Episode #4: "Ghost Toast" with Screenwriter Kristine Eckert

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Lovely
You come to me when I'm lonely. I take your hand and we go home. You cover me with your you with my.

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Sasha
What happens when you grow up in a haunted house? And as the youngest sibling, you get blamed for all the ghostly activity. And where does the imagination end? And a real life haunting begin. Christine Eckert spent ten years producing and directing unscripted television for the Travel Channel, Animal Planet and HBO before switching over to screenwriting. She has recently been showcased on the Impact Creative Network, an incubator for up and coming writers created by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer of Imagine Entertainment.

00:01:10:21 - 00:01:50:06
Sasha
And in this haunting episode, we talk about the girl in the blue dress who appears in her daughter's room, companions in the afterworld and the wildly haunted house she grew up in lights, some incense, recite an incantation and pull the curtains closed. Because I'm your host, Sasha Graham. And this is Ghost Stories by the Fire. My name is the Christine Eckert.

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Sasha
Hello and welcome to Ghost Stories by the Fire.

00:01:53:16 - 00:01:57:23
Kristine
Thank you. I'm very excited to be here. So I'd love.

00:01:57:23 - 00:02:15:03
Sasha
To start out by hearing from you. Like when you were a kid growing up, did you grow up in a house? Like, did your family tell ghost stories? Did they believe in the paranormal? What was it like for you growing up as a kid?

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Kristine
I grew up in a haunted house and everyone was in a lot of denial about the fact that there was definitely something going on in the house, and we didn't talk about it for a long time. And I actually, as the youngest child, I often got blamed for things that were going on in the house because that was easier.

00:02:34:01 - 00:02:55:29
Kristine
Right? Like there were mischievous things that were going on. So it's easier to say like, I'm the youngest of four children and I was the baby of the family. My brothers are much older. So it always became, you know, Christine, stop doing X, Y and Z. And I would say I didn't do anything because the house we lived in, you know, it's I'll give you a little background of the house.

00:02:56:00 - 00:03:21:19
Kristine
So the house we moved into, when we moved, we moved from New Jersey to Arkansas, and my parents found this house and it was a very weird house. It was the person who developed the neighborhood, developed, made it for them, for his family. And he was trying for like, I don't know what he was trying for, like modern lives, like a lot of weird windows and like, some were triangular that a lot of the windows were very high on the wall towards the ceiling.

00:03:21:19 - 00:03:38:15
Kristine
I think the idea of letting the sun in, but keeping people out, some people you didn't have to put curtains up there were like real cobblestone stones in the hallways in the in the bottom of the house. There was a lot it was weirdly, it was like modern, but also kind of dark and shadowy in its own way.

00:03:38:15 - 00:04:00:13
Kristine
It was like a rock garden in the middle. It did not look like a quintessential, like haunted house. And I guess this developer, the the rumor was growing up that he had built it for himself and his family, and they only lived there for four months and then moved out. And then another family moved in and also moved out pretty, pretty fast.

00:04:00:16 - 00:04:21:07
Kristine
And then we bought it. And apparently there's a great price for for the house because there was a it's a pretty big house. And and then, you know, as I got older, there was a lot happened very quickly after we moved in the house. My brother was in a bad car accident. So there was a lot of time spent in hospital.

00:04:21:09 - 00:04:46:26
Kristine
And then, you know, my father is, you know, had cancer and he died. So stuff started becoming very evident after he passed away. And it was everything from doors opening and closing to footsteps on the cobblestone floors to things moving around like we wouldn't see them move, but they put a cup down and you leave the room and the cup would move.

00:04:47:03 - 00:05:03:07
Kristine
These are the things that I would be blamed for, by the way, like stop moving my cup or Why did you do this? And I would, you know, you left the door open or you left the lights were a big thing. Lights would come on all the time and and I would get blamed for that kind of stuff, you know.

00:05:03:09 - 00:05:12:05
Sasha
Was there an uptick in all of this after your father passed away, or was it did it feel like it was always like that since since the moment you moved in the house?

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Kristine
My memories are more after he passed away, but I was only like four or just five when we moved there. And like I said, there was a lot going on with our family and a lot of times I wasn't at one when my father was sick. I actually was sent to North Carolina to stay with family, so I wasn't even in the house.

00:05:29:24 - 00:05:59:26
Kristine
So I really like them. I think kids just start also our memories start kind of solidifying at around seven, you know, six or seven. So I don't really know. I think there was always, though, my brothers would say there was always something weird about the house, like it never it always felt a little odd, you know? I mean, and it was also like like upstairs in the in the dead of summer, my mother and I lived upstairs, our bed, like my my mother and my father's bedroom was upstairs.

00:05:59:26 - 00:06:18:12
Kristine
I had a bedroom upstairs. We were the only ones up there. And in the summer it would be, you know, Arkansas was very hot in the summer and there would be these pockets of cold up in the top of that, like to the point like sometimes you would like a C or brick in like the middle of summer.

00:06:18:15 - 00:06:22:07
Kristine
My mother finally admitted this years later because, like, no one believed me.

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Sasha
And and when people were blaming you, when your family was blaming you for for things you weren't doing. What was your response like? How did you feel? What did you say?

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Kristine
I know I was you know me. I mean, I would I would argue with them and I think I would argue. And then sometimes I would be like, okay, you know, like I think I would say sometimes, like, I think something's weird, something weird is going on in the house. I don't think I had the words to really explain.

00:06:46:10 - 00:07:04:20
Kristine
Like, I think there's a ghost, but I definitely understood like something wasn't right in the house, but I was always I was always kind of shushed or, you know, there was I don't think anybody, especially my mother who was dealing with so much anyway, didn't also want to deal with the fact that we could be living in a in a haunted house.

00:07:04:23 - 00:07:26:15
Kristine
But I'm trying to think of just some one big story. I remember when I was probably and I well, I have to start my bedroom first. My bedroom was fairly large and it had a very big walk in closet. And the end of the closet, there was a door that went into the attic. And I was obsessed with Yeah.

00:07:26:18 - 00:07:46:07
Kristine
And I was obsessed with flowers in the attic and the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. So it was like the perfect combination of those two things. And I was always, like, playing in this attic space. But a my mom said, and I don't know if this was true or she said it to keep me out of the attic, that a construction worker had died while they were making the house, and he died in the attic space.

00:07:46:07 - 00:08:03:13
Kristine
So she was like, I really I really do want to play in the attic space. And I but, you know, you're a kid and it's just like and it's literally in my closet, right? So finally, my mom and my family got so upset that I was constantly playing in the attic. They put a padlock on the door and they locked it.

00:08:03:15 - 00:08:22:20
Kristine
I couldn't get in there and like, my brother had the key. And so obviously I was devastated. But, you know, whatever. And one night I was probably nine or ten. My brother, I had I had been leaving all the lights on. Right. And my brother said, if you have if you leave any lights on, you're not going to go out to dinner tonight.

00:08:22:27 - 00:08:37:12
Kristine
You're going to stay home because we keep telling you to shut the lights off and you leave him alone. So I'm going to go check. And I was like, Fine. So I made sure all the lights were off. He came upstairs. He looked I'd even pulled my nightlight out and he was like, okay, fine. So we get I'll get in the car.

00:08:37:12 - 00:09:07:12
Kristine
And my mom had this giant Lincoln Continental that was like the early eighties, and we're pulling out of our it was a circular driveway. So as you're pulling out, all of a sudden we all, all the lights in the top of the house went at the same time. And then we all sat in my parent's bathroom window, a face like looking out which was also weird because it was a very high window and we all saw it and it was just like we all kind of turned at the same time.

00:09:07:15 - 00:09:27:02
Kristine
And my mom was just like, Well, that was interesting. Let's go to dinner. And we just like drove to dinner. And when we got home all the way, all the lights were off on in the house and the top of the house, every single and every bedside table, every closet light, every bathroom light. And the light in the attic, which the door had a padlock on it.

00:09:27:04 - 00:09:49:03
Kristine
And my brother went crazy and tried to find the key, couldn't find the key. And like that night, like, busted the the thing off of the door, the lock and like, turn the light off. And I and I was like, see, I'm not the one leaving the lights on. It's not me. And that's just one of like so many stories like that in my family.

00:09:49:03 - 00:09:59:24
Sasha
Is this something that you and your brothers talk about now but didn't talk about then? Like what was their conversation about what you were just it wasn't you. They didn't want to talk about it, it sounds like.

00:09:59:27 - 00:10:23:28
Kristine
Yeah. When when we finally when we moved out of the house is when we started talking about it more. And they were starting to admit, like there were very weird things that went on in the house, like your favorite bagel story, which that story. And that was another one of those insta like moments where it was undeniable because we were all experiencing this at the same time.

00:10:23:28 - 00:10:52:20
Kristine
So for holidays, certain holidays, we lived in a town called Jonesboro, Arkansas, and that was about 45 minutes from Memphis, Tennessee. And so we would on holidays, we'd get dressed up and we'd go to this really nice hotel called the Peabody in Memphis. And, you know, we would probably be gone for like eight or 9 hours. And so we had gone to Memphis and had, I think it was Easter and had like a big buffet and like, you know, hung out in the hotel.

00:10:52:20 - 00:11:15:22
Kristine
And then we drive back, we get home and all the doors in the house are open, all the exterior doors and not like unlocked, but like wide open. And it's like the front door, the back door, our sunroof door was open. The sliding door in the back, like in the house was open, like everything was open. And so my brothers immediately we didn't my mom and I stayed in the car.

00:11:15:22 - 00:11:47:16
Kristine
My brother's like went in the house to make sure someone wasn't in there and did a check. Nobody was there. And we all come in and we go in the kitchen and we look and there is a freshly toasted bagel sitting on a plate with cream cheese and a knife, and you can still see it top. And we were just like, we all look at it and the thought is either someone has some stranger has come in our house, opened all the doors, nothing was missing and for some reason made a bagel and left it here for us.

00:11:47:17 - 00:12:01:20
Kristine
Or like, how do you explain that? And this is my mom's denial. She went over, she put a schmear of cream cheese on it. She took a bite and she was like, this is this is a lovely thing to come home to. And then just like walked out through that.

00:12:01:23 - 00:12:25:24
Sasha
So it's amazing. That's an amazing Well, I love I love the idea that, like, it makes sense that when you're living in a place that seems spooky, the denial, right? Like, I know what, like when you were a kid, I don't know if this was true for you. I would feel like if the ghosts don't see me looking at them, then they don't really exist and they can't get me.

00:12:26:01 - 00:12:34:18
Sasha
Like there's this kind of safety. I feel like in in absolute, like ignoring actually what is going on. Would you agree?

00:12:34:21 - 00:12:58:27
Kristine
Yeah, absolutely. Like, because and also I think this was this was in the seventies and eighties when we were like, I don't think people were it was as accepted. Like now it's so tight like his one of this is a podcast or we're talking about it and there are articles written about it, but I feel like back then if you had if you talked about like ghosts in your house, you're like the Amityville Horror family, you know what I mean?

00:12:58:27 - 00:13:12:00
Sasha
Like, exactly. And that was it all lived like horror. Horror like whole stories and haunted houses that that was like the territory of Peter Straub and Stephen King. And that was like, pretty much it.

00:13:12:02 - 00:13:41:21
Kristine
Yeah. So it's like it just made you seem kind of like kooky, you know? And again, I think my mom especially was dealing with so much that she just didn't want to deal with it. And I'm sure there was a part of her, too, was like with that my father coming back. I mean, my brothers and I would talk about that, like with was this like our father coming back to kind of touch base, like communicate, you know, was it this construction worker?

00:13:41:27 - 00:13:57:13
Kristine
There were rumors that the neighborhood was built on an Indian burial ground like we would, you know, and you would find like arrowheads and artifacts all the time. And so there were all those I don't know. And again, I think it was just it was too much to like, wrap your head around.

00:13:57:14 - 00:14:17:15
Sasha
If you if you had to take a guess. Do you feel like the energy in the house was attached to the house itself? Was it kind of the collected energy maybe around the trauma and energy of what your family had gone through or a little bit of an intermingling of both?

00:14:17:18 - 00:14:37:10
Kristine
I wonder if it wasn't there. I think about that sometimes, especially because it wasn't a coincidence that there were two families that moved in and out or and honestly, and I don't. Is that true? I don't 100% now, like, I don't have the records to that. That's what I was told. And then we stayed for as long as we did.

00:14:37:13 - 00:15:05:07
Kristine
I don't know. You know, I'm sure the energy in the house you also have to look at one of my brothers was mentally ill. And so I don't think that caused anything to happen, the House, but I don't think it helped the energy of the house. It definitely did not help his mental health, you know, because I think he sometimes had trouble separating, you know, he had trouble separating reality from fantasy or what was in his head.

00:15:05:07 - 00:15:08:15
Kristine
And I think having those things happening made it even worse.

00:15:08:15 - 00:15:40:09
Sasha
Yeah, for sure. It's an interesting line and it's something that, like myself is as a tarot card reader, teacher and expert, something that comes up again and again when you're doing occult or metaphysical or meditative work, you're often using your sacred imagination, right? You're often that's the basis of a guided meditation as you're journeying in your imagination. So the interesting question is always where does the imagination and and something actually real begin, right?

00:15:40:12 - 00:16:04:17
Sasha
And it feels to me like there's quite a it feels like quite a gulf of a threshold space where the imagination leads into things and energies that are perhaps coming to manifest in this world. I don't know. You're a writer, so I'm you've I'm sure you've had a lot of experience with that as well. What's your how do you.

00:16:04:19 - 00:16:11:01
Sasha
I don't know. Have you have the things that you have written ever manifested in real life for you?

00:16:11:03 - 00:16:33:18
Kristine
No. But you know what I was thinking about? I don't really write ghost stories and I wonder if I don't really write about it because I lived it for so long that that it doesn't feel like escaping into anything because it was such a part and still remains weirdly, a part of my life. I was I just was thinking about that today because you and I are both writers, but we write very different.

00:16:33:18 - 00:16:34:06
Kristine
Yeah.

00:16:34:06 - 00:16:41:15
Sasha
Thank you. Would you say that collective experience certainly is something that bonds you with your brother's?

00:16:41:17 - 00:17:17:17
Kristine
You know what? There was a period kind of, but we don't really talk about it anymore now. I mean, we did for a period of time, but they're not as interested in in the supernatural realm or any of that in a way that I've always been like, I've always been interested. I think because of that and because I was a big Stephen King fan growing up, like you mentioned, Stephen King and and growing up, I watched a lot of horror movies and I was always very, very interested in in like how the occult can manifest and, and like, I felt like ghosts and supernatural occurrences.

00:17:17:20 - 00:17:30:15
Kristine
But again, it goes back like what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Was I interested in that? Because I was surrounded by it? Was I you know what I mean? Like, I don't know which one it was. It has always it has always interested me.

00:17:30:17 - 00:18:01:04
Sasha
And now that you're all, all grown up and and the mother of two extraordinary twin girls, have you noticed any ghostly activity kind of around them are coming through them because children, of course, are kind of so wide open to those things that adults are very quick to dismiss. So I wonder if if you're seeing any kind of repeat behavior with your own girls or interesting things in the house that you live in now.

00:18:01:06 - 00:18:16:13
Kristine
Well, as you know, Sash, I remember you are alone in my house. Let's do you remember this? I would say the girls are very young. I think in the school year visiting. And I came home and you said there is a lot going on. That's.

00:18:16:15 - 00:18:17:28
Sasha
yes, you are.

00:18:18:00 - 00:18:50:29
Kristine
So we moved into this house when Sedona and Zoey were two years old. They just turned two and and the answer to your question is, yes, there are. We've definitely experienced stuff specifically with them. We experience where they when they were little in our old place, and we definitely experienced things here. This is something to put in now since I've been with Jesse and we've been together for 13 years, Jesse says that every house he's ever lived with me in, he has.

00:18:51:01 - 00:19:16:15
Kristine
Things have happened in it and he's never had experiences like that until he lived with me. And I have had mediums say, it's not the houses that you have to be living in. It's actually you are freaking. I seem to be some kind of like a magnet. A magnet, but I don't I can't. I'm like, I'm the weirdest magnet, so I'm like, I can't communicate and I can't.

00:19:16:17 - 00:19:17:28
Kristine
I can't help them.

00:19:18:00 - 00:19:23:17
Sasha
But have you tried have you have you actively tried to to work with energy?

00:19:23:20 - 00:19:41:23
Kristine
But I don't know. I mean, maybe I am blocking it out. I have no idea. But even as a child, like, I recognize things are happening, but it's not like I was. I never saw anything. My daughters have. I have not. So that going back to when we moved, when we when we bought the house, there was a piano in it.

00:19:41:23 - 00:20:03:01
Kristine
And the owner said, Would you like to keep the piano? And I, being a mother of young children, I thought, Well, this would be great. Children should grow up from music and maybe this will inspire them to want to take lessons. And so we said yes. Yeah. So when the girl, probably about five months after we moved in the house, I was bathing the girls and they're, you know, toddlers.

00:20:03:03 - 00:20:23:02
Kristine
And so I would take one out, dry them off, and that one would just run around naked while I was trying to get the other one out. And so I had gotten Zoey out of the tub and dried her off. And she was running around and I'm drying her sister off and I'll send she runs back into the bathroom and she says, in that very kind of toddler way, like, Mama, there's a man at the piano.

00:20:23:04 - 00:20:48:08
Kristine
Yeah. And I think my heart just stopped. My thought was immediately, someone has broken into our house and Jesse was working in Venice, and he had a long commute. He wasn't home. And that was my immediate like, God, there's someone in the house. And she spun around and ran back in that direction to the piano. And so I, I scream and I follow her trying to like, grab her.

00:20:48:08 - 00:21:05:00
Kristine
And we she's that she's running around where, you know, the music, what we call the music room where the piano is. And she's kind of like dancing around and laughing and and of course, there's no man. And I check the whole house. I'm checking all the doors, I'm checking all the locks. Once they're. I get them in their pajamas, I get them their, you know, their Bibles.

00:21:05:00 - 00:21:22:27
Kristine
We sit down to read a story, and then I say to Zoe, Do you remember what you said about the man at the piano? She said, Yeah, he was fixing the piano. I was like, What do you mean? She was like, He was fixing the piano. He he was. I was like, You mean he was playing the piano because she had like, that very broken way of toddler speaking.

00:21:22:29 - 00:21:38:06
Kristine
She didn't have a ton of words at that point or like a ton of complete sentences. And she was very adamant. She was like, no fixing. He's fixing the piano. And I was like, okay. And so then I start asking her questions like, was he tall? Is he taller, short, tall, like daddy or shorter? And she said, tall.

00:21:38:08 - 00:22:09:03
Kristine
And I said, dark hair like daddy or like sublight. And I said, you know, dark eyes are dark are light eyes. And she's a light eyes like me. And I said, okay. And and that was it. You know. And then Jessie came home that night after I checked the van and I told him the story and he said, well, I didn't want to alarm you, but sometimes late at night I hear the piano keys tinkling, but like very, very lightly, as if someone is just testing them.

00:22:09:06 - 00:22:28:20
Kristine
But I didn't want I didn't want to play. So this goes sick. This goes on. You know, sometimes she'll say, like, the man at piano. And then it became outdoor stuff. They would be outside playing and I'd be doing something in the yard. And so it would run up to me in tears and say, the man, the the man who fixes the piano is fixing.

00:22:28:20 - 00:22:44:26
Kristine
And then she starts calling him the man. The man is here and he's fixing things in the yard, and he's yelled at me and told me not to do something, which I think he was telling her not to do dangerous things like I would I and her sister would say, well, she was on the church, she was standing on the chair, you know, And he was like,

00:22:44:29 - 00:23:03:19
Kristine
And so there would be she really saw him a lot. And then when it came to we finally had this night where they were in the bathroom brushing their teeth. And all of a sudden, in that very creepy way, children have where they just like, stop what they're doing. She turned them and she goes, Mama, the man is here.

00:23:03:21 - 00:23:13:07
Kristine
And I was like, where is the man? And she said, He's in the hallway looking at us, meanwhile. And I was like.

00:23:13:09 - 00:23:17:19
Sasha
Ooh, I have to hide out.

00:23:17:21 - 00:23:42:14
Kristine
And her sister says, Sedona, sitting there brushing your teeth and clearly is seeing something and doesn't want to admit it. And I'm like, Sedona, do you see something? She's not me. Not me. And so that happens. And I was just like, what the what the you know, what is this? And we in the meantime had been getting mail from the previous owners.

00:23:42:14 - 00:24:06:29
Kristine
You know, you just always get like previous tenants. But then we would get this one man male who was not the previous owner. And I'm like, this is probably the original owner. So I think it it only had two owners before us. So we Google the name and it pulls up an obituary with a man's picture with light gray hair and light eyes.

00:24:07:01 - 00:24:23:25
Kristine
So the next morning, Zoe is in her high chair. She still that's how little she was like in her highchair having her breakfast. And Jesse shows her the picture. It's like, Zoe, I want to show you something. We don't say anything to her about what it is, and we show her the picture and she looked and she goes, That's the man, Mommy.

00:24:23:25 - 00:24:39:04
Kristine
That's the man who's always fixing the piano. And outside. And and we were just like and we found out later through neighbors that he had, in fact, died in the house. And. Yeah.

00:24:39:07 - 00:24:42:20
Sasha
Did he die a natural death or dead?

00:24:42:21 - 00:25:13:03
Kristine
It sounds like he died. And what we didn't realize in California, you do not have to let people know like divulge if someone passed away peacefully in their home, you only have to disclose if there's a murder. So, like, Correct what? And and then we finally it seemed fine and we just kind of were like, all right, you know, so there's a presence here.

00:25:13:03 - 00:25:40:00
Kristine
He seems to be harmless while that's happening, by the way, they also start playing with the girl in the blue dress. What I say, which, you know, they I came in one day and I think it was Sedona. I was like, sitting with her little legs crossed and talking very clearly, like having a and it was one of those things I was like, does she have does she have an invisible playmate?

00:25:40:00 - 00:26:02:13
Kristine
Like, this is the age where they. But it seems so, so specific, almost like more complex. And I felt like a child should be able to do and they're kind of like muttering like almost like her head is back close to another child's head talking. So I say to her, Who are you talking to? And she says, The girl in the blue dress who lives in our closet.

00:26:02:15 - 00:26:21:24
Kristine
So it's like, I see. I don't mean to be laughing, but I know your expressions are hilarious. Yes. So then I ask Zoe, and Zoe says, Yeah, there's a little girl in a blue dress, and they describe a little girl with, like, curls and a little bow in her hair. And she has a Peter Pan collar and this blue dress, very nice.

00:26:21:25 - 00:26:39:01
Kristine
Like the way they describe it, it sounded like a very kind of 1950s era dress. So I'm like, Great. So now I have an old man fixing the piano and working in the yard, and I have this little girl, like playing hide and seek and living in the girl's closet. And sometimes at night they'd be like, Mommy, can you check the closet and make sure the little girl's night?

00:26:39:01 - 00:27:05:20
Kristine
And I'd be like, like, I'd open it. Just be like, Please don't. I don't want to see. Maybe that's why Sasha I can't see anything cause I really don't want to. And, and, but we were like, trucking along and like, okay, if we've got to, like, a little girl and an old man, everything seems fine. And then one night, Zoe woke up hysterically crying and screaming and saying that the old man was like, standing over her while she woke up and he was over her bed and that freaked her out.

00:27:05:22 - 00:27:37:09
Kristine
And Jesse got very upset. And there were talks of, like, hiring someone to do, like a cleanse. But you're not. You're never supposed to do that. People can't get really get rid of spirits unless they want to go. So we called. I did research and I called the Califor I think it's the California parapsychology Organization. And they sent a medium out, just Steele Walker, just to give us an idea of what was in the house and also some ideas of how we could help send them on their way.

00:27:37:12 - 00:27:55:16
Kristine
So she came and did a walkthrough where we're in a lot of talk to her ahead of time. She didn't have any information. That's how they do it. And when she was down, she said, Well, there's definitely the old the old man who used to live here is still here. And and she's very attached to the house. It's still his house and his mind.

00:27:55:16 - 00:28:16:28
Kristine
And she goes and there is a little girl in a blue dress here who I sense drowned. So she was like, Do you have a pool or do you have neighbors with pools? And then she the little girl was with a woman in her forties who she described as very sad and who was with the little girl. But they did not they were not together in a previous life.

00:28:16:28 - 00:28:22:09
Kristine
They kind of met spirits and had become like companions in the afterworld companion.

00:28:22:09 - 00:28:23:21
Sasha
And after work.

00:28:23:23 - 00:28:41:04
Kristine
Yeah. And she said, she said I she sense that the woman probably when she was alive, may have lost a child. And that's why she had kind of bonded with that child. And then she said there was a man with like a top hat. So we were talking about it and she said, you know, I was like, where?

00:28:41:04 - 00:29:04:04
Kristine
I don't know. I understand why the old man's here. I don't understand where they he's like, because she definitely she was like, I definitely think the little girl drowned. And I was like, Well, there's no pool. Here. She goes, Well, maybe she could have. She was kind of trying to think about it. She goes, But, you know, there's so many spirits here that honestly, they're they're either attracted to you or your children because children tend to not have much of a veil.

00:29:04:05 - 00:29:21:26
Kristine
Like we shut that down as we get older. But children have you know, that feels very open for them. So she gave us you know, she gave us some tips, too. She talked to all of them and said, you know, it'd be really good if you could move on. But she did say she goes, the old man is very he does not want to leave, as I have the other ones.

00:29:21:26 - 00:29:42:03
Kristine
I'm trying to, like usher out and tell them there's a better place. But he he really likes to be here. And so he burned a lot of lavender and had talks that were just like, basically kind of like, we'd like it. You're like, you're scaring our daughters. You could just, like, maybe not appear or scare them when they're sleeping.

00:29:42:06 - 00:30:05:04
Kristine
And now I think, honestly, he's still here. He's 100% still here. And now I'm kind of like, you know what? Maybe it's not the worst thing. Like, maybe he does look over the house and, you know, it kind of gives me a strange comfort. here's another weird thing. So our garage, when we moved in, still had his workbench and all his tools and like, nails.

00:30:05:09 - 00:30:19:04
Kristine
The Kansas. He made a workbench in the garage where you could tell and there's a rearview mirror. So he must have sat there with the garage door open and would work and like. And he clearly probably smoked Cigarets.

00:30:19:07 - 00:30:27:18
Sasha
How very seventies, sixties and fifties of him back in the day? Well, the man had had a work room.

00:30:27:20 - 00:30:43:05
Kristine
We did. And and it's interesting to me that all that stuff is still there. And I don't I don't want to move it. And I had asked I'd actually met the previous owner, this guy Adam, and I asked him like he had he's the one to tell me like, yeah, he the old guy died in the house. And I was like, thanks for telling me now.

00:30:43:07 - 00:30:59:12
Kristine
But he said, I was like, Why or Why didn't you ever throw away as tools? And he goes, I don't know. I just felt like he was like, Really? If we throw away the tools suggesting I would throw it, we just keep them all right. We're like, You know what? You just have your workspace. I really do think he hangs out there most of the time.

00:30:59:14 - 00:31:06:03
Kristine
The girls don't see him at all anymore and don't really Sedona weirdly kind of remembers, so he seems to not remember at all.

00:31:06:06 - 00:31:10:07
Sasha
Does Sedona remember the little girl in blue?

00:31:10:09 - 00:31:34:24
Kristine
I have to ask him again. I feel like I asked one of them and they were kind of like I remember that. But I think I think what's interesting is I think Zoe really thought that he was a real person. I don't think she understood. Whatever she was seeing seemed very clear to her. I think what Sedona was seeing look like some kind of apparition because her reaction was like, I don't this is not okay.

00:31:34:26 - 00:31:59:21
Kristine
Like, this is not something I want to be seen. Like, she was very like, nope, I'm not looking at that. But what's interesting now and then is like, if I go in the garage at night because we keep the paper towels and things like that, I will definitely go in there. And there are times I can definitely feel like a presence and I can smell like Marlboro Cigarets like as if someone had been smoking and I was like, I don't smoke.

00:31:59:21 - 00:32:03:24
Kristine
Nobody in our family smokes. Do you speak?

00:32:03:27 - 00:32:22:18
Kristine
I usually, I don't know. I'll just be like, I'm just getting some paper towels. Like I'm trying to just stay in here as long as you are. Please don't come inside. But he's never bothered. He's never either. The girls can't. They definitely don't see him anymore like I did. I have asked them that. They're like, No. Yeah.

00:32:22:20 - 00:32:53:02
Sasha
So I find it so interesting that at the beginning and the end of life, this is when like the veil grows thin and it seems like people see things on the other side because hospice nurses and people who have been with friends near death on their deathbed, it seems like a lot of people are talking about the the ones who've passed over as if they're right there at, you know, at the end of their bed, kind of like in the room just as present are you and I would be.

00:32:53:04 - 00:33:18:06
Sasha
So I just think that that's super fascinating. What is what is your sense? What is all of this kind of give to you in terms of like how your ideas of the afterlife? Has it affected the way that you view these mysteries that nobody can quite nail down? And what what is your sense of what happens to us both before before, Like, where were we before and where were we after?

00:33:18:06 - 00:33:19:14
Sasha
I love this question.

00:33:19:19 - 00:33:55:20
Kristine
Well, I definitely don't think you know, I do know I have some friends who believe that we just die and that's it. And maybe it's it's me as an optimist. I just have never felt that that is the case. But again, you know, I've I've grown up in a in a having a life experience that over and over again has told me that there is something beyond because, you know, I don't know if you know the story, but my brother Martin, when he was in this bad car accident, when he was 17, he was in a car with three other friends.

00:33:55:20 - 00:34:19:19
Kristine
And it was very bad, like someone I think one or two of the people died and my brother almost died. And he was in the hospital. He lost a leg, he lost a kidney, he was in a coma. And this was in the seventies. And there was no they had to they didn't even I don't think they helicoptered people, so they had to take him to a trauma hospital in Memphis and they had to take him in an ambulance.

00:34:19:24 - 00:34:45:29
Kristine
And they told my parents that he died several times on the way to the hospital, 4 minutes at a time where he would just not have a pulse. And then they bring him back and and my parents said he was so angry when he, like, finally woke up, he was, you know, in a brief coma and when he finally came to, he was mad at them because he he was like, I don't understand why you just didn't let me die.

00:34:45:29 - 00:35:17:25
Kristine
Like, why am I still here? I shouldn't be here. And and he never got over that. And when he finally I remember talking to him about it when I was older, I mean, he wouldn't talk to me when I was kid, but when I became more of, like, a teenager, he I remember him. He we talked about it and he said that he definitely was in that light and he saw all of our all these dead relatives, some of which he knew or people from like that he had that were there to greet him that he didn't necessarily recognize.

00:35:17:28 - 00:35:39:16
Kristine
There were definitely people he did recognize and that he just felt this like wave of like love and war. Then just like it's like a feeling he'd never had living. And he was honestly, he was angry about it for the rest of us, for the rest of his life. So this kind of puts a button on the house in Arkansas.

00:35:39:16 - 00:36:06:21
Kristine
So we had saw that. And this is when my family all openly started talking about it, like even my mother a little bit, but definitely my brother's so my mom finally sold the house and she moved into a condo in the same area. And so it was like the last, you know, I think we were we were all ready to, like, not be in that house anymore.

00:36:06:24 - 00:36:21:04
Kristine
Also because there was so much emotional stuff intertwined with like my father's death and just not a lot of great memories. Like we moved in that house and like, a lot of bad things happened in our family. So I don't think there was a lot of great things attached to it. But still it was the last place we live with our dad.

00:36:21:04 - 00:36:44:13
Kristine
But I think my brothers kind of wanted to pay respect to that. So the house was empty. I think it had been sold, but we still had the keys, but everything was cleared out. There was no electricity or anything, and my brother's like, went into the house and brought like candles and some alcohol and they were kind of like they lit candles and they were just kind of talking about like, memories and whatever.

00:36:44:13 - 00:37:12:18
Kristine
Maybe my dad or family, I wasn't there, so I'm not quite sure. But but then they said at some point, all three of them agree that this happened. They were sitting there and then it got very cold like it was already cold a little bit outside. But I think it just got like freezing cold, like like that. All sudden they could all see their breath and they all at the same time just sense a very ominous presence that was clearly like, get out of the house.

00:37:12:18 - 00:37:32:26
Kristine
They I don't think they heard anything auditory, but later they all said at the same time they sensed just a you are not welcome here. Get out like you need to leave. And they all just like and the candles blew out. So it was like candles blew, cold air, frost coming out of mouths and just an overall horrible feeling.

00:37:32:26 - 00:37:38:03
Kristine
And they were like, And we're out. You're out. That's we're we're done.

00:37:38:03 - 00:37:46:29
Sasha
I did. So did any of any of this behavior follow your family to the house that you moved to after this Arkansas house?

00:37:47:02 - 00:38:19:01
Kristine
Not in that way. I mean, there were still, you know, my my mom still had her issues. My brother still had his issues. But that the heaviness of that house really, I don't think transfer in that same way. Like I never we never experienced like a family, I guess a family haunted in that same way, you know. And I'm the only one that seems to have if it happens to my siblings, they really not they really don't talk about it in the same way that I will share stuff.

00:38:19:02 - 00:38:21:09
Sasha
You mean in their current lives?

00:38:21:11 - 00:38:30:00
Kristine
Yeah. You know, like I'll. And even if I mention stuff, they, I make them uncomfortable, They don't. They're like, I don't want to talk about that.

00:38:30:00 - 00:38:33:25
Sasha
Have you checked on Google Earth to see if the house is still standing.

00:38:33:27 - 00:38:47:27
Kristine
Or is it is still standing? And they it looks a lot better than when we lived there. I think they built stuff onto it, maybe added a pool. You know, they definitely it looks better than when it was a nice house, but it looks nicer now.

00:38:47:27 - 00:39:26:05
Sasha
So I just I want to share something that freaks me out to no end. And I kind of love that this happened. But at my grandmother's house where I used to spend every summer growing up, my grandmother, her second husband, had been married prior to her, and in the house that she moved into, there was this giant spiral staircase, big, beautiful house nicknamed in Connecticut, and in the spiral staircase, which is right there, when you would walk in the main doorway, there was even an alcove with like a Greek statue was very traumatic.

00:39:26:07 - 00:39:57:08
Sasha
But what had happened was that her husband, Don, who loved to drink, had his his first wife, Bun, had accidentally fallen eight years to her death. And so literally the quote unquote, fallen down the stairs to her death was code for the fact that he could get really mean when he drank. And so the subtext was wife was that his wife had been pushed down the stairs by him.

00:39:57:15 - 00:40:17:10
Sasha
But everybody referred to it as when when Bun fell down the stairs and died. So we were I was my sister and I were literally growing up spending our summers in this house with the specter of Bond's ghost. And I would always picture like I never saw anything. But in my imagination I would see her like body, like at the bottom of the steps.

00:40:17:10 - 00:40:42:08
Sasha
And anyway, it was a great haunted old place. But years and years later, when my grandmother moved into assisted living, they did sell the house. It was bulldozed. And of course they put up a McMansion over the space. And so I went on to Google Earth and saw this giant new McMansion in the crazy new layout of of how it was.

00:40:42:09 - 00:41:15:12
Sasha
But the most fascinating fact was that the front door and the new staircase winding was a is exactly in the same spot as the original staircase and front door, even though the entire layout of the house is completely Democrat is crazy. Completely. I like screams. And I just thought, you know, energy is energy has an interesting way of collecting and and maybe it's a coincidence you know, maybe it's a coincidence.

00:41:15:15 - 00:41:26:20
Kristine
And repeating I mean, it'd be interesting to know of that. Whoever designed it or, you know, didn't have this impulse but then wanted her stairs.

00:41:26:22 - 00:41:44:09
Sasha
And it was it was that it was that space that we all kind of tiptoed through. And it was just always there was just always, I think, in everybody's imagination that that yeah, that she had perished at the bottom of those stairs. And then none of us use the front door. We all use the side kitchen door as the main mike in and out.

00:41:44:09 - 00:42:03:23
Sasha
But yeah, so, so it's interesting because I do it does feel to me, you know, when a house is finally bulldozed, taken down, there does seem to be a big energy release. I mean, I see it all the time in New York City where they're taking down buildings left and right. And it does often feel like a big kind of open, gaping hole.

00:42:03:23 - 00:42:15:06
Sasha
There does seem to be an energy release. But I do think that, yeah, like some some things do seem seem to remain. Don't know. What do you think about that?

00:42:15:09 - 00:42:38:22
Kristine
I think there's I think I think well it's interesting that you bring up energy because I have thought about this a lot because I remember watching a documentary about like ghost sightings when. But The Shining is very repetitive. So I remember there was some, like, you know, most haunted mansions show on that I was watching and there was some antebellum plantation house that now is a hotel or a bed and breakfast.

00:42:38:24 - 00:42:58:15
Kristine
And it's well known because there's this little girl in like 1800 style clothes and people see her doing the exact same thing over and over again. And there are, you know, parapsychologists or people who are into the supernatural or ghost who say that is not actually a ghost, but it's a repetitive energy, Like there's an energy that's stuck on a loop.

00:42:58:15 - 00:43:19:00
Kristine
And so we're not really seeing maybe a spirit, but we're seeing more of the energy of something. But then there's, you know, sightings of ghosts and apparitions that interact in a space. And a part of me is like, I don't know. Does that always go away? I think it depends on how much how much that entity doesn't want to leave.

00:43:19:03 - 00:43:43:05
Sasha
Or how the energy is right. How how and it it to end. And speaking of antebellum, I was recently in New Orleans and, you know, you can feel like I think trauma being so intense. I think love to you. I think love can be as intense, as intense as trauma. But I think that trauma has a way of intensifying the energy of what goes on.

00:43:43:05 - 00:44:13:01
Sasha
And it's something that you can certainly feel when you move into certain places. But to your point about repetition, I think that what's interesting about, say, the repetition of a ghostly energy, a traumatic energy or just just a repetitive energy is is that we all like repeat patterns in our lives. And of course, that's why, you know, nature in and of itself, when it finds something that it works, that that that leads to to life and to expansion.

00:44:13:01 - 00:44:30:06
Sasha
Nature is very good at repeating that. Right. That's why a willow tree, if you look at the branches, looks like the veins of our heart, you know, And that's why you see like things that are like, good for your brain, like walnuts actually look like a brain, you know? So when you find something like it, like it'll just do the shortcut.

00:44:30:06 - 00:44:56:03
Sasha
It always it'll always work. So I think that I think that it's an interesting study in and how we ourselves tend to wash and repeat ideas and thoughts and habits that that keep us safe or keep us feeling secure. But I do think that it's the innate point of the universe to, to evolve, right, to break to break those patterns.

00:44:56:03 - 00:45:08:29
Sasha
So I suppose in a way, when a house is taken down and the energy is finally released, that seems like it would be very much quite a good thing. I don't know. What do you think?

00:45:09:01 - 00:45:39:23
Kristine
Or like could it really? Well, yeah, I think I think maybe if if I a spirit, it's making me think. Back. Years ago, I worked in this hotel in Santa monica, and it was the task of the Radisson Hotel at the time was the tallest hotel in Santa monica, just 24 hours. And it was very well known that a lot of people there were a lot of suicides out of their hotel because people would go and they jump out of either they actually made all the windows plexiglass, but you could still go in the stairwells and were they were open.

00:45:39:26 - 00:46:02:17
Kristine
And so there was a story about the woman in white who would walk through the hotel and apparently she so people would see her come out of the elevators. It was only late at night you'd see her come out and she'd go through the dining room and she'd disappear around where the kitchen was, where there was a stairwell with an open space.

00:46:02:17 - 00:46:27:29
Kristine
And apparently that's where she jumped. And one night there was one of our bartenders who had been there forever and was a closer was so shaken because he was there all by himself. And he sees her come in and he said, Christine, she look like a woman. And I thought it was a hotel guest. And and then I looked down and from her knees down, there was nothing there.

00:46:28:01 - 00:46:46:24
Kristine
And he was like, So she had come. She was walking and he was like, Ma'am, ma'am. And then he looked out. It's like, and this was not a this is a very kind of macho older man. And he would not work the closing shift. My point of this, though, is that many people had that sighting, I guess with this.

00:46:46:26 - 00:47:07:15
Kristine
And she was clearly repeating this traumatic event, like stuck in some kind of I don't know if that was her energy. The spirit herself was just stuck on this loop. So the whole hotel came down, which she then finally be released. Because how do you like if your if your loop space is gone or does it somehow still remain?

00:47:07:19 - 00:47:08:01
Kristine
I don't know.

00:47:08:01 - 00:47:09:21
Sasha
I don't know.

00:47:09:23 - 00:47:21:17
Kristine
Again, I think it goes back to if they want to be released or not or if that's maybe the final push. Is Bunny still in that space in New Canaan? Bunny.

00:47:21:19 - 00:47:41:13
Sasha
Maybe I could, to be honest with you, feeling what I would feel and looking at that house as it stands today when I found it on Zillow, I mean, it's a fabulous lake is fabulous. I don't live in that house. It's a total upgrade. You know, it was a fancy house when it was built, the fancy New Canaan house.

00:47:41:13 - 00:48:06:26
Sasha
And and now it's an even fancier one. Yeah, it's these are interesting questions and ones that I don't think that were ever going to get a concrete answer to. But I do think it is always kind of remarkable to me. I think that I think that when we look into like that shady area between life and death, we find things to be a lot more similar than they are different.

00:48:06:28 - 00:48:25:00
Sasha
You know, I don't think there's that much difference. But my hunch is that between this world and the next I, I have so love talking to you and I feel like we've only scratched the surface. So can I just I know in advance that you'll come back and have another conversation with me at the fire.

00:48:25:03 - 00:48:37:07
Kristine
A part two? Yeah. Yes, I will absolutely come back. Coming.

00:48:37:09 - 00:49:11:17
Sasha
Thank you so much for being part of Ghost Stories by the Fire. Do you have a spooky story? Near-death experience or supernatural happenings like to share? I'd love to hear it. Submit your story to Sasha Grammy.com with ghost stories by the fire in the subject line. You might just wind up on this podcast, and if you want to support it and keep the ghost stories coming, head on over to Sasha Grammy.com to check out my books and tarot decks which are available for purchase at your favorite bookseller.

00:49:11:20 - 00:49:32:29
Sasha
The Ghost stories by the Fire theme song is titled Lovely from the original motion picture score of The Deeper You Dig, a film about the lengths a mother will go to to find her daughter's killer, even if that means accepting a curse from beyond the Grave. Lead vocals by Zelda Adams Stream The Deeper You Dig On Amazon Prime.

00:49:33:04 - 00:49:39:29
Sasha
More. Toby. Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I'm saving you a seat at the fire.