Transcript
Hello, it’s Spooky Boo. Today I have for you two spooky ghost stories from the Creepypasta Library that I’m sure will creep you out! I tell you creepy stories every day from my spooky beach house located in the Northern California coastal town of Sandcastle.
Thank you to all of my Patrons including 933thevolt.com, BubbleSlayer, Ivy Iverson, P.A. Nightmares, and Oliver. Want to support the creation of Spooky Boo’s Scary Story Time and Sandcastle, California? Check out my Patreon page at www.patreon.com/spookybooscarystorytime to see how you can help the multiverse of Sandcastle grow!
Come with me and watch Creature Features on Saturday nights in the YouTube chat room while the fans and I watch the horror host Vincent Van Dahl interview fun guests and show old classic horror movies. It’s a lot of fun and we’re all just a little bit strange. Get your show times at www.creaturefeatures.tv.
Now let’s begin.
Just to be clear, this is a true story…
In Baltimore City, Maryland, at the Westminster Hall and Burying Ground lies one of the founders of modern short story thrillers and one of the greatest poets of all time: Edgar Allen Poe.
On each January 19, Poe’s birthday, a strange man would visit Poe’s grave every year. The gentleman would have ten-seconds of a moment of silence, read his aged copy of Poe’s “The Raven”, lie a single red rose at the foot of his grave, then leave. He did this consistently every year at exactly 4 PM not missing a single year.
The people living in the area, or those who claimed to have seen this man, describe him as wearing a black overcoat, black slacks, black suit jacket, white Oxford shirt, black vest, black tie, well polished black dress shoes, and a black top hat. All clothing, according to others, bore the resemblance of the style, tailoring, and fabrics used during the early to mid 19th century which would be the time Poe did a great majority of his works.The man was a Caucasian male standing a little over six feet and appeared to weigh no more than 200 pounds. His face was handsome with a well-kept full mustache.
Those who watched this man from afar say that when he travels to and from the burial site, he would always commute by foot. He never used any form of transportation. In a small crowd of people, he was easy to pick out. Probably like spotting a lit match in a dark room. As he would travel he would make no eye contact with anyone. He walked a normal pace. You could tell he was in no hurry. He maintained an upright and proper posture. As he walked he kept the rose in hand level at his stomach. He never stopped to rest. He never stopped for a drink. He never needed to tie his shoe. He just walked straight there and straight back year after year after year.
My former neighbor once told me about actually encountering this man. It was last year. She told me that every year for the last nine years this gentleman would knock on her door three times then wait. My neighbor told me that when she would answer the door, the gentleman would ask the same question. In a slight British accent he would ask, “Hello. Would you like to accompany me to pay respects to Edgar Allen Poe; one of the greatest writers of all time?”
My neighbor would simply reply by saying “No thanks. Maybe next year.” I knew that wasn’t true. She barely knew who Edgar Allen Poe was, let alone like reading at all. She wasn’t going to even begin to consider visiting a dead guy she didn’t even know existed until the first time the man knocked on her door a few years ago.
After all this occurred, I finally decided to approach my neighbor’s mom who was living with her at the time. I asked her if she knew anything about this bizarre man that would habitually come knocking at her door every year on the same day. Her answer was confusing to say the least.
During the 1960’s, when she was a teenager, she would see a “similar” man perform the exact same ritual. Knock on someone’s door, invite them to accompany them, proceed to the site, and be off. She looked out the window and pointed to an empty lot across the street. Kids would always play there because it was the only vacant or relatively open area for kids to play in in these city streets. She told me that there was house that used to stand there.
In 1964, she said, there was a man who had a wife and one son. The gentleman would come to his house and invite he and is family to the burial grounds. She told me that the gentleman would repeat this for nine more years. In 1974, on the night of January 19, the house suddenly caught fire and was quickly consumed in flames. The house burned down. The who family, she said, was still inside, but their bodies were never recovered. The same incident occurred in 1984 at another home a few blocks down, and again in 1994. She told me that each house had one thing in common.
They were all visited by that strange gentleman. However, she began to tell me that in 1995, another man was seen with this man. He was dressed like any other person from the 90’s. People that knew him said that after traveling with this gentleman, he disappeared after the gentleman invited him to dinner at his house, which was supposedly in the historic district of the city. People claimed to have seen the two men turn the corner into a vacant lot and simply – vanish. After an extensive search for the missing man, investigation, and retracing of steps, law enforcement called the case cold.
After all this and a nice dinner with my neighbor and her mother, I was left a little restless. I decided to hop on my laptop and do a little research of my own, specifically about the historic area where that lot is. What I found I just could not believe.
Apparently, in that particular lot in historic Baltimore, there was a record of about ten different shops, corner stores, and bakeries throughout the 20th century and even a small factory. Each building that went up in that lot met the exact same fate. Each building would catch fire and burn to the ground. The fire would not spread to its neighboring buildings. They wouldn’t even leave any smoke damage or even smell like there was a fire that just happened two feet away from it. It gets more strange. In each pile of rubble there lay a single healthy red rose.
No. It couldn’t be…
After a little more research, I discovered that in that exact lot, there used to be an apartment building. The apartment burned down during the Great Baltimore Fire which occurred on February 7, 1904. In the apartment lived a gentleman who would “frequently visit Edgar Allen Poe’s burial site dressed in all black attire except for his white button-down shirt” , his wife and his wife’s mother on the first floor, his brother on the second floor, and a family of four on the third floor.
There have been a couple local news articles about this man. Most of which ranged from 1880 to 1901. The next day, I took a trip down to the city library and found these articles. Although the gentleman would frequently visit the burial site, it was only on a January 19 that he would read The Raven; and people would actually gather around and listen. After he finished, he would place the rose at the foot of the burial site and go home.
I was taken aback by everything I had just read and discovered. What I was thinking could not be the reality of what was going on. It just is not possible. Was this the same man that visits Poe’s site to this very day?
Regardless of what I had just discovered, I HAD to inform my neighbor that her life and her mother’s life was in potential danger. She thought it was just another one of my improvise jokes or skits. I used to go to an Arts School, see. No matter how much I insisted she wouldn’t bite.
Well, the next night I came home form my day job that I had since quit. When I came home, the site I saw was too much for me to take in. There, right next to my house was my neighbor’s house completely engulfed in flames. There was a considerable crowd just watching her house burn. Firefighters relentlessly worked to put out the fire. The continued to burn until the house was nothing but rubble and smokey steamy ash. Firefighters found no bodies amongst the debris. They were gone.
I was unable to sleep that night. All I could think about was my neighbor. She was a good friend of mine. We graduated from the same high school. She got me familiar with the area. Her mother was the sweetest old woman one could meet. And now they’re just gone. Why, though? Just… There is just no way this man could live for so long if he is even the same person. None of these fires could have possibly been freak accidents. But what would this man want with the man who disappeared, that family that used to live across the street, and now, my neighbor and her mother? And what about the others that may have suffered prior to my neighbor’s mother’s memory? Was he killing these people because they all rejected his invitation? But why were all the bodies missing?
The memory of these events that occurred last January made me sick to my stomach, so I decided to call in sick today and stay home. It was the 19th. I decided to watch a little television and finally lazied up an appetite to eat. Around 3:15 PM I made myself a tuna fish sandwich.
There was a knock at my door. I heard three knocks. I froze like a deer in headlights. I walked toward the door and answered.
There he was. With his slight British accent, he asked, “Hello. Would you like to accompany me to pay respects to Edgar Allen Poe; one of the greatest writers of all time?”
****
Credited to Bangulzai
In 1964, Eddie and Frances were a young couple with a 10 month-old daughter. They had recently begun renting an old two-story house in Egg Harbor City, NJ, and almost immediately Frances began complaining that something about the house wasn’t right. Eddie was a truck driver in those days, and he was often away for several nights at a time. On those nights, Frances told her family, the house was occupied by more than just herself and her daughter Debbie. When Eddie was away, something would play—and it was scaring her half to death.
After several months of increasingly frightening and flamboyant disturbances, Frances announced that she wouldn’t stay in the house alone any longer. Eddie, who had never experienced anything unusual in the house on the nights he spent there, chalked up his wife’s hysteria to post-partum depression, but felt helpless to do anything about it. He could neither afford to move nor to give up the extra income of his long hauls. A compromise was reached: my mother would stay with Frances.
Thus far, the ghostly occurrences had only taken place when Frances was alone with the baby. Eddie hoped that my mother would be a calming influence on Frances. My mother was—and still is—a hard-headed and pragmatic woman. She didn’t believe in ghosts, wasn’t frightened by the idea of ghosts, and generally agreed with Eddie that the only thing strange in the house was Frances. According to her, that belief system crumbled forever at around 11:30 pm of her first, and only, night in Frances’ house.
It was about 7 pm, an hour or so after sunset, that the scratching in the walls began. Frances, on hearing it, paled noticeably My mother assured her that it was merely the scratchings of mice they were hearing, but Frances would have none of it. “We’ve had exterminators here three times in the past two months. There are no mice. This is how it starts.”
At around 9:30, while watching TV in the living room, they heard three sharp raps on the front door. Mom waited for Frances to answer the door, and was surprised and a little bemused to see her sitting rigidly erect in her seat, frozen in fear. “For god’s sake, Fran,” she said, “There’s someone at the door.”
“No, there isn’t,” Frances replied, and refused to go to the door. Exasperated, my mother went to the door, flung it open, and found the front stoop empty. “You see?” Frances asked. But my mother believed that it was merely kids screwing with them, and said so. Turned out, Mom was wrong.
The evening wore on, and though Frances grew increasingly jittery, the house was quiet. At 11:30, after the end of the local news, my mother announced that she was tired and ready for bed. Frances agreed, and after they had taken a quick trip around the first floor making sure that all doors and windows were secure, they went upstairs to their rooms.
The guest room was at one end of the upstairs hall, the nursery at the other. Between them was the master bedroom. The guest room and the master bedroom shared a walk-in closet, so with both closet doors open it was possible to look from one room into the other. My mother was to sleep in the guestroom, but Frances insisted that they keep the closet doors open so they could see each other. By this time, my mother considered Frances to be something of a twit, but she agreed to humor her.
My mother went into the bathroom, got herself ready for bed, then returned to her room and climbed into bed. The lights were on in Frances’ room, and she could see the lower half of the bed, where Frances was lying down with her leg dangling over the side and swinging to and fro. Mom watched her, hoping Frances would fall asleep soon so this adventure in ninnyness could come to an end.
“Goodnight, Frances,” she called through the closet.
“Goodnight, Anita,” Frances replied. . . from the guestroom’s hall door.
My mother started in surprise at Frances’ voice. She looked at Frances in her doorway, then looked back through the closet at the master bedroom. The leg was still there, swinging back and forth. My mother jumped out of her bed and slammed the closet door, telling Frances to get the hell in out of the doorway and lock the door behind her, because there was someone in the master bedroom.
Frances did as she was told, all while asking my mother what she was talking about. My mother explained what she’d seen, and Frances said that she hadn’t even lain down yet, because she had been in the nursery changing the baby. The two women stood huddled together, trying to decide what to do next, when something made the decision a helluva lot harder.
Terrible noises suddenly filled the house. It sounded to the women as though someone was throwing every breakable object in the basement against the cinderblock walls. They could hear glass breaking, wood splintering, and repeated low banging that sounded as though someone was pounding the basement steps with a sledgehammer.
The women hugged each other in terror, as the noises seemed to build to some horrible crescendo of destruction. Then, as though a switch had been thrown, they stopped. And the small, mewling cry of Debbie could be heard from the nursery.
Frances moved automatically for the guestroom door; her instincts guiding her steps. She was brought up short, however, by the loud bang of the cellar door slamming open. She stood, eyes wide, hand on the doorknob, and listened as heavy footsteps moved through the first floor, toward the staircase to the second.
Debbie’s cries became more insistent. And the heavy tread fell on the first step. Then the second. Frances moaned in a soul-freezing terror of indecision. She knew three things. There were 14 steps. The staircase was between the guestroom and the nursery. And something was coming steadily up the stairs.
My mother, hard-headed no more, whispered frantically, “My God, Fran, it’s coming up the steps. And the baby’s crying…”
The footfalls thudded relentlessly up the stairs. Third step. Fourth. Fifth. Sixth. Frances screamed, and to this day neither woman can say whether that scream was of terror or anger or both, but it was primal and nearly savage. She tore open the guestroom door and raced for the nursery, where her daughter’s cries were growing louder as she waited for her mother to come.
Still screaming, Frances flew past the upper landing, hearing the thudding footsteps fall on the seventh, eighth, and ninth risers, then Frances was in the nursery, my mother hot on her heels. Mom slammed and locked the nursery door as Frances scooped Debbie from her crib and held her tight, soothing her cries, all the while staring wild-eyed at the nursery door, beyond which something was on the tenth step, the eleventh, the twelfth. . .
Then the eleventh. The tenth. The ninth. Both women stood, shaking with combined fear and relief as whatever had been approaching retreated to the first floor. The cellar door slammed shut. And the whirlwind of destruction resumed in the basement.
My mother hissed at Frances, “Do you go through this every time Eddie’s away?”
Frances almost managed a laugh. “No, it’s usually not this bad.”
Frances had insisted on getting a telephone extension placed in the master bedroom, and the women decided to risk going there to use it, despite the thing in the basement and the leg in the room, reasoning (not very well) that whatever was in the house was busy downstairs.
They gathered a few supplies for the baby, and peeked out the nursery door. The noises continued unabated from the basement, so they dashed down the hall, past the landing to the master bedroom’s closed door. There, they hesitated, terrified of what they might find inside, but seeing no other alternative, they steeled themselves and slowly open the door. And found the room empty. They rushed inside, locked the door, and called the police. They then sat at the bedroom window, watching the street for the squad car.
After a short time, which felt like hours to the women, the black-and-white arrived, and two officers approached the front door. Frances had explained that there was an intruder of some sort in the house’s lower floors, and had instructed the responding officers to let themselves in using a spare key that was hidden in a planter near the door, as neither she nor my mother had any intention of going downstairs to let them inside.
The sounds of crashing from the basement had gone on for so long that Frances wasn’t certain what else could possibly remain to break, but they suddenly ceased the moment the spare key was inserted in the lock of the front door. The officers entered the house, and called out to Frances that they had arrived. Frances ran downstairs to them, baby in tow and my mother just behind her.
The two women related, as best they could in their state of mind, what had happened that night. The officers, both young, burly men, weren’t sure what to make of their story, but they believed the fear in the women’s faces, and when they went to the basement to investigate, they went with their guns drawn. After several minutes, one of the officers called upstairs, asking the women to come down. So Frances and my mother walked down the wooden stairs to the basement floor.
And found it in perfect order. A little dusty, but otherwise completely undisturbed. The officers questioned them: What did they hear again? Were they sure about the sounds they had heard? The women were mystified and frantic. They had heard everything they described, the sounds were unmistakable. They were desperate to be believed. The officers were courteous, but ever-so-slightly condescending. Perhaps the ladies should try to get some sleep, they suggested. Everything was in order; they would be fine in the morning. Helplessly, the women stood in the foyer and watched as the two officers prepared to leave. And, just before the door latched shut behind the second policeman, the sounds of a destructive frenzy exploded forth from the basement again.
And the front door quickly swung open again. The sound instantly cut off, but not before both policemen had heard the crashing from downstairs. They quickly raced past the women, again drawing their guns and swiftly descending the basement steps. And again, they found the basement unoccupied and undisturbed. When the two officers returned to the first floor this time, they were both visibly puzzled. They strongly suggested that the women spend the night elsewhere, and offered to stay in the house with them while they gathered whatever they would need. The women returned upstairs, grabbed their things, and left the house with the officers. They spent that night in my mother’s apartment, and neither of them ever set foot in that house after dark again.
As a postscript to this story, Eddie and Frances fought bitterly over her refusal to stay in the house at night anymore, even when Eddie was at home. They nearly divorced over it. Eddie stubbornly insisted on keeping the house, feeling that it was the nicest home he would ever be able to rent for the money. He stayed there whenever he was home from his long hauls. Then, his trips became more local for a while, and he started spending more time in the house.
A month later, he broke his lease and moved, reconciling with Frances and buying a smaller house in Hammonton. At the time, he said he had changed his mind because he loved his wife and wanted to make her happy. But years later, he admitted the truth:
He never heard any of the sounds of chaos from the basement. But one night he awakened to find he was sharing his bed with a strange woman. A woman who dangled one leg over the side of the bed, and swung it to and fro. He leapt out of bed with a grunt of surprise, and watched with increasing horror as the woman slowly faded from view.
The next morning, there was a moving van parked in front of the house.
EXIT
PODCAST/Video INFO
Spooky Boo’s Scary Story Time
Creepypasta and True Scary Stories
Episode 178 2 Very Spooky Ghost Stories to Haunt You
Story One
TITLE: The Gentleman of Baltimore
AUTHOR: unknown
LINK: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Gentleman_of_Baltimore
Story Two
TITLE: The Unwanted Occupant
AUTHOR: Credited to Bangulzai
LINK: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Unwanted_Occupant
MEDIA
Sound: A Stormy Night by the Fireplace in Sandcastle, California
By – Spooky Boo Rhodes, Podcast Ambience of Sandcastle
Video Intro by Montana Horseman
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1BTQDeeaEP6PBJt99YXZSQ
Sound
A rare thunderstorm in the Bay Area Spooky Boo
Thank you to all of my Patrons including 933thevolt.com, BubbleSlayer, Ivy Iverson, P.A. Nightmares, and Oliver.
Thank you to all of my listeners!
CREEPYPASTA AND TRUE SCARY STORY PODCAST
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About Spooky Boo
Spooky Boo Rhodes is both an author and a podcaster. She has three podcasts available: Spooky Boo’s Scary Story Time where she writes her own stories and tells them on the podcast, Creepypasta and Scary Stories where she tells the creepy stories of the internet written by other authors, and Creepy True Scary Stories where people send in their own true scary stories for Spooky Boo to read.
Visit Spooky Boo’s favorite punk band at https://www.officialstayout.com
This podcast includes stories of a dark nature and may not be suitable for all listeners. If you’re comfortable listening to stories that are paranormal or twisted dark horror then this podcast is for you.
I love telling horror stories. Subscribe to both of my channels to listen to true and fictional scary stories of nightmares, ghosts, demons, witches and witchcraft, haunted houses, Halloween, x-files, cryptids, monsters, vampires, ghosts, and other creatures that go bump in the night!
I’ll see you in your nightmares!
