I'm Liz Sauer and this is Ghosts in the Burbs, a podcast of ghost stories from

Wellesley, Massachusetts. A warning, adults who use adult language told me these

frightening tales, these ghost stories aren't for kids.

It's February 2016. I'm Liz Sauer and this is about Ghosts in the Burbs. I

I chased the scare. After a childhood of scary stories to tell in the dark,

Stephen King, Ghostbusters, Scooby-Doo, Fear Street and Christopher Pike, I stumbled upon

paranormal reality television. It was dream come true. It feels so real, it probably isn't,

I mean, it totally isn't, but who cares? Alas, there are only so many times you can get a thrill

from listening to the definition of EVP after watching someone ask, what is your name

into an empty dark basement? Eventually, I felt the need to take things up a notch, but I'm a

whim. No way could I stand in the middle of a dark room with a digital voice recorder. What

if something answered when I asked the inevitable, are there any spirits here with us? No. I wanted

to jump from soda to no-dos, not Shardinay to Crystal Math. Inspiration came on a gray October

morning. I walked past the community message board on my way into the Wellesley Free Library,

where I work as a children's librarian. An image of a flyer popped into my mind,

Ghost Stories Wanted. That's it, I thought, a text bubble popping up over my head.

Instead of watching some guy in night vision say, I swear to God, dude, that door just opened by itself.

I would find people, neighbors, to tell me, in person, I swear to God, I saw this insert, terrifying,

ugly, boogly thing in my house. I created a little sign and pinned it to the library's community

message board. I promised free coffee and muffins in exchange for a scary tale. My husband

thought I'd get calls from what he termed, hippy-dippy dream catcher people who wanted free

cabrata pastries. He was wrong. I met some really nice, normal, regular, quirky, kind,

...