Paley, Kasey, Jason, Jen, Anna, Melissa, and Annie. Thank you for joining our Patreon. Times are hard and budgets are tight so we cannot thank you enough for becoming a new member and continuing to stick around. Our Patreon members get early access to episodes and bonus content so consider joining to get caught up on our back catalog of tons of exclusive spooky stories. Other ways you can support the podcast is by leaving a Fist R rating and a review. Another way you can support us is by coming to our live show November 2nd. We will be sharing ghost stories from the historic A Schwab's on World Famous Bill Street. Tickets are linked on our website and in the show notes, we would love to see you there. Okay. See what I did there? That's part of the... I'm Melissa Swayze. And I'm Nate Reisman, and this is You Can See Me In The Dark. Gabrielle lives in a haunted house. Or maybe more to the point, wherever Gabrielle ends up, the house winds up to be haunted. We've arrived at a classic schism for this show, haunted place or haunted person. You may think you've heard this story before. I thought so too. Until she revealed a third act, Wist, so surprising that you'll hear me later in this episode trying to process it in real time with her. I promise I really do try and stick to our protocol of letting our storytellers take the mic, but just trust me on this one. Okay. You can see me in the dark presents Gabrielle. So I'm Gabrielle. I'm from Northeastern Pennsylvania and I grew up in a house that was built in 1875 so it's a very old home and the person who owned this home, he owned a ton of land where we're located. So behind the home is like a servant home. So it's a very old home, you know, like wrap around staircase, like beautiful woodwork. My parents fell in love with it when they first saw it and my mom knew, like even though was going to be a fixer upper, that was the home that they wanted to start their family in. So they moved into this home and they redid a whole bunch of things, like tore off wallpaper, redid floors, took down walls, built walls, so they did a lot of remodeling in the home. And when they were there, they said they never felt anything. But when I was a kid, I always felt like very scared, very uneasy in the home. So growing up as like a Christian that like was very big in our family, we always like talked about the afterlife. I always grew up believing in spirits and heaven and God. But with that comes spirits with bad intentions, demons, those sorts of things. So I always had an uneasy feeling as a child growing up in the room, my room was directly across the hallway from my parents. And I mean, it was so bad when I was a kid, I would line my body up with stuffed animals. So like no part of me was left open to the bed. I would sleep with a pillow over my head, a blanket over my head. And this was this was every night. I had a ritual because I always felt scared in my room. And my mom would always tell me that I would say like I saw things or I heard things and she would just be like, it's my senior room, it's just mice and they always brushed it off. I always felt comfortable in my bedroom during the day, it was fine, you know, bright windows but it was when it started to get dark out, that's when the feelings would change. I always had an uneasy feeling about my closet in my bedroom. I would hear scratching from the inside and my mother would tell me, oh it's just the mice, you can't be eating food in your bedroom and I'm like, mom I don't eat in my bedroom I'm hearing scratching and I had one of those spiral hampers that you would put your laundry in and I heard a scratching noise and you know I hadn't fallen asleep. I was still awake. I don't know if I was on my phone or something but I heard a scratching and I thought to myself, you know, oh it's the mice my mom tells me about. So I thought it was the mice. So I like I caught my cut my hands You know I hit my head board trying to scare them away kept scratching and Then I threw a pillow on the ground at it thinking like oh that'll scare the mouse like out or whatever if there is one And scratching's happening and then I'm staring at it like fully wide awake at this point and then all of a sudden the hamper starts violently shaking I mean like it was shaking so hard and it made like the sound of like if you've ever been inside of a tent that shakes That was the sound it was making So I quick flew out of bed and ran out of there She always just told me it was mice and you know my door would like like shake kind of as if someone's like trying to open it and they always just said oh it's the drafts in the house you know it's just like it's an old home the house shakes. So those are kind of the things that I grew up hearing and it really wasn't until I was older that they became more open with me with with the kind of experiences that I was having, that it wasn't just me, it was everyone in my family. As a kid I just kind of heard things like that, I never saw anything that I can remember, but as I became a teenager that's when I began seeing things. So going into my bedroom, occasionally in the door frame, I would see kind of like a small orb and it would go from the top of the door frame all the way down to the bottom and align. And I told my family this and of course no one believed me until one time I was taking my sister in my bedroom with me and she saw the orb the same time I did So you know at that point we were both kind of freaking out. I was like oh my god. I'm not the only one anymore So that was like super exciting to have someone actually believe me I was still living under my family's home when I was pregnant my My husband had moved in with me and that's kind of when crap hit the fan, I guess you could say. One night I was laying in my bed and he worked night shifts so I was sleeping alone. My mom wasn't home. She was out with my sisters. My dad was asleep in the room across from me and I'm laying on my left side, you know, a pillow under my stomach to support me and in my sleep I heard a groan and I felt it in my right ear, something like leaned over me and groaned in my ear and it was so loud like enough to wake me up and I was so frightened. And as I opened my eyes, I saw a shadowy figure of a man standing over me and he reached his arm out to touch me. I screamed, I threw my pillow, I turned on my night light and I was screaming and my sister who was down the hall. She came running in and she's like, like, Abby, what happened? And I was like, there was a ghost, he reached at me when I woke up and he groaned in my ear and I felt it, it was absolutely horrifying. It was kind of crazy and it actually followed me into the next house I moved into, my great-grandparents' home. We just wanted to have our own place having a new child, it was going to be like our fresh start. I mean, I was more than happy moving out after I had that experience. I thought it was the home, I was like it's this old home, I gotta get out of here, I always sworeore on like if I ever have a home that has one ghost experience I'm moving. I don't even care. So when it followed me into the next home I was like kind of thinking it's me and my husband. I don't really think it's the house itself. So we had moved in and we were living in the home for four months. My daughter was four months old and prior to that she was sleeping in our bedroom with us. And we never felt anything. It was my great-grandparents' house. It was a very loving home. We knew nothing happened there, so we felt very safe. So when she was four months old, we decided to move her into her own bedroom, which was right next to ours. It was just a two bedroom house. And we put her to bed, my husband and I go into our room, we go to sleep, and we had a baby monitor on. And then we both had just fallen asleep. It was like that, where you're half away, half asleep. And through the baby monitor, we heard a woman's voice. And I don't remember what the woman was saying, but Dylan, my husband, also heard it. And he got up and he flew out of bed running into the baby's room thinking there's someone in her room. And he goes in there and there was nobody there. So we don't know what woman we heard on the monitor, but we both heard it and it both woke us up. So after night I was like that's it you're in my bedroom because he was working night shifts That was one of his nights off. I was like I can't deal with this alone. I'm terrified. I need you in my room with me so I Started praying every night God. Please take all spirits out of this house and do with them. Like what you will and nothing would happen for a long time. We're like okay, we feel safe. Let's try to move her in her own bedroom again. So we move her in her own bedroom. That's when we started hearing things again in the house. I would hear a dresser's war shutting every night. I would like no matter if I went to bed at eight o'clock, seven o'clock, nine o'clock. The times would vary, but if I was in bed every night, I would hear one of the dresser drawers shut, even though they were already closed. So in my head I was like it's okay, it's just the heat kicking on or it's just like an old, like it's an older home, it's just the home, but it was the sound of a dresser. I know that. And then I was getting ready for work. It was four or five in the morning and I'm downstairs. And at this point we had gotten a new baby monitor that used our phone. So the new baby monitor that we had could detect when someone was in the room. It would say somebody's in Melody's room. And it wouldn't detect her because she had bars on her crib so it couldn't see her face. So it never caught her. So around the time I was getting ready for work, I saw my phone light up a bunch of times. I said somebody spotted in Melody's room so I go on to my phone and I click the live feed and then in the top left corner I see an orb going back and forth in the camera. So I click, click, record. I'm like I'm not going to be the only one that sees this. So I caught it on camera and recorded it and orb going back and forth on the top left of the screen. So when my husband got home from work and I'm getting ready to go,

I was like, hey, just so you know, there was an orb in the baby's room. I'm like, she's asleep,

she's not crying. I'm gonna go to work. This is your problem. So I love to work. She was fast to

sleep. Nothing else ever came of it. It was like, it was very innocent. It was just like an orb.

I like to think maybe it was my great grandmother watching over her. I moved into this new home. So I had no dressers or anything when we moved in here. We just kind of had a bed frame. All my clothes were on the ground. So we went to this place called Second Chance Treasures where they sell like old dressers and that was like something more in our budget range and I had no problem buying anything secondhand so we had bought in these two really beautiful antique dressers and we moved them in and when we moved them in we I started hearing again the dresser drawer shutting at night it's shutting and I was like like, oh, please don't tell me. This is starting again. And I was like, I left all my old furniture at that other home. That was my great-grandmother's for my sister because my sister moved in after me. So I was like, it's not the dressers because this is a brand new dresser I've never had it before and it's making these shutting noises again.

And then I'm going for a shower one night and my husband goes, did you just shut that door? And I was like, no, like, I'm not in the kids' play room, I didn't shut the kids' playroom door. And he's like, that door just shut is slam shut. I was like, well the kids are in bed. It wasn't me. I'm like, it's probably the ghost.

At this point, I'm just so numb to everything. I was like well the kids are in bed it wasn't me I'm like it's probably the ghost at this point I'm just so numb to everything I was like there's a ghost let it be so he was hearing footsteps and he never really believed me about anything he was like hearing footsteps upstairs so he was getting more freaked out and you know I was doing my prayers at night and if I did my prayer nothing would happen but on the nights that say I fell asleep early or I didn't do my prayer that's the night something would happen. I was again laying in bed and I just woke up in the middle of the night and I saw a man leaning over me with his hands on his hips

and when I opened my eyes and saw that and you know I opened them again and kind of like backed up like what is this and the man leaned over me So I started screaming and I threw my arms over my daughter because she's still in my bed with me at this point You know, we went back to sleep. I knew it was a spirit because anytime I've seen this like a ghost, it's been kind of like a shadow. Like you can see the silhouette of the person, but it's kind of like hazy foggy. So that's what it's always looked like to me. And then a couple nights later, again, I wake up in the middle of the night, the figure

standing over me, but this time, instead of leaning towards me, it backs away.

So I don't know if it knew that like I was so frightened the first time, it was like,

okay, I better not go close, I better back away.

I still screamed, but you know, I ended up going back to sleep after praying. My one daughter Melody, she's still in bed with me. We ended up putting Willow in her own bedroom at this point, but Melody still feels safest when she sleeps with me. So I don't mind because my husband works the night shifts. So I'm usually in bed alone. I don't particularly like to sleep alone just because of like growing up the way I did having experiences and then all these other experiences that I've been having. I just prefer to sleep with somebody. Thankfully, you know, me screaming every now and then doesn't really fright her, but I'm not really afraid like I was as a child.

Like I'm not, it's not that feeling of dread like I had in my mother's house.

I told my husband when he got home the next morning and I told my parents and that was when they, like that was the moment that they opened up to me. My mother did tell me some stories about things that happened while I was a kid. She told me once I moved out. She actually just told me this past year. She told me that my little sister, Ava, who was in a different bedroom, she had a baby monitor for her when she was little and she would hear the rocking chair rocking and she'd go up and it would still be rocking but obviously no one's there is shown to have been rocking. And me and my other sister, we'd be at school and my sister Ava would be napping and you would hear the door slam shut And it would open and it would slam shut and these are these are heavy doors because it's an old home So it takes some like it takes like strength to like shut these doors and Yeah, she would hear the door shut and she'd go up and there'd be nothing and the door would be the door would be closed it cracked it'd be closed. So she had that and then it wasn't until my sister started crying, waking, it would wake her up from her map and it wasn't until my sister started crying that my mother said like whoever you are like you need to stop because you're scaring the baby. I don't care if you're here she said but you need to stop and she said from that day forward it never

happened again. I was born in this home. So I had lived there for 20 years until, you know, I had the experience of the man leaning over me and reaching towards me. So I'd been there my whole life, but my mother and my father that lived in the home,

they said they never had a single experience.

When they were moving in, they didn't feel anything, nothing, but they did tell me that

the bedroom that they put me in as a child was a room that they kind of had to put extra care into when they moved in because there was blood dripping down the wall. So my mother not being afraid of anything just cleans it up, slaps a fresh coat of paint and calls it a day. So that was the room that I grew up in, which is why I think I always felt that way. Okay. Back up. You're parents, so you'll move into the house. She's maybe pregnant with you, like you haven't been born yet. No, I wasn't born. She pregnant you know they were just totally starting fresh okay so they fall in love with the house and they know they've got renovation to do but she walks into the room and there's just blood on the walls the one wall by it's kind of by the door I guessatters. And she's like, she told me it looked like someone hemorrhaged. So I don't know how much blood was on the wall, but she said like she just cleaned it up and painted over it. So since it's a very old home, she knew the lady that lived there before her was like an elderly lady. So she didn't know if someone had died there. And then also in their dining room when they had moved in there, there was a huge black spot in the hardwood. Like she said it looked as if like a body had decomposed there. And there was a rug that was like covered in the same stain. They had rip up the rug it was on the hardwood floor so as when I was a kid my mom she just kept like an oval rug and we put our dining room table on top of it to just cover like I guess whatever was under there so yeah there was some interesting things about that home. I'm so curious because like tough doesn't begin to describe your mom. Can you just maybe just give us a little more description of your parent because I'm what you're describing I think with so many people just running for their car and be like nope, sorry can, can't do it. And I get it. If it's, you know, you don't have, you've got only so much budget to work with the house. Obviously, love with it. But what do you think was unique to your parents and their personalities that they were willing to be like, and I'm assuming this was like the walkthrough, like had they bought house when they saw this like because that's that blood's gonna scare most people away. Jim just saying. So the house had had I believe a lot of cats in there. It was just very very dirty worn down. So they knew going into the home that they were gonna need to put in a lot of work. So they weren't, I guess, they were tight on money so they weren't really thinking about anything like paranormal. They just knew they loved the home. That didn't really bother them because both my parents had also grown up seeing things and hearing things paranormal. My dad, the previous apartment they had lived in was haunted. So for her, they would have just been going from one haunted building to another. So she was just kind of like, and whatever, you know, I'll just buy this home. I love it. It's beautiful. The kind of things that were happening at their old apartment were my dad would hear footsteps walking upstairs. And it was just like a pacing, a walking, nothing bad. And one time he, it was one of those old doors that had like a skeleton key and he kept the key in it and he saw the key turning and he knew no one else was in that home. So he thought maybe it was an intruder so he grabbed his gun. Ready to like protect himself and you know he watched the key turn the doorknob turn and he

quick flunked it open and there was nobody there and so like they all knew that apartment was haunted they just grew a custom to like the window-shutting door slamming shut and then my mother growing up she had done weegee boards with her friends and they spoke to a spirit named Michael. They got it to spell out his name and my mom wanted no part in it because she was terrified of the paranormal. Like my grandmother always taught her, don't mess with that. You don't know what you're going to attract. You don't mess with it. So my mom wasn't doing the Ouija board her friends were,

but she was there with her friends. And then the spirit Michael started spelling my mother's name like he wanted my mother. So she was terrified, she left. And then I don't know how many years later, but she was saying a prayer, she said she couldn't remember for one of her friends. She was just praying for something. in her here she heard In like the most like guttural sound like stop it so She she said I never jumped so high she ran to her mother jumped in bed with her mother and she goes I I knew in my head She's like that thing doesn't want me to pray. She's like I I am not going to stop praying. So she said she prayed all night long until she fell asleep and eventually she woke up and it was the next day and she was fine. So she kind of had that very scary experience. So yeah, moving into a home with like a couple stains here and there didn't really bother her. It was fine. But yeah, both of my parents grew up hearing like and seeing paranormal things and they always kept that from me. But once I saw that you know figure standing over me, that's when they finally started telling me everything they've experienced. My father was asleep in his bedroom and his door opened and he saw what he thought was my mother and he's going, you vet. What are you doing? She always slept in downstairs so it wasn't normal for her to be up in the bedroom at night and he sees her walking around the bed and he's like, you vet, what are you doing? And she's walking around and she comes up and weans over him and again he's like, what are you doing in here? And he turns on the light, she's gone. When she leaned over him, he turned the light on to try to get a better sea of what he thought was my mother. Like in the bedroom, he was like wondering because normally she never goes in because he's asleep. He wakes up at 4 in the morning, she doesn't want to disturb him. So that was his experience and then my mother told me that she was also having experiences in her kitchen where she would see a woman walking back and forth and she said it was just a shadow so it was like black at night she and this again it's happening at night time it's a woman walking back and forth in her kitchen and she comes to the doorway and reans over the doorway and she could see the hair draping down from the person's head leaning over her and my mom would sleep on the recliner for her back and she said multiple times she just would see a woman leaning over the door frame watching her and she knew it wasn't me and my sisters because we're all all upstairs in bed my dad's upstairs in bed she knew it was a spirit but you know my mom, she's very tough, so that didn't even frighten her. She just rolls back over. She goes back to sleep. It didn't bother her at all. My sister, Ava, a couple months ago, she was in my bedroom. That was my old bedroom. And it's the same bed that I grew up in, same dresser, same everything. So she was in bed talking on the phone with her boyfriend and she was just about falling asleep and she turned over and in the same spot that I had that hamper, she has a filing cabinet. She saw a figure crouch down on top of the filing cabinet. And she started screaming and she's talking to her boyfriend and he's like, oh my God, what happened? And she's like, there was a figure standing over me. It was like on the filing cabinet, it was watching me. So she moved her bed around. She said she slept with all the lights on she was horrified so she she also has the same feelings that I felt in that bedroom and she also has had bad feelings about the closet where I heard scratching and she's tried to take like a video on her on her phone and anytime she puts the camera over the closet she said the camera goes blurry it won't focus. I've never tried it I've like never thought to do that but that's what she said regularly happens if she tries to take a video of it it won't record it just goes out of focus over the closet so I don't know what happened in the closet, but you know, between what I heard and her experiences, I feel like there's something like in that bedroom. Like I think that bedroom does have something. My mother always tells me that the spirits followed me when I left. That's what she believes. My little sister Ava thinks differently that lives in my room. She thinks like they're still there. My father, on the other hand, he also thinks it follows me. But my mother has said like if there's a spirit in the house like she doesn't mind if it's there just as long as they don't let it be known to her

She doesn't want to know he doesn't want to know

They like they don't want anything to do with it

...