Creepy Kitch Episode 39: Haunted November... In December.

This episode, the gals try something different!
We asked listeners for personal ghost stories and they delivered!

Its our Haunted November Episode!... In, December.

This episode, Cins and Stac share their and listener's true ghost stories with everyone while constantly giving each other the creeps. This was a fun, fantastic episode to record!
So make yourself a cup of cocoa with rum, your favorite blankie, and tuck in!
Give it a listen!

Also, looking for the listeners' choice poll? You can find it on the Creepy Kitch Podcast Facebook page! Head on over and vote!

An Unpleasant Way to Wake Up

When I was 14 years old I went to live with my paternal grandparents in Arcata, California, smack in the middle of Humbolt County. I may very well have been the only teen to live there who would never smoke pot. My grandparents' house is very old: though now in the middle of Arcata proper, when they bought it back in the late 1950's it was still surrounded by farm land. As a product of originally agricultural origin, it is a large, two story farm house, replete with quaint and occasionally bizarre architecture. I love this house; I have always loved this house. It was one of my favorite places to be when I was small, and the setting only contributes to how the house has held me charmed over the years. There is no front or back yard, instead two sprawling areas on either side of the house. The front in the street the house sits on, the back is the wild, brambly slope that lead down into the Bottoms area of Arcata, named by some distant cousin "The Barrens", I assume after the wild play land frequently described in Stephen King's fictional (and often evil) town of Derry, Maine. At the back of the house are some of the tallest cypress trees in the area, visible for miles around. All of this worked together to concoct some alchemy for me; it is a place I will remember with love for the entirety of my life.

But, like any decent old house, there's a ghost. Her name is Leticia, and she lives in the attic. My grandmother invented her to keep all of us from playing upstairs when we were small-- my grandparents' house is antiques-laden, and she didn't trust us around them alone. For as long as I can remember, there has been a painting hanging by the staircase, a reproduction of Rembrandt's Girl At An Open Half Door. We were told that painting was a picture of the resident ghost.

Meet Leticia. She lives in the attic.

We were never told she was mean or evil, simply that she slept during the day, and as a result we needed to play downstairs or preferable outside so we didn't wake her. When I was little I accepted this as fact and never questioned it. That we would occasionally hear upstairs movement in a house that projected every footstep only cemented this concept. When I was older, I would learn that, though my grandmother had invented Letitia, she had merely given a name to something that was already there. Leticia was not invention; Leticia is fact.

Most of my observations were small things, and some events were unquestionably the result of a very imaginative teenager living in a house with some serious, serious ambiance. The hallway up to my room still has the wall paper original to the house-- and it's been falling apart as long as I've been alive. Turns out wall paper tends to do that past the century mark.

Leticia's room is just at the top. Mine was just next to it. I have fallen down these stairs so. Many. Times.

On these stairs I would frequently leave my folded laundry, to take upstairs with me when I next went up (this drove my grandmother APE SHIT which was a big reason for why I kept doing it. The other prominent reason was that I am deeply, deeply lazy.). I usually put the pile o' clean clothes on the third step, as it was exactly hip-height on my frame. Sometimes, when I was home alone and had been all along, I would notice that my clothes had moved from the 3rd step to the 4th or 5th, and once or twice down to the 2nd. A few times I'm almost sure that my clothes were put upstairs on my bed, and I couldn't actually remember taking them up there, though that could easily just be inattentiveness on my part.

But the weirdest thing that occurred during my brief habitation there happened one Sunday morning when the house was full of family. My grandmother liked to have a big family breakfast on Sundays. Various aunts, uncles, and cousin would come, and eat a huge meal. At 8 am. As a truly devoted night owl who profoundly hates getting up before 10 am, this quickly became something that I slept through, which of course pissed Grandma off (I learned during this year that I had a knack for that).

One Sunday I awoke in a startle, ready to holler because someone had been in my room, staring at me. This is a pet peeve of mine-- I really dislike people looking at me while I'm sleeping. I was certain my very young cousins had been in my room again, and like most fifteen year olds I was less than excited by the thought of baby cousins taking off with my shit. I knew someone had just seconds before been looking at me; my door was not just open (I slept with it closed) but it was still swinging from the touch of whomever had just been there. Scrabbling for my glasses I climbed out of bed and went looking for the culprit to yell at them.

I was certain I would catch a rugrat or two just outside my door as I had heard no one go down the stairs just outside my door. This house is so old and creaky that you can literally hear every footstep a person makes. You can hear it so clearly you can also usually tell what room they're going into. You could hear it best when you were downstairs and whomever was upstairs, but even when I was upstairs I could hear a person walking downstairs. So there is no way in hell a 5 year old and a 3 year old could have gone scampering down the stairs without me hearing every footfall. Other than my swearing and the creaking of my bedroom door, there had been silence upstairs in the few seconds since I awoke.

Just to be sure, I went downstairs. Maybe I had been so confused when I woke that I had missed the sounds of fleeing feet. But when I went grumpily down I learned quickly that my young cousins had not come that Sunday. So I asked my grandmother, who was cleaning up, if she had come and looked into my room, perhaps to glare at me for choosing sweet sleep over an early morning calorie load. Grandma was pissed at me when I went over to ask her-- no shock there, as she was usually pissed off at me all day on Sundays due to my accursed resistance to the Borg. I mean family time. Today was no difference. When I asked her if she'd just been upstairs, she snappily told me that of course not, and then went off on her usual diatribe about how she would never violate my privacy by going in my room, blah blah blah. Hilariously, this was a lie-- she would never go into my room, she would just stand at the door way and snoop, and then yell at me later for my admittedly slovenly ways. So that really wasn't an out of the way question.

She then rounded on me, and very angrily said "And I don't appreciate you treating my house that way!" I stared blankly at her; I had apparently wandered into the country of Non Sequitur. When I asked her what the hell she was rambling about, she told me that everyone at the table heard me get up, walk down to the hallway, and then RUN down the hall, into my room, onto my bed. They then heard me do this three more times. The problem with this? I had done no such thing. I'm certain I wasn't sleep walking, either, because I have never gone sleep walking in my life; I had been deeply asleep, and had not moved for some time when I awoke. I am sure of this because I could feel the need to stretch, badly, when I awoke, my pulse was also slow and my breathing calm. Finally, I'm an asthmatic; I would have known if I had been running, because I would have had an asthma attack as a result.

But everyone had heard "me", not just my grandmother. And when I asked everyone else if they had been in my room, I got a negative in reply. I don't think anyone was lying, because none of them had previously expressed any interest in my room at all (other than Grandma's afore mentioned occasional excursion, and that she only did when I wasn't home). Added to this was the fact that until a few months later, I was the only (living) person who inhabited the second floor.

It wasn't a frightening or cruel experience, it was just a weird one. The impression I get now was that I was being admonished to get up, because I was missing breakfast and family time. My grandmother does not to this day believe there has ever been any presence in her house; she doesn't believe in ghosts at all. Grandpa has never said what he thinks either way, but he's pretty taciturn by nature. But the feeling I get, and I've generally learned to trust feelings like these, is that my grandmother simply gave a name and face to something that was already there, something benevolent and lonely. Leticia is who she is now, and I think she's fine with that name. Whomever she was in life I have no idea, but now she's the girl in the half-door, and she lives in the attic.

Ghost Shows

This is sort of a great time for creepy TV; on SyFy (insert eye roll here) there is a favorite of mine and Cins, Ghosthunters. Sadly, there is also Ghosthunters International which appears to be where the TAPS' less able younger siblings go so they don't bother the grownups. Seriously, they went looking for Hitler's ghost. Tacky AND over the top!

There's Monsterquest on the History Channel, and on the same channel you can always find a gamut of Haunted Hotels, Creepy Destinations, or Haunted History programs to choose from year round. (Incidentally, to the History Channel: the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast is scary, I GET IT, please talk about other places!)

Aside from Ghost Hunters there is also widening selection of specifically paranormal programming to chose from. I've seen ads for Paranormal State, Haunting Evidence, Paranormal Police, Psychic Kids, and even Cartoon Network is in on the wagon with their own kid aimed paranormal investigative show. I can't remember the name of it, but it's pretty hilarious to hear pubescent boys shriek; the sound of a voice popping at a million decibels is a haunting, beautiful thing.

But the newest (to me) and my current favorite when I can find it on is Celebrity Ghost Stories on A&E. This show is interesting because of what it should have been and what it has turned out to be; when I first saw this title pop up in my guide I groaned. I was sure this was going to be some typical example of celebrity worship with the added insult of watching the fabulously spoiled get smoke blown up their asses because one time they thought they'd put on Dolce and Gabana and it had turned out to be Versace OMG how did that HAPPEN???

I was wrong, completely. The set up is very basic: two or three celebrities past or present share their experiences, and they are frequently eerie. In the episodes I've caught they've had everyone from Belinda Carlisle to Illeana Douglas. To date I think my favorite stories include Joan Rivers, who tells this story VERY straight, Kelly Carleson (who is on Nip/Tuck as a porn star, apparently? I don't know, I didn't recognize her) who has been able to see the dead since she was around twelve years old, and I think it was Jordan Ladd who essentially had the incorporeal corpse of her parents' friend drop across her bed. All of the episodes are disturbing to me, and it's that kind of quiet menace and vague, intangible threat you get when you're with a group of friends and the conversation turns, as it always does in my family, to the unsettling.

Its very good, quietly engaging, and all around I recommend it. I hope that foreign actors start to get asked to appear on the show; that would widen the pool of stories, and I'd love to hear them.

I also want to apologize for being MIA so often; I've got a wicked case of writer's block lately. Dammit.

Personal Ghost Stories or: WALL O' TEXT AHOY!

I had a friend once tell me I'm a ghost magnet. Do I believe that? I dunno, all I know is that when something gets my attention I tend to pay attention. I drive people crazy because everything catches my attention, and no matter how insignificant it is, I have to mess with it. Bugs, toys, shiny scraps in the gutter; I think maybe I'm part magpie. As a result of this I have sometimes noticed when things in my living environment have been a little.. off.

It seems to be a family thing, at least on my mom's side. See, you have to understand my maternal genetic material: my mother has eleven brothers and sisters, and of the twelve, there are three sets of twins. So you know, Grandma only MEANT to have nine. Mom is a twin. I have a sneaking suspicion I'm going to have twins (mostly out of karmic retribution; I do the "ha ha, you got TWO babies in there" dance every time a sister or sister in law gets knocked up.) Simply put, that side of my family is a touch spooky at times. My cousin D.C. swears to God he saw a big foot. Normally we'd just make fun of him and tell him he was full of pot/ shit (in fact.. we did do that.) but whenever someone would talk about it, he would get pale and sweaty, and not want to talk about it. Whatever he saw scared him badly, and Grandma's old place wasn't far from where the infamous Patterson-Gimlin film was shot back in the 1960's. Is that film legit? Fuck if I know chief, and really, I don't care. But another story that was told at family get togethers was about the big Cat tractors that were all tipped over one night, in a clearing up in the redwoods, again, not far my my grandmother's house. These tractors are probably half a ton or more in weight, and all around them were gigantic footprint, and the only vehicle tracks were from the night before. Is this true? I have no idea. But when you're sitting around a campfire with a million cousins, high in the Red Woods, it really doesn't matter how true it is in the daylight. I promise, you'll believe it at night.

One of my afore-mentioned aunts, Peggy, died before I was born. She was in a car accident, and then died in her sleep that night. Her twin, my aunt Penny, found her, if my memory is correct. (EDIT: My memory is NOT correct; she drowned after losing control of her car and veering into Willow Creek. Her friend survived, but was paralyzed from the waist down. Peggy drowned, something about a heavy sweater.) According to family legend, she haunted my grandmother's house. Grandma's house would have been creep regardless; she lived several miles up Kneeland mountain, in a ramshackle home smack in the middle of the Red Wood forest, as I have mentioned several times. It was a three bedroom house that housed fourteen people: my grandparents, nine daughters, and three sons. Because of the location, night doesn't fall up there, it crashes. There are no street lights, etc. You can clearly see the stars up there, or at least you could a few years ago. The house was also a touch dilapidated when I was a kid-- peeling paint, rusting cars, rotting lumber, the whole look, all of it being swallowed by blackberries and ferns. Inside the house was a nightmare of clutter-- my grandmother didn't like to throw anything away, including food, but that's a horror story for another time. Stacks of magazines on every surface, all over the floor, broken down couches and chairs covered by afghans, pictures all over the walls, and a blanket hung over the entrance to the hallway, to keep the house warm; for a long time I'm pretty sure the house was only heated by the little pot-bellied wood stove in the front room. The blanket was creepy; it was electric purple, and had singed holes int he middle that looked exactly like eyes were peering out at you from something hidden in the hallway.

My siblings and cousins all lived with Grandma on and off, sponging off of her and getting stoned. This is Humbolt County; getting stoned there in an everyday activity, really. At one point my older brother and his wife lived there. My sister-in-law told me that it was a really spooky place to be at night. She said she constantly heard noises, and their two dogs Nick and Bull, would bark at nothing, or lay and track things through the air, things that weren't there.

According to my family members, it's Peggy, watching over us.

My older sister also lived with our grandmother, for a time. She was still smoking, and it drove her crazy because her cigarettes would constantly go missing. It wasn't Grandma taking my sister's coffin nails; Grandma didn't care if anyone smoked. We liked going to Grandma's when we were underaged because she always let us drink up there. She has admitted to smoking pot, even. When I asked my sisters if she thought it was Grandma, my sister scoffed, and then said that she even asked Grandma, to be sure. Grandma's response? "No love, it was probably Peggy." Then our grandmother would go back to reading whatever it was at the moment. (Grandma will try to read while driving. I think I get my biblio lust from her.) Mag said she would usually then find her cigarettes in the closet of what had been the girls' bedroom, up on the top shelf, and shoved all the way into the back. My sister is a very no nonsense, type A kind of person, and she told me that the feeling she would get hen she found her nicotine tubes was a sensation of disapproval, like someone was silently telling her "These aren't good for you!" Mag was young when Peggy died, and spent a lot of time with her.

The last story of the moment comes from my uncle Steve, Peggy's brother, of course. Steve got drunk, something he did a lot, and stole a bunch of postal flags. He then took them up the hill, as he was living with Grandma at the time. He had pinned all of the flags up all around his room (the boys' room, originally), and was glad to be done, or so he said, as his arms were aching a bit from having them up over his head. Then, one by one, they fell off the wall, one after the other. It was a very playful kind of thing, but it scared the hell out of Steve, and I don't know that he ever slept in there again.

Through it all, Grandma has been fine with the idea of Peggy haunting us-- I'm sure most mothers would be that way. She was very young when she died-- I don't think she was even thirty or if she was it was not by much. She also had small children, another incentive to hang around. But I think it comforts Grandma, that Peggy pops in every now and again, and looks in on us.

There are other stories about this-- allegedly there was a phantom dog, too, the remnant of a former pet who ran under a burning porch, and no one was able to get him out in time. My cousin Lisa even claimed that the Ouija board told Peggy she as going to die, and it also told Lisa the same thing. I asked my sister about that and she shot it full of holes. Since the board allegedly told Lisa she was going to die before thirty-five and she's now over forty, I think I agree with my sister. Honestly, the real story s creepy and sad enough on it's own, don't you think?