Episode 439: The Band Played On

First uploaded April 11, 2016

Episode Details

 * Troy calls in with a story of helping his wife, who works at a school for "troubled youth." He describes going into the storage room, where he feels something behind him, but when he turns he sees nothing there. When he goes back into the storage room again, he feels the same sense of someone behind him and then hears a deep, guttural sigh. When Troy later meets one of his wife's newest students, he immediately gets a bad feeling. After meeting the student, Troy begins to feel a dark energy in his home and feels as though someone is watching him. His seven- and five-year-old children suddenly become afraid of the dark and refuse to cross the house at night. Troy also feels a strange, dark energy in the corner and doorway of his room, where he can almost, but not quite, see what looks like a form. One day, while lying down, Troy feels something hit the bed--though no one else is home. The next day, he hears the same guttural sigh from the storage room, this time in his bedroom. He wonders if something has attached itself to his wife, who may be bringing something unwelcome into the home. But Troy is reluctant to smudge the house because he believes the ghost of hist wife's former husband inhabits the house, and he doesn't want to chase off his good energy.
 * Josh from Georgia explains that he and his girlfriend were planning a trip to a nearby area once inhabited by Native Americans. Planning the vacation reminds him of a story his co-worker shared about going out a bit too far on his own in the same area. When he finally decides to turn around, he sees a full-bodied figure of a Native American man standing on a nearby embankment. The co-worker described a sense of unwelcome and suddenly becoming nauseous and throwing up before running away. He tells Josh it was the scariest experience of his life.
 * Dan from Williamsburg, Virginia calls to confirm that the Ripley's Believe It or Not at which he works is indeed haunted. He describes walking around the museum to gather people to see the theater show. While in the crypt room, he hears what sounds like scratching and tapping on the stone walls and then hears metal chains being dragged across a metal floor (even though the crypt room is carpeted). As Dan is walking through the crypt room amid the unexplained noises, he hears a voice say, "Ripley." And then "chains" and the word "me."
 * Tara calls about a trip to an abandoned psychiatric center down the road from her house in Rochester. While on the second floor with her boyfriend and another friend, she feels a chill go up her spine and gets an intensely uncomfortable feeling. She wanders into a room where she sees seemingly fresh blood on the floor--which seems odd since the center has been abandoned for quite some time. Suddenly one of the towels on the floor lifts into the air before plummeting back to the ground.
 * Tony explains why if he were a ghost he would be sure to smell like catnip.
 * Jay from North Carolina describes taking a picture of a strange, hunched figure in a Civil-War era graveyard. He also describes, in that same graveyard, walking around with some friends and finding a smaller graveyard hidden in the back. While sitting on a brick wall surrounding the tombstones, he starts to hear what sounds like a Civil-War era marching band. But since it's 2 am and no one's around, he can't come up with a rational explanation for it. After he and his friends run out of the small graveyard, the sound fades away. But as they're preparing to leave, they hear the music again. The music then fades again as they begin to walk down the road to their car.
 * A first-time caller recounts a story from his best friend who works as a nanny. One of the children she cares for has an imaginary friend named Larry; she assumed Larry was a typical imaginary friend until one day objects began mysteriously flying off the shelves in the bathroom. Several days later, she takes a picture with one of the kids, and the face-recognition program on her phone thinks it sees a face behind her in the closet. When she looks more closely, she sees what looks like the face of an old man standing behind her. The caller then goes with his friend to the house, where they find a bathroom door mysteriously barred shut and hear the sound of objects moving around--even though no one's inside.
 * Gary from Lawrence, Massachusetts describes installing a battery in a car only to receive a call from the car owner telling him the newly installed battery is completely drained. When he goes to inspect the car, the car's locks keep locking and unlocking uncontrollably. As he and the woman walk out of the garage, he sees the door to the house crack open and slam shut. The woman claims it was her husband, who's inside, but Gary thinks it was something a bit more paranormal.
 * Dee from Louisiana details her experience as a child of always seeing a strange man sitting at the table with her mother. She would also see him when her mother was in the living room listening to music. Dee never talked to him, nor did he ever talk to her. One day Dee asked why the man had stopped coming by the house. Her mother became upset at the question, and the more Dee asked about it, the more irritated her mother got. Dee then told her grandmother about the man, and her grandmother insisted the mysterious man was in fact her grandfather.
 * Jessica from Pennsylvania tells the story of driving to a convention in Maryland and feeling the urge to stop at her parents' house on the way, despite being fatigued and out of gas. After visiting for an hour, she drives on to her hotel. The next day, her father calls to tell her her mother is in the hospital; by the time Jessica gets to the hospital, her mother has already passed. Jessica wonders if there was something supernatural urging her to visit her parents that night so she could say a final goodbye.