This week, Amanda has a story to share revolving around a mother, children, and something potentially sinister invading their new home. After her horrific tale, we engage in a spirited discussion that leads to many avenues none of us quite expected.
Welcome to Smirk. A podcast that covers society and culture through a storytelling lens. Part creative writing, part discussion, and always interesting. Each week our hosts brings a story to the show, a story they wrote themselves, which is immediately followed by discussion on the author’s moral or theme.
These stories can cover any topic the host wants to discuss, it can be lighthearted or more serious. No one but the author knows if these tales are truth or fiction, and part of the fun is guessing while you’re listening before the reality is made clear.
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Want to read Amanda’s story “I’ll Make You Scream Like the Night You Died” in full? Think you can identify the moral or theme for this episode? Read it below, and then take a listen to the podcast.
I’ll Make You Scream Like the Night You Died
A newlywed couple, Ariella and Dominick, are moving into their first house together in Baltimore, Maryland after Dominick landed the job of his dreams. He will be a resident neurosurgeon at John Hopkins Hospital. They each have a little one from previous relationships. Ariella’s little boy, Spencer, is a 6-year old happy but introverted child but Dom takes care of him as if he were his own. Dom’s son, William, is 4 years old and has a neurological condition which was the motivation for Dom to go into the field of medicine. They’re also expecting – Ariella’s about 6 months along and they’re convinced it’ll be a girl. Well, Dom is constantly rubbing Ariella’s stomach telling the fetus that it’ll be a girl – so honestly, maybe they’re the ones trying to do the convincing.
They found a beautiful manor that has windows everywhere, is somewhat secluded which means quiet, and has many rooms for their growing family. It’s a very gothic looking home, with a lot of yard space and a small woodsy area in the back behind the big Willow tree. It has two offices- one for Dom to study from home and one for Ariella to do her painting when she’s not taking care of the kids or eating pickles dipped in grape jam with sprinkles on top. The house was on the market for awhile and they heard stories which made them hesitant to even buy, but the offer wasn’t one they could turn down. It’s pretty close to the hospital and near some really great schools, and with the student debt they’ve both accrued, Ariella from her art degree and Dom from his medical degrees, they needed something affordable. It was a big house that needed a little bit of work but seemed well worth it to them. And the playset in the backyard that was included made Spencer and William sure to remind mom and dad how badly they wanted to be there. So, they closed on it. Two weeks to get everything moved in before Dom started his residency, and with everything they had going on, this wasn’t a lot of time. They managed to get all the furniture set up and the boxes in each according room in only five days, but there was still a lot of work to do.
They spent their weekend putting the bedrooms together for the kids and Dom’s study space but spent some time exploring the new neighborhood. They were greeted with so many warm welcomes from everyone because they hadn’t had a new face in 25 years. No one explained why there were no permanent residents in the last quarter of a century, and Dom and Ariella both titled their heads at this. When they told them which house they bought, they were met with fake smiles and shock. This only furthered the concern for Ariella, who worries about everything, but Dom had too much else to think about to worry about these weird occurrences. He still needed to get everything ready for his first day at the Hospital and make sure the house was ready for him to be gone extremely long hours.
Three weeks in and Ariella loved her new house and so did the boys. Dom worked for his dad’s carpentry business growing up so he was quite handy but his free time to fix things was minimal. Ariella began noticing a lot of creaks in the night but knew how much pressure Dom was under and didn’t want to nag him to fix things. She figured, hey, it’s an old house, what can you do?
But things started to get weird… She was in bed half-asleep one night and woke to the sensation of someone in the bedroom and a hand that draped down her hair affectionately. She was so exhausted that she woke up long enough to look at the clock and say “Hi babe” before falling back asleep. She assumed that it must’ve been Dom coming in from working at the Hospital. 10:12P.M. the clock read. When he woke for work again later that day, she asked him if he slept well and got enough with getting home so early. “Early? Well, I guess 4A.M is early in the span of things,” Dom said as he chuckled a little. Ariella squinted her face – “4A.M? I heard you come in around 10 last night”. “You must’ve been dreaming sweetie, it was a late night. We had a released patient come back in with a brain bleed,” Dom responded.
A couple nights later Dom told Ariella he knew he’d be home late because of a lengthy procedure that they would be starting on later in the evening. Ariella began getting frantic when she was alone in bed and the kids were asleep. The noises, the feeling she KNEW she had that someone had to have been there, and the weird neighbors. She hadn’t slept since Dom told her he was at work when she felt someone in the room. She knew something else was going on. So of course, she went to Google for the answers.
Side note – why don’t more people do this? Google the Gothic house you think you might buy and see if any creepy stories come up. Anyway, Google confirmed her fears. A family of five was slaughtered in this house, one of 6 families to be murdered on that block by a deranged psychopath – only 60 years ago. The first family that tried to buy after it happened (about 40 years ago), left within 30 days because of complaints of noises, things moving, and… human silhouettes. “What. The. Hell,” Ariella thought to herself on the couch. Still, she persisted; she read on. The next and last family that moved in came in about 26 years ago and dealt with it for a little while longer but left after they found their dog hung from the big Willow tree in the backyard and their child told them of her “friend, Judy” who told her that “this isn’t your house. You need to leave”.
Ariella shut the laptop and said to herself, “Oh, hell no. Screw this. That’s it. I grew up on these movies, we’re out of here.” She immediately called Dominick, but he didn’t answer. She left him a detailed message before the phone was ripped out of her hand and thrown across the room. She couldn’t find it and didn’t have time to worry about it. She ran upstairs to her kids’ bedroom and yelled for them to get out of bed, but… As soon as she reached the top of the spiral staircase, she looked down the hallway and straight out of The Shining, their two kids are standing at the end, staring at her. “Uh… Nope,” she said to them. A big bang happened behind her towards the bottom of the stairs, she turned behind her in terror, to find nothing. When she looked back at the hallway, her kids were gone. She ran down the hallway screaming for them, went into Spencer’s room and found Spencer talking in the corner to someone. “Baby, who are you talking to you? I need you to come to mommy, okay?”
Spencer just kept talking. All of sudden, in the midst of conversation and Ariella frantically trying to coerce her child to leave the corner, she hears Spencer say the name “Judy”. “Oh God, it’s happening,” she says – right before Spencer turns his head around with dark circles under his eyes while his body is still facing the corner and YELLS “GO. AWAY.” She runs to the other room for William, he’s sleeping. She scoops him up and turns around towards the door and there Spencer is. His hand seemingly interlocked with another’s – an adult’s. “Baby…” She says to Spencer.
He says nothing more, looks up to the invisible figure to his left, makes eye contact, and slowly moves his face back, making eye contact with Ariella. Spencer tilts his head down and looks at her…with a smirk.
Now, listen to the full episode as we dissect Amanda’s story.