The Little Clown by the Window

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[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_04] 1% know that we don't. Why are they building all those bunkers? And really, what the heck is going on with the Denver airport? Join me every week to see just how high up this goes on the Spotify podcast, Conspiracy Theories. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:00:48] [SPEAKER_00] I turn back around and one of them has their hand wrapped around the frame of the closet. I can see the fingers sticking out.

[00:01:05] [SPEAKER_03] Have you ever seen something move that absolutely shouldn't? No breeze, no wind, just a lifeless clown doll on a swing moving on its own? My name is Edwin and here is Alexis True Scary Story.

[00:01:29] [SPEAKER_00] The first time that it happened, I was around six or seven. It's the first memory I've ever had of my grandmother's townhouse. One bedroom was dedicated to a regular little cute hangout room. The other bedroom that wasn't her room was dedicated to her crafts. And in her craft room, there is this giant body-length mirror.

[00:01:56] [SPEAKER_00] On top of this mirror, sitting in front of it was a porcelain-slash-stuffed clown doll. I just hated this doll. It creeped me out.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_00] I literally closed the door and I was like, I don't want to see it. I want nothing to do with it. Later that night, I woke up to go to the bathroom. I never have slept through the night. I don't know why. I'm still that way till this day.

[00:02:42] [SPEAKER_00] I remember getting up from her bed, crawling over her because I had to sleep near the wall. I was a wild sleeper and I would fall off the bed constantly. I'm walking down the hallway. It's dark. I'm a little bit scared, but it's my grandma's house. Nothing bad's gonna happen to me. The craft door room is open.

[00:03:09] [SPEAKER_00] Sometimes she goes in there. She might have just left the door open. I remember the window being open. It was nighttime because I remember the moon shining. It wasn't breezy. There was no wind. The curtains definitely would have been moving. I could stand across the room and puff air into the room and the curtains would move. They were very light, sheer curtains.

[00:03:35] [SPEAKER_00] The curtains weren't moving and the mirror sits in front of the window. You can see about half of the window. The clown doll starts swaying side to side. Now, if we're talking logically, if it's in front of the window, it should be swaying front to back if there's wind.

[00:04:05] [SPEAKER_00] And it's not a light doll, but it's not particularly heavy either. So even if there was wind blowing into the room, there is no logical way for the doll to be moving. Because the mirror is blocking any wind that should be coming into the room. And the wind definitely wouldn't have been strong enough to move this doll and it's swaying side to side. I get so freaked out. I am standing there in shock.

[00:04:35] [SPEAKER_00] So I close the crack room door. I go to the bathroom, wash my hands, and I run back into the bed. I tell my grandma about it the next day. She's like, okay, seems like you had a nightmare. Let's pray about it. My grandma was raised Catholic, later converted to Baptist Christian. She's like, okay, we're going to say a prayer. You're going to feel better.

[00:05:03] [SPEAKER_00] I did tell my mom when I got back with her that I didn't like the feeling the dog gave me. I didn't tell her specifically the story until I was much older. I have told a couple people since then, now that I'm way older and recanting these stories. But my family is the only people that know that I don't like clowns.

[00:05:33] [SPEAKER_00] It's not a fear. I just don't like them. I never have. That's the only very vivid experience I have with this doll. After that, my grandma would put it away when I would come over because it was freaking me out after that day. I didn't like looking at it. I didn't like knowing it existed. I'm a very out of sight, out of mind type of person.

[00:05:57] [SPEAKER_00] The interesting thing about my grandma's house, though, is you would experience gusts of wind or like you would hear whispers or see flashes of things moving throughout the house except for in her room, which is where she kept everything religious. It's not that she didn't have crosses throughout the house here and there, but all of her holy oil was in her jewelry box.

[00:06:22] [SPEAKER_00] All of her holy Bibles was in her room, specifically a big blue one, because that is her grandfather's holy Bible. And it's been passed down. My mom now owns possession of it. That's the only room I've never experienced anything in. My cousin has experienced things in my grandmother's house. She hasn't gone into detail.

[00:06:48] [SPEAKER_00] I've had another cousin that has claimed to see shadow figures throughout the house and throughout the hallways, but nobody's ever had stories about my grandma's room specifically. And I think that's because she is a very vivid, very loyal, devout Christian. Whenever her grandchildren, any one of us would have a nightmare, she would go through and re-bless the house. That's just how she's always brought comfort to us and comfort to herself.

[00:07:18] [SPEAKER_00] When I was about 10, she moved out of that townhouse and into an apartment, but she lived in the basement. So it was probably a house that was converted into apartments. I would experience very vivid nightmares. I don't remember them in detail because I was quite young. But it was to the point where they would wake me up and I would not go back to sleep.

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_00] Or if I did go back to sleep, I would jump right back into those nightmares. I would have them repeatedly throughout the night. That basement level apartment was probably the most negative feeling space that my grandma has ever lived in. She no longer lives there. She moved out of there when I was 13, so my last year of middle school. She did move out of there.

[00:08:18] [SPEAKER_00] The second really scary experience that I remember was when she was moving from that original townhouse in the first story. To the second one where she was living in an apartment in the basement. She had gifted that clown doll to my eldest brother. I don't know why he liked it. I don't know why he wanted it. Maybe it was because I was scared of it and he wanted to irritate me like all brothers do. He claimed it was because he liked the doll.

[00:08:48] [SPEAKER_00] But I remember coming home from school one day and it is sitting in my brother's room hanging in front of his mirror. I was like, why do you have this? Number one, this is grandma's. Number two, this thing is creepy. I don't want it in the house. My brother was like, there's nothing wrong with it. Like, you're overreacting. Grandma gave it to me, so I get to decide where it goes. I just remember complaining nonstop about it.

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_00] I was like, I don't want it in the house. I hate it. It creeps me out. I can't believe it doesn't creep the rest of you guys out. I mean, look at it. And then I come home one day, it's gone. My brother's complaining that it's gone. He doesn't know where it is. He thinks I touched it, so we're fighting about it. I'm like, I didn't touch your creepy clown doll. I would never in a million years touch that thing. It's not my fault, but it's gone. It was ugly, good news.

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_00] Till this day, I'm not sure if my mom did actually throw it out or it did disappear. After this clown doll had came into our house, I started experiencing it more vividly. So the way our house was set up, it was also a townhouse, but it was slightly bigger than my grandma. The kitchen had the stairs in the corner of the kitchen. It was across the room from the sink.

[00:10:13] [SPEAKER_00] There was a closet there. One night I had tried to be slick about not doing my chore, preteen hormones, I'm being sassy, I don't feel like doing the dishes. I'm like, if I pretend to go to sleep, my mom's not going to wake me up. She does end up waking me up. It's like 10 or 11 at night. She tells me to go downstairs and do the dishes. I'm hopping and puffing, going down the stairs.

[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_00] Again, the usual preteen girl attitude. Of course, I start the dishwater, waiting for the water to rise. In the kitchen, there is a closet. It's a big one, but it's used to store the boiler and the heater. And you do have some space to fit like brooms and mops. The closet was usually closed but cracked open a little bit so that we could slide our hand

[00:11:12] [SPEAKER_00] in to grab the broom and the moth. She was very specific about not opening it any wider. Don't go in the closet. Just reach in, grab what you have to get, and take your hand back out. I am diagonally across from it at the sink. And I feel something staring at me. It's kind of like if you have a pet, and they're laying down or they're sitting somewhere behind you.

[00:11:41] [SPEAKER_00] You can just feel them looking at you. But it's very intense gaze. I'm spinning around in the kitchen, doing a full 360, looking around, looking under the table.

[00:11:58] [SPEAKER_00] I feel that stare on me again after, I want to say maybe one or two minutes, of not feeling eyes on me. Turned back around, and my eyes immediately connect with the slither opening of the closet door in the kitchen.

[00:12:23] [SPEAKER_00] My eyes are adjusting to it, because there is no light in that heater closet. And I see the silhouette of what looks like something from a comedy movie where it's the youngest character on the bottom. And it goes by age, and it's like three of them. So the youngest, the middle child, and the eldest at the top peeking around a corner. The vibe that's giving is like I'm praying.

[00:12:53] [SPEAKER_00] Like I'm being watched, and I'm about to be chased. But I turn back around, and I start doing the dishes just a little bit faster. And I still feel that gaze on me. I turn back around, and one of them has their hand wrapped around the frame of the closet. I can see the fingers sticking out.

[00:13:22] [SPEAKER_00] I feel like once they know that I see them, and I'm scared, they're going to get me. So I try to slowly and calmly turn back around and start doing the dishes. But I'm rapid fire doing these dishes. It's very clear that I'm freaked out. I drain out the sink, and I book it back up the stairs. I wake up my mom. She's like, why are you running in the house? I'm like, it's nothing. I finish the dishes. I'm going to bed.

[00:13:54] [SPEAKER_00] I saw them on and off throughout my childhood. They've always liked to mess with me. It wasn't every time or every night I was in the kitchen that if it was late enough and everybody else was doing their own thing or sleep, one of them or all three of them would appear. I never got any distinct details. It's just like a silhouette of a person. But they were short, almost like they were supposed to be children.

[00:14:21] [SPEAKER_00] But the vibes I was getting was definitely not childlike spirit. I always hated reaching my hand in there to get the broom. I would try to get my brothers to do it for me. I would try to get away with opening the closet door a little bit more so that I could see in there better. Because I always thought one of them was going to grab me when I went to go reach for the broom in the mop.

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_00] I was 14. And I had decided I wanted to completely move around my side of the bedroom. And I didn't want to do it with my mom's help because I had a very specific vision for how I wanted my side of the bedroom to look. So I had a desk and a dresser and a twin-size bed. Very simple. I had to fit all my stuff in there with my sibling stuff. I had very minimal stuff.

[00:15:19] [SPEAKER_00] They had very minimal stuff. But I had half the room. There was a row of windows across the doorway. And then it was supposed to be a regular closet with a sliding door. But we took down the sliding door after I was like five. My bed was in the middle of the closet. And on the side with the windows was my desk. And it had a vanity mirror on it that could detach from the desk and reattach.

[00:15:51] [SPEAKER_00] And on the other side was my dresser. I had this big, huge, wooden heavy mirror. So, unfortunately, because I was not paying attention and had no idea these existed at the time, I had accidentally created a vortex in my room, which is two mirrors facing each other that creates an infinite reflection of mirrors. I had put my bed in the middle of a vortex.

[00:16:21] [SPEAKER_00] So, a vortex is kind of like a door for spirits and entities. There's no specifics to it. You can't just create the vortex with an intention of letting good spirits into your home. The only way that I know that you can create one is using mirrors, which is you face them towards each other. And because a mirror is a reflection, it's an infinite reflection of mirrors. It just keeps going. There is no end.

[00:16:48] [SPEAKER_00] And I don't know the specifics of why it creates this amount of energy that allows spirits to pass through it. But it's, for some reason, something special that they can use. But yes, I did unintentionally create a vortex in my room and almost sleep in between it. I flipped over the small mirror that could detect from the desk. I took it off the desk and I sat it on the ground next to my bed.

[00:17:21] [SPEAKER_00] I remember eating dinner that night and going to bed. Again, I don't sleep throughout the night. I wake up periodically. I had woken up just to reposition myself. At the foot of my bed to the side of it was a tall shadow figure.

[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_00] Not hunched over my bed, but slightly leaned forward and his head turned looking at me. Almost in like a curious way. You know, like a somebody that comes to look at a baby in a cradle type of way. I did not want it to notice that I knew. So I pretended like I didn't see them. I turned over to my right side and I went back to sleep.

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_00] I woke up for a second time that night and I was going to go to the bathroom. I get up from my bed. I go to my doorway to go to the bathroom that is on my right. He's standing up top of my stairs in the corner in front of the linen closet staring at my doorway. I'm looking at him. He's looking at me. At this point, I'm thinking he for sure knows that I know he's there.

[00:18:43] [SPEAKER_00] I turn back around. I'm like, you know what? I don't want to go to the bathroom anymore. I'm just going to go back to sleep. Pretend I never saw anything. I climb back into the bed. I significantly hide a little bit more under the covers this time. I wake up a third time. It's probably four, maybe five in the morning. I get up and I was like, this has been a weird night. I just want my mom actively getting up out of the bed.

[00:19:12] [SPEAKER_00] I go to my doorway to go to my mom's room. He's standing in my mom's doorway. Again, staring at my doorway. I'm looking at him. He's looking at me. It's almost as if he knew. This time, he is actively blocking my pathway to my mother. I'm freaked out. This time, I don't even go back to sleep. I just go into my bed. I hide under my covers.

[00:19:42] [SPEAKER_00] At this point in my life, I haven't fully accepted the fact that I can see things. I can experience things. I can see things. I was raised Baptist Christian. That is what my mother is. She is still that faith to this day. I was taught that this isn't a real thing. Christians don't necessarily believe in spirits and demons walking around us and being around us. That's more of like a Catholic thing.

[00:20:14] [SPEAKER_00] So, whenever I had told my mom about these experiences, she's like, it was just a nightmare. I had always had very vivid nightmares since I was a small child. So, she's like, it was just a nightmare. It's okay. We're going to pray. You're okay. I did ask my mom a couple months ago, hey, when I told you about these experiences, did you actually believe me? And she told me, I don't necessarily believe in spirits, but I believe my daughter.

[00:20:44] [SPEAKER_00] So, what she would do was when the kids are away, we would be at school or we'd be at my grandma's. She would do what my grandma would do, which is re-anoint the house. Put crosses of holy oil on the doors, windows, any entranceway throughout the house. And recite Bible verses of God being stronger than demons and the devil, etc.

[00:21:10] [SPEAKER_00] She never told me she did these things because she didn't want to feed into it and make me more scared than I already was. But now that I'm older, she admits that she did take a precaution and did re-anoint the home every time I would experience something. And that is the last time that I saw that shadow man. I'm not sure if it's because my mom re-anointed the house after I did tell her the following morning. Or if he was just passing through the vortex.

[00:21:39] [SPEAKER_00] Because that does open another door essentially and just happened to be passing.

[00:22:17] [SPEAKER_00] We had moved my junior year of high school. I was 16. This was my mom's first time buying a home. But it's customary for Baptist Christians. When they move into a new space, whether it's a new office space, a new house, a new apartment, it doesn't matter. It's a new space that is your own that you're going to be occupying. You're supposed to clean it. And then you're supposed to anoint it.

[00:22:44] [SPEAKER_00] You're supposed to ask God to bless it and to protect it. Because this is your place. This is your home. This is your office. He protects you and he also protects the spaces that you reside in. And then we moved in. I had my own room for the first time. I was loving it. My parents decided to move into the basement. Because my mom has a lot of stuff. I had taken the master bedroom upstairs.

[00:23:13] [SPEAKER_00] My little brother had taken that attic converted space. My little sister had taken the room that was next to mine. In that room, I had my bed that was across from the door. My desk was across from the windows. I had a walk-in closet. And I had a giant wooden dresser. I remember I spent all day decorating it. And I'm straightening up my dresser.

[00:23:44] [SPEAKER_00] Just making everything look perfect. I remember I was falling asleep watching TV. Because the TV is directly across from my bed. Right next to that giant wooden dresser. This is the first time that I experienced sleep paralysis. When you experience for the first time, it's very scary. You don't know what's wrong. You don't know why you're experiencing this. Is this a nightmare?

[00:24:11] [SPEAKER_00] My eyes are starting to adjust to the darkness of my room. And on top of the big wooden dresser is this bigger entity hunched over. Kind of like when a cat is sitting, but more hunched in the shoulders. Its head is tilted to the side, almost like it's trying to lean off the top of the dresser. It's staring at me. And I'm freaking out.

[00:24:43] [SPEAKER_00] And it's black and white stripes all over it. And a really long 20 nose and really long fingers. And really sharp teeth. I can easily turn on the light and see if I'm hallucinating. But I can't move. I can't even blink. And I'm just staring at it. And it's staring at me and smiling. Very cat type of smile. And it starts talking to me.

[00:25:12] [SPEAKER_00] I don't remember specifically what it said. Probably because I was freaking out in that moment. But then I remember snapping out of my sleep paralysis experience. And immediately reaching for my phone to Google. Do they talk to you? But I didn't see anything on the internet. On Google. About it talking to someone. And so I was like, maybe it wasn't a nightmare. Because if nobody else has experienced this thing talking to them.

[00:25:41] [SPEAKER_00] Maybe it was sleep paralysis at first. And I had fallen asleep. And it became a nightmare because it was scary. I do know it was for sure a sleep paralysis. I just don't know what part that figure fits into. Because he did talk to me. Ever since then, it has not happened. But to be fair, I did move out of that room. I was like, I don't want to sleep in here. I can't sleep in here now.

[00:26:12] [SPEAKER_00] Shortly after that, I did move out. And I do live in an apartment now with my boyfriend. I have not experienced anything in this apartment. Even though I did not do what my mother would have liked me to do. Which was anoint my apartment. The most recent experience was for my 90th birthday.

[00:26:37] [SPEAKER_00] My best friend, Ayana, had come to pick me up for my birthday. Take me over to her apartment where she lives with her family. Just spend the weekend there. Have a little girl's weekend. Something to enjoy my birthday with. She gives me a necklace. And it is a Saint Benedict necklace. Which is one of the saints for the Catholic religion. And he protects you from evil spirits and demons.

[00:27:06] [SPEAKER_00] They drop me back off on a Sunday morning. And I get ready to go to work on Monday. I go throughout the whole week at work. The only difference was I had a co-worker that I was somewhat friends with. We had a falling out. And we were no longer on good terms. I go into work Saturday. Saturdays aren't mandatory for my job.

[00:27:35] [SPEAKER_00] You can sign up for them doing overtime hours. I'm talking to her titi, her aunt. And she's asking me what happened between us. Trying to get the story. The department I work in is to pick orders for whatever contacts that the customer orders. And you go throughout the aisles. And you just find the numbers. And you pick them out of the boxes. That's it. That's all. It's very simple.

[00:28:06] [SPEAKER_00] Sometimes there are gaps in between these shelves. And you can see in between them into the aisle over. Or like what's behind or near the vicinity of them. Whatever's in the point of view of that gap. And that specific gap that I was looking at while talking to her titi was the one where we would get our papers from. With the list of contacts that we were supposed to gather for that order. And you can see people's faces or like depending on how tall they are, their chests.

[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_00] I'm looking through that crack. And I see her eyes looking back at me. And she has a very distinct way she wears her eyeliner. And we're the only people of color. Black people. In the job. So I know it's not me. I'm not looking at myself through the aisle. So I see her eyes looking at me. I paused talking to her titi. And I was like oh she's here. I didn't know she was here. And she's like oh maybe she was late. Because we were supposed to be there at 8.

[00:29:06] [SPEAKER_00] But she takes the bus. So sometimes with the city transportation system. You can run a little late. We go about our day. And at the end of the work shift. I'm talking to a mutual friend between me and that co-worker. And I'm like oh where is she at? Like are you guys not walking to the bus stop together? You want to take the bus together now? And she's like yeah but she's not here. She hasn't been here today. She missed the bus this morning.

[00:29:37] [SPEAKER_00] And I was like what do you mean she's not here? I thought I saw her this morning. She's not here. The reason I bring this story up was because originally for my birthday. Before we had that falling out. We were supposed to go over to this co-worker's apartment. Just to celebrate my birthday. Have a girls night. Because that ended up getting cancelled. That's why my best friend came to get me. This co-worker owns a VG board.

[00:30:06] [SPEAKER_00] I have never touched one. I knew they were going to be using it. But I wasn't going to be touching it. I was going to be going near it. That was going to be their fun thing for that weekend. But there are times in my life where I have had people come up with very interesting ideas. Like let's go use a VG board. Let's go play Bloody Mary in the mirror. And life intervenes for some reason. Whether it's my mom calling me and being like I need to come home.

[00:30:36] [SPEAKER_00] Or my mom calling me and being like something's not right. Something in my spirit is telling me you're about to do something. I raised you to know better than to do. You need to come home. This time it was just me having a falling out with her. And then me not being friends with her. So the whole thing was seeing her eyes through the aisle. Not her face. Because I just saw her eyes. And I didn't hear her voice or see her walk in.

[00:31:04] [SPEAKER_00] Was because in a lot of religions and sometimes in the Bible. You do see a lot of mentions of the eyes being a window of the soul. And having known that she has experienced paranormal things in her apartment. She did tell me that she has experienced ghost children running around her home. Maybe that's because she does have a son. And they did latch on to the fact that there is a child in that home. I don't know.

[00:31:34] [SPEAKER_00] But because I know she has played with that Ouija more multiple times. And I do believe on things attaching themselves to people and to items and whatnot. Maybe that was the necklace showing me. That's my theory. That she does have something following her around. That it is confirmed that whatever spirit is roaming her apartment is definitely still there.

[00:32:06] [SPEAKER_00] The women in my family are spiritual in a sense when it comes to intuition of knowing things. But not paranormal. And I do wonder if that developed into paranormal for me. Because children are more susceptible to the paranormal. Because we're so naive and we're so open minded. And everything excites us. But I've always been very in tuned. To the point where I can go to places and naturally tap into spirits that are there.

[00:32:36] [SPEAKER_00] It's like, yeah, there's one here right now. I can feel it here. But I'm just not going to bother with it. Because it's not bothering me. I'm not bothering it. It can stay over there on that side. I can stay over here. For the most part, I do ignore it. Because I do believe once you start indulging in them messing with you, they will stay. And I'm not particularly religious.

[00:33:03] [SPEAKER_00] So I don't really have any prayers on hand. If I really do believe a situation recalls for a prayer, I call my mom or I call my grandma. And I have them pray over the phone. Or I have them give me a prayer, per se, while walking throughout where I live. I'm not sure if they enjoy, especially the more meaner ones, enjoy messing with people that are religious or come from a religious background.

[00:33:31] [SPEAKER_00] Or if it's because I'm open-minded. I don't say they don't exist. I don't say, hey, I'm a hardcore believer. There's probably spirits walking around on the sidewalk outside my house right now. But I do believe that there are things that some people can't see and experience. And there are things other people definitely can see and definitely can experience. And I do believe they pick and choose who to show themselves to.

[00:34:00] [SPEAKER_00] I don't actively seek out the paranormal. I just accept that it's around me and that it will sometimes reach out to me.

[00:34:19] [SPEAKER_03] Thank you, Alexis, for sharing your experiences with us. If you have a true scary story that you want to share, find our form over at truescarystory.com. Scheduling for this episode was done by Bianca Chavez. Editing and sound design by Sarah Voorhees-Wendel. From VW Sound. Additional production by me, Edwin Covarrubias and the Scary FM team. If you're following the show, we'll be back next week with another story. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary, everyone. See you soon.