Welcome to the world spooked, and if you need more supernatural storytelling more, you shall have 22 all new episodes of SPOOT Only on Luminary, a subscription podcast network with original shows you won't find anywhere else.

Visit luminary podcasts dot com to start your free trial. Not available in all markets and terms apply. SNAP Judgment Studio. Now, I lay me down for sleep in due time. I will Rodust creep back to the stain on my floor. And scrub so I can scrub no more. And listening to Split. Stay tuned. From luminary, you've crossed over to Stuart. OK, so when me get some higher education or whatever. I have this buddy and my buddy Sports, a beautiful brand new wine colored Jeep Grand Cherokee back when it was the cool thing or I, I, I don't have a brand new, beautiful wine colored Jeep Grand Cherokee, but I still know that you can't pull up at noon in the middle of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and expect to find a parking spot right next to class.

I tell them folks who have to drive a mile out and hike our asses back, but he's like, no, wait, that's karma. Negro trust the karma. Don't fight the con. Have you lost your mind? Right. Then a car pulls out from a space directly in front of us. But, buddy, give me that look and slides right in on my please, and I think this clown just got lucky. Lucky a one off, but he's my boy, right?

So I spend lots and lots of time in that car, lots of time with him. Doors opening wide as we leave his fancy apartment, restaurants pulling us to the front of the line, unbidden pushing the numbers into his hand and him always turning suddenly into empty parking spaces, which everyone knows is impossible in Ann Arbor. He's telling me it's because he's special, magical, a special, magical black man. Brother, the universe loves me. I don't believe in magical black men, especially not one steady running their map out of time, but here we are.

And this thing, this thing, he depends upon it. Like you depend on your belt or go watch or an umbrella. He counts on the smile of fate. And it's to the point where he can think of a person say their name out loud, Lisa. And two minutes later, Lisa wanders by what did you. How did you. I already told you, you ain't trying to hear me now. And I know that life isn't fair.

I know this. But I think about his world, his beach house. He's never flown coach. And for a moment, it makes me it makes me angry. Still, he's my friend. My best friend. And I have love for I do, but nobody special for real Obi Wan. And one day we're driving that beautiful wine colored car and he's looking for a parking space and he's looking. And looking, not turning up, and he's baffled, confused, waiting for the magic to kick in, stay silent, keep him a smart myself, thrilled to discover that maybe.

Maybe. I've got some magic in my own. And I was in Washington, there are parking spaces everywhere. Now, then, a storyteller day is Brittany Howard at the time of this story. Brittany is a singer, a songwriter. She was the lead singer of the group Alabama Shakes. But this is before the fame, before the adulation. The band is just getting off the ground and she needs a place to practice, to create, to dig deep inside herself.

The granny's old empty house seems perfect. But before we get into it on hand, it over to our producer, Chris Handgrip, who interviewed Brittany. A little while ago, our staff here at that found this story in The New Yorker about Brittany Howard. We love Brittany Howard, lead singer of the Alabama Shakes, an amazing musician and songwriter. And there was one short paragraph about the house in which Brittany grew up. She said that it was haunted.

In fact, she said while driving by the house, that beauty was haunted as hell. And then the story moved on. Of course, our interest was piqued, so I set out to learn a little bit more. We got Britney on the phone to find out just what was going on in that house. We painted all the four different colors, so the kitchen was blue with a white checkerboard on it, and my room had like this like green flooring and the walls had all this sponging on it.

I had the biggest bedroom I ever had in my life, decorated the way I wanted to with plans, I was really excited to have my own space and excited for us to not live in an apartment anymore. But there's this deep corner of my room and it's just the corner. It's a 90 degree angle, just like all the other corners in the room. But this corner in particular, I always felt like somebody was watching me from that corner.

I always felt like there was a presence. I really didn't talk about it because I just thought it was my imagination. Oh, I'm just getting scared because. Is the new house. And I'm not used to having so much room. And so it's just a new place and I'm just taking myself out. The way that this side of the duplex is connected to her side of the duplex is through my bathroom, so essentially my great grandma and my bedroom shares a bathroom.

So she would like come through sometimes and in the beginning that would scare me because she's super quiet, I would be in the living room watching TV and she'd just pop up and she would have like ice cream cone. It would be like midnight. And I'm like, great grandma, what will you do? And she's like, I just thought you wanted some ice cream, baby. I'm like, I'm good. But then I noticed it would not always happen that way I would hear something or I would see like the curtain move a little bit in the living room.

And I believe God is great grandma, but it wasn't. But then we had a cat, so I just kind of thought, oh, must have been the cat. My great grandma passed away while we were live in that house. We only stay with her for five months before she passed away. So now it's just me and my mom in this big old duplex. We'd be eating breakfast together and my mom would just blurt out and say, great grandma came and sat on my bed last night.

I was like, Mom, stop, stop, I don't like it. I don't want to talk about it, but she was I know she's sitting on end of the bed and she does it all the time. I am scared of ghosts. And I just thought maybe she was messing with me or trying to scare me. I was afraid. I don't want to hear about it. When I was 18 years old, my mom got remarried, so she moved out and I decided to stay.

I was pretty excited to live alone. Excited to be independent. So during this time, I'm going to work.

I'm going to school and I'm practicing with my band, Alabama Shakes. But back then, we would just the shakes.

We start rehearsing there and we start working on our repertoire and we start storing our gear, and we had a home base, a stable place to make music and to write songs. And it's really nice just to come home and have my own space to practice with my band, not having anybody complain about the noise.

One afternoon I had just gotten off of work, I was landscaping, so I'm tired, I'm ready to eat something, I go in the house, go in the kitchen, and I'm about to make my struggle meal girl a can of corn.

And sometimes I'm in the heating up this kind of corn. I turn on some music.

A little boom box, you know, keeping myself company, the room, my bedroom window into the kitchen, I hear my door like click as if someone turned the knob and I look over and the door swings open.

The first sensation I had was. A chill going up my spine and my skin getting tingly like adrenaline. I was ready to fight or flight. But then once the door open all the way, there was nothing there, there was no sound, it was just the darkness of my big creepy bedroom. I stood there for a while just looking into that space, waiting to hear footsteps. Waiting for what I should do next. I just said, oh, maybe it's time for some new doorknobs.

It's like a whole new gear, maybe it's all worn out and that's why they happened. OK. I remember cautiously walking up to the door, having the door handle and pulling it back closed and hearing that. And then thinking, I'm not sure why it was nothing. And then I go sit on the couch and I eat my dinner from the television and put it out of my mind. Not too long after that, I was getting off work, I go into the house, it was such a beautiful day, the sun was shining and it was a cool breeze.

I didn't want to sit inside the house, so I got on my back porch.

There's this big heavy like hand door and it doesn't have a door knob. It just has a big industrial slide lock. So I kind of pull the door behind me just like a little bit to make sure my cat doesn't get out. And then I call my best friend and I'm talking to her on phone. What do you want to do this weekend? What do you do this night? Unit. I hear my cat baton at the door trying to open the door all the way so he can come outside and I say I just trying to get out.

So I turn around. And sure enough, there he is with his little past sticking to the door.

I pull the door all the way to and then I get back to my conversation sitting on the porch, chat, chit chat. Next thing I know, I hear the sound again.

And I think to myself, huh, I guess that's Ozzy trying to get out again. Hold on. Let me let me do a how about this for good. I push on the door, expecting to open it. To see my cat, the door was locked.

Suddenly I freeze because I think, oh, my God, someone just came in my house and locked me out there trying to rob me. Hey, stay on the line with me, girl. I think someone has come to my house. So I run around the side of the house and I go back into the front door because I had left the one locked only weapon I have in my entire house is a machete. But I got this machete and I'm going through every room of my house.

I'm looking in the showers. I'm looking in all the closets. I'm going through all of these rooms, turn the lights on real quick and then go into the next room. And looking in those closets I went to this entire house must have me like 20 minutes. Finally, I get to the back door and I look, not only was it pulled to the side, but it was also back in place into locked position.

And meanwhile, my friends was talking to me on the phone.

She's saying, are you OK? What's happening? What's going on? I said, hey, the door locked itself. She's like, what are you talking about? So I don't know, but the door has locked itself. I'm not sure what to say. I'm kind of scared. And she's like, why had that happen? And I'm like, I don't know. I just stood there staring at the door and I saw how it had been locked back.

And I know that this slide, like this heavy industrial slide lock on this door could only have been moved by hands. That's the only way. Not about a house, certainly not by the cat, not by when I open the door back up. I looked at the screen door. I look at the back porch where I was sitting. I just thought, I'm OK. Nothing's happened. So I'm just going to get on with my day, I guess.

I really liked my room a lot. My amazing bedroom. I feel like it really represented me at the time. And so I had this really cool vintage bed frame was like from the 1940s.

Me and my mom had painted it this really beautiful green to go the rest of the room. And the only thing about this bed was, you know, I was kind of too tall for it, so my feet would kind of hang off the end of the bed. It would go through these two bars at the end of the bed frame, and that's how it's sleep.

One night I was still awake, but I was almost asleep, you know, that real nice spot, that sweet spot. And then I just feel my foot was being touched, which is the worst feeling, because that's what everybody is afraid of when their feet hands off the bed, you're scared somebody's to get your foot. Imagine like someone takes their finger and then goes from your heel to the top of your toe just like that.

I thought, oh, what was that? And I immediately get out of bed and I think it must be my cat. My cat must have been trapped in the room tonight because I never let him sleep in my room. And so I look under the bed, you know, there's nothing in there but like clothes and boots and stuff. And I'm just sitting there and I think, OK, maybe I imagined someone touching my foot. Maybe it was a dream.

But I've had that sensation still in my body, like just like if someone had had poked you, you would know afterwards. And I was so afraid suddenly when it sunk in that that was not possible. Nothing's in the room I catch. Not in the room.

Maybe I didn't imagine it. It's slowly flooding to me, these strange experiences that I had been having in the house since my mom moved away, such as cabinets creaking open the door to my bedroom, opening curtains, moving on their own, being watched. And thinking something else is in this house, I think this is a haunting. I thought maybe it was the spirit of my great grandma that was coming to. Say hello. Maybe that was it, if that and that was just based on what my mom was saying about something sitting on her bed at night.

But what I didn't understand was that while my great grandma mesalamine, so much so, that really scared me. And so I went to sleep in the living room. Doesn't that suck? Like whose house is it like you've been forced out of your bedroom? Yes, thugs, I'd say the worst part about it was not only losing my domain, but also just losing sleep, you know what I mean? I think at the time being like, you know, enrolled in college and also working, also trying to work on my dreams.

You know, I was in a survival state. I was trying to do the bare minimum so I could make my dreams survive. You know, I'm saying so if I had to sleep on a couch to do that. So be it, I'll sleep on the couch.

Weeks later, after that, I do my bedtime ritual, I turn on Animal Planet, a documentary about ant colonies, the escape route left, I lay down, I'm cozy, I'm falling into that nice, squishy, gentle place between consciousness and sleep and then another. Now those come running, I remember hearing the man's voice talking about ants and here I am with my eyes closed.

And I start hearing this growling. And I think to myself must be on a TV and then it gets closer and louder. And it took me a moment to realize this is not the television, this is right next to my ear. It was like. And I was like, oh, my God, the first thing out of my mouth is the expletive. Tarifa. I'm looking around my room. I'm like, what was that? What was that?

What was that? Was that. It made me sit up immediately around a bit. I'm looking around. I look on the television is these ads. I thought it must have been animals on a TV. But it couldn't have been so then I thought maybe it's raccoons fighting under the house, which is the most country thing I've ever said, but it was not raccoons fighting under the house.

Everything was quiet, everything was copasetic. Except the chills that I had all over my body, let me know that that was real. I go into the kitchen and I'm just standing there and I'm like, what do I do? My heart is beating so fast I just call my dad and I'm so upset I have to do this. I don't know what time it was like midnight. And I'm like, I have a house, you know, I'm so scared.

And go stay with my dad. Next time I came home, I had decided I'm not sleeping in that room anymore. Something's up with this room. This is the apparition doing this or ghost or something. I can't see that. Can see me. I never talk to my mother about it because she's not afraid of ghosts. Supernatural things like that, she is curious about it. Brought it up like one time when my mom and she just said just a mouthful.

She's like, sometimes I see orbs and stuff in the house and telling me all the stuff. And I'm just like, that's not comforting. That is the opposite of what I'm trying to hear right now. As far as like who it was, I just assumed it wasn't my great grandma because whatever it was like to scare me and I don't think that's her bag, you know, my great grandmother was really sweet, you know what I mean? I don't think she'd want to scare me.

I don't think she would growl any. Should never I don't think my great grandmother will stick around to terrorize me, make no sense. And then I thought, what if it was my great grandpa? I was like, I'm a mixed woman, my father's black, my mother's white. I thought maybe my great grandpa didn't approve of that.

Sometimes messing with me based on my color, I was just trying to figure out who this was at this point because it was somebody who was not of the earth. But then when it came to the growling. Is a growling ghost, what does this mean for me? My worst case scenario was like, what if his demon? I mean, you know, I'm saying like in the hierarchy of, you know, ghosts or whatever is demons is pretty bad.

I said, you want my room, you have my room. I changed the door shut, I would only go in my bedroom to get into my closet to get ready for work when I sleep in, it would not spend any time in it. I had basically moved my sleeping quarters to the little living room because I couldn't explain it and I didn't feel safe. We had rehearsals in my house Tuesdays and Thursdays, so on one of these nights, me and my bass player are sitting in our rehearsal room, which was my mother's room previously.

But I turned it into like a little jam space, had paid amps, drums, piano, everything sitting in their.

I was seated playing guitar and he seated next to me playing bass. We were just running through the section of the song over and over again. We're trying to perform it perfectly. So we were playing it and every note was perfect. And then all of a sudden he stops. And I'm like, why do you stop what was wrong? I look over at him. He had this look on his face, his eyes were kind of big and his mouth was kind of like open a little bit.

And he was staring at a doorway where you could kind of see where two rooms join. I'm starting to get scared because I've never seen this look on his face before. He says to me, something just whispered in my ear right next to my head. And then we talk about he's like, I don't know, I'm going to. But I was like, you're going to go. You're going to tell me that? And now he's like, I don't wanna be here anymore.

Pretty sure your house is on. He didn't know what it was saying because, you know, then what, you know, to be honest, there wasn't even a topic of the conversation. I wasn't even like, what did he say? I wasn't even like that. He was just like something just got out of my ear, you, like, feel it breathing everything, I could tell he was really scared because his big guy got up and left and I'm like, I'm going to go to I'm not going to stay here.

If you tell me something like that, the only thing I know to do was to leave my partner overnight. I would call my cops if I sleep on a couch. I felt validated like, OK, I'm not crazy. But then on the other hand, I was like, my house is haunted. What am I going to do? This is scary. This is ramping up. Well, I had to go back because, you know, my life is there.

That's the rehearsal space. That's that's where I live. It's not as easy as picking everything up.

I just knew that being pushed out of the house meant I lose my independence, and I knew that if I lost that now, then maybe my dreams would never come to fruition, because where else am I going to work on my dreams than in this house that is all mine where I can make as much noise as I wont be as creative as I want to.

There's some economic issues that go into staying into a haunted house that no one talks about. I'm here to tell you hello. You don't have money saved up to make a move. You are still in this haunted house. Ghost don't pay rent. So now it's been like three years, I've been losing sleep. I asked. All the time, and I'm still carrying on with my life and still going to work. I'm still trying to study for school, still having band practice twice a week, still trying to have a social life.

I was so paranoid in my home that I wouldn't go to bed till I, I don't know, the sun came up. So five I'll get a few hours of sleep and, you know, wake up, be ready for work.

I'm on the couch trying to go to sleep.

It must have been after 11:00, you know, so far and I hear footsteps crunching on the leaves outside. So immediately I think, oh, my God, someone's here to rob me.

So I grabbed his flashlight that I have to shine into the living room window just like that. Nobody's out there. My gentleman is running again, and I'm so tired. Just like, oh, I don't I don't know, I guess they aren't coming to me. I'm not sure. So I just think, OK, maybe somebody passing through, you are trying to the shortcut, whatever, which would've been super weird, by the way. But maybe I lay back down for a few hours, wake up, go to work.

I thought it was a literal human being, so then I started sleeping with a gun underneath the couch, so it's a floor gun, couch pillow me.

A few nights later, something happened. Footsteps So immediately, I think, oh, not, oh, I'm ready this time. So I have a gun. I get the flashlight out the window. Look, Ali, there's no way I wouldn't be able to see someone there, but every time I get this flashlight, I would look in in the footsteps to stop.

Nobody's there. And I'm like, I'm going crazy. Like, what is this? Go to sleep with a few days later, it happens again. This time I think I'm calling the cops. I can't do this anymore.

And I'm so tired. I'm so sick of being scared. I doubt the police officers would tell them what's going on. I only live maybe four or five minutes from the police station, so they're there in a jiffy.

I could see their lights, I could see them with their spotlights, checking the field next to me in my yard, officers walking around my house.

I come to the door and I'm like, Ma'am, we didn't see anybody. Are you sure you heard what you heard? I'm like, yeah, I am, I lay back on the couch, I was so tired, I remember just like crying because I was just so exhausted from not sleeping well for months. And now there's this other situation with these footsteps outside my home. Is the ghost now haunting me from outside the house? Is this something else I have to worry about?

I can't worry about any more stuff. I wanted to have my life back again. This is not worth it. My mental health was so much more important than having my independence.

I decided enough is enough. So periodically my dad would call or text to check on me because he knew that I was scared in that house and he just said, how are you doing? And I was just like, honestly, you know, can I move back in with you because I can't do this anymore. You know, I had to call the cops last night. This whole thing. I can't I can't live like this. And he was like, of course, you can come live with me, just like, come on.

So, you know, he drives a truck over there that go grab some boxes from the recycling center, build some boxes I pack up, was worth packing up.

Put everything I owned in these boxes, throw it in a storage unit, take with me what I could fit into my childhood bedroom and move out in a day and start over again.

The conversation was with my band was just like, this is impractical. We had to move our rehearsal space. I just basically tell them we can't do it here anymore. I got I got to leave. Let's find somewhere else. They understood. And they're just like, yeah, sure, we'll find some place. And that place happened to be my guitar player father's garage. And we made it work. Everything changed very suddenly, but it worked out.

I have thought about this so many times. One thing I tried to follow up with was talking to a psychic who had proved to be accurate of all things in my personal life and in other friends and stuff. I remember asking her about it and saying, yeah, I used to live in this house, you know, and I felt like there was another spirit in it and didn't give her too much. But she's just like, oh, yeah, you should check out the history of Native Americans in your town.

She's like, because what I'm saying is like, this is native land has nothing to do with the house. It just has more to do with the attachment to the actual land itself and that the spirit does not want to leave this land or you having you think it's laws.

And I was like, well, I guess that's good enough for me at. So the ghost one, if you say so, if you want that old junk in your house. Yeah, he one. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, he won it. Still there. What do you feel like you lost what I feel like I lost. I didn't lose anything. I'll tell you what I gained. Peace of mind, OK, by five Grammys, OK?

I'm good. I can't lose anything. All I did was gain from that point. So, like, really, maybe I should be thinking that goes. Big banks and big love, Brittany Howard. We are so glad you got the last laugh against a bad theory. The original score for that story was by Leon Morimoto. Was produced by Chris Hambrick.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. The secret is out, and if you need even more scoop in your life, the full 22 episode season is available right now at Luminary podcast, dot com luminary podcast that can't be afraid. And you've heard my before. But if you have a personal story that spooky where you you touch the force of power, a being that was not supposed to be there when you had a relationship with the mystery. Email us your story.

Speak at SNAP Judgment that Awaji, there is nothing better than the spook story from a listener but not tell me you saw a ghost. Everybody saw a ghost.

If you have a real story though, let us know.

Spooked snap judgment that Awaji now the best way to ward off evil spirits is by wearing spook gear head on over to the SNAP Judgment Dogs Shop to get some spooky merchandise that snap judgment dogs shop.

And if you like your storytelling and the bright light of day, subscribe to the amazing SNAP Judgment podcast. Why? Because it might just change your life. It was brought to you by the amazing team at the Alabama Shakes, always welcomed with open arms everyone except for Mark Restitch as an assessment, our chief spokesman, Alysa Smith. Chris Hambrick, any new in law news? Leon Morimoto, Renzo Gourriel, Tilda, Kurt Russell Yates. So if right now, Greta Weber, Jacob Winnik, Doug Stewart, Sannikov, Tiffany, Tulisa and forward Fernando Hernandez and Flo Wiley, the spook theme songs by Pappas.

Judy Miller. My name is from Washington. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram for a whole different type of story. And yes, I'm here to simply tell you that what you already know, if you want to practice a of old abandoned house in the middle of nowhere, that you are absolutely certain is teeming with unearthly spirits. If you want to do that, I can't stop you. I've learned this. I cannot make you turn screaming in the other direction.

I can't. What I will do is ask a simple favor, be please, for the love of all that is sacred and holy in this spooky house that you're in. Never, never, never, never, never, ever, never, ever turn out. The lights. This episode of Spooked was some in the dark of night by luminary.

If you need more spook storytelling this Halloween, we've got more spooked than you can hide in the barn and well in the middle of the Deep Dark Forest, 22, all new episodes of SPOOT await your listening pleasure only on Luminary, a subscription podcast network with original shows you won't find anywhere else to start your free trial and to be free.

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