Before we begin a quick programming note,

Family Ghosts will be off next week,

but Season 3 will continue with an all-new episode on Wednesday, March 4th.

Until then, please enjoy this week's story, and thank you, as always, for listening.

Spoke Media

Hello, Ghost Family.

Welcome to Family Ghosts.

Friends, by now you've heard us tell a wide range of stories about people who are haunted by the legends of the past.

In most of our episodes, the action of the story focuses on those people attempting to lift the weight of that haunting from their shoulders,

to exercise those ghosts, if you will.

But something we haven't talked much about is the moment that haunting first reveals itself,

that shiver of realization, that your entire perception of your family, and your place in it, has changed forever.

But your humble narrator recently took the stage at a live storytelling show to tell a story about just such a moment.

So, a couple of years ago, I got invited to go to my girlfriend's family reunion.

And this was really exciting for me, because I was planning to propose to my girlfriend,

and I had not met this side of her family before, so this was a big deal.

But there's a little problem, which is that her family is comprised of outside people,

by which I mean people who like to spend time outside.

I am an inside person.

As a matter of fact, working in radio and podcasting, I spend most of my time in rooms that are designed to deny the existence of outside.

That's how much I like being inside.

So I said, what's on the agenda for the family reunion? And she said, hiking. And I said, shit!

...