WEBVTT 00:00.391 --> 00:08.258 [SPEAKER_00]: What would you do if whilst clearing out a loved one's home, you found evidence that they'd been hiding something from you for decades? 00:09.739 --> 00:18.226 [SPEAKER_00]: How would you react if grief led you back to a familiar house, only for that house, to feel suddenly unfamiliar? 00:19.627 --> 00:25.772 [SPEAKER_00]: What do you do when a parent's belongings suggest they knew far more than they ever told you? 00:27.439 --> 00:34.542 [SPEAKER_00]: How would you explain finding something hidden, that seemed ordinary, but felt wrong the moment you touched it? 00:36.123 --> 00:44.226 [SPEAKER_00]: And what would you do if the home you thought you knew best, began to reveal a secret that had been waiting long before you arrived? 00:44.907 --> 00:50.569 [SPEAKER_00]: As always, today we don't guarantee you any answers, but we do guarantee a good look in 01:04.477 --> 01:12.941 [SPEAKER_00]: Live from Liverpool, the Dark Paranormal, with Kevin Justus. 01:25.526 --> 01:30.428 [SPEAKER_00]: Hello everyone and welcome indeed to Episode 9 of Season 24, 01:34.925 --> 01:41.633 [SPEAKER_00]: This season, for me, as I've said numerous times, has seemed to gone by in the blink of an eye. 01:42.634 --> 01:51.344 [SPEAKER_00]: And as always, we leave almost intriguing, almost thought-provoking and almost terrifying tails towards the end. 01:52.603 --> 01:57.464 [SPEAKER_00]: Next week's finale is won, believe me, you will not want to miss. 01:58.304 --> 02:02.646 [SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't already hit subscribe, add suggest you do so now. 02:03.286 --> 02:12.448 [SPEAKER_00]: As you'll want to be amongst the first people to hear what I can only call one of the most profound finale's we've possibly ever had. 02:13.228 --> 02:20.650 [SPEAKER_00]: As we reach our break in play after next week, I of course would say now is the right time to join our Patreon. 02:21.568 --> 02:27.351 [SPEAKER_00]: where you can gain extra access to different shows each and every week, even during the downtime. 02:28.031 --> 02:29.591 [SPEAKER_00]: But more on that at the end. 02:30.492 --> 02:34.834 [SPEAKER_00]: And also, please remember we are always accepting submissions. 02:35.534 --> 02:39.896 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't care if it's a paragraph, a sentence, or 13 pages. 02:40.616 --> 02:42.897 [SPEAKER_00]: Again, the link to submit is in the show notes. 02:43.578 --> 02:48.900 [SPEAKER_00]: Or you can go direct to the dark paranormal.com and click on Submit my experience. 02:50.063 --> 02:55.845 [SPEAKER_00]: But, right now, let's jump immediately into this penultimate episode. 02:58.966 --> 03:04.667 [SPEAKER_00]: As I ask you, for the second to last time this season, to please, lower the lights. 03:05.468 --> 03:11.950 [SPEAKER_00]: Make yourself comfortable, and, of course, leave your disbelief at the door. 03:13.370 --> 03:16.411 [SPEAKER_00]: As we listen to, disbeliever. 03:19.409 --> 03:20.289 [SPEAKER_00]: The dear kev. 03:21.070 --> 03:25.572 [SPEAKER_00]: I want to start by saying I've been listening to the show for maybe two years now. 03:26.512 --> 03:27.733 [SPEAKER_00]: And I've gone back on. 03:28.894 --> 03:33.576 [SPEAKER_00]: And I've gone back and forth on whether to send this in maybe a dozen times. 03:34.676 --> 03:42.400 [SPEAKER_00]: Every time I sit to write down everything that went on, I end up closing the laptop, finding something else to do. 03:43.601 --> 03:46.062 [SPEAKER_00]: It's not that I don't want to tell it. 03:47.248 --> 03:55.035 [SPEAKER_00]: It's more that writing it down makes it feel like I'm admitting something I've spent three years trying to unpick. 03:56.036 --> 03:57.297 [SPEAKER_00]: Yet here I am. 03:58.257 --> 04:02.461 [SPEAKER_00]: So I left the very least try to do it some justice. 04:04.423 --> 04:09.127 [SPEAKER_00]: My name is Claire, I'm 38, I live in Darbyshire in the UK. 04:10.418 --> 04:17.743 [SPEAKER_00]: I work as a pharmacy technician, and personally, I'm not someone who seeks this stuff out. 04:18.763 --> 04:28.910 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't watch horror films I've never been on a ghost hunt, and before any of this happened, I would have described myself as firmly agnostic on the whole subject. 04:30.171 --> 04:35.254 [SPEAKER_00]: A disbeliever, someone who'd never had any reason to think about it either way. 04:41.434 --> 04:51.219 [SPEAKER_00]: she'd been ill for around 18 months, breast cancer, diagnosed too late, and by the time they did find it, it had already moved. 04:52.779 --> 05:03.365 [SPEAKER_00]: We had time to prepare, which people always say is a blessing, and I do understand what they mean by that, but I'm not entirely sure it's the complete blessing 05:05.315 --> 05:12.336 [SPEAKER_00]: 18 months of watching someone you love become less themselves is its own particular kind of damage. 05:13.257 --> 05:18.578 [SPEAKER_00]: And I don't believe the slowness of it, protecting you in any way that everyone implies. 05:20.078 --> 05:24.139 [SPEAKER_00]: She died in February, at home, which is what she wanted. 05:25.179 --> 05:26.919 [SPEAKER_00]: I was there, my brother wasn't. 05:27.639 --> 05:30.940 [SPEAKER_00]: He lives in Australia and couldn't make it back in time. 05:31.769 --> 05:35.812 [SPEAKER_00]: which he still carries guiltful, wrongfully in my opinion. 05:37.073 --> 05:39.935 [SPEAKER_00]: It was just me and the district nurse when she left. 05:40.755 --> 05:47.299 [SPEAKER_00]: It was quiet, peaceful, none of that made it any easier, though. 05:47.320 --> 05:54.324 [SPEAKER_00]: I want to be upfront about my mental state in the months that followed, because I think it important. 05:55.625 --> 05:57.807 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I was grieving, but I was functioning. 06:02.077 --> 06:07.680 [SPEAKER_00]: I was sleeping, I was eating, I was sad in the way that people are sad when you lose a parent. 06:09.181 --> 06:21.889 [SPEAKER_00]: I mentioned this because I know the first thing people reach for when you tell them something like this is grief, the mind doing what distressed minds do, and I'm in no way discounting that I've turned it over too. 06:23.110 --> 06:24.050 [SPEAKER_00]: But I know myself. 06:25.616 --> 06:35.903 [SPEAKER_00]: I know my difference between the fog of bereavement and what I am about to describe, and believe me they are not the same thing. 06:37.504 --> 06:43.148 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe six weeks after the funeral, I drove down to her house to start clearing it out. 06:44.389 --> 06:50.253 [SPEAKER_00]: She'd lived there for 31 years, a semedy attached in a village just outside Matlock. 06:54.966 --> 06:57.848 [SPEAKER_00]: So really, it had been her house for most of my life. 06:58.848 --> 07:02.470 [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, it was full of her things, her smell. 07:03.411 --> 07:12.515 [SPEAKER_00]: The specific way she'd organised her kitchen cubits leaves shoes in the line by the back door as if she'd still be stepping into them any moment. 07:13.916 --> 07:17.058 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd been back once since the funeral to collect from paperwork. 07:18.008 --> 07:25.612 [SPEAKER_00]: But this was the first time I was there properly, alone, with the intention of going through things. 07:27.112 --> 07:36.237 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd given myself the weekend, I packed a bag, planning to stay Friday and Saturday night, sleep in the spare room rather than her room. 07:37.557 --> 07:39.218 [SPEAKER_00]: I wasn't ready for her room. 07:40.819 --> 07:41.879 [SPEAKER_00]: Friday went fine. 07:48.662 --> 07:56.806 [SPEAKER_00]: I kept things I probably didn't need to keep, and yes I cried a reasonable amount of time, but I felt okay about it. 07:58.267 --> 08:04.090 [SPEAKER_00]: Evening time I ordered to take away, watch things on my laptop, I was asleep by 10. 08:05.851 --> 08:08.713 [SPEAKER_00]: Saturday was when it all began. 08:12.915 --> 08:15.637 [SPEAKER_00]: I was in the spare room going through the wardrobe. 08:16.535 --> 08:22.659 [SPEAKER_00]: old coats, handbags, the accumulating clutter that migrate to spare rooms over decades. 08:23.979 --> 08:31.984 [SPEAKER_00]: On the shelf above the hanging grail, tucked behind a stack of folded blankets, was a cardboard box I'd never seen before. 08:33.144 --> 08:35.726 [SPEAKER_00]: Plane, no writing anywhere on it. 08:36.967 --> 08:43.010 [SPEAKER_00]: The brown parcel tape ceilinger to dry doubt, not really adhering anything to it anymore, 08:44.491 --> 08:50.776 [SPEAKER_00]: I brought it down wiped off the dust and opened it, inside there were only two things. 08:51.857 --> 08:59.142 [SPEAKER_00]: The first a bundle of letters, maybe 35 or 40 of them, tied together with garden twine. 09:00.563 --> 09:06.508 [SPEAKER_00]: The paper had jellied at the edges, the handwriting on the top envelope wasn't my mom's. 09:07.489 --> 09:08.910 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't recognize it either. 09:14.103 --> 09:15.683 [SPEAKER_00]: it was laying face down. 09:16.783 --> 09:17.464 [SPEAKER_00]: I noticed that. 09:18.304 --> 09:19.424 [SPEAKER_00]: The face down position. 09:20.804 --> 09:24.325 [SPEAKER_00]: And for some reason something in me paused on that. 09:25.685 --> 09:30.706 [SPEAKER_00]: It was only a small thing but it felt deliberate in a way I couldn't rationalize. 09:32.086 --> 09:32.866 [SPEAKER_00]: I turned it over. 09:34.126 --> 09:34.666 [SPEAKER_00]: A child. 09:35.507 --> 09:36.027 [SPEAKER_00]: A girl. 09:36.947 --> 09:39.127 [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe four or five years old. 09:40.067 --> 09:40.668 [SPEAKER_00]: Darker, 09:44.843 --> 09:50.204 [SPEAKER_00]: She was stood in what looked like a back garden, squinting slightly into a bright sun. 09:51.904 --> 09:56.065 [SPEAKER_00]: The dress and shoes were old fashioned in a way I literally can't date. 09:57.105 --> 10:04.967 [SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't say a Victorian nor anything dramatic, just a particular frumpiness of clothes from a few decades ago. 10:06.507 --> 10:08.487 [SPEAKER_00]: She was looking directly at the camera. 10:09.888 --> 10:11.688 [SPEAKER_00]: That was the thing I kept coming back to. 10:13.241 --> 10:16.502 [SPEAKER_00]: Children almost never look at cameras cleanly. 10:17.622 --> 10:20.903 [SPEAKER_00]: They perform, they look away, they grin, or they cry. 10:21.844 --> 10:24.224 [SPEAKER_00]: Or they at least do something with their hands. 10:25.605 --> 10:27.445 [SPEAKER_00]: But this girl was doing none of that. 10:28.406 --> 10:30.126 [SPEAKER_00]: She was simply looking. 10:31.547 --> 10:34.487 [SPEAKER_00]: Her expression not blank exactly. 10:35.668 --> 10:39.189 [SPEAKER_00]: It was something I kept trying to find a name for and couldn't. 10:43.282 --> 10:52.624 [SPEAKER_00]: The word that kept presenting itself, which I kept dismissing, because it seemed absurd, applied to a child of that age, was deliberate. 10:54.004 --> 10:56.124 [SPEAKER_00]: I had no idea who she was. 10:57.444 --> 10:59.665 [SPEAKER_00]: I brought my attention back to the letters. 11:00.745 --> 11:03.085 [SPEAKER_00]: It was the same handwriting across the mould. 11:04.125 --> 11:06.326 [SPEAKER_00]: All addressed to my mum at this address. 11:13.302 --> 11:15.444 [SPEAKER_00]: the earliest November 83. 11:17.085 --> 11:19.527 [SPEAKER_00]: 35 years in a box at the back of a wardrobe. 11:20.908 --> 11:23.971 [SPEAKER_00]: My initial instinct was to not read them. 11:25.092 --> 11:26.313 [SPEAKER_00]: It felt intrusive. 11:27.434 --> 11:35.260 [SPEAKER_00]: They felt private in a way that even the intimacy of going through a dead parent belongings doesn't usually feel. 11:36.401 --> 11:38.223 [SPEAKER_00]: But I did open the most recent 11:39.495 --> 11:40.576 [SPEAKER_00]: It was from a woman. 11:41.456 --> 11:47.239 [SPEAKER_00]: She signed it with just the first name, which I won't share here out of respect for whoever she is. 11:48.580 --> 11:52.282 [SPEAKER_00]: She wrote with a familiarity of someone who had known my mum well. 11:53.482 --> 11:55.403 [SPEAKER_00]: The letter itself was short. 11:56.624 --> 11:59.365 [SPEAKER_00]: It said she was writing because something had happened. 12:00.526 --> 12:04.808 [SPEAKER_00]: That the girl, whoever the girl was, had been seen again. 12:09.175 --> 12:18.558 [SPEAKER_00]: and that, and I quote, whatever arrangement my mum had made about it clearly hadn't been sufficient, and it needed to be revisited. 12:20.219 --> 12:27.282 [SPEAKER_00]: There was no explanation of who this girl was, no explanation of what scene again meant, or were. 12:28.502 --> 12:31.823 [SPEAKER_00]: No history that I could use to build any context. 12:33.344 --> 12:36.025 [SPEAKER_00]: I read maybe half of the letters over the next two hours. 12:37.205 --> 12:47.434 [SPEAKER_00]: They were all variations of the same conversations, references to sightings, to something the two women had apparently agreed on years earlier. 12:48.495 --> 12:56.783 [SPEAKER_00]: To whether the house was still safe, to the girl, and whatever she was accompanied by. 12:58.264 --> 13:00.967 [SPEAKER_00]: My mum's side of the correspondence wasn't there. 13:01.983 --> 13:06.865 [SPEAKER_00]: I was reading one-half of a dialogue that could have been going on for nearly four years. 13:08.106 --> 13:15.069 [SPEAKER_00]: The language I could understand perfectly but couldn't interpret it at all, and I kept coming back to that photograph. 13:16.350 --> 13:22.513 [SPEAKER_00]: I'd propped it against the war next to the box, and every few moments I'd find my eyes going back to it. 13:23.673 --> 13:29.016 [SPEAKER_00]: The more I looked at it, the more unease that had first settled on me when I opened the box 13:32.467 --> 13:35.690 [SPEAKER_00]: There was nothing wrong with a photograph, or what it showed. 13:36.591 --> 13:39.154 [SPEAKER_00]: A child in a garden in the sun, that's all. 13:40.155 --> 13:50.465 [SPEAKER_00]: But something about the directness of that look, the completeness of it, the way it didn't vary, the way it gave nothing back. 13:51.606 --> 13:55.270 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it made me want to stop looking before I'd worked out, why? 13:56.321 --> 14:02.043 [SPEAKER_00]: Subconsciously realizing I would be interested in this, I moved it to the center of the kitchen table. 14:02.903 --> 14:05.384 [SPEAKER_00]: And I carried on going through the wardrobe after that. 14:06.164 --> 14:23.629 [SPEAKER_00]: Not really concentrating, I kept finding myself pausing, hands on whatever I was folding, thinking about those letters, the phrase that kept resurfacing was, whatever arrangement my mum had made, because that implied intention. 14:24.493 --> 14:31.816 [SPEAKER_00]: That implied my mom had assessed something she decided on a course of action and implemented it. 14:33.036 --> 14:34.997 [SPEAKER_00]: My mom was a practical woman. 14:35.878 --> 14:39.519 [SPEAKER_00]: I retired practice manager, precise, organized. 14:40.359 --> 14:42.340 [SPEAKER_00]: She did not do things vaguely. 14:43.460 --> 14:50.083 [SPEAKER_00]: If she had made an arrangement she had made it deliberately, and she had kept it going for at least four years. 14:50.903 --> 14:52.064 [SPEAKER_00]: According to these letters, 14:53.197 --> 15:03.863 [SPEAKER_00]: and then she placed that correspondence in a box at the back of a wardrobe and not told any of her children a single word about any of it in three decades. 15:05.304 --> 15:08.285 [SPEAKER_00]: Around five o'clock the light outside started leaving. 15:09.106 --> 15:12.968 [SPEAKER_00]: The house faces north and the back garden gets dark early in February. 15:14.069 --> 15:19.572 [SPEAKER_00]: And I noticed that what had been an ordinary afternoon of going through boxes had become something 15:23.238 --> 15:26.360 [SPEAKER_00]: Of course, it's the same rooms, the same furniture. 15:27.161 --> 15:32.405 [SPEAKER_00]: But something about the quality of the house and the early dark felt altered. 15:33.586 --> 15:37.129 [SPEAKER_00]: Altered in a way I couldn't trip you to anything specific. 15:38.270 --> 15:39.471 [SPEAKER_00]: Too quiet maybe? 15:40.551 --> 15:42.093 [SPEAKER_00]: Or a different kind of quiet? 15:43.554 --> 15:48.858 [SPEAKER_00]: I found myself doing what I hadn't done at all during the day, which was looking over my shoulder. 15:54.068 --> 15:59.212 [SPEAKER_00]: At one point I went into the kitchen to put the kettle on and I stopped in the doorway. 16:00.654 --> 16:02.375 [SPEAKER_00]: The photograph had moved. 16:04.237 --> 16:07.540 [SPEAKER_00]: I placed it on the kitchen table, it had been in the center. 16:08.841 --> 16:16.087 [SPEAKER_00]: It was now the edge nearest the door, nearest me, still face down but in a very different position. 16:17.728 --> 16:21.652 [SPEAKER_00]: I stood there for longer than I should have before I went to touch it. 16:23.138 --> 16:28.560 [SPEAKER_00]: Then I moved it back to the center, not picking it up, but shoving it across the counter. 16:30.381 --> 16:32.742 [SPEAKER_00]: I told myself I'd moved it without noticing. 16:33.742 --> 16:39.605 [SPEAKER_00]: The way you put something down while your mind is elsewhere, and you can't account for the precise position afterwards. 16:40.825 --> 16:42.186 [SPEAKER_00]: That's completely plausible. 16:43.226 --> 16:44.687 [SPEAKER_00]: I know that's completely possible. 16:45.967 --> 16:52.230 [SPEAKER_00]: But I also know I spent the rest of the evening with the photograph in my eye line as much as possible. 16:53.195 --> 16:55.137 [SPEAKER_00]: which is not my usual behavior. 16:56.078 --> 17:01.082 [SPEAKER_00]: Nor the behavior of someone who fully believes their own explanation. 17:06.207 --> 17:11.072 [SPEAKER_00]: That evening I cooked, I rang my brother and I told him about the box. 17:12.413 --> 17:15.236 [SPEAKER_00]: He'd also never heard of the woman who signed the letters. 17:16.077 --> 17:19.161 [SPEAKER_00]: He had no memory of any friend of mums that my fit. 17:19.782 --> 17:22.946 [SPEAKER_00]: He suggested it was probably something from before we were born. 17:23.747 --> 17:25.469 [SPEAKER_00]: And that we'd never get to the bottom of. 17:26.490 --> 17:28.272 [SPEAKER_00]: And that was almost certainly right. 17:29.394 --> 17:30.235 [SPEAKER_00]: I agreed with him. 17:31.570 --> 17:43.000 [SPEAKER_00]: I went back to the letters, made sure they were back more or less how I'd found them, and I set the photograph on top, face down, the reasons I didn't examine. 17:43.981 --> 17:47.064 [SPEAKER_00]: And I left the whole thing back on the kitchen table. 17:48.005 --> 17:50.166 [SPEAKER_00]: I went to bed around half past 10. 17:51.110 --> 17:53.491 [SPEAKER_00]: Check all the doors turned out all the lights. 17:54.152 --> 17:58.014 [SPEAKER_00]: I left the spare room light on and the doors slightly a jar. 17:58.755 --> 18:01.616 [SPEAKER_00]: As I always do if I'm sleeping somewhere unfamiliar. 18:02.717 --> 18:07.620 [SPEAKER_00]: I like to be able to see at least something, to hear the house. 18:09.341 --> 18:13.023 [SPEAKER_00]: I woke at 10 past 2, not gradually instantly. 18:13.724 --> 18:15.325 [SPEAKER_00]: The way a noise pulls you up. 18:16.225 --> 18:18.567 [SPEAKER_00]: Except I couldn't identify a noise. 18:19.652 --> 18:21.714 [SPEAKER_00]: I lay still and I listen to the house. 18:22.635 --> 18:22.955 [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing. 18:24.136 --> 18:35.167 [SPEAKER_00]: I check my phone for the time and as I did I notice the spare room door, which as I say I'd left a jar, now fully closed. 18:35.187 --> 18:38.671 [SPEAKER_00]: I initially felt no fear, more curiosity. 18:39.672 --> 18:43.996 [SPEAKER_00]: I got to use the bathroom, check the landing, again nothing. 18:45.127 --> 18:52.412 [SPEAKER_00]: I told myself the door had been sworn on a draft and I went back to bed, but before hand I opened it and left it to jar again. 18:54.193 --> 19:02.279 [SPEAKER_00]: A 20-4 I woke again, same sensation, immediate, complete, a switch being thrown. 19:03.420 --> 19:10.805 [SPEAKER_00]: I lay there with a light off for longer this time, and this time the thing I noticed was the silence. 19:13.210 --> 19:16.373 [SPEAKER_00]: I know that sound odd, but silence is not uniform. 19:17.013 --> 19:28.404 [SPEAKER_00]: A house at night when your alone has its own specific quality, the home of a fridge, the occasional flecks of the building, the soft buffer of the outside world coming through the walls. 19:29.485 --> 19:32.047 [SPEAKER_00]: What I was lying in didn't have that quality. 19:33.228 --> 19:38.193 [SPEAKER_00]: It was a closer silence, a silence that felt like the room had shrunk. 19:38.894 --> 19:45.697 [SPEAKER_00]: like the air had been moved aside to accommodate something that was now in the room with me. 19:46.857 --> 19:48.598 [SPEAKER_00]: I turned on the bedside lamp. 19:49.698 --> 19:53.680 [SPEAKER_00]: At the foot of the bed facing away from me was a child. 19:54.480 --> 20:01.283 [SPEAKER_00]: She was small, the right size for four or five years of age, darker, the dress. 20:02.573 --> 20:09.096 [SPEAKER_00]: I won't try to describe the physical experience of that moment because I don't think I would have the vocabulary to do so. 20:10.057 --> 20:17.020 [SPEAKER_00]: I know my mind went immediately to every rational possibility and exhausted the mall in about two seconds. 20:18.021 --> 20:19.561 [SPEAKER_00]: I know I made a sound. 20:20.502 --> 20:22.843 [SPEAKER_00]: I know I pulled back against the headboard. 20:23.563 --> 20:27.045 [SPEAKER_00]: I know my hands were shaking before I was conscious of being frightened. 20:28.195 --> 20:29.576 [SPEAKER_00]: she didn't move. 20:30.476 --> 20:35.799 [SPEAKER_00]: She stood at the foot of the bed with her back to me, completely still. 20:37.339 --> 20:40.661 [SPEAKER_00]: I said something, I think it may have been, hello. 20:41.762 --> 20:43.762 [SPEAKER_00]: My voice didn't sound like my voice. 20:44.963 --> 20:46.324 [SPEAKER_00]: She didn't react. 20:48.045 --> 20:54.648 [SPEAKER_00]: I kept the light on and I watched her, I counted in my head, I think, because I needed something to do with my brain. 20:55.774 --> 21:00.137 [SPEAKER_00]: 5 seconds, 10, 30, a full minute. 21:01.398 --> 21:10.424 [SPEAKER_00]: She was not the stillness of a sleeping child or a child frozen with surprise, and she was not breathing in any way I could see. 21:11.585 --> 21:14.206 [SPEAKER_00]: This stillness was total. 21:15.427 --> 21:18.149 [SPEAKER_00]: The way a photograph is still. 21:19.477 --> 21:26.220 [SPEAKER_00]: The way something is still that doesn't require movement because movement is not part of what it is. 21:27.601 --> 21:41.748 [SPEAKER_00]: And that was the thing that did me, that specific thing, the thing I've never told anyone is that I became acutely terribly aware that I did not want her to turn around. 21:42.753 --> 21:45.054 [SPEAKER_00]: and I don't know where that awareness came from. 21:45.994 --> 21:49.355 [SPEAKER_00]: I hadn't thought it, it arrived fully formed. 21:50.116 --> 21:56.238 [SPEAKER_00]: Like a certainty that it'd been waiting for me to be in this exact situation before it was needed. 21:57.638 --> 22:00.379 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever was going on to be on that front. 22:02.160 --> 22:08.062 [SPEAKER_00]: Whatever was going to be on the front of that, I knew I did not want to see it. 22:09.470 --> 22:25.195 [SPEAKER_00]: I understood that with the completeness that had nothing to do with logic, and everything to do with some older, more primal part of me that keeps me alive, that has kept people and humans alive long since our rational minds came along. 22:26.456 --> 22:35.499 [SPEAKER_00]: I slowly slid out of bed on the far side, keeping my eyes on our at all times, keeping my face to her back. 22:36.843 --> 22:43.827 [SPEAKER_00]: I backed myself out into the hallway, and I turned on every light I could reach without taking my eyes off the bedroom door. 22:44.947 --> 22:53.572 [SPEAKER_00]: Then I backed myself downstairs, sitting on the sofa with the kitchen light and the whole light and the living room light and every light on. 22:54.272 --> 22:59.074 [SPEAKER_00]: I had every door open so I could have as many clear lines of sight as possible. 23:00.215 --> 23:03.277 [SPEAKER_00]: And I sat there until it was fully daylight. 23:07.247 --> 23:13.572 [SPEAKER_00]: When I built up the courage to go back upstairs at maybe half-seven, the spare room was empty. 23:14.773 --> 23:15.954 [SPEAKER_00]: And I checked everywhere. 23:16.935 --> 23:21.159 [SPEAKER_00]: My mother's room, the bathroom, the airing cupboard, behind every door. 23:22.039 --> 23:22.440 [SPEAKER_00]: Nothing. 23:23.901 --> 23:26.723 [SPEAKER_00]: I went back into the spare room to collect my overnight bag. 23:27.444 --> 23:29.365 [SPEAKER_00]: I didn't go to the foot of the bed. 23:30.206 --> 23:31.607 [SPEAKER_00]: I stuck to the far side. 23:35.951 --> 23:38.933 [SPEAKER_00]: and I left without looking at the space where she'd been stood. 23:40.415 --> 23:44.838 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if that was sensible or cowardly, but I think a mix of both. 23:46.439 --> 23:51.543 [SPEAKER_00]: I checked all the rooms again on the way out, not the methodical check of a few hours earlier. 23:52.264 --> 24:00.770 [SPEAKER_00]: This was a quick, lights on lights off sweep that was really just about making sure no door was closed that I hadn't closed myself. 24:04.965 --> 24:09.807 [SPEAKER_00]: I locked that front door and I sat in the car on the drive for half an hour. 24:11.107 --> 24:16.889 [SPEAKER_00]: Just trying to make any rational sense, before I eventually started the engine. 24:18.209 --> 24:27.372 [SPEAKER_00]: From the outside the house looked entirely normal, same as it had always looked, same as it had looked every time I'd come home to it as a child. 24:28.668 --> 24:41.492 [SPEAKER_00]: Driving back, thinking about my mom living in that house alone for 30 years after my dad left, sleeping in that house every night, and thinking about that box in the wardrobe. 24:42.753 --> 24:52.116 [SPEAKER_00]: I thought about the fact she had never, not once, given me or my brother, any indication there was ever anything wrong with that house. 24:53.509 --> 24:55.250 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what that means. 24:56.071 --> 25:03.216 [SPEAKER_00]: Whether it means there was nothing ever wrong with the house and whatever I experienced was contained to that one weekend. 25:04.317 --> 25:10.382 [SPEAKER_00]: Triggered somehow by opening that box, by looking at that photograph. 25:11.743 --> 25:18.468 [SPEAKER_00]: Or whether it means my mum had spent over 30 years managing something and not telling us 25:20.110 --> 25:24.431 [SPEAKER_00]: As I drove home, I patted the box on my passenger seat. 25:25.632 --> 25:30.713 [SPEAKER_00]: Why I took it with me, I honestly cannot tell you, but I did. 25:32.194 --> 25:40.336 [SPEAKER_00]: But here's the part I haven't told my brother, because I told him the broad shape of what happened, but I stopped before this. 25:48.473 --> 25:51.355 [SPEAKER_00]: I got myself ready, or should I say, unready. 25:52.636 --> 26:02.164 [SPEAKER_00]: This was now time for me to try and relax, get a my pajamas, and try to make some sort of logical sense of what I'd experienced. 26:03.204 --> 26:08.688 [SPEAKER_00]: When I felt ready, I sat at my kitchen table, and I pulled the box, towards me. 26:10.029 --> 26:12.792 [SPEAKER_00]: Deciding I would take a second look at this photograph. 26:13.533 --> 26:21.776 [SPEAKER_00]: to see if the dress that this little girl was wearing was the dress that had its back to me over the weekend. 26:23.097 --> 26:24.337 [SPEAKER_00]: So I lifted the lid. 26:25.658 --> 26:27.579 [SPEAKER_00]: The photograph wasn't there. 26:29.259 --> 26:37.042 [SPEAKER_00]: I went through that box methodically, every letter, the box itself, the twine, I went through my bag, my coats, I checked my 26:39.074 --> 26:43.316 [SPEAKER_00]: It was not in the house, not in the car, not in the box. 26:44.697 --> 26:54.242 [SPEAKER_00]: The last time I touched that photograph was when I'd placed it back in the box and placed it on the kitchen table the previous evening in Gimai Mothers' home. 26:55.003 --> 26:57.364 [SPEAKER_00]: Face down, before I went to bed. 26:59.245 --> 27:04.568 [SPEAKER_00]: I have three questions that I come back to and just can't answer. 27:09.592 --> 27:22.056 [SPEAKER_00]: what my mum and this woman saw, what the arrangement was they made, and whether it has anything to do with the house or something else entirely. 27:23.596 --> 27:30.339 [SPEAKER_00]: The second clearly is who this girl was, not what she was, who? 27:31.839 --> 27:36.721 [SPEAKER_00]: Because whoever had put that photograph in that box, had kept it there 27:39.238 --> 27:43.642 [SPEAKER_00]: and my mum had kept that box for 30-plus years. 27:45.423 --> 27:47.144 [SPEAKER_00]: None of this happens by accident. 27:48.966 --> 27:53.229 [SPEAKER_00]: My third question is the Wal-Nai find hardest to sit with. 27:54.890 --> 28:04.398 [SPEAKER_00]: If what was stood at the foot of my bed was the thing in the photograph, and I'm not saying it was, I'm saying I don't know. 28:06.032 --> 28:09.394 [SPEAKER_00]: But then it knew I had seen the photograph. 28:10.855 --> 28:16.838 [SPEAKER_00]: It knew I had looked at its face, although it stood with its back to me. 28:18.039 --> 28:29.145 [SPEAKER_00]: Inside me, even with my logical, rational point of view on the world, something in me internally believes I was given a choice. 28:30.625 --> 28:43.051 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if it means the photograph was a kind of warning about exactly this, and my mum had left it face down for the exact same reason that I ended up putting it face down. 28:44.571 --> 28:50.534 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what my mum knew, or what she may have been protecting me and my brother from. 28:51.915 --> 28:56.957 [SPEAKER_00]: Or whether the fact she's gone now means that protection is gone too. 28:58.969 --> 29:01.431 [SPEAKER_00]: The house itself sold four months ago. 29:02.612 --> 29:03.693 [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know who lives that. 29:04.934 --> 29:11.620 [SPEAKER_00]: I thought about trying to reach them, but every time I tried to talk myself into it, I talk myself out of it. 29:12.601 --> 29:15.763 [SPEAKER_00]: Because I don't know what I would say or what good it would do. 29:17.965 --> 29:25.471 [SPEAKER_00]: If anyone listening has had an experience involving something in a parent's home, they clearly kept deliberately hidden. 29:26.440 --> 29:36.265 [SPEAKER_00]: Something that suggested they've been managing, something for years without telling anyone, I would really love to know I'm not the only one. 29:37.986 --> 29:44.609 [SPEAKER_00]: And if anyone knows what it means when something won't show you its face, I'd love to know that too. 29:46.150 --> 29:51.393 [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Kev, I know this is rather long, but one final point. 29:53.074 --> 29:55.355 [SPEAKER_00]: My brother sent me a message two weeks ago, 29:56.563 --> 30:04.109 [SPEAKER_00]: He said, and I quote, you won't believe me, but I've just got on the bus at night, and there was one other person on it. 30:04.990 --> 30:06.891 [SPEAKER_00]: I only noticed her when I raised my head. 30:07.572 --> 30:14.217 [SPEAKER_00]: She had long black hair, and I thought she was far too young to be travelling on a bus at this time of night. 30:15.618 --> 30:17.980 [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't see her face, she was looking straight ahead. 30:19.301 --> 30:21.103 [SPEAKER_00]: I looked down at my phone to read a text, 30:25.406 --> 30:29.769 [SPEAKER_00]: All the books hadn't stopped in between me looking at her and my phone. 30:30.850 --> 30:38.494 [SPEAKER_00]: Work that one out sits, low, far from lolling, I was in utter shock. 30:39.955 --> 30:42.797 [SPEAKER_00]: Even though I responded with a laughing emoji. 30:44.118 --> 30:48.881 [SPEAKER_00]: If it does all does not make the show, at least I'm glad some one of an open mind 30:59.794 --> 31:04.878 [SPEAKER_00]: Well, Claire, thank you so, so much for this amazing experience. 31:05.979 --> 31:11.864 [SPEAKER_00]: I absolutely love this experience in its entirety, and I will explain why. 31:12.684 --> 31:16.668 [SPEAKER_00]: You'll note there was one sound effect throughout this entire episode. 31:17.548 --> 31:19.890 [SPEAKER_00]: That being the sound of a light switch. 31:20.871 --> 31:24.134 [SPEAKER_00]: Simply because this episode does not need any other 31:28.250 --> 31:36.795 [SPEAKER_00]: It's very akin and it's rare for a long length episode to the shorter experiences that we cover on Dark Bites. 31:37.815 --> 31:47.040 [SPEAKER_00]: Now our patrons will tell you I really enjoyed doing Dark Bites episode because the stories are short and therefore give you as the listener or me as the reader. 31:47.761 --> 31:54.884 [SPEAKER_00]: Not more jump off points about theories to why but we've just read or heard may or may not 31:56.905 --> 32:07.969 [SPEAKER_00]: This to me is the closest elongated version to a short dark bite, but the most interesting part about that is Nonovid's filler. 32:09.289 --> 32:24.555 [SPEAKER_00]: Each in every part of this is relevant to the experience, and even now as I finish up this now 30 plus minutes episode, I feel like I've only been talking for five minutes, which is the sign of a great experience. 32:26.042 --> 32:32.484 [SPEAKER_00]: But the jump-off point we can look from at this episode are as terrifying as they are numerous. 32:33.965 --> 32:51.872 [SPEAKER_00]: Firstly, from what you've wrote, it does appear to be, without jumping too many guns, that your mother was connected with something, some sort of organisation or at least a one-on-one agreement, apparently to keep a spirit trapped. 32:52.852 --> 33:11.023 [SPEAKER_00]: Or should I say at least distanced, from whoever the letter writer was, now the lack of letters when they stop in the late 80s would imply your mother don't something which made the writer of the letters be a piece, whatever that was. 33:12.944 --> 33:20.128 [SPEAKER_00]: And I do think, although I would not have thought of this, it had you not said it, your theory could well be right. 33:21.128 --> 33:27.072 [SPEAKER_00]: about whatever protection your mother placed around this girl died with your mother. 33:28.293 --> 33:36.419 [SPEAKER_00]: And the Adenda at the end where you receive your brother's text message was the final chill down the spine. 33:37.040 --> 33:41.083 [SPEAKER_00]: That's what convinced me this is going as our penultimate episode. 33:42.304 --> 33:45.526 [SPEAKER_00]: Because it shows one wonderful, terrifying thing. 33:46.745 --> 33:50.906 [SPEAKER_00]: The right experience does not need bells and whistles. 33:51.247 --> 33:54.108 [SPEAKER_00]: The right experience lives in your head. 33:55.708 --> 33:57.529 [SPEAKER_00]: You encounter it as you hear it. 33:58.589 --> 34:04.171 [SPEAKER_00]: And you may, as I did initially, step back and think, is that actually scary? 34:05.211 --> 34:09.393 [SPEAKER_00]: And then I read it again, but made sure to visualize as I was reading. 34:10.485 --> 34:26.852 [SPEAKER_00]: And genuinely, if you absorb that experience in the way you're mental, by visualizing what you're hearing, nobody can walk away from that experience and say that they would not be absolutely terrified or left unaffected. 34:27.943 --> 34:44.086 [SPEAKER_00]: So, Claire, thank you so much for this amazing experience, and please, touch what it doesn't take place, but should there be any follow-up, please do let us know fast and foremost, but once again, thank you. 34:44.586 --> 34:49.267 [SPEAKER_00]: And thank you to each and every one of you who have joined me on today's penultimate episode. 34:50.387 --> 34:55.488 [SPEAKER_00]: I truly cannot wait to tear into this episode in our after-dark Patreon show. 34:56.590 --> 35:06.112 [SPEAKER_00]: and on the subject of, as promised at the start, a quick mention of our wonderful team of Patreon, who are the reason you're hearing this for free right now. 35:07.352 --> 35:15.774 [SPEAKER_00]: When you sign up to our Patreon, who's links in the show notes, you can join the first tier to get ad free episodes and who likes andverts. 35:16.514 --> 35:22.996 [SPEAKER_00]: Tier 2 gets early access and ad free episodes, meaning early access to finales and debuts. 35:23.876 --> 35:37.247 [SPEAKER_00]: and also tier 3, gets all of the below, as well as an hour additional content for patron's only each and every week, even on the downtime between seasons, which is about to come up. 35:37.985 --> 35:44.548 [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, 52 weeks of the year, our patrons at our goal level receive two additional shows every week. 35:45.129 --> 35:54.614 [SPEAKER_00]: Darkbites where we take a look at the shorter experiences sent in, and also after dark, where I do things like take a look at the episode we just covered. 35:55.453 --> 36:10.097 [SPEAKER_00]: And now with the break coming up, it's the perfect time to claim your free week trial of Patreon at the highest tier so you can binge for at least a week, that back catalogue of over 200 plus hours of dark bite episodes. 36:10.757 --> 36:18.199 [SPEAKER_00]: So to claim that free week you just simply go to the show notes or you can go to patreon.com forward slash the dark paranormal. 36:19.079 --> 36:22.920 [SPEAKER_00]: And of course if you can't find naturally support the show, do not worry. 36:23.662 --> 36:26.164 [SPEAKER_00]: your ears are the only thing I require. 36:26.925 --> 36:35.191 [SPEAKER_00]: But if you be so kind as to subscribe to the show which is free and takes a few seconds, all leave a nice review or maybe tell a friend. 36:35.772 --> 36:37.873 [SPEAKER_00]: Because the show works like a snowball. 36:38.394 --> 36:48.882 [SPEAKER_00]: Do tell a friend, they listen, they may have a story they send it in, I relay that story back, somebody else may tell a friend, and we end up, like I've said earlier, doing something 36:52.987 --> 36:59.629 [SPEAKER_00]: creating an archive of the current generations' darkest paranormal experiences. 37:00.529 --> 37:08.692 [SPEAKER_00]: So if you can join the world's greatest paranormal community in my eyes, sincerely, then Patreon is for you. 37:09.532 --> 37:12.073 [SPEAKER_00]: And if you're unable to, you can still help 37:17.723 --> 37:38.192 [SPEAKER_00]: But I want to thank each and every one of you for joining me on this wonderful penultimate episode, and believe me, hit subscribe, be amongst the first to hear next week's finale, as I say, a finale, the likes of which I doubt we will see again or have had the likes of before. 37:39.124 --> 37:45.430 [SPEAKER_00]: But for now, I will say goodbye and ask if you just want to think, and that's to remember. 37:46.131 --> 38:00.905 [SPEAKER_00]: When you discuss the paranormal, always try to leave some of your disbelief at the door, and I'll speak to you next time, for the finale of the dark paranormal season 24. 38:01.906 --> 38:03.668 [SPEAKER_00]: Stay safe and goodbye.