00;00;03;20 - 00;00;14;12
Lovely
You come to me when I'm lonely, I take you and we go home.

00;00;14;15 - 00;00;45;19
sasha
There's a unique and even thrilling quality when driving through unfamiliar or territory, especially late at night. It might be the liminal space unfolding behind the wheel when you are between worlds. Not here. Not there. But suspended in time with only 20 feet of headlight guiding you through the unknown. Tonight's Spooky stories all happened while our storytellers were on the road.

00;00;45;22 - 00;01;15;11
sasha
Our first tale, Phantom Ice Cream, was recorded at a live Ghost Stories by the fire event at the Barrows Intense tasting Room in Brooklyn, New York, on December six, 2022. Here's Elliot with phantom ice cream coming.

00;01;15;14 - 00;01;34;00
Elliot
So I was working in a bookstore in my college town. I graduated with a degree in history and on a lunch break, I ran over a friend of mine. I'd been with a play in a play with in university, and I just casually said, Hey, what are you doing this summer? And he said, Well, I'm touring America as a clown in the circus.

00;01;34;03 - 00;01;53;06
Elliot
And I said, Really? I said, Can I go with you? And he said, Well, have you ever clowned before? And I said, No, no, I can do it. I said, I can do. I was the class clown in eighth grade once. And he said, Can you ride an elephant? I said, No problem. Yeah, Fall off an elephant. How do you do that?

00;01;53;08 - 00;02;17;14
Elliot
You can't fall off it. So anyway, he got a contract and we went down. First date was March 3rd in Odessa, Texas. 1979. In the circus, my partner Paul bought a new Chevy. And we play these little towns in the middle of nowhere. So I know he was doing 55 miles an hour when it happened. And we would play these little towns like on these old state highways.

00;02;17;17 - 00;02;34;07
Elliot
It was a cart and Johnson Shrine Circus. So I know we were going 55 miles an hour when it happened. It was Paul was driving. I was sitting in the middle in the front seat of the Chevy pickup, and we picked up the drummer in the circus was now living with us in our 12 foot trailer. We're in the middle of nowhere.

00;02;34;09 - 00;02;54;08
Elliot
You know, after they built the interstates, there's nobody on those little state highways After the last milk truck goes home and the last roadhouse closes at 1 a.m., there's nobody out there. We hadn't seen a car an hour or more. So we came down this hill and we crossed a body of water. But it wasn't a bridge. It was just built on pylons over the water.

00;02;54;11 - 00;03;16;07
Elliot
And as we crossed this, like narrow two lane bridge with no lights on it, our headlights illuminated something that ran across from one side of the water to the other. It went right across the road. It was about eight feet tall. It was tubular and it looked like it was made out of smoke. Now, it was a windless night.

00;03;16;15 - 00;03;33;04
Elliot
And I've been in the desert. I've seen little tornadoes of sand and I've been on lakes, I've seen mist, tornadoes, little. But this was moving on its own. And we were all like and it went about 20 feet ahead of us. So as it went through the headlights, we got a good look at it and we were off.

00;03;33;05 - 00;03;52;17
Elliot
We were freaked out, you know, And then we got really scared and really quiet because we're still out over the water and we came back up on land and right away there was like this Dairy Queen like ice cream joint. We were all like, let's get out of the van. Let's talk to a human being. We all had that sense of just, you know, put that behind us.

00;03;52;20 - 00;04;16;14
Elliot
So I got up to the window, this little ice cream shop, and there's a little bald man in there, little bald guy with thick coke bottle glasses. And I said to him, I said, We just crossed over back there and we saw something. Now. This is what he does. He doesn't open the little screen window and stick his head out and look even beyond the lights of the parking lot.

00;04;16;14 - 00;04;45;00
Elliot
Blackness. He wouldn't. He's inside the place. And he does this. He slowly turns in that direction, and then he slowly turns back and he looks each of us in the eyes as he does this. He says, A lot of people say they seen something out there. And I'm like, great. So I ordered a milkshake and he slides the little sliding door across and he pushes it out onto the ledge.

00;04;45;07 - 00;05;10;03
Elliot
And I notice his thumbnail. So it's a curved yellow three inch claw. And then I ask myself the morning after. Why did I drink the milkshake? And what was he doing out there in the middle of nowhere with no business, no traffic? And that look was a look of recognition. He knew something and he wanted to see what we had seen.

00;05;10;05 - 00;05;23;24
Elliot
So he asked us. A lot of people say they seen something out there or something out there.

00;05;23;26 - 00;05;55;21
sasha
For most teenagers, nothing screams freedom like getting a driver's license. Hitting the road late at night with your friends is euphoric. But it's safe to say that we probably all have those friends who are like magnets for weird, wild experiences and odd happenings. Our second tale is the lonely Road, and it was recorded at a Live Ghost Stories event at the Barrows Intense Tasting Room on April 2nd, 20, 23.

00;05;55;24 - 00;06;08;22
sasha
Here is Heidi with the Lonely Road.

00;06;08;24 - 00;06;32;26
Heidi
So kind of a short story, but I grew up in Virginia. If you've ever been to Virginia, it's very known for being haunted. There's a lot of old buildings there. But I had this one friend who lived in a super old house. It's actually on in the middle of the state arboretum, and it's like protected property. Like they couldn't even get that property because it's so old.

00;06;32;26 - 00;06;54;09
Heidi
It's older than the state arboretum. And she always had weird stuff going on in her house. Like, so strange. She lived in the bedroom that led directly to the attic. And it was the only only bedroom that led to the attic. And the attic was like this cool play place, right? It was like her parents decked it out is when chalkboard paint first became a thing.

00;06;54;09 - 00;07;16;03
Heidi
So like, everyone got to go up there and write on the walls. It was really cool, but weird stuff always happened with her. She was like, my friend that like weird stuff happened with so and we'd hear stuff in her attic, all that stuff. But like I said, Virginia is super old. Like you hear stuff in people's houses all the time and you don't think anything about it.

00;07;16;06 - 00;07;33;12
Heidi
Like you're like, you heard those voices upstairs last night. Cool. Yeah, I hear those in my house too. So you don't really think anything about it, but one night we were driving home from a school dance, and I'm with this friend who, once again, weird stuff happens with her. So all those people that slept, slept, walked to.

00;07;33;13 - 00;07;53;02
Heidi
So she was, you know, you just never knew what she was going to do. So we're driving home and she's driving and she's in her parents Volvo. It's like pretty low to the ground. And we're just, you know, we're really like on cloud nine, coming home from the dance. It's one of those glow stick party dances. And we're like, Yeah, this was awesome.

00;07;53;04 - 00;08;15;16
Heidi
And we're driving through this like old, old, old township, right? And when I say towns like, I'm from a place called White Post Virginia and there's nothing except for a white post that George Washington put in the middle of the ground. No stop signs, no nothing. It's a four way intersection with a white post. So we're in the even smaller town in the county, right?

00;08;15;16 - 00;08;42;20
Heidi
We're driving through Millwood and it's the speed limits, 25 miles an hour. And I see this person walking on the side of the road. Not uncommon to see people walking on the side of the road, but they're in all white also, like we're not thinking, that's super weird either. And as we get closer to this person, my friend starts driving the car slower and slower.

00;08;42;21 - 00;09;14;03
Heidi
You're thinking, okay, yeah, that's not weird. We should slow down. It's dark and there's someone walking on the side of the road. But she starts driving, like really slow, and the person, the closer we get is freakishly tall. I mean, like, the tallest person I've ever seen. And she. I mean, we are crawling in the car at this point, and I'm looking at her and she's not even looking at this man.

00;09;14;07 - 00;09;43;28
Heidi
I'm on the side of the road. She is I mean, I've got like goose bumps talking about She's just dead forward and the car is creeping. And by the time we get next to this person, they're an all white have really dark skin and just the the just craziest eyes I've ever seen like the the white part of their eyes is so white, but the pupil part, it's just red.

00;09;43;28 - 00;10;08;07
Heidi
I mean, like and they're staring right in the car at me. And at this point I am, I am fully panicking. I am like, I am not. Okay. And they start reaching for the door handle. And at this point, my friend has stopped the car and she's not looking at me. She is looking dead ahead and has stopped the car.

00;10;08;09 - 00;10;33;15
Heidi
And I screamed, I screamed, I screamed, I screamed. Her name. Her name is broken, I screamed broken drive. And she snapped out of it and drove. And she was like, what happened back there? And I was like, Did you not see that? Like what? What happened? And something. She was like, We have to go back. And I was like, okay, well, you're crazy.

00;10;33;15 - 00;10;54;11
Heidi
Let me out on the side of the road, often for myself. Thank you. But we turned around. She said, You will lock all the doors. They can't get in the car. It's fine. Just keep like. I don't know what happened back there. I have to go back. We drove back. No one nothing. There's nowhere to hide. There's one road, right?

00;10;54;13 - 00;11;20;04
Heidi
And still to this day, I ask her, Why did you stop? And she said, I couldn't hear you. I couldn't. I don't know. So ambulances say we took the other road home. Whenever you're driving home from any other school dances. But yeah, that is that is my story.

00;11;20;07 - 00;11;52;05
sasha
I'm our third tale, The Lost Souls of Happy Valley was recorded at our first ever Ghost stories by the fire event at the Barrows Intense Tasting room on September 14th in 2021. It is told by a masterful storyteller with an introduction from me. Now, here's Nicholas de Farris with the Lost Souls of Happy Valley.

00;11;52;08 - 00;11;52;19
Lovely
I want to.

00;11;52;19 - 00;12;22;08
sasha
Introduce him properly to you guys. This is a new friend, actually, from the terror world who I am utterly delighted to actually meet for the first time. So I guess you guys will also be meeting him for the first time this evening. We Tarot readers are a special a special bunch, I will say his name is Nicholas d'Affairs, and he brings together the magic of old time witchery with a deep knowledge of tarot.

00;12;22;12 - 00;12;55;27
sasha
And I'm so ever so jealous of this because following in the footsteps of his great great grandmother, he and his family have reached beyond the veil for over a century. A master storyteller, Nicholas, weaves every reading into a transformative experience, and we are so excited to bring you up to close out ghost stories by the fire. Come on up, Nicholas.

00;12;55;29 - 00;13;22;17
Nicholas
Thank you so. So I will start by saying that I do make my living as a tarot card reader and my mother's mother's mother's mother way up in upstate New York around the turn of the last century, made her living reading tea leaves. So the women in my mom's family have always done these strange things tea leaf readings, palm readings, tarot card readings.

00;13;22;19 - 00;13;48;21
Nicholas
And I always thought it was quite normal growing up. And it wasn't until I moved out of Podunk, upstate New York that I realized we were quite weird and as a little actually special, I suppose you could say boost tonight I wore the ring that my great great grandmother died wearing. So perhaps that'll lend a little bit of extra energy here tonight.

00;13;48;24 - 00;14;33;13
Nicholas
So this is a story that I wish was not true, as you can imagine, my family and I love weird things. We love nothing more than wandering around graveyards, walking through cemeteries, reading the names off of the headstones, wondering who they were and what they did in the years that they lived. We've gone through old, abandoned psychiatric wards in upstate New York, and if we happened to see a little tumbledown house on the side of the road, you can bet your bottom dollar we will stop at it and poke around.

00;14;33;20 - 00;15;03;18
Nicholas
Whether that's legal or not. So several years ago, my mother bought a house in this little tiny town called Albion, New York, way up in the boondocks in the middle of nowhere. Now, this house came complete with a hundred acres of land. And this was just the kind of thing that my grandmother, my mother and myself were all about.

00;15;03;20 - 00;15;42;06
Nicholas
It was an old house with a big stone fireplace, 100 acres of land with trails and trees and all kinds of lost and lonely places to straggle through. Curiously enough, down the road from my mother's new house, there was something of even greater interest to us. There was a little sign by the side of the road that was all cracked and weathered and peeling apart, and it said Happy Valley, with an arrow pointing down a little road that was no bigger than two car tire tracks.

00;15;42;08 - 00;16;12;14
Nicholas
And this little road stretched down into an even deeper set of woods. Well, of course, my grandmother, mother and myself insisted that we had to see what was at the end of this road marked Happy Valley. So after dinner one night, my mother, grandmother, myself and my little sister Nellie all piled into the car and we took a drive to Happy Valley.

00;16;12;17 - 00;16;38;17
Nicholas
Now, I should add that my little sister is not quite like the rest of us. My little sister likes sports and being popular and being well-liked by other people. And as for my mother, grandmother and myself, we really don't give a fig about any of that. Now, I will say that in the weeks that we had lived in Albi in New York, we had asked around and we asked the locals, What is this Happy Valley place?

00;16;38;20 - 00;17;11;15
Nicholas
And we were met with silence, strange looks or defiant stares. But it was one afternoon at an all you can eat buffet truck. Stop that a local woman told us Happy Valley was not a place that we were likely to ever see. why? We asked. And she told us Happy Valley had once been a village of its own.

00;17;11;17 - 00;17;53;22
Nicholas
Well, we were even more interested. And she said, back during the middle of the 1800s, Happy Valley was a small but very thriving religious community near Albion, New York. At the very center of it was a church with a minister and his wife who tended the flock of devout. And she said that for several years Happy Valley flourished until one night in a fit of hysterics, the minister's wife decided she wanted to send the whole flock of parishioners to heaven.

00;17;53;24 - 00;18;28;09
Nicholas
So she took poison, dropped it down the well, and by the next day, every last soul in Happy Valley was dead. Now, in the middle of the 19th century, this was so shocking no one dared come near the town. Now, rumor had it we were told that the whole forest trees and vines had grown up over the houses and Church of Happy Valley, and the whole place had been engulfed by the woods.

00;18;28;12 - 00;19;17;20
Nicholas
And we were told that somewhere deep in that forest, little Happy Valley was resting still, just as it had been 100 some odd years ago when the well was poisoned, intact and covered in ruin. Now, this woman told us that it was not what happened in Happy Valley years ago that kept the locals away. But it was what happened now, she told us in her strange small upstate country way that Happy Valley was a hotbed for devil worshipers and cultists who sought out that strange place.

00;19;17;25 - 00;19;50;28
Nicholas
They were drawn to it like moths to a flame, she said, to practice their séances and cast their spells. And she said they had stirred up a whole hornet's nest worth of trouble that only an idiot would venture into Happy Valley. So we were driving into Happy Valley, my mother, grandmother, myself and my sister. We were driving. My mother's car was pitching up and down the winding road, careening across the gullies.

00;19;51;02 - 00;20;19;21
Nicholas
The road was narrowing and narrowing and the sun was setting deeper and deeper into the sky. Soon it was twilight and there was only a glimmer of light left in the sky. The trees seemed to grow up taller and taller around us and we drove on for what felt like ages. But we found the deeper we drove into the woods, the quieter we grew.

00;20;19;23 - 00;20;51;03
Nicholas
This was weird because we were a very rambunctious clan, but my grandmother stopped talking. My mother's hands gripped the wheel, and even my little sister in the back began to whine that she wanted to go home. Usually she waited until at least halfway through our adventure to do this. But nevertheless, we drove on in this stilted silence as this strange feeling descended on us.

00;20;51;05 - 00;21;23;16
Nicholas
And then, at last, to our delight, we found that Happy Valley was not just a myth. Out of the driver's side window we all saw poking through the trees a little tumbledown church steeple deep in the woods. There was vines growing up around this little church. The clapboard were moldy and weathered away, and it looked like this little church was just hanging on a frame held up by vines and leaves.

00;21;23;20 - 00;21;49;11
Nicholas
And lo and behold, there was a clutter of little houses around it too. And best of all, there was a well in the center of town. So we stopped the car and we all piled out and my mom took out her phone and turned her flashlight on. The light was dimming and we climbed over the brambles across logs and we went deeper and deeper and deeper into this woods.

00;21;49;11 - 00;22;15;22
Nicholas
We were dreaming about all kinds of strange 19th century artifacts we were going to find inside this church and the houses. We just couldn't wait. And then all of a sudden, my grandmother stopped dead in her tracks and I looked over at her and I could see that she was transfixed, staring at something just in the distance. And I followed her eyeline.

00;22;15;25 - 00;22;40;21
Nicholas
And even now, a part of me wishes that I hadn't seen what it was that she had seen about 20 yards ahead of us. They are just in front of the church. There was a man standing alone in the middle of the woods. He was facing away from us. He was looking at the church and he was wearing a long black coat.

00;22;40;24 - 00;23;15;06
Nicholas
And in the twilight he seemed to sway side to side. And my mother looked back and she thought perhaps he might be someone who needed help. My grandmother shook her head and she said something that sounded like he's not alone. Well, just then my mother's phone dimmed and the light went out. Her phone died in her hand, and my grandmother said, We need to go back to the car right now.

00;23;15;09 - 00;23;44;17
Nicholas
And so we backtracked. We made our way back over the logs in the moss, in the brambles, and we hurried back into the car. And when we looked back at the church, whoever had been standing there was gone. And my sister began to cry. At this point, we got inside, locked the doors. My mother turned the key of the car, and as she did, she shrieked because standing there in the headlights just ahead of us was the figure of a man in a long, dark coat.

00;23;44;17 - 00;24;08;06
Nicholas
But this time he was looking right at us through the glass. And his eyes or what there were of them were nothing more than dark sockets, and it looked as though his face had been badly burned. In fact, it looked like he had only half a face altogether. Well, my mother slammed the pedal and we drove backwards over the road.

00;24;08;10 - 00;24;31;16
Nicholas
The car pitched side to side. We drove for what felt like miles and miles and miles. It felt like the longest car ride we had ever been on. My sister was screaming and the car felt like it was being twisted and turned from side to side of the trees and the branches scraped along the side of the car like nails on a chalkboard, and the car pitched over.

00;24;31;16 - 00;25;21;06
Nicholas
A gully came down hard and the lights in the car dimmed and the car stopped there on the road in the middle of the woods. And my sister was screaming and screaming, Mommy, she said, There is more people. And my grandmother looked over at me and she said, He's gaining on us. And I looked out the window and in the dim light of the woods, I swear it looked as though there were other faces coming out from behind the trees, just as dark, just as strange, shambling towards the car and as the car sat there, seemingly dead in the middle of the woods, I heard what sounded at first like the engine ticking.

00;25;21;06 - 00;25;46;04
Nicholas
Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. But then it sounded like knocking on the car doors and then banging. And we all sat there as it sounded, as though dozens of hands banged and slapped on the car, rocking the car back and forth. My mother turned the key again and again and again and again and said a silent prayer.

00;25;46;09 - 00;26;22;02
Nicholas
And finally the car turned back on and we pulled out of the woods and careened back onto the main road. And we drove at breakneck pace, back to my mother's house, squealed into the driveway, got out. And when we look back at the car on all of our windows, there was indeed handprints smeared and wet. We had no words for one another.

00;26;22;02 - 00;26;59;07
Nicholas
We ran inside the house and we spent a whole sleepless night inside. My sister and I slept in the downstairs bedroom. A storm kicked up that night. Thunder, lightning, torrential rain. And in the morning the car had been washed quite clean by the rain and there was no sign of our little misadventure into Happy Valley at all. In fact, the whole thing might have gone down in our history is just a really bad memory, a dream, a nightmare.

00;26;59;09 - 00;27;43;09
Nicholas
But we would have all rather forgotten about. As you can imagine, less than a year later, my mother sold that house for less than she bought it for. We didn't talk much about Happy Valley, except for one strange thing that happened before we left that house just a few days before my mother moved out. Another storm blew through Albion, New York, and we sat in the living room downstairs by the big picture window and we could only see outside through flashes of lightning.

00;27;43;11 - 00;28;22;18
Nicholas
My grandmother and mother and myself and my sister sat there looking out the window at the road and the trees in front of us. And in one great flash of lightning out on the road in front of us, we all saw a man looking back through the window at us, wearing a long, dark coat, and he was looking straight in through the window and we could see those same dark eyes and that same strange face.

00;28;22;21 - 00;28;57;03
Nicholas
And once again, my grandmother said, he's not alone. But this time we knew what she meant. In another burst of lightning. There, by the man's side was a woman dressed in a long dress as if she had stepped right out of the 1800s. None of us said a word, but even now, we all wonder if it wasn't the minister and his wife coming to say, one last goodbye.

00;28;57;06 - 00;29;07;13
Nicholas
Thank you, guys.

00;29;07;15 - 00;29;30;10
sasha
The Ghost Stories by the Fire theme song Lovely comes from the breakout hit horror movie The Deeper You Dig by the Addams Family, The Deeper You Dig is an edgy, heartfelt ghost story that will haunt you long after it ends. Watch it now for free on tube. And thanks for listening to Alive Ghost Stories by the Fire episode.

00;29;30;12 - 00;29;54;28
sasha
If you like these creepy tales and want to keep them coming, please follow the Ghost stories by the Fire podcast and drop a nice review. You can watch video recordings of ghost stories on my Sasha Tarot Diva YouTube channel and find out how you can attend a live ghost stories by their fire event by going to my website event page at Sasha Graham dot com.

00;29;55;00 - 00;30;07;15
sasha
Do you have a story or a spooky one you'd like to share with me? Send me an email through my website contact page at Sasha Graham dot com. Thanks again for listening.

00;30;07;17 - 00;30;13;08
Nicholas
My name is the.