4am Footsteps | True Paranormal Stories | Ep #42

0:00 I will always tell people to trust their gut, although it's tough because I want to trust my gut but sometimes my gut is paranoid. Welcome strangers and strange links and happy strange tober. I, Madam Strangeways, am here to narrate your true strange stories of the unexplained. Stick around after the story where I share my strange thoughts and observations for believers and skeptics alike, and I will drag you down a Slough of strange rabbit holes along the way, kicking and screaming if needs must, before we get to today's true strange story.

0:47 The strangest of shout outs to my Patreon patrons TJ Hotter of the Tapes of Trepidation podcast, G Man Music, Ted, Keith and Tori, thank you so much to my Feral Fiendish 5 for supporting the show. Do you want to hear your name at the beginning of every episode? Or maybe you'd fancy a free sticker? Or what about access to Madam Strange Notes, AKA Strange bonus content? Join the Patreon today at patreon.com/madam. Strange Ways. Oh, did you hear that? I think it's about to rain hellcats and hell hounds outside, so you know what that means. On to our true strange story here on Madam Strange Ways.

1:53 My most terrifying experience by Petra. We had a little girl ghost in our previous house. We've all seen her, hurt her. She was sweet, nice. We didn't mind. Coexisting was easy. She was maybe 5 or 6 years old. One night I was all by myself. Kids were spending the night with friends and or their mom. We are a patchwork family. My little girl was at a friend's house and the other two with their mom. My husband was at work, he's a truck driver and expected back around 4. AMI was sitting on the couch watching TV when it started. I heard heavy footsteps and something dragging above me. Except this was a one story house with no attic, not even a crawl space.

2:49 Heavy, heavy footsteps dragging. Maybe a heavy sack of flour. I want to think flour because we all know what the alternative would be. It was so loud and I was so frozen with fear that I could not move off the couch. I called my husband and asked if he could hear this through the phone and he could. I called some more friends and they all heard it. My husband told me to go to a hotel but I couldn't because my purse and car keys were in my bedroom. I felt like I could not go down that hallway to my bedroom. I don't know why that I had that feeling, I just. I just knew not to go into the hallway so I stayed on the couch until my husband came in at 4:00 AM. When he walked in we could both hear it for another couple of minutes then it was gone.

3:50 Never happened again. I was terrified and the whole air around me felt thick and dreadful. It never stopped until my husband came home and after he heard it for a few minutes it stopped and the air felt normal. This was the only time I was afraid of a ghost, quote UN quote and I had never been so afraid. Petra, thank you so much for allowing me to read your horrifying story. I am so glad to hear that you are not in this house anymore because this happened in your previous house if I understood correctly.

4:39 So thank goodness because you don't need that in your life. Hello, everybody, welcome, welcome. Welcome to Strange Tober. Happy Strange Tober, everyone all month long, so excited. You know, I'm recording this. I'm I'm going to tell you a little peek behind the curtain. Behind the strange curtain. It's October 4th when I'm recording this. I should have been recording this back in August at minimum. Probably should have been July. That's not how we roll here. That's not how we roll here in the strange zone. Strange. I feel like I had a word for this at some point.

5:20 You know what? e-mail me madamstrangeways@gmail.com. What do we call this space? Oh, strange space. What do you think? Let me know, madamstrangeways@gmail.com. Anyway, that's not how we roll here. That's not how we roll. So unfortunately I am recording this on October 4th. We're already four days into Strange Tober and I'm already like, no, Oh my God, October's almost over. Like I'm, I'm already like mourning it. And it's not even Halloween yet, so I don't know if you feel the same way again, e-mail me madamstrangeways@gmail.com. Let me know, am I alone? Is it just me? Anyway, on to Petra's story. First of all, Petra, what a cool name. What a cool name, what a bad ass name.

6:01 I love it. But what I don't love is that you had to go through this. So first of all, Petra, I am so sorry that you had to experience this, especially alone. I mean, I'm not sure how much better it would have been if your kids had been home, because then I'm sure that probably would have spooked the kids in addition to spooking you. That would be my guess. But also maybe there would have been something kind of like, like a protective instinct on your part to protect the kids, and then maybe you would have been running on more adrenaline. I don't know. I'm. It's just scary to be alone. It's scary when you're alone because you're also like, am I crazy? You know, for instance, like calling your husband and asking, like, can you hear this or am I hallucinating? And yeah, just so, so creepy, Especially because. OK, OK, let's just jump back.

6:47 Let's let's jump to the beginning. A little girl ghost. Y'all had a First of all, I love Petra. How just like casually you're just like, Oh yeah, we had a little girl ghost in the house. Yeah, no worries. She was just like 5 or 6. Like we got along great. She was a great roommate. She didn't bother anybody. She was really nice. Like, what do you mean? How can you just drop that and then just walk on? Go on with the story. That's crazy. I want to know more about this little girl, first of all. First of all, especially because everyone has seen her. Everyone has heard her. I don't like it. But you know, I guess she didn't bother anybody. That's fine. But then like, so then did you have two ghosts? Because is this a separate ghost? I assume that a little girl ghost is not making heavy footsteps. I suppose she would be capable of it if she put her mind to it, because you know how I feel about weird little girls. I love.

7:42 I I love weird little girls. I was a weird little girl before weird little girl power. You know, I so she could probably figure it out, but it's if it made you feel unsafe, probably it's not a little girl ghost. Although now that I'm saying this out loud, guys, this isn't scripted. If this isn't clear, none of my commentary is is is scripted when it comes to these kinds of stories, unless I'm doing like a deep dive when there's research involved, then it's kind of scripted. But this is not scripted at all. It's probably you're probably thinking this is very clear that it's not that it's not scripted Madam, because here's the thing. Little kids are spooky and and scary movies. They're super spooky when they're used to spooky effect. Right?

8:26 So like if you look at signs, the little girl, I don't think she was spooky, but I bet some people did. I thought she was so cute. Bo Oh my God, so cute, so cute. I didn't think she was scary, but I bet some people kind of thought she was a little weird. However, you look at Ringu or Juon and it's like, OK, well, terrifying, right? So scary, but this little girl ghost is like a western little girl ghost and maybe western little girls are not as scared. Why is that? Why someone smarter than me let me know madamstrangeways@gmail.com What is it with like the the split between little kids especially being super? Maybe my maybe my sample size is small, but I feel like there's something to be discussed there.

9:17 Just like I said, someone smarter than me please chime in madamstrangeways@gmail.com. Anyway, I don't think this was little girl because like you said, like Petra said, little girl ghost was sweet and nice etcetera. Curious, so is there 2 ghosts? And where did this ghost go? Because it doesn't sound like it ever happened again. It was the only time it happened and you've never been so scared. So what the heck? What was it? Was it a ghost? Was it a ghost? This is where we get to the point where if there was a complete 100% skeptic listening, I'm not sure that they're still listening. However, I love to give both a skeptical or a mundane explanation as well as a paranormal 1. And so that's kind of what we're going to get into here. So I will start just with the paranormal explanation where, OK, you've already got, you know, you're already understanding that there's paranormal activity in the home because like there's a little girl ghost in the house, right? OK, so clearly there's ghosts around. Is it that strange to think that there's a second ghost? Probably not, right, 'cause like, what is it? Like I don't even want to say this 'cause I hate them. But it's like if you talk to an exterminator and you see, you know, they say like if you see one gross bug, I'm not even going to specify I hate, I hate bug infestations. It's disgusting.

10:46 But anyway, they go like if you see like 1 bad bug, it's not just one. There's a bunch. You just can't see them and they're hiding or you know, they'll come out soon or there's a ton of them. So is that kind of what we're dealing with here? You know, like not to be Ed Warren about it and call it an infestation because we know Ed Warren, the self-proclaimed demonologist and self-taught demonologist loves to throw the word infestation around when it comes to ghosts and demons. But you know is that is that kind of related? Like, maybe there were just more ghosts. And maybe for some reason, this night, maybe this night was the night that the man died 50 years ago and this is just the last thing he did when before he died was drag a sack of heavy flour around. Nothing else.

11:33 Nothing else. Nothing weirder than that. Just flour. I get you not wanting to think of something scarier. Like, for instance, a body. Sorry, I did have to say it. A corpse. Maybe it's not even a corpse. Maybe it's a living person and something's horrible. OK. Just there's so many thing. This is the thing. Your imagination is always worse than the truth, right? Or worse than when you don't know something. You're going to fill in the gaps and they're going to be really disturbing and scary. Or at least that's how my brain fills in gaps. I know it's not just me. I bet if you're listening to this, you probably do the same thing anyway. You know, maybe that is just the night that he did that. And every year, you know, or every five years or, you know, whatever, you know, there's, there's sure. I think if you already have one ghost in the house, it's not that much of A stretch to say there's another ghost. Now.

12:28 Why was it doing that? What was that feeling? You know, just something bad happened in the house. I would have a lot of more. I would have a lot more questions. I would want to know if I was looking at this from a paranormal, if I was a paranormal investigator, I would want to know, are there any crimes that happened in the house, like murders, deaths, you know, anything that you could find? What's the history of the house? What was there before the house? And that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm asking if there was a Native American burial ground on on the land. OK, we don't have to get that horror movie cliche about it. But like, was there something else traumatic that happened on the land? I know, you know, there's the stone tape theory where, you know, in a nutshell, something that has happened in real life kind of gets etched into the, the, the quote UN quote like tape of time and that it just repeats. And it's not an intelligent haunting. It's a residual haunting.

13:21 So is, you know, is, is that what we're dealing with? But then I would also have to ask, well, then why hasn't this ever been experienced before? Why was it never experienced again? Like what you know, it's just there's lots of questions. Very scary though, especially because like when you got to trust your gut right? Like I will always tell people to trust their gut, although it's tough because I want to trust my gut, but sometimes my gut is paranoid or my gut is having, having, having a bit of an, having a little bit of a panic attack, just a wee bit, just a wee little panic attack, that's all. Yeah, that happens sometimes. And so it's hard to trust my gut. But of course you should trust your gut. You know, that's just do as I say, not as I do, but I get it like feeling I cannot do X because I just feel in my bones that something bad is going to happen if I do it. I sounds really, really scary and especially if it, you know, all of this was clearly happening through the witching hour, 3:00 AM, which I will say, I feel I feel away about 3:00 AM And like anytime, anytime in a story when someone is saying like, Oh my God, and 3:00 AM, it was happening at 3:00 AM and that's the witching hour.

14:38 And that's when you know, demons, blah, blah, blah. I've been that. I've been there before. I have thought that before. I've had to seriously do kind of like almost exposure therapy with myself alone, not with a therapist to now. I'm like, and when I wake up and it's like 3:33 AM, I'm like, nice. And then I go back to bed because there's not really any, there's not really any basis for 3:00 AM. It's just kind of word of mouth and also cognitive bias. And you know, you just when someone says this thing always happens at 3:00 AM, you know, my question is, are you actually recording this information? Are you gathering all the data every time you wake up? Are you looking at what time it is and then writing it down to the spreadsheet?

15:26 And then if you are, and then you are still only waking up at 3:00 AM, then though that comes to, OK, I'm getting into the mundane and skeptical view. My point is, if you're looking at it from a paranormal point of view, 3:00 AM spooky time. Spooky time. So obviously this was happening during the quote UN quote witching hour because your husband, Petra's husband didn't come home until 4:00 AM. And then but of course, of course, like within minutes of Mr. Petra coming inside the house, all of a sudden it stops and never happened again. That's so annoying. Could I just say like, I'm glad it didn't have it again, but like that's so annoying. Like what do you what are you talking about? It's almost like when you're having an IT issue and then IT takes a look at your computer and then it's not happening anymore and you look crazy and you look kind of dumb. I mean, you're like, I swear it was just happening, but now it's not happening anymore.

16:26 Kind of like that. I mean at least he it was happening when he was there and you could both hear it, but still like what is that ghost? Oh, now that there's a man in the house, you're not going to scare the woman that's left alone. Hmm, don't approve, don't like it. So that ghost dragging the flower, the flower dragger ghost. Not cool, dude, not cool. All right, so now we're moving on to mundane or skeptical or as I like to also say, naturalistic explanations. OK, So I was kind of getting into it with the 3:00 AM spooky hour. But The thing is, is like there are studies that show that 3:00 AM is kind of really typical time for people to wake up either because of high cortisol, like REM sleep, etcetera.

17:18 I mean, of course, it depends on around when you go to sleep, but circadian rhythm just happens to be that that you're kind of up at 3:00 AM. Now, that is not what's happening here. Petra was up. She was up. She was up at 3:00. That's not what this is. I just have to address it because I brought it up. My bad. That's my bad. Anyway, so little girl ghost, all right, I don't know. Not knowing, OK, because I don't know what actually happened with the little girl ghost. I don't know any of the experiences that happened around the little girl ghost. Obviously, it doesn't sound like it was anything, you know, traumatic even remotely. But The thing is, the entire family has been primed.

18:00 The entire family has been primed to expect there to be a ghost in the house. So once you expect there to be a ghost in the house, kind of like what I was saying earlier is like, well, then I don't think it's that big of a stretch for you to think that there are two ghosts in the house. If you're already having things happen in the house and you are assigning a supernatural explanation to them. Of course, if something happens and you can't explain it, you're going to be, you know, you're going to be pinning it on the paranormal. You're going to be pinning it on a ghost, obviously not the little girl ghost in this case, but a ghost. So there's that. First of all, you know, regardless of whether or not the little girl ghost is actually a ghost, regardless of whether that is because obviously, listen, if I read your story on here, I need you to understand. If I read your story, it's because I feel like you are telling the truth and you have really experienced something that is unexplainable.

18:59 So I am not questioning whether or not there was a little girl ghost. It actually doesn't matter. The point is, is that you're primed for there to be a ghost in the house. So there's that. However, it doesn't make a dragging sound and heavy footsteps above you when there's no attic or crawl space. It doesn't make that any less terrifying. And if it were me, of course I would do the same things where it's like, was it wildlife? Like, what was it? Was it, you know, there's going to be some mundane explanation, except, you know, that Petra felt that overwhelming heavy sense of dread and foreboding and, and, and just fear. So, you know, is, does that come from expecting it to be a ghost or, you know, what is that? What what is that?

19:47 Is that that anxiety? You're also alone. It's night time, you know, I assume that the house is not normally empty. So does that maybe play into it? You know, I know I get really jumpy sometimes, especially when it's late at night and I'm like, what is that noise? I don't normally remember hearing that noise. Maybe I did, Maybe I have heard that noise, but I wasn't paying attention because I wasn't scared and on high alert questions. But if it were happening to me, I think this is kind of the way that I would go. It's like, first of all, Oh my God, is there someone on the roof? Like, is there an actual human being on my roof? Walking back and forth. And if so, why? And if so, oh God, you know, I think I would panic and and think about calling 911.

20:33 I mean, I think definitely calling someone to be like, do you hear this? Am I crazy? I think that makes complete sense. But I think if it were me, I would really hope that it was like a rabid raccoon. You know, like, I don't want it to be rabid. I do. I, you know, if I could wave a wand and eradicate rabies from the world right now, you know, I would. But I would hope that it was like an animal that was for some reason pacing back and forth, although I can't really think of a reason why that would ever happen. But barring it being an animal, you know, happening so consistently back and forth, back and forth and in the footsteps, I mean, I know rodents of all kinds, you know, from squirrels to rats to, you know, probably raccoons.

21:19 I know they're not rodents, but, you know, wildlife that can get into your OK. There's not an attic, there's not a crawl space. But there's something right? Like in the roof. Like, I mean, I guess I'm trying to picture a roof scenario in which it just goes roof house. Is that also? I feel like now I've said roof now do I say it weird? Do I sound like I'm a dog barking? Roof, roof, roof, roof, roof. How do we say madamstrangeways@gmail.com? Let me know. How do you pronounce roof? Was I pronouncing it weird? Anyway, there has to be some space. Even if it's not a crawl space, there's something up there because like, insulation is supposed to be up there, right? I guess, I don't know, that's kind of even scarier. I don't love that, you know, OK, I'm just, I'm just riffing here. Like, is it like, was there like a loose roof? Shit, there it is again.

22:14 Is it a loose shingle? You know, like, was it a windy night possibly. Was there a shingle that was kind of being blown just enough to get the wind under it and then it's kind of smacking back down on on the roof roof. Is that maybe that's something or like a branch of a nearby tree? You know, that's like hitting the there's I, I feel like there's something there. I just without me being there and, and being able to replicate it or, you know, take a look around, you know, we're just never going to know. We're never going to know exactly what caused it. But you know, it could be something like that. But then even even if it was something like a shingle or a tree branch or honestly anything, anything mundane, why did it stop shortly after Mr.

23:08 Petra came home? That would be my question. I don't have an answer to that. Maybe. OK, you know what? If it actually was a human being, a living human being that was actually walking back and forth with a heavy sack of flour on the roof like a weirdo. If it actually was a human being doing that. And husband came home and then weirdo on the roof was like, uh oh, rut row. And then clambers off the roof, never to be seen or heard from again because he didn't realize that Miss Petra had a Mr. Petra. You know, maybe that's it.

23:48 Maybe that makes the most sense out of all of the options, all the mundane options. Maybe. I kind of think I like that the best, although it is almost the scariest. See, as again, I'll always say honestly, the living are way scarier than the dead and they're definitely a lot more dangerous than the dead. The living can hurt you. The dead I will. This is the hill I will die on. And when I die on that hill, I will not be a danger to you because I firmly believe that the dead cannot hurt you and that there is not a supernatural force or a paranormal force that can actually hurt you. So that's me. That's my hot take. That's my paranormal hot take. But you know, living creatures can, human beings can definitely and will definitely hurt you.

24:35 So spooky, very spooky. So I guess when it comes to breaking it down, paranormal versus mundane, the paranormal angle, I mean, I think I, I, I kind of like my pet theory of like something happened on that night. It's a residual haunting and he's just repeating his, his death or something leading up to his death. Or it's like, you know, I don't know, it's something dramatic and hopefully cool and not at all a body or a corpse. That's just fingers crossed. And then from a mundane or skeptical standpoint, maybe it was actually a human being dragging something heavy or just walking and the dragging, Who knows? I don't know.

25:16 Maybe it was actually a human being and then they skedaddled as soon as Mr. Patrick came home. I don't know. Let me know though, if you're listening and you have thoughts on to how to explain this from either a paranormal angle or from a naturalistic or mundane angle. I would love to hear your thoughts. e-mail them to me at madamstrangeways@gmail.com. And of course, if you have your own strange story that you want to hear narrated on the show, e-mail it to me. You know the e-mail madamstrangeways@gmail.com.

25:59 Thank you for joining me for more true strange stories of the unexplained. Remember that you can feel afraid and not be in danger. You're safe here with me, probably. Please follow the podcast, leave a rating on Spotify or Apple, or tell your friends and foes about the show. It would mean the world to me. The underworld, obviously, I mean, come on. Was that not? Was that not clear? Madam Strange Ways is produced and narrated by me. Madam Strange Ways theme music is by marina.ryan@marinamakes.co. Cover art is by Andrea Chisel Roldan at Cult of Teddy on Instagram.

26:42 You can submit your own true strange story at madamstrangeways.com or e-mail it to madamstrangeways@gmail.com. See you soon, she said ominously.