The Rat

[00:00:00] Before we get started with today's episode, we want to thank our Patreon subscribers. Aaron, Chad, Kristen, Mim, and Christine, you make this show possible and we are so thankful for your support. You too can become a Patreon member. Members get early access to episodes and exclusive bonus content only heard here. Other ways you can support the podcast is by leaving us a 5-star rating and a review. Or send us your stories.

[00:00:27] Please pitch us your creepiest encounters at youcanseememethedark at gmail.com. This episode also coincides with the release of Melissa's debut novel, The Sisters of Crimson House. She thanks you for all your love and support you've shown her along the way and dreams do come true. Thank you to the listeners and readers like you. Okay, on with the show.

[00:01:03] I'm Melissa Sweazy. And I'm Nate Reisman. And this is You Can See Me in the Dark. Julia grew up surrounded by cemeteries and cicadas. Summers were lush.

[00:01:32] Kudzu crawled up every available surface. The house was normal for suburban Tennessee. But for Julia and her sister, they were sharing space with something dark that did not want to stay hidden. You Can See Me in the Dark presents Julia.

[00:02:12] Julia. My name's Julia. I grew up in western Tennessee and my family's from Louisiana. And I grew up visiting there several times a year, every year. It's like a second home for me. Growing up in the South, there is that Southern Gothic sort of vibe. Whether it's driving through Mississippi and Louisiana,

[00:02:37] seeing all the statues, monuments and mausoleums and things. One side of my family actually comes from the funeral home business. And I was just frequently around funerals growing up. And that coupled with the lush and very humid green of the South is something I've always been fascinated with.

[00:03:05] And that feels like home to me. It was when I got older that I kind of realized I went to and participated in more funerals and had more death in my family in my childhood than other people I know growing up. Which is, it is what it is. In high school, we wore the artsy clothes and we would go and take

[00:03:33] cool pictures by the graveyards and write our spooky lyrics and poetry. We'd take crayons and colored pencils and draw over pieces of paper to see what was on the tombstones. It's always, honestly, cemeteries and graveyards are places I'm quite comfortable at. But people definitely said things about our house growing up, about weird feelings in the house, weird occurrences.

[00:04:02] I lived there from ages six to I think 17. 16 or 17. But my house growing up, it was total 70s suburbia. I think it was built in the late 70s. Lots of wood grain and stucco on the walls. Lots of brown and tan. Not a ranch style.

[00:04:32] It was in a cul-de-sac West Tennessee. We were some of the only kids there. There were a couple kids there, but it was mostly retired people. And a lot of my free time at home was spent just wandering around alone around my house, either reading books or drawing or just playing pretend.

[00:05:02] And things were not, strange occurrences were not so frequent that it was mundane. But it had that, I think it's that sort of eerie, uncanny, suburban feeling might have contributed to the strangeness of it all. We were not the first owners.

[00:05:31] I don't remember exactly how many there were, but it was a handful. Under five, for sure. It was not that old of a house. I think it was 77 or 78 that it was built. We moved there when I was six, so early 2000s. I can't recall when the previous owners had left. But they actually had relatives

[00:06:01] that lived across the street, too. The first time I realized that something was off, I was pretty young. It was not as soon as we got there. When we got there, I was more so excited to be in a new place. But I think I was six. I was six. My dad would almost every night fall asleep on the couch watching TV. And what I used to do is,

[00:06:30] since I was a child, I've been a bit of an insomniac on and off. I've always had trouble sleeping with my sleep schedule. And I would wait for my dad to fall asleep watching TV, go down, turn the volume low, and change the channel to watch whatever I wanted. And I was going down to do that. And I got myself a blanket and I used to lay down right in front of the TV because it was close and I could keep the volume low. And I don't remember, it was not

[00:07:00] something scary that night. I used to frequently watch scary things after my parents were asleep and not able to tell me no. I think it was something pretty simple, something basic. And I eventually turn off the TV, I'm going to sleep, and I don't know how long I'm asleep, but I jolt awake and I look up and my great-grand, I see my great-grandfather,

[00:07:30] but he's not physically there. My great-grandfather had passed away a year or two before when I was very young. I was four or five when he passed away, I think four, and he had passed away in Louisiana. He was a cattle rancher and a World War II vet. He was a really cool guy. And I have snippets of memories with him, but the feelings were always very warm. And that was what I felt was he wasn't looking directly at me. It almost

[00:08:00] looked like he was looking towards the wall, looking at something else, just checking on things is what it looked like. And I look at my great-granddad and I think, well, you're not supposed to be here. You died. And in addition to that, he didn't look to be physically there. He had this strange, he had this strange outline look about him. I remember this

[00:08:30] clear as day where almost like an outline of a drawing, right? So there's the negative space, that's transparent, it's like there's nothing there. But the outlines of his features, this baseball cap he would always wear, these wide collars for his jackets and his shirts that he got in the 70s and then just never updated. Those outlines were in a sort of blue mist, almost. The, honestly,

[00:09:00] the way I could describe it would be kind of like in the 90s Disney's Pocahontas movie. There's this sort of smoke when figures kind of come out of the smoke, those lines, those translucent blue lines, that's the closest thing I can think of. Because it was not hazy. It was almost crisp. And he doesn't acknowledge me almost as if he didn't perceive me. And he

[00:09:31] walks over me and through me. And as he walks past me, it seemed like he was just checking on everyone. As he walks through me, I know that feelings associated with ghosts are that feeling of cold, getting chills, and I felt those things in other instances as well. But in this case, it was not that. It was warm. And that's very interesting to me because I've never really heard that. And I've never felt that in other weird

[00:10:00] moments I've had that I can't explain. It was a very comforting feeling. It felt almost like a hug. Or if you've ever taken a sip of something like hot chocolate, it was that feeling. And I got very scared because I saw someone who I had seen in a coffin and then who I knew for a fact had passed away standing in front of me looking strange and then walked over me and through me. So I put the blanket over my head and I went back to sleep and

[00:10:30] I woke up on the carpet on the floor in the morning. But that was the first time I remember thinking, this is supernatural. The house that I grew up in would

[00:11:00] definitely have shifts in mood in a room. The word that my sister and I recently talked about it again, for a long time my sister and I were the only people we would talk to about it because she also has seen some wild things. But we would, the word is intimidation. We would feel this occasional intimidation even if one of us is alone in the house.

[00:11:30] The sort of hotbed of it was my room and that was on the second floor. The second floor was very small. It was just my sister and I's bedroom and then a bathroom that we shared. My sister's bedroom was directly above my parents' room and there were things that would happen in there as well but it seemed to live, funnily enough, in my closet which sounds like a bit of a movie trope

[00:12:01] but I saw what I saw and I felt what I felt and that was where it would sort of, in the same way, even if you're not looking at somebody, you can sometimes tell if someone's looking at you or if someone is in the room with you, you know? And that feeling would move throughout the house and that was not a kind feeling and that was certainly not the feeling of my great grandfather. I would describe the presence as kind of

[00:12:30] other, it seemed real grouchy, it seemed displeased that anything or anyone was around it and there were actually times where I would feel such a pressure in my room, I would feel unwelcome in my own room any time of day, it could be morning, afternoon, or night but at night I would sometimes actually sleep in the hallway outside of my

[00:13:00] room because I would be minding my own business, reading a book or drawing, listening to the radio and it would suddenly feel like there was something that had walked out of the closet or in from my bedroom door, almost like someone was standing there. I could see nothing physically but there was that same pressure of, you know when you get sent to the principal's office, that sort of fear of the adult

[00:13:30] authority figure and what cruelty they might express towards a child, it was that sort of feeling of I should probably go and I would just take a blanket, I would sometimes sleep in the hallway outside of the bedroom, I only learned in my adulthood that my sister would sometimes do the same thing. She would feel from her door to her bedroom this sort of intimidation or this sort of social pressure feeling to

[00:14:00] leave. It would just not feel good or safe for a child to be in there and she would take a blanket as well and sleep in the hallway and I would also sometimes park myself in front of the TV downstairs and I remember we talked to my parents about it and they were very confused by that because we were little kids at the time too, you know, like we'd be seven and nine or something like that and we weren't

[00:14:30] really the kids who would typically get things like night terrors or even if we had nightmares for the most part we would just think, oh I had a nightmare, let me just think happy thoughts, get a glass of water, go back to sleep. But this would be different. And so that was the more frequent kind of activity that we would feel in the house, that was more of an intuitive thing. This would also happen with our animals, our pets, we had one cat and one dog.

[00:15:00] It was the classic thing that my dog would sometimes just stare at the closet. There was a period where she was fixated on sleeping in my sister's closet, which is very strange. She usually was just pretty happy-go-lucky like any golden retriever, but she would sometimes become more focused, sit down and just stare at the closet. It was very weird. I didn't like it. I barely went in my own

[00:15:29] closet. It felt almost like if you went into an animal's home, like an animal nest. I should probably not be around this alligator's eggs, is kind of the way it would feel. My sister's room was pretty spacious, so we would play in there. And when we would take breaks to get snacks downstairs

[00:16:00] chair, it was like an office chair, like a computer chair, the old kind where the top half can flip back and forth. And I swear on my life, that chair would move on its own. And it was not the kind of chair where, you know, if you looked at it wrong, it would just the top half would flip over. You had to manually do it.

[00:16:30] this baby doll. We would play with it and either twerk it in that chair or it had its own play chair. And there was just a thing about that doll as well. There was just something strange about it, and we would sometimes test it, actually. I remember one time we set the back of the chair upside down, we go down

[00:17:00] and we wait a few minutes, we hear it. We go back upstairs, it's right side up. Very strange. That's going against gravity, you know? Like someone's hand would have to pass over it. And this baby doll would, she swears it moved on its own more than I saw it, but it was in her room. I made myself scarce whenever that doll was around. But I do remember this, we were in her room together,

[00:17:30] goofing around like usual. We go downstairs, I think we watched TV or something. We come back upstairs, almost corny like in a movie. The baby doll's head went 180 degrees backwards like an owl. Almost like something is messing with us. Because that was the thing, it didn't feel feel like you might see in a movie where there was no

[00:18:01] scratching on the wall that said, get out, or anything like that. But it seemed almost like something either pranking us, but in a dark way, almost like a bully is the way I would describe it. It is this sense of pointing and laughing at the kids because they're freaked out because their toys have moved on their own. And when that happened, I remember for a long time, my sister and I just didn't talk about that. That kind of shook us. We saw

[00:18:31] things too. I would see this thing out of the corner of my eye, which the closest person I could describe it to would be young Shirley Temple. And multiple times I would see it look like almost a cartoon in slightly fast motion, like an old animated show where it bobs up and down, not jittering in a aggressive way. But like if you watch an old newsreel or something, like old-timey footage, this thing that kind of looked like Shirley Temple would

[00:19:00] just spin around and turn a corner. And I later learned that my sister would sometimes see a boy, but with glasses, out of the corner of her eye in the yard in her window that pointed towards the front yard. Little things like that, not usually making direct eye contact with anything. But I do have one that we call the rat. That was one at that same

[00:19:30] house that was one of the first times I felt this is not just a neutral thing. There's an almost bullying or negative spirit, is how I would describe it, or personality maybe. We called it the rat because it was like a rat the size of a cat, pitch black. We watched TV as a family often, and so we were all on the couch. I don't know what show we were watching. It was after

[00:19:59] dinner or in the living room. If you're watching TV, about 45 degrees to your right is the hallway, and you can see straight down that hallway into the office. We all see what we call the rat. cat. It's this pitch black thing that comes out about the size of a cat, and it comes out very quickly, makes a 90 degree turn towards the

[00:20:28] office, and we're all looking right at it, and it goes towards the wall, vanishes. I don't know what it was that we saw, but I know that we all saw it, and that's one of the ones to this day because my mom and dad saw it. My mom and dad are not really believers. My mom is a little bit more open to that sort of thing, but my dad is literally a scientist. He's very material. He's told me strange things

[00:20:57] he's seen, and he goes, oh, but it probably wasn't a ghost. And I remember my mom just saying, what was that? And my sister and I just looking at each other like, oh my god, what was that? I just remember the shape, and I remember it looked so strange because it moved like an animal, but it didn't have legs. It was almost the outline of a rat, that sort of light bulb shape. I remember my sister and I

[00:21:27] looking in the office to investigate, and there was no sign that anything had been in there. I feel like if that had been an animal, it would have either been in the room, or we would have found a hole in the wall that it would have gone through. How I remember feeling at the time was we almost caught it, like, if you see someone walking out from the shower with a towel on before they put their clothes back on. That's how it felt to me, was it was

[00:21:56] almost like it hadn't covered up in a way. It was just migrating from one place to another. And it did not seem nice, either. It seemed almost animalistic. It seemed, I don't mean predatory in a way that it was like hunting us or anything like that, whatever this thing was. I think it's reasonable to say that it could present itself differently in the same way that you or I might be able to change

[00:22:26] an outfit. And then the fact that even our parents saw it, because it, I remember talking to my sister about this at the time, being almost like annoyed because it seemed to sometimes mess with my sister and I, and then our parents would think it was just our imagination. And kids have active imaginations. But I also think that is worth considering that maybe it put itself in some

[00:22:55] sort of form to say boo and to spook the family. And it certainly worked. So both my parents worked growing up. And usually one person was home, you know, but sometimes there's two kids at home. Like sometimes both my parents would be out.

[00:23:25] And my parents' room was the dimmest and quietest room in the house. So sometimes one of us would go there to take a nap. And so I'm assuming that's what my sister was doing. There was no one at home other than me and her. And I don't remember this happening until I heard her yell. But what she told me was that right before my mom gets home, this thing that looked like our mom,

[00:23:55] walks in the bedroom door. She hadn't heard anybody come in, anything. My sister's just sitting on the bed. But something feels kind of off. My sister looks at it and it frowns at her, this kind of furrowed brow, like very repulsed sort of expression. Not the kind of expression my mom would make. It was almost like a Jim Carrey sort of

[00:24:24] facial expression that my sister described that then continues to contort and distort until it was very exaggerated and scary. scary. And then it, she told me it then walked towards her. When it walked towards her, she knew something was wrong. She screams bloody murder and jumps off the bed. I hear her upstairs. I hear her scream. And I know, you know, my sister and I screamed all the time as kids,

[00:24:54] but you can tell when something's really wrong. And so this was not her playing. I knew something was wrong and I run downstairs. downstairs. My mom gets home, comes downstairs or walks into the bedroom on the side door and we're trying to comfort her. She was obviously just freaked out. Whatever she saw, she was shaken. And that's not just being a little trickster, you know, that's not just being a little stinker. That is terrifying a child.

[00:25:23] But that was the sort of climax of activity. This very strange house I grew up in. I've never really felt anything like I did at that house. As soon as I was not living there anymore, felt totally different. And actually recently, after moving far away to New England, I was in Memphis for a couple days and I went and visited my childhood home for the first time.

[00:25:52] I go in that same neighborhood and I walked to the house and it was strange. There was a warm, familiar feeling. Probably my own feelings towards it. It looked almost exactly the same, but there was still like this weird tension there emanating from just to the right of the house. Not right of the house, just to the right side of the house. There was this strange oh, you're back sort of

[00:26:22] feeling. Could that have been my own projection? Yes, but it was a part of my perception situation. I actually learned it just in the past couple years, a story about the previous owners. The previous owners, I was not aware of this at all in my childhood. Our parents made sure not to talk to us about any of this, but they actually got a bit of a deal on the house because the previous owner had committed suicide in their bedroom.

[00:26:51] And he was an abusive husband, an abusive father, which is very, from what I've heard from my parents that knew people that knew him, he was just all around not a swell guy, very mean-spirited guy. And I thought, I turned to my mom and she told me that and I thought, well no wonder there was all this weird stuff going on. Why did you look at my sister and I

[00:27:20] were crazy when we were saying this is bullying atmosphere here when nobody else is around. That lines up totally with his personality. And I only learned about that three or four years ago. I had no idea. They did a great job of not telling us about that. I remember wondering that at the time, if there had been something dark that had happened that had kind of psychic stains. It can be kind of a lot to explain a

[00:27:50] suicidal abuser. In the house that you grew up in, it can just be a lot to explain. And also, if we were already having these experiences, I can see her perspective of not wanting to add fuel to the fire in terms of us, my sister and I talking to each other into hysterics about our house is haunted, our house is haunted. So I do understand that, but it really did, that was sort of a missing piece of the puzzle

[00:28:19] for me in the context. I remember hearing that and thinking, yeah, that totally lines up in that same room where the weird things would happen and sort of emanate. But I also think if I was a misanthropic abusive spirit, if I was the, you know, if I was an abusive parent and spouse from beyond the grave, I would probably be pretty unhappy that there was another family in my house living in a parallel plane to

[00:28:49] me, I would probably also kind of sulk in closets. A big thank you to Julia for sharing her story. And we'll see you next time on You Can See Me in the Dark.