they'd be particularly interesting. But when I heard about the Vardiger phenomenon, my jaw literally dropped as I listened to the episode. I've never heard of it described this way before, but it seems to exactly fit something I'd experienced in my late teens and early 20s with a couple important variations.

JULIA: Ooh, okay.

AMANDA: So, my first encounter with these phenomena was back in high school, which for me around 2007, us too. Our school had a classic mid-century modern style design and the library was centrally located but sunken sort of like a conversation pit.

JULIA: Weird. Okay.

AMANDA: We're not going to dox you, Shen, but I very want to know what high school you went to because I have got to see pictures of this thing.

JULIA: I've got some questions.

AMANDA: You could access the library from wide hallways on either side, and there were no doors or walls closing it in, just a few steps down with tall bookshelves lining all of the edges. My friends and I would arrive early to school, as most bus riders did, and we'd make our way to the library to sit at one of the tables there and chit chat before classes began. On one occasion, I sat with my best friend, Carrie, to my right and two more of our friends sat across from us at our usual table. They had their backs to one of the short staircases that descended into the library, but Carrie and I could see the stairs very clearly in the hallway behind them quite easily.

Now, one of the girls sitting across from us, Angela, had a boyfriend whose name I can't really remember, let's call him Chris, and he would sometimes join us at our table after we'd already settled in. This particular morning, I sat doodling and heard my best friend say, here comes Chris. So I looked up, saw him approaching down the wide hallway. He sauntered down the few steps into the library, all teenage boy confidence, came up behind Angela and grabbed her shoulders with a little boo, and she predictably nearly jumped out of her skin.

JULIA: Someone said, here comes Chris though. Girlfriend.

AMANDA: You think, Julia. I looked at her incredulously and she must have made some comment like, what the heck, Angela, you knew he was coming. Why would you react so scared?

JULIA: There we go.

AMANDA: To which everyone stopped and looked at me. I didn't know he was coming, Angela said. I was like, no, no, Carrie just said, here comes Chris. So of course you knew he was coming. More blank stares.

JULIA: Everyone’s like what? Huh?

AMANDA: Carrie shook her head and was like, girl, I did not say anything out loud, but I did think it.

JULIA: Uh-oh.

AMANDA: I don't know verbatim how the rest of the conversation went, but I continued to insist that I had heard Carrie say out loud with her voice that Angela's boyfriend was on his way, which is the reason I looked up to see him coming down the hallway in the first place.

JULIA: Makes sense.

AMANDA: Carrie was confident she had not said a word, and everyone else at the table corroborated her story. I eventually shrugged it off as like, okay, guess I just accidentally read my best friend's mind, no big deal. We do sometimes dress identically without planning to, so I guess this is the next evolution of best friendness.

JULIA: You might have just had a soul bond. It might not be a Vardiger

AMANDA: I'm also happy to report we are still best friends 20 years later.

JULIA: That's what I'm saying.

AMANDA: Fast forward a few years. I'm in college in an apartment on my own. This instance is so minuscule and I'm sure there's some weird maybe sleepy brain stuff that might be able to explain it, but here we go. When I graduated high school, I moved to another state to go to art school. Rather than move into that college's dorms, which were kind of like a multi-school shared dorm set up housing students from a few different colleges and required bus transportation if you didn't have a car and was the same price for a tiny room without a kitchen as like an actual apartment. I opted to find an apartment.

JULIA: Sure. Makes sense.

AMANDA: I found a pretty nice place that had been recently renovated and lived there quite happily. I do pretty well on my own as I'm fairly introverted, but after six months of living on your own with no real friends in a new city at a new school, of course you start to feel a little bit lonely.

JULIA: That's tough.

AMANDA: None of this has anything to do with the actual event, but I just want to make sure you have a sense of my state of mind.

JULIA: Mm-hmm.

AMANDA: So, a few months into living on my own in this apartment, I started to have weird dreams, some of which were definitely verging into nightmare territory.

JULIA: Uh-oh

AMANDA: A favorite was a creepy dark-haired woman with sharp teeth gnawing on my hands.

JULIA: Uh-oh! Not your hands! Usually it's the feet.

AMANDA: Usually it's the feet, like gnawing on the feet, not the hands.

JULIA: Yeah.

AMANDA: Like the dangling?

JULIA: Yeah. Yeah, like, you know, there's something about like, you know what I mean? Like you're in bed and I feel like your feet are more often exposed than in your hands are that's what I'm saying.

AMANDA: My hands are like curls up under my chin.

JULIA: Exactly, that’s what I’m saying

AMANDA: And often I will have a foot out for ventilation. So honestly, I'm just asking for it.

JULIA: It might be like also the way that you're sleeping is causing your fingers to like lose circulation. And so that sensation translates into your dreams. fascinating. that's where it's like, now like it feels like something's biting my fingers because you're feeling that through your dream interpretation.

AMANDA: By the way, y'all, we are working on getting a neuroscientist who specializes in sleep onto the show. I'm very excited, so stay tuned.

JULIA: Yeah!

AMANDA: Apart from that strange woman, they were typically just kind of garden-variety nightmares. One night, I was sleeping, and I was dreaming, and I heard a loud crash. Now, whether it was in my dream or in my apartment, I'm not exactly sure, but I jolted awake, sat up in bed, and looked around my room in a sleepy daze to figure out where the hell it came from. Moments later, as I watched the mirror hanging on my bedroom wall fell and crashed to the floor, making an identical crash to the one I heard.

JULIA: Has Shen considered that she maybe has perhaps an extremely useless form of precognition?

AMANDA: Okay, this is a great point. How do you think we could monetize this for Shen? It's hard out here in this economy.

JULIA: I don't know.

AMANDA: Well, Shen continues, I remember sitting there staring at it, obviously a little bit freaked out, thinking, did I hear the mirror fall before it actually fell? Or did I make it fall? Another mystery I'd never solve! But the strange dreams, by the way, did stop after that.

JULIA: Okay, maybe it was the mirror.

AMANDA: Maybe the mirror had a problem.

JULIA: Maybe it was a ghost of the mirror.

AMANDA: My final story is another one involving another person. A few years after that apartment, I transferred colleges and moved to another town about four hours away. I was working part-time at a well-known chain restaurant. If you have a Spaghetti Warehouse, you gotta tell us.

JULIA: I feel like if it was, she would mention it, yeah.

AMANDA: I started as a hostess there, became a server, and later a bartender. The town I lived in at the time was sort of at a crossroads, and it was known as a place where people kind of ended up or drifted in.

JULIA: My thought right now, I'm sorry, we'll get to that in a second. My immediate thought is Applebee's.

AMANDA: Really?

JULIA: I don't know if I'm right. My first thought was based on Hostess and then server and then bartender, Applebee's.

AMANDA: Julia, my first thought was Chilies, just because the last time I got an alcoholic drink at a chain restaurant, it was the Wicked Margarita at Chili’s

JULIA: Girl, why?

AMANDA: They were pretty bad. One of my, my friend was pregnant and really wanted them and couldn't have them and so—

JULIA: So, they made you drink it instead?

AMANDA: Yeah. And I said, you know what? Fair enough.

JULIA: You're growing a human. I'll drink a terrible margarita for you.

AMANDA: But you know what, Julia? My bill was fucking $5.

JULIA: Hey, the sacrifices we make for our friends.

AMANDA: So at least two of my coworkers at the restaurant were in this category of people who kind of ended up in this town long term after starting on some cross-country road trip with the intention of settling somewhere else, but sort of found themselves petering out in this town instead.

JULIA: Uh-oh.

AMANDA: Don't get me wrong. It was a nice area, lots of outdoor sort of mountainy activities to do. And I think it called the sort of adventurous spirit who was looking for someplace new to call home.

JULIA: Okay.

AMANDA: Because this place was very central in an otherwise barren expanse of the country, there were people from all over who would settle there for some amount of time. For me, it ended up being about four years. I work with people from all over. Florida, North Carolina, Texas, California, Utah, all over the place. One of my coworkers, Madison, had been at this restaurant for several years before me. She'd taken a short break after she got married and had a kid and worked her quote unquote professional job for a few years then came back shortly after she found out she was expecting her second baby to make some extra money.

JULIA: Hmmm.

AMANDA: She came back around the time that I had been first trained as a bartender, so the two of us worked together behind the bar for most of our shifts.

JULIA: Okay.

AMANDA: One evening shift, everything business as usual, and Madison worked on completing her side work for the day. We were chatting about something, I don't remember exactly what, when I got an impression that she'd be moving away soon. People often did in this town, so it wasn't that unexpected. So, I said to her something along the lines of, well, you guys are gonna be leaving soon, right?

JULIA: That's an ominous thing to say to someone if they didn't explicitly say that to you.

AMANDA: So—

JULIA: Like if someone was like in casual conversation was like, yeah, you guys are moving soon. I'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about?

AMANDA: But Julia, if you had said to me, yeah, we're gonna be moving at some point, and then five minutes later, I was like, but like, are you gonna be ordering like a new grill because you're gonna be moving soon? Like, that would be expected. And that from Shen's perspective is what happened.

JULIA: Yes, crazy.

AMANDA: Madison stopped what she was doing, gave me a very strange smile. Like, how would you know that? And she paused before saying slowly, yeah, but we haven't told anyone yet.

JULIA: I just like this idea that everyone from an outside perspective thinks that Shen is like the town gossip.

AMANDA: I know

JULIA: I'm sorry to put that on you, but it's just ghosts, probably.

AMANDA: I don't remember exactly what I said, but I'm sure it was something along the lines of like, oops, with the shrug, but she left. She said something like, I mean, you have a bit of a sense about you, don't you? Sometimes I can see it. Is something no one has ever said to me before or since, but it has absolutely stuck with me through the years. A couple months later, she shared with all of our coworkers that she and her family were moving the next state over.

JULIA: Gotcha.

AMANDA: So, listen, I don't consider myself clairvoyant or spirit sensitive or anything like that, but I've definitely had a few instances in my life of getting a distinct impression via sound before something happened. And your podcast episode mentioning the Vardiger made me wonder if I had some such spirit hanging around me, giving me a heads up before some tiny, mundane little thing would occur.

JULIA: I… okay, my hot take is I don't think it's Vardiger.

AMANDA: Tell me

JULIA: I do think it's, like I said before, the world's worst version of clairvoyant. It's so useless. I'm so sorry, Shen.

AMANDA: Yeah, I think you sometimes hear the thought of someone you are particularly tuned into and, you know, that might just give you the ability to like anticipate that, you know, Angela needs like a refill on her mint at her station at the bar. And other times it's, I don't know, hearing something that you can't prevent happening before it happens.

JULIA: And yeah, that's what I'm saying.

AMANDA: Absolutely wild. Shen finishes out with, whatever you call this, it does make me feel a little bit whimsical to think that it might just add a little unpredictability and spice to life. Thank you for reading. Stay Creepy. Stay Cool. Shen.

JULIA: That was very fun, thank you. Well, Amanda, I'm really glad that you brought up an interesting workplace ghost story because I have one here from Zoe, she/her titled, My Workplace Has Ghosts and I Own A Haunted Lamp.

AMANDA: Okay, let's go!

JULIA: Hi, Spirits Team! I've written in a couple times before, College Cult and my Psychic Dreams, and it is exhilarating to hear you all read my stories on the podcast. Now, I have returned to tell you an exciting development at my workplace and regarding one of my apartment furnishings, both of which involve ghosts.

AMANDA: Now, Julia, when you said exciting replace development, my first thought was, you're unionizing? And then I was like, no, Amanda, ghost story, ghost story. But either of those would be very exciting to me.

JULIA: Ghost unionized.

AMANDA: I would love that.

JULIA: I don't know what they would like, what labor—

AMANDA: What demand?

JULIA: -they're looking for, but yeah.

AMANDA: Or maybe they're helping, maybe they're helping the workers organize.

JULIA: Maybe. That's a good point. Maybe the ghosts are the union organizers. So that would be nice.

AMANDA: And they're like, (whispers) you should vote yes on the Union ballot and ignore all of the propaganda!

JULIA: Let's start with my workplace. I work in a location that has multiple buildings that have been built at different times. Half of the main visitor center was built sometime in the 70s, while the other half was built in the early 2000s. In the old visitor center is a library where a few of my co-worker friends and I gather as an after work writers group. It was there that I learned about our resident ghosts. Needless to say, I was very excited to learn that my workplace had ghosts and I instantly thought about writing to you.

AMANDA: You in a job interview. like how hot do we say this workplaces and if they say no slash what are you talking about? You're like, I'm so sorry. I'm actually not available.

JULIA: I have to move on. These ghosts are believed to be the couple who donated most of the books to the library. They aren't hostile by any means, just ones who want to hang around and enjoy the space. But there are a handful of reasons people suspect they are there. I'll start with the most explainable to the least explainable observations.

AMANDA: Cool.

JULIA: The first piece of evidence was the slamming and shutting of doors after hours. This whole discussion of ghosts came up in our writers’ group because we heard a door close in the back of the library, even though no one but our group was there. Our resident librarian then explained that, that's just the ghost, and proceeded to tell us how the librarians will hear doors close in the back area sometimes when they stay after hours. Many of us were able to explain this away by mentioning the offices in the basement beneath the library. It could be other coworkers staying late and then leaving and letting the doors slam on their way out, which could potentially be heard above in the library. Spooky, but there's a reasonable explanation.

AMANDA: For sure.

JULIA: The second piece of evidence is the door scanners. Like other libraries, this one has a scanner system on the inside of the library doors that alerts the librarians if anyone walks off with books that they shouldn't be taking. These scanners track how many people pass through them. Now when the librarians are leaving, they will check the scan number and then close and lock the doors. Sometimes the scanners will count dozens more pass-throughs during the night, leaving a new number there in the morning.

AMANDA: Hmm, I'm trying to figure out why. I'm gonna reserve judgment.

JULIA: That means either someone or something, like a ghost, is passing back and forth through the doors at night, or the scanners are occasionally going haywire. I like the phrase occasionally.

AMANDA: Just on occasion, like they're mostly fine, just sometimes going haywire.

JULIA: The librarians are also the only ones with a key to the library, so it's not like any other staff are messing around with the scanners. The evidence is definitely getting suspicious, but this could be logic'd away by bad technology.

AMANDA: For sure.

JULIA: The third piece of evidence is photographic and will require a quick description of the library layout. There are the entrance doors to the library that open into a small reception space with a desk and a table. Then there are a second set of doors into the main part of the library. In the back of the library is a door that leads to the librarian offices, records, and rare books. The library has sections of rug carpets on wood floors. Okay, now the story. About a month and a half ago, I visited the library in the morning and the librarians were rather frazzled. There was a trail of muddy footprint stains from the door of the back rooms through the main part of the library.

AMANDA: Say what?

JULIA: Near the doors to the reception area, the footprints made a circle and then walked around the side of a display case. Now we were all certain we would have noticed it the day before and had no idea where the footprints could have come from. I took a photo as proof and you can clearly see the mud prints in a straight line, going in a circle and then going around the display. The librarians even tried to clean it up using carpet cleaner, but they were tough stains to get out.

AMANDA: Good God.

JULIA: Now, if you aren't convinced of a ghost yet, then this story is the one that I couldn't find a single explanation for. This comes from a coworker whose husband used to work here but has since retired. He was a facility staff, so he would come in really early to clean before anyone else got there.

AMANDA: Brother, if you want to know what really happens in a workplace, ask facilities.

JULIA: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. One day, he was waxing the lobby floor, which is next to the library. Over the very loud waxing machine, he heard a clanging. He stopped the machine and looked around, but didn't notice anything. So he went back to waxing. Again, he heard a clanging, but louder this time. When he looked, he saw two jars on a display nearby clanging together all on their own. They looked like they were being held in the air and slammed together like symbols, but there was no one there.

AMANDA: What the hell? Julia, that's some haunted mansion ass shit happening.

JULIA: It is. It is. The next line is, he turned off the wax machine, put it away, and took the rest of the day off.

AMANDA: Yeah, let's go. That's why this man is confidently, happily, peacefully retired. He has good instincts.

JULIA: He said, you know what? I think I'm done, actually.

AMANDA: I'm actually fine. I'm good.

JULIA: I think I'm fine. I think this is all set. Now, we say it was the library ghosts who were fed up with the noise and wanted him to quiet down so they could enjoy their library in peace.

AMANDA: Sure.

JULIA: They're like, being too loud, man, get the fuck out of here. And he said, like, word.

AMANDA: They were like, these fucking kids in here most of the day. Come on.

JULIA: I like that, like the ghosts were like, get the fuck out. And he was like, yes, absolutely. will.

AMANDA: Say less.

JULIA: 100%.

AMANDA: Say less.

JULIA: Now for a shorter ghost story. Ghosts in the workplace. Great. They can really liven up a workday. Ghosts at home. I prefer not, but here we are. Like my workplace ghosts, I don't feel particularly convinced about a ghost at home, or at least I didn't until recently. You see, I own a touch lamp that turns on when you touch it. It has three brightness levels, which you can get by touching the lamp again and again until it turns off. These are really popular like in restaurants nowadays as well. So—

AMANDA: Yes, you know.

JULIA: If you've been to a restaurant and you can like tap it, you'll understand what we're talking about. This is something that I got when I was seven or eight. So it is an older lamp. I left it at home when I went to college and for a bit after college until I moved into my own apartment. Throughout those years, my mom was an empty nester and mentioned how, on a few occasions when she would go upstairs, the lamp would be on in my room. It certainly weirded her out, but it didn't happen often enough for it to be a concern. We figured it was the wiring because it was an old lamp. Now, in my own apartment, the lamp sits on my desk in the second bedroom, which is across from my bedroom. I had been here for a year with my partner before the lamp started turning itself on nearly always at night. It would happen randomly, usually long enough between times that we would kind of forget that it was happening. We would wake up in the middle of the night wondering where the heck the light was coming from, then realize it was the touch lamp in the other room.

AMANDA: Me with a arm over my eyes, the honey, it's the ghost.

JULIA: Honey, can you get it? The ghost is doing the thing again.

AMANDA: Please.

JULIA: We would get up, turn it off, and then go back to bed. I joked that it was a ghost, to which my partner would reply that if that were the case, they should be paying rent.

AMANDA: Because this shit is here consistently.

JULIA: All of this wasn't a problem until last year when it started turning on with some frequency a few times a month and then even a few times a week, always at the lowest brightness.

AMANDA: Huh.

JULIA: That was when I thought, well, it always turns on at the lowest brightness, which does seem like a wiring issue. But if it were turned to a higher brightness, I would know that it's a ghost.

AMANDA: Sure.

JULIA: Next line is—

AMANDA: I get it.

JULIA: Wow. Did I tempt fate?

AMANDA: Oh, no!

JULIA: Three days later, I came home from work and the lamp was on, the second brightest level.

AMANDA: Oh, great. They're like, bitch, do you get it now? Is this definitive enough for you?

JULIA: I was absolutely astounded, but I turned off the lamp and said to the room, okay, thank you. Please stop turning on the lamp so that we can sleep better and we would appreciate you paying rent.

AMANDA: Love it.

JULIA: Now we didn't get any help on the rent side, but the lamp did stop turning on. Although last night it turned on again for the first time since then, and I'm not really sure how to feel about that.

AMANDA: I know what to do.

JULIA: Oh?

AMANDA: You play this segment out loud in the room. Make sure that the ghost can hear you. Where we say, ghost, we love your style, okay? We love your attitude. I love that you heard, me manipulating an electrical device isn't enough for you, let me do it twice. And I would invite you to get as wild as you want with turning the light on during daylight hours. Is that a compromise we can get behind?

JULIA: There we go. You know, the witching hour can be 3 a.m., but it can also be 3 p.m.

AMANDA: Julia, you are so right for that. And I just want to offer our services as sort of ghost mediation, know, spirit, let's say arbitration. whatever you need, if you want to write in with a dispute about your, or not even a dispute, let me not use that kind of language, with a, you know, an issue that you and your ghost roommate are working through, Julia and I would love to help. let us know how this goes. If anyone on either side has any input, you're welcome to get in touch with us, spiritspodcasts@gmail.com. cause ghost, I know that you are savvy enough to send an email if you want to.

JULIA: There we go. There we go. I like that we were talking about how ghosts are labor organizers.

AMANDA: Yes.

JULIA: And what we can do is we can come to the table with those ghosts on your behalf—

AMANDA: Yes.

JULIA: -listener, who has ghost problems right now.

AMANDA: Yeah.

JULIA: And we can mediate the situation and we could talk to them and say, hey, if you're not going to pay rent, you should at least haunt the witching hour of 3 p.m. instead of 3 a.m.

AMANDA: Precisely. think this is something that we can all get behind and we are here with you until we figure it out.

JULIA: Yes. So, Zoe finishes with, thank you for reading, love the pod, later, satyrs.

AMANDA: Zoe, I expect to hear back. Thank you so much. And Julia, what a gorgeous episode of apartment centered and workplace organizing ghosts. I'm into it.

JULIA: Listen, I think that if more ghosts get into labor organizing, the world will be a better place. I also think that if more ghosts pay rent, then housing will be a lot more affordable for everyone.

AMANDA: Workers of the world unite, ghosts of the world organize. Can't be worse.

JULIA: Can't be worse. Could be better.

AMANDA: Could be better. Alright, everybody, next time you find a ghostly presence in your home and think, I could split my utilities this month, remember.

JULIA: Stay Creepy.

AMANDA: Stay Cool.

JULIA: Later, Satyrs.