The Mistake of Never Saying Goodbye

[00:00:01] Despite many warnings, Brooke and her friend decide to play with the Ouija board, a decision they would come to regret. My name is Edwin, and here is Brooke's true scary story.

[00:00:23] My name is Brooke. My first experience ever with the supernatural happened in Irvine, California, at my grandma's house. My grandma still lives in the same house. She bought the house in the mid to late 50s. I was six or seven years old. My mom and I were in the back room watching Unsolved Mysteries, so it was pretty late at night.

[00:00:51] The TV was on. I was sitting on my bed. My mom was to the left of the TV doing her eyebrows. Very late back night watching the show together. All of a sudden, the sound in the room disappeared. There was no TV, no nothing. You could have heard a pin drop. I zoned out on the wall out of nowhere. This huge gust of wind blew all of my hair back.

[00:01:23] I look at the door to the bedroom. There is this huge shadow figure. No facial features, but it was the shape of a human. It was so tall, it almost surpassed the top of the door frame. After a few seconds goes by, it instantly realized that I had seen it. It turns and starts sprinting down the hallway.

[00:01:50] I jumped up from my bed. I run down the hallway and stop. I just knew not to follow it all the way to the end of the hallway out to the door. It makes it to the front door and it disappears. I'm standing completely confused. I go back to my room and it's as if nothing happened. My mom's still doing her eyebrows. The TV is still on. And she didn't even ask me about what happened.

[00:02:19] So it was honestly as if time just stood still. From that point on, I would see things, hear things. We moved around quite a bit when I was growing up. And it didn't matter what house we were in. Something just chose to follow me. I would hear my name being called a lot of the time.

[00:02:43] It would either sound like my mom or someone was trying to sound like my mom to get my attention. I would even hear my name in class in elementary school. And of course, as a little kid, you don't want to hear someone calling my name in the middle of class and draw attention to yourself. I didn't want anyone to think I was crazy. So I kept it to myself a lot of the time. But the experiences never went away.

[00:03:10] They slowed down once I hit my early teenage years, 11, 12, 13. But they never fully went away. Even to this day, I still experience a shift in the energy in the room and this overwhelming sense of dread. It didn't matter what house we were in. Sometimes it would happen during the day. A lot of times it was at night. Just this overwhelming sense of, I'm not alone. Someone is watching.

[00:03:42] Fast forward to middle school. I'm 12 years old. We're living in a townhome, still in Irvine, but out of grandma's house. Me, my mom and dad, my brother and sister. My parents decide that it's not working and they tell us that they're getting a divorce. Dad moves out. He has his own place. That doesn't last long. And he ends up back at my grandma's and he meets my stepmom. They get married.

[00:04:11] They have my youngest sister. And we move into a house in Northwood, not far from my grandma's house at all. This house, the first time that we did a walkthrough of that house, it didn't feel right to me. Downstairs, no problem. As soon as I went upstairs where my soon-to-be bedroom, my siblings' bedroom, and my dad and stepmom's bedroom was, I just had a feeling of, I don't want to be here. This doesn't feel right.

[00:04:41] I ignored it. I ignored it.

[00:05:10] It never gave me a good feeling. This was going on for a handful of months. And I felt very fortunate that we moved into the same neighborhood that my best friend at the time was living in. Her house was two streets up in the same exact neighborhood. We were spending the night at each other's houses. Every weekend, we would alternate and meet at the corner. Okay, whose house are we spending the night at tonight? A few months goes by.

[00:05:40] I keep having these feelings. I can't shake them. And her and I are having a sleepover at her house. I'm telling her about all these things, how scary it is, and I wish I could figure out what was going on. She laughs and she goes, hold on, I have something I want to show you. She goes to her bedroom closet and she pulls out a Ouija board. I grew up in a very traditional Mexican household. Most of my family are believers.

[00:06:07] You don't mess with the supernatural and you absolutely do not mess with Ouija boards. No matter what anyone tells you, it's not worth it. I always knew it was something you avoid. But we were teenagers. A few weeks later, it was my turn to host having her over. She brought the Ouija board with her. The light that I would use in my room had a dimmer setting. You could dim it almost all the way down to where it was almost like a very mild candlelight feel.

[00:06:37] We waited for everybody to go to bed. And of course, picked the absolute worst time, the witching hour as they call it, to bust out this Ouija board. Her and I are sitting right across from each other. Our knees are almost touching. There's obviously space on either side of us. It's just her and I. We have my light all the way on. We're sitting there. She takes it out, explains to me how it worked. We both place our hands on the Ouija board.

[00:07:06] She's like, okay, what do you want to ask it first? Do you have an idea of what could be in the house? Is it an adult? Is it a child? I don't know. Let's just ask it if there's a ghost in our house. She says, okay. We put our hands on the Ouija board. She asks the question. The little piece starts moving. So of course, I'm like, okay, you're moving it. This isn't really happening.

[00:07:33] She starts freaking out and she's like, no, I'm not moving it. I promise you. It keeps moving all the way to yes. I start panicking. I ask her to stop and we sit there for a second. Clearly, there's something here. I'm not going crazy. What do I ask it now? She thinks about it for a second. She goes, why don't you ask its name? We put our hands back on. She asks the question.

[00:08:02] It slowly moves to G, E. As it's getting closer to the letter O, my lights dim by themselves. I start accusing her of moving it again. And she's like, no, I promise you, I'm not moving it. The lights dimmed on their own. It spells out G, E, O. George, maybe. We're trying to figure out what this name could be. Going back and forth. We're both a little scared. We put our hands back on the Ouija board. She asks the last question.

[00:08:31] Halfway through it moving. The lights dim again. I feel this overwhelming sense of dread. That same feeling every time I walk past my dad and stepmom's room. Before I can even say anything to her, there's this sensation between where her and I are sitting. We are not sitting alone. I could very vividly feel the pressure of someone's leg against mine. I get up. I run and turn the light all the way back on.

[00:09:01] She's full panic, eyes wide. Did you feel that? I said, yeah. What the heck was that? We are completely freaking out. Don't want to wake anybody up. The lights are on. She puts everything away. Went to sleep. Looking back, I realize now the biggest mistake that we could have ever made is not saying goodbye. We go to sleep. I honestly forget about it.

[00:09:30] We giggle about it in the morning over breakfast. She goes home. We're back at school Monday. Nothing really happens. Halfway into that week, I get a call from her around dinnertime. She's at her mom's. She sounds freaked out on the phone. She's like, hey, have you been feeling anything since our last sleepover when we used the Ouija board?

[00:09:56] Ever since we used that thing the last couple nights, I can't sleep. Every time I close my eyes, there's somebody in my room. Fast forward to a few nights later, I go upstairs, get ready for bed, shut all my lights off, get into my bed, pull the covers up, close my eyes, and I start to settle in.

[00:10:21] Within five minutes, there's this ringing in my ears. It wasn't super high-pitched, but enough to make me uncomfortable. I sit up, get a little nervous, and I'm like, okay, you're making it up. Just close your eyes and go back to sleep. I lay down. I get comfortable again. This time, the ringing is louder. Now I feel this pressure on my chest. I tell myself, don't open your eyes.

[00:10:51] I could feel someone staring at me, almost nose to nose. If I open my eyes, it would be right there. The pressure in my chest is getting heavier. I get the courage to sit up and open my eyes. There's nothing there. I had to sleep with my light on that night. And of course, my dad gets up in the middle of the night and shuts it off for at least six months.

[00:11:19] Any time that I had to go to my dad's and stay there, that would happen every single night unless I kept my light on. I kept getting in trouble for falling asleep with the light on. As soon as the lights would go off, this thing would be right in my face when I was trying to sleep. I couldn't even use the dimmer anymore. They would shut themselves off. This started happening a lot. I felt so crazy.

[00:11:45] I knew that my dad would be upset if he found out that I brought a Ouija board into his house, so I didn't say anything. My friend started experiencing the same thing. A few weeks goes by. I go to spend the night at her house. We are baking, watching movies, having a great time. Her mom goes upstairs to go to sleep. Her and I are alone. Her and I are starting to chat about the things that have been happening and the things we've been feeling at the house. The only light that's on is the chandelier. She's like, let's grab our stuff.

[00:12:14] Let's go upstairs. We'll hang out in my room the rest of the night before we go to sleep. She goes up the stairs first, gets to the very top of the first set of stairs, and stops dead in her tracks, staring at the wall. I'm standing at the bottom of the stairs like, what are you doing? Why are you not going to your room? She doesn't turn around. She doesn't move. She doesn't look back at me, nothing. She just says, don't move. I'm standing there terrified.

[00:12:44] What are we not moving for? What do you see that I'm not seeing? I slowly turn my head just barely to the left. There is this little boy sitting on the chandelier, legs wrapped around the bottom, staring at her and I. Do we run? Do we walk? What do we do here? I said, just ignore it. If you give it attention, it's only going to get worse. Walk upstairs. Don't look over that way again.

[00:13:14] Her and I start with a walk, and of course, it turns into a run. We're terrified. We get to her room, sweating, freaking out. There's no way that really happened. I didn't go spend the night at her house for a few weeks after that. She told me there was a few other times after that incident that she saw him.

[00:13:41] I don't know if ignoring it is what helped it go away for her, but after a handful of times, it stopped happening. I had a few more experiences after that. I just thought this was going to happen for the rest of my life. I'd be in the bathroom getting ready for school. Someone would shake the door violently. I'm alone. There's no one there. Things like that happened for several months afterwards. A few more weeks goes by. My little sister was a baby at the time.

[00:14:09] It was just me, her, and my stepmom home alone. She's upstairs falling asleep in her bassinet. An hour goes by, and she starts crying. Something woke her up. I go to look at the monitor. I see a hand gently patting her back. She falls back asleep. I'm like, oh, perfect. I don't need to go up there. My stepmom made it up there. She went back to sleep. She's fine. Two minutes later, my stepmom walks in the front door from outside.

[00:14:35] I said, did you just come in from outside, or were you upstairs with the baby? And she's like, no, I was cleaning out my car. I didn't say anything. I just sat there. I went back and looked at the video later. And of course, there's nothing on there. I have nothing to show for it or to prove it. After a couple days, I started really just trying to visualize what I had seen to see

[00:15:04] if I could put together what the hand looked like or whose hand it could have been. I remember there being this green emerald ring on the middle finger. That's the ring that my grandma wore pretty much every day. After that experience and seeing what I believe was her on the camera, soothing my sister, everything just stopped happening. I was able to sleep normally again. My friend wasn't seeing stuff anymore.

[00:15:33] I like to think that somehow she paid a visit, not just to see my sister, but to be like, hey, you guys don't belong here. Move on. I actually found out from my friend a few years after all this had happened that there had been a lot of crime in our neighborhood prior to us moving in. There was a park right across from our house, right across the street that you could see from my bedroom window.

[00:15:59] I found out a few years later that a man that lived in the neighborhood for several years took his life at that park. I don't know if because our house was in such close proximity to the park, if maybe there was just this bad energy from stuff that had happened there or from what happened with him lingering in the area. But I can definitely say I'm still a firm believer that stuff is real. I have not used a Ouija board since 10 and I'll never use one again.

[00:16:29] I definitely still have experiences. I'm about to be 32 in November and stuff still happens. It's not nearly as bad as it was. I make jokes about it now. I feel like keeping it lighthearted, one, doesn't scare me, but it also doesn't welcome in the darker, maybe more sinister spirits that could potentially make themselves known. The most recent experience I had was actually about a week ago.

[00:16:56] My grandfather unfortunately passed away early May. It was very unexpected. I took the loss really hard. I get married in a couple of weeks and he was so unbelievably excited for the wedding. I was given some of his things. I just so badly wanted something of his to keep around. I have a picture of him from barber school. He was a very proud barber for over 60 years. On the same shelf as his photo, I have a pair of beads of his that he wore all of the time.

[00:17:26] He loved to wear necklaces. And I have his haircutting scissors. A week ago, I was getting ready for work and out of nowhere, the light started making this weird buzzing noise and was dimming itself almost in frequency. There was no music on, no TV on. And I giggled and I was like, oh, grandpa, you came to visit. I've been waiting for you. As soon as I said that, the lights shut themselves off and back on.

[00:17:53] They started making that sound again and dimming in frequency. The more that I talked to him, the more the lights started doing that. They would get really bright and then really dim again. It was him paying a visit. I still talk to him every now and again and the lights will do their thing. I'm sure a lot of that is just having his stuff in our apartment. But I definitely still have experiences to this day. I'm just grateful that they're a little bit nicer now than they used to be.

[00:18:30] If you have a true scary story that happened to you and you want to share it with the rest of us, go to truescarystory.com and fill out the form. You can always reach out to me in case you have any questions. Anyway, if you like the show, drop some stars for us in the ratings and reviews. I'll be back next week with another story. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary, everyone. See you soon. Keep it scary, everyone.