Strangetober Macabre Minisode #1 | True Spooky Stories for Halloween

0:11 Welcome stranger to a mini Strange O ween episode with Madam Strangeways. That's me. It's officially Strange Tober, which means it's also officially spooky season, even if spooky season is a 24/7 365 thing. Here in the Strangeways household, I'm celebrating all month long with bonus mini episodes every Monday and every other Wednesday. So you get 350% more strange stories than usual. 350% That's math. These many episodes will just be story narrations, but every other Wednesday I'll still release a main episode with my usual commentary after the story.

0:53 And of course, I will get back to dragging you kicking and screaming down endless rabbit holes before we get to our true strange stories. Just a quick reminder, if you're ingesting a lot more scary content lately and you find yourself getting spooked easily, remember that you can feel afraid and not be in danger. And a quick shout out to my Patreon patrons who helped make the podcast possible. TJ Hotter of tapes of trepidation, G Man Music. Ted, Keith and Tori, Thank you to My Fiendish 5 for supporting the show. Now it sounds like it's about to rain Hellcats and Hell Hounds outside, so you know what that means. On to our true Strangeoween stories here with Madam Strangeways.

1:42 Strangeoween is good, right? Like Strange Topper, fine. But like, come on, Strangeoween, I don't know. Let me know. UK chef who's a huge skeptic but can't explain what happened this morning by Bert the Baker. I work as a chef in the UK so have worked in a lot of old English pubs that are supposedly haunted throughout my years in the trade. Various colleagues have even put the most silliest things down to paranormal activity, but I've always been able to debunk or come up with rational explanations for them. Fast forward to this morning, 6:00 AM, cold and rainy as it always is over here, and I'm putting away my delivery in the walk in freezer.

2:42 Now for context, our walk in freezer where we store all our bulk stuff is not directly connected to the kitchen and is instead around the back of the building that requires an additional key to get through to the security gate. I'm just mentioning this so that we can rule out any members of the public or other staff as a reason as it's only me that would have access at that time anyways for convenience. When putting away my delivery I always propped the door up with a large slab as the doors on a lot of the older walk in freezers are very heavy and are designed so that if you don't fully shut them they will naturally lock into place from the weight. So I'd just finished putting my last box away, knocked the light off and had just removed the slab as the door slowly started to shut when I could hear footsteps clear as day coming from inside the walk in freezer.

3:39 I turned around and I could see a figure moving in the back. I instantly put my hand out to catch the door to stop it from fully shutting in that moment assuming that one of my colleagues or the owner had gone in whilst I was getting my next box and I shouted out I'm so sorry I didn't see you go in there. But as I knocked the light back on and walked in, there was nothing, nobody there, no sign of anything. And it just baffled me. At the time I kind of just tried to put it in the back of my mind and get on with my work. But sitting here now on my break, I just can't explain it and I can't think of any rational way of debunking that. It's just the fact I heard footsteps as well as seeing something that's making it really hard to interpret. Wow, sorry for such a long post, I just wanted to get as much info down as I could.

4:41 I guess the question I want to know is if it's paranormal, what exactly was it? I never felt threatened during the moment, just confused. Thanks all, have a good day. There's a woman in my car, I-24 female pass by the same stretch of Rd. almost every night for about 5 years off and on. I kept feeling like someone was in the back seat of my car as I drove at night, always between 9:00 PM and 12:00 AM without me knowing. My mother was also experiencing this as well as my best friend. Only recently did we figure this out and my mother and I started talking about this only to find out that we often have the same image in our mind of what this woman looks like late 1800s to early 1900s clothing.

5:52 She's got a high collar, button up shirt, a long Plaid skirt. Her face is pointy, sunken eyes, aged features but not older than 70. A few months ago I was driving home from my friend's house and got the feeling that she was in my car. It was extra heavy, like she was inches from my face, and when I passed by a house that had an outside light on, I could see the outline of someone sitting in my passenger seat. It was like a grey fog or mist and then an almost clear face and she looked exactly like how my mother and I described her now, because I do believe in ghosts, but I also believe in seeing faces and things that might not be faces. I made sure every night that I felt her I'd look and see if it had just been the light from the house but there was nothing ever there.

6:55 I haven't felt her in a while and I can't find anything about a death or records that are available from that time period to see if I'm actually seeing someone that once lived in the area. So right now it's just me driving by and hoping she doesn't jump scare me again. Full body apparition by Ryan When I was 8 I saw a full body apparition. I was sleeping at my grandmother's house on a pull out sofa next to my father.

7:46 I woke up at one point and noticed my grandmother standing in the corner of the room. It was weird on many levels. It was very late at night. That was a random place to stand, and why would she just be standing in the corner instead of trying to talk to us? Well, as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked closer at her, I had the horrible realization that this old woman in the long nightgown was in fact not my grandmother at all. I didn't recognize her at the moment I realized that it wasn't her.

8:27 She started to move towards the bed. I started elbowing my father and trying to get him to wake. I was absolutely terrified to the core of my being. He was slow in waking as this thing approached the bed. She turned and walked around the foot of the bed, through the adjacent sunroom and out into the hallway of the house. My father finally awoke and I frantically told him what I saw, but he dismissed it. Oh, it was probably just Missus Pearl. She doesn't mean any harm. And he went back to sleep. I couldn't believe it.

9:10 So many things happened in that house. I saw ghosts at other times, including one case when I was too young to remember it. Most people who spent time there had some paranormal experience, and others reported seeing ghosts too. I was never comfortable being alone in that house even as I got older, and even telling the story still gives me chills. Thank you for joining me for more true strange stories of the unexplained.

9:51 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 Strangeways is produced and narrated by me. Madam Strangeways thememusicisbymarina.ryan@marinamakes.co Cover art is by Andrea Chisel Roldan at Cult of Teddy on Instagram. 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.