Latest / Strewth - Australian True Crime and Mystery Podcast / A Haunted Family - Australian Mystery

Transcript

A Haunted Family - Australian Mystery · Strewth - Australian True Crime and Mystery Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: G'day, welcome back to Struth. I'm your storyteller, Mark. And
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: every year around now, the same argument starts up in
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: this country. Somebody's kids go door to door in plastic
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: capes and supermarket masks, and somebody else's dad stands behind
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: the fly screen grumbling that Halloween is an American thing
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and that we've got no business with it. He's kind
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: of got a point about the pumpkins. The spooky stories, though,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: while they were here long before the trick-or-treaters. Australians have
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: been frightening each other long before the word Halloween was
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: uttered on these shores, and for thousands of years prior
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: to that too, by our First Nations people. Around campfires,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: in the back bars of country pubs, invoices kept low,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: so the kids in the next room wouldn't hear. And
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: so this year, Struth is celebrating that tradition, and we're
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: doing something a bit different. Starting today, there'll be a
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: new episode every day for seven days, right through to
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Halloween on Saturday. We're calling it Halloweek. Some of these
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: stories are listener tales, others I've found on internet forums,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and some are partnerships with other podcasters. But they all
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: have a couple of things in common. They're Australian, and
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: they're bloody frightening. Some of the episodes run a bit
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: shorter than usual too. Others are a bit more in-depth.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: but they're all made to be heard after dark. So,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: put them on in bed with the door shut, or
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: in the car on a long stretch of road with
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: nothing but your headlights to keep you company. And if
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: you haven't already, please make sure you subscribe to Struth
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: on the podcast platform that you're listening on. You won't
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: want to miss any of these seven tales. I'd really
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: appreciate it if you could share the show too with
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: anyone that you're talking to this week about the creepy
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: and mysterious stories It makes a huge difference to an
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: independent podcaster. Anyway, enough of that. Here's the first tale.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: It's late on a weeknight earlier this month, and I'm
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: out in the shed. My studio, which is perhaps a
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: grand word for it, sits in a corner of it
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: that I sectioned off myself. Some very basic framing, panelling,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: things I cobbled together. Just big enough for the desk
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: and the microphone and a heater by my feet that
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: ticks as it warms up. On the other side of
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: that wall is the rest of the shed. A workbench
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: covered in bits and bobs, the mower, tools on the
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: hooks and a couple of roller doors that rattle whenever
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: the wind comes up. I've got a stack of tabs
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: open on the laptop. Research for a new case. There
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: are some coroner notes to try and make sense of.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: and an old newspaper photograph of a house I keep
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: zooming in on. But I'm getting nowhere with any of it.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: My brain can't seem to weave all of these facts
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: into any type of flowing story. The screen on my
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: phone lights up as it sits beside the keyboard. It's
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: a message from a listener. Currently listening to the Guyra
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Poltergeist story, she's written. I know of a very similar tale.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Do you want to hear it? The Guyra story, for
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: those who haven't heard that episode, took us to a
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: cottage on the New England tablelands in 1921, where stones
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: came down on the roof night after night, and thumps
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: from inside the walls shook the place to its very foundations.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: It is perhaps Australia's most famous poltergeist story. I'm always
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: up for a good guy story, I hurriedly type back.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: And about a minute later, the answer comes. It's a
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: long story, she said. Here goes. The little dots on
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the screen that indicate that she's typing come and go.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: And then the next message comes through. It's a bit longer.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: And the one after is longer still. And they keep
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: landing a minute or two apart. So that I'm halfway
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: through each one when the next one arrives underneath. In
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: these initial messages, she tells me about a young woman
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: she was once close to. a generation younger than her,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: and about the family that young woman came from. And
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: by the fourth or fifth message, my laptop has gone
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: into sleep mode. I've got no interest in the tabs
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: that are open. I'm fully invested in the messages now,
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: and they keep coming through. In between those messages, out
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: in the garage, the wind leans on the roller door,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: and it rattles in its tracks, and something knocks against
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: the tint. A loose bit of guttering perhaps. Maybe a branch.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: I've heard these noises a hundred times out in this
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: little studio without ever looking up. But tonight I look
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: up every time. Something about reading these messages in the
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: dark has all of my senses on full alert. And
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: they keep coming. One after the other. They tell of
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: an ordinary Australian family ravaged by bad luck and bad health.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: And then finally A message that makes me put my
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: cup of tea down. The young woman in this story,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: she writes, has since died. And what happened to her
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: family is so incredible and unbelievable that it deserves to
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: be told. G'day, welcome back to Struth. I'm your storyteller Mark,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: and tonight's story reached me in that corner of the
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: garage over one long night in messages that came through
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: in dribs and drabs from a woman who asked me
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: not to use her name. So instead, I'll refer to
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: her as Susie. She also asked that the people in
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: her story be protected, and so the young woman at
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: the centre of the tale will refer to as Beck.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: And the country town in New South Wales where her
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: family lived will also go unnamed. The rest of it
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: is exactly as she told it to me. The first
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: few messages were background. And Susie apologised for how long
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: they took. She was a generation older than me. and
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: over the years she became the friend Beck trusted more
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: than almost anyone. She came to know Beck's family, well,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: the way these things tend to work out in country towns.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: It was a big family, five or six children, as
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: she remembered it, and they never had much. They owned
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: their house, but it had been left to run down
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: a long way, and the parents found the world harder
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: going than most people do. To add yet another layer
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: of difficulty, The father also lived with a debilitating long-term illness.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: Beck was the one who got out. She studied hard,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: took herself outside of her comfort zone again and again,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: and made a real life for herself away from that house,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: about an hour's drive from home. And then one of
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: Beck's brothers died suddenly. The post-mortem found an inherited condition,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: one that could come for anyone in the family who
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: carried the same gene. As a result, the other children
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: were tested, and Beck found out that she carried it
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: as well. The condition came for her in the final
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: year of her studies. She became very ill very quickly,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: and she was put on the list for a lung transplant. Thankfully,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: the call came sooner than anyone expected, but for a
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: young woman from a country town, a transplant means Sydney,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: hundreds of kilometres away, and it means going back again
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: and again. for the appointments that follow. Susie, who I'm
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: sure was a rock of strength during this difficult time,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: went with her on those trips. And on the morning
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: of those appointments, they'd leave in the dark to reach
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: the clinic on time. Susie at the wheel and Beck
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: in the passenger seat with a mask over her face.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: And the paddocks out the window would go from grey
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: to gold as the sun rose and the highway ran
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: down toward the coast. And somewhere on those trips, Beck
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: started referring to Susie as her other mother. Beck finally
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: came home with her new lungs and picked her life
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: back up. They were a second chance, but a fragile one.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: A transplanted kidney or heart is tucked away inside the body,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: Susie explained to me, while a lung is open to
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: every breath of the outside world. And so the anti-rejection
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: drugs have to be stronger. And Beck's were so strong,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: that she could never have children. Susie said that she
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: would have been an amazing mum. Beck had married young
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: to a bloke Susie described as a bad boy, and
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: the marriage didn't last. And then, just as I was
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: starting to get a better understanding of all of the
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: characters in the story, the messages stopped. The last one
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: in that first run said, I have to take off now,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: but part two will follow ASAP. That's how I write.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: a cup of tea and let it go cold beside
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: the keyboard. I open the other case again, read the
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: same paragraph of a coroner's report three times, and then
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: close the window. Because I can't take in a word
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: of it. Every few minutes I turn the phone over
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: to check, and every time the screen stays dark. An
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: hour goes by like that, and then most of another,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: with the rain coming and going on the roof, and
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: the roller door shifting now and then in the wind.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: And I'm still sitting at the desk, waiting on part
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: two of a stranger's story. Part two. The next message began,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: adding as time permits. Bec visited her parents often. She
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: kept going home after the lung transplant, even though both
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: her parents still smoked, inside the house. in front of
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: a daughter, breathing through someone else's lungs. Another of her
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: brothers had the same inherited illness, and he was the
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: one she was closest to. When swine flu was going around,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: he caught it, and inevitably his already fragile body was
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: no match. He spent a long time on breathing support,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: and then a ventilator before he died. His death very
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: nearly broke her. Shortly after his death, things in the
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: house began to change. It started with the doors. Her
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: mother is at the sink one evening with the television
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: going in the lounge room when the door from the
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: hallway swings slowly open behind her all the way back
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: until the handle knocks against the wall. Nobody is in
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: the hall. She shuts it and hears the latch catch.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: And when she turns around from the kettle a few
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: minutes later, it's standing there, open again. And then the
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: furniture starts moving in the night. A kitchen chair turns
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: up in the lounge room in the morning, facing the wall.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: A heavy cabinet that has stood in the same spot
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: for years is half a metre out from where it belongs,
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: with four deep dents in the carpet to show where
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: its feet used to be. And once everyone is in bed,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: the banging... begins heavy and single from inside the house
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: from rooms with nobody in them everybody lies awake waiting
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: for the next one and it comes just as they
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: start to drift off over instant coffee and cigarettes they
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: tell back all of this at the kitchen table the
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: mother does most of the telling leaning in over a
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: cup but the others chime in filling in the details
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: and describing the experiences from their own perspectives. Bec takes
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: it all with a grain of salt at first. She
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: grew up in this house. She's heard it creak and
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: settle all her life, and she only half believed them.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: After all, they'd been through a hell of a lot,
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: and that type of pressure can do strange things to
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: a person's mind. Within a matter of weeks, though, the
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: family stopped talking excitedly about these experiences, and instead... became
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: very afraid. Four of them at the time were still
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: living at home, a mother and father and a brother
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: and sister. And one night they'd simply had enough. None
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: of them could face going to their own rooms to sleep.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: And so the two kids drag a mattress into the
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: main bedroom, and then another, and they push them up
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: against the double bed and close the door behind them.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: The next night they do the same, and the night
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: after that. until it is, quite simply, how they live.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: Tea is eaten early, well before dark, and nobody goes
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: down the hall alone after the sun's gone. Four people
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: lie side by side in a room built for two,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: with the father's laboured breathing and the glow of mum's
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: cigarette end in the dark, listening to the rest of
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: the house. They know every sound it makes by now,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: the iron roof creaking as it cools, the wind in
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: the gutters, and from the far end of the hall,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: through two walls, the low hum of the fridge in
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: the kitchen. On one of those nights, with all four
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: of them in that room, the shit out the back
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: starts up. It begins with a click and a whine,
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: so faint at first, that it could be a car
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: they have on the road. But then it climbs gradually
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: into the high, unmistakable scream of an electric drill running
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: flat out. Her father sits up, her brother gets to
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the window and pulls the curtain back an inch. The
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: shed is a dark block across the backyard. There's no
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: light on, no torch moving anywhere near it, and the
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: drill keeps screaming in the dark. And then the sound
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: of an angle grinder joins in alongside it. an unmistakable
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: noise and then another tool and another until everything electrical
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: in that shed is running at once. The noise carries
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: across the yard and into the bedroom where the glass
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: in the window is humming in its frame. The neighbour's
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: dogs are going berserk two houses down and inside the
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: room they count each other in the dark again and
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: again and the count always comes out at full. Every
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: person who lives in that house is in this room.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: There is no one out there to hold a drill.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: And the tools go on running, minute after minute, louder
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: than any of them have ever heard them. And then
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: they stop. All at once. Every one of them in
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: the same instant. And the silence that comes after is
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: so total that a brother can hear his own heart
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: beating in his chest. Somewhere down the hall, The fridge
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: clicks on and begins to hum. Nobody in that room
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: sleeps again that night. Nobody goes out to the shed
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: until it's fully daylight. And when they do, there are
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: no signs of a break-in. The doors are locked. There
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: are no sign of the tools being used. Nothing. Most
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: of them weren't even plugged in. The gap before the
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: next message was the longest one of the night. And
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: when it came, it began, So where were we? And then,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: in brackets, Now you know how I feel waiting for
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Struth to drop the next episode. Susie went on to
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: explain that by the time the family were all sleeping
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: in one room, Beck had met a new man. One
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: who cared for her with a great deal of love.
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: And Susie called it a match made in heaven. Meanwhile,
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: back in that country town, the Knights were still producing
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: all of the elements. of a classic poltergeist case. The
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: four family members were still sleeping in the one bedroom
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: in what Beck described as pure fear. Late one night,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Beck's phone goes off on the bedside table. It's her
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: brother and he's whispering because he's on the floor of
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: their parents' bedroom with the rest of the family around
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: him and he doesn't want whatever is out there to
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: hear him. The furniture is moving. He tells her. It's
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: happening right now. He can hear it out in the
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: other parts of the house where nobody is. And he
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: holds the phone up so she can hear it too.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Down the line, behind his heavy breathing, comes a long,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: low scrape. And then a heavy knock. And then the
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: scrape again, but this time closer. Beck is already out
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: of bed as she's listening. She tells him to keep
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: the door shut and to stay where they are. She
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: tells him they're coming. She and her partner are dressed
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: and in the car within minutes. The town they live
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: in is sound asleep. And they're through it and out
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: past the last streetlight before either of them says a word.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Then it's an hour of country road in the dark.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Two lanes, no streetlights. And the white guidepost flicking past
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: and the scrub pressed close on both sides. And every
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: so often the green glint of a kangaroo's eye at
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: the edge of the headlights, so that her partner has
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: to come slightly off the accelerator and wait for it
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: to decide. Beck has her phone in her lap and
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: somewhere along the road she calls her brother back and
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: he answers in a whisper and tells her that it's
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: still going. A while later she rings again and this
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: time he tells her it's stopped and she doesn't know
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: which of the two frightens her more. She spent years
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: telling her family there was nothing to worry about in
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: that house. They reach the town as the sky behind
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: the paddocks is just starting to go grey. The house
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: is dark, with no light in any window, and when
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Beck gets out of the car, the only sound in
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: the street is a magpie starting up somewhere. She uses
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: her own key to enter through the front door, and
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: the house is cold and smells of old cigarette smoke.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: and it's quiet in a way she isn't used to.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: She reaches for the hallway light. The first thing she
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: sees as the fluorescent bulb kicks in is a chair
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: on its side, outside the lounge room door. Past it,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: a cabinet. has come out of one of the rooms
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: and stands askew across the hallway carpet. And beyond that
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: are more pieces, heavy ones, dragged out from the rooms
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: they belong in and pushed along the hall. And all
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: of them pointed the same way, towards the main bedroom,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: where she knows her family are cowering. And there at
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: the end of the hall, right against the bedroom door,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: is the fridge. It's one of the big square ones
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: that weigh a ton, and it's lying flat on its
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: back on the hallway floor, its door facing the ceiling,
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: and its cord trailing away behind it, back down the hall,
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: towards the kitchen it came from. Beck calls out to them,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: and the bedroom door opens inward, into the room. And
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: there's her family on the other side of it, grey-faced
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: in the light from the hall, looking at a fridge
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: lying across their doorway at shin height. Because the door
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: opens inward, the fridge was never going to trap anyone.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: And it hasn't. It has simply been brought the length
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: of the house to their door, laid down there, and left.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: In their health, even all four of them together couldn't
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: have laid that fridge down on its back like that.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: slid it along the hallway and manoeuvred it through a
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: doorway to get it there. They climb over it quickly,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: one at a time, and into the hall. Bec takes photographs.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: She photographs the fridge against the door from the far
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: end of the hall and close up. And she photographs
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: the chair and the cabinet and every other piece of
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: furniture that's been moved while the light comes up grey
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: through the front windows. Sometime later, She showed those photographs
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: to Susie. I saw them with my own eyes, Susie
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: wrote in one of the messages. There were no lies
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: being told by these people. It was clearly true and terrifying.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: The family weren't religious. If they were anything, they could
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: have been classed as Anglican. But after that night, it
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: was the local Catholic priest they went to. And he
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: came out to the house. He moved through that small house,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: room by room, praying aloud and sprinkling holy water into
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: each bedroom in turn, and then the kitchen and the
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: lounge room. And lastly, along the hallway to the door,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: they'd all slept behind for weeks, while the family waited
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: outside on the veranda, with the screen door propped open.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: When he's gone, the night comes, and the family lie
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: there listening for the first bang. But this time it
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: never arrives. Nothing moves in the house that night. Or
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: the night after. As far as Susie knows, nothing ever
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: has again. Bec married the man who drove her through
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: the dark that night. And a year later, her illness
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: took her. She was just 35. Her father had died
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: before her of the unrelated illness that he'd always had.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: and her mother still lives in that house with at
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: least one of Beck's siblings. That mark, the message she'd,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: is the end of the story. She wrote that she
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: misses Beck every day, and that she still thinks about
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: all of this very often. I finished reading that last
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: message well past midnight. I read the whole thing through twice,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: and I had my hand on the lamp to switch
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: it off, when the phone lit up one more time.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Who do you think was doing the haunting? I know
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: what I believe. I promise you not a word of
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: this is fiction, not from her and not from me,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: Susie wrote. And she signed it off with a photo
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: of herself and Beck, both smiling, a picture that showed
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: their close relationship. I turned the lamp off and sat
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: in the dark for a minute with the phone in
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: my hand. Reading her question again. Before I locked up
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: the shed. And went inside. So there you have it folks.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: An amazing listener tale. I wish I could thank the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: person who sent it in by name, but they know
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: who they are and that's what counts. Thanks for listening
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: to another episode of Halloweek. There's plenty more still to come,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: so make sure you reach out to anyone who loves
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: a spooky tale and tell them about everything that's happening
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: on Struth this week. And if you haven't already, make
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: sure you hit subscribe. You don't want to miss a
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: single story. Some crackers still to come. Cheers.