Hi, I'm Rob. Tale number 70. The Haunted Man. A quick note about the sound quality of this episode. It's not quite up to par with the rest of my episodes. My microphone broke while I was recording it, and I'd used a different microphone to record half of it, and I think you can tell a difference, but you should still be able to hear everything.

Jimmy was a normal guy.

He had a good job, had a good company. He had just turned forty. He had a girlfriend that he was planning to marry. He owned a house. Things were going as planned. And then one day they weren't. He woke up and he felt different. And maybe he had been feeling a little different for a long time, but now it was really there. It was an emptiness and it was growing, and it didn't really scare him because it was an emptiness. He wish it had scared him, because that would have been more normal. But he just didn't care. He stopped caring about work. He stopped caring about taking showers. He stopped caring about eating. He slowly stopped caring about everything. He talked to his girlfriend about it. He had a loving family. He talked to them about it. He talked to his friends about it. They all had the same advice. You need to talk to your doctor, you need to see a therapist. So that's what he did. He started taking medicine. He started going to therapy once a week. And it helped him better understand what he was experiencing, but it wasn't helping that underlying empty feeling, that nothingness. It affected his job, and eventually he took a leave of absence. That didn't help because now he had no reason to leave the house, so he didn't leave the house. He didn't have a reason to get up early in the morning, so he just stayed in bed. Jimmy was depressed, severely depressed. He started staying in bed pretty much all day. And that's how he describes depression, that feeling in the morning when you don't want to get out of bed, but you know you have to. It's that feeling magnified. And you don't want to get out of bed even though you know you should get out of bed. You don't exercise anymore even though you know exercise would make you feel better. You stop talking to the people that love you, even though you know that they love you. Everything is too much, so you just give up. But that does not make you feel better. In just over six months, Jimmy's life was completely transformed. He stopped seeing his girlfriend. He was at home in his house alone all day, every day. His family was still checking in on him, but he wasn't engaged with his family like he used to be. And when people did talk to him, they were always trying to help him get better, which was nice and loving and a good thing. But it was also exhausting to Jimmy to always be talking about how to get better. So he just stopped talking to people. The only person that he really stayed in touch with was his friend Maria. She took a different approach from anyone else. She wanted him to get better, but she didn't know how to help him, so she just asked him to describe what it was like to be in this depression. And Jimmy could do that. He could talk about that feeling or lack of feeling that led to him doing nothing. Everyone was worried. Jimmy was worried, but in a different way because he didn't care about anything. He was just sitting there, sort of waiting for something to happen. And then something happened. Maria, who was the only person that was talking to Jimmy on a regular basis, which required a lot of effort because it was sort of this one-sided thing. But she was okay with that. Jimmy had always been someone that was timid, like he was really scared when he would drive. He could be really shy, didn't like parties, and when he was depressed, some of his fears sort of went away because he just didn't care. It was fascinating, but also scary. Like he was a less cautious driver, which freaked Maria out. But also, she went to a wedding with Jimmy at this time, and he was a lot more social. He was darker and he really had to be pushed and almost forced to get out of the house to go. But once he was there, the fear that sort of overwhelmed him in those situations seemed to be gone. And Maria was listening to the radio one day, and it was October, and a local radio station was doing a promotion where you could win$5,000 if you could stay the night in this abandoned hospital on Halloween. Maria tells Jimmy about it and is like, you're perfect for this because you're not scared of anything. You don't care. The radio station wanted an audition tape, and Maria filmed one for Jimmy. And Maria was doing this because Jimmy needed money. He wasn't working. And she thought this might be an easy way to get some quick cash. This was the third year they were doing the contest, and nobody had ever made it through the whole night. So nobody had ever won the$5,000 prize. Maria and Jimmy figured that was because the people that did it probably were like true believers and were really scared of ghosts, and they probably picked people that were the most likely to get frightened. And so Jimmy, in his audition, he did pretend to be like a true believer. And he wasn't, but also he knew being in an abandoned building at night, like that was scary without anything supernatural. Non-depressed Jimmy would have never agreed to this, and non-depressed Jimmy would not have lasted five minutes. They submit the tape. Maria, she's more of an optimist. And they get a call a few days later that they want to interview Jimmy on the radio. And this is one of those like annoying morning radio shows. Jimmy is in a deep depression at this point, so he's not motivated to do anything. So Maria is really pushing him and driving him. And when he goes on the radio, he's not nervous at all. And he does a great job, and they make it official. Jimmy will spend the night in an abandoned hospital on Halloween. The hospital was called St. Mary's, and it had been closed for over 30 years. He would be spending his time in what was basically the emergency room, and really he'd be in the like the waiting area of this emergency room. It was big, had high ceilings, was really echoey. There was like an old receptionist area where you could tell people would check in. There were lots of old chairs. And the weather was cooperating to make it a very atmospheric Halloween night. It was cold, it was sort of a misting rain, perfect for what was about to happen. So the way it worked was they had like a broadcasting booth set up outside the hospital. Jimmy was going to be taken in at 10 PM, and he had to last until 6 a.m. the next day. They were going to be doing a live broadcast from their booth outside the hospital. They weren't doing anything inside the hospital. It was just going to be Jimmy alone. But at that booth outside, they were telling people to come by and get candy and things like that, and they had that going until like midnight. And then in the morning show, at 6 a.m. the next day, the audience would find out if Jimmy made it. Maria wanted to be there, so they let her hang out at the broadcasting booth. After they closed up shop, she just waited in her car. And it seemed, you know, like a big operation, like it was a big production. But once it was time to actually go in to the hospital, Jimmy was sort of surprised by how amateur everything seemed. One guy took him into the emergency room, gave him a small flashlight, took away his phone, gave him some snacks, there was a case of bottled water. As they walked in, they were walking over broken glass, there was garbage in food containers everywhere. It didn't seem like they had put much effort into setting things up. That became even more apparent when Jimmy spotted the portolette, like a portable toilet that Jimmy assumed was for him. And the guy leading him in said, Hey, there's this toilet if you need to go to the bathroom, but let me warn you, we got this for the event last year, and the company just never picked it up. It hasn't been cleaned or anything. We haven't even opened the door. So if you really need to go to the bathroom, I would not recommend using it. Of course, there were no functioning bathrooms in the abandoned hospital, so that was the only option unless Jimmy wanted to leave and lose the contest. Jimmy was shown to his area of the emergency room. There was a chair that had been brought in for him. He was told to stay in the waiting room area, and that if he left and explored the hospital, he automatically lost. This was for his safety, they said. And then the only other rule was he wanted to leave at any time, he could walk out the front door of the hospital. There was a little pathway that was lit, and that would take him to someone waiting in their car, and he could tell them he gave up. Otherwise someone would be there at six AM the next morning, and then the radio person left, and Jimmy was alone. He had talked over this with Maria quite a bit, and was expecting the radio station to do things to try and scare him to get him to leave. The first thing that stood out to him was the porta potty. He wondered if it was actually an old gross porta potty, or if maybe there was something or someone hiding inside, so he stood up and opened it up and was just hit by an awful smell. It did seem that it had been there for a long time and had never been cleaned. And also maybe it had even been used recently. He sat down in his chair, he looked at his snacks, but he had no appetite, and about an hour into his stay, he heard a loud knocking sound. Then he heard it again. It sounded like it was coming from the other side of a wall, so Jimmy stood up and walked to that wall, and he knocked, and then there was a knock back. And then Jimmy did two knocks, and two knocks came back. It didn't scare him, but it made him smile, and he yelled out nice try. Jimmy sat back down to wait, he drank some water, and after a couple of hours he was starting to doze off, but then he heard a siren, and then there was a loudspeaker that was far away that said code blue, code blue, room four hundred twenty eight, code blue, and he perked up, and then he heard a woman scream, like a blood curdling scream. And it sounded like there was probably a real person doing the screaming. And again, all he did was smile. He didn't think he was being watched, it wasn't that high tech of an operation, like I said, but he clapped just in case someone was watching, because he appreciated what they were trying to do. After that he fell asleep sitting in this chair, it's really uncomfortable, and he thought all the scare attempts were over. He'd fall asleep for a little bit and then jump awake, and he didn't know how long it had been, but at some point he sprung awake. It was very dark, but his eyes had adjusted, and there was some light coming in from windows, and down this waiting room, standing in a doorway, was a human figure. He wasn't certain at first that's what it was, but as he stared at it, he could see their breath because it was cold. And they were taking these big breaths, and he could also see their body move when they breathed. It looked like they were wearing a big trench coat, and they had a scarf on and a fedora. He tried to shine his flashlight, but it didn't really reveal anything. It was too weak to really see that far. The person was probably like a hundred yards away from him. And this one also amused Jimmy. He liked horror movies. Looks like they were trying to kind of dress up like a horror movie character like Freddy Krueger or something like that. And he called out to the person and he said, It's so late, I hope you're getting paid to do this. And the person spoke back in a deep, grabbly voice. I do this for free. Jimmy smiled. Jimmy drank some more water, and the person just sat there. Jimmy was impressed by their commitment. But Jimmy was so tired he eventually dozed off again, and he woke up what had to be hours later, and the person was still standing there. And he called out to them, and they didn't say anything back. And I think this is a great example of how his depression is sort of playing into all this, because then he falls asleep again, and the next time he wakes up, it's when the radio station is bursting in the door to tell him that he made it through the night and he's won$5,000. Maria is with them, she's very happy, and Jimmy's happy too. You can be depressed and also experience happiness. They have a big breakfast spread and Jimmy's hungry. He also finds a real bathroom to use, and then he has to go on the radio. They want to interview him about how the night went and present him with his$5,000. And you know, they ask him what scared him the most. And he plays it like, You guys tried to get me, but I won. And so he's like, Well, you guys tried to get me with those knocks on the door. And the DJs admitted, yeah, that was us. And then Jimmy asked, Who was the woman that screamed? And someone that worked for the radio station walked in. It was her, she had done the scream, and Jimmy was like, Great scream. And she seemed to really appreciate that. And then Jimmy was like, And that guy? Who is he? He stood there for like five hours. That was crazy. The guy with the fedora and the coat. And they look at him strangely, and they keep looking at him strangely. And Jimmy says, The guy that stood there for like half the night, just breathing in that doorway. And then someone says, What guy? The only two things we did were the knocking and the ambulance and the intercom and the woman screaming. And Jimmy doesn't believe them. He doesn't buy for a second. He's like, stop it. There was a guy standing in the room with me for hours. But they won't fess up to it, they won't admit it. And then the interview ended. They gave him a check for five thousand dollars. He would eventually give half to Maria, which she reluctantly accepted. But before they left the little broadcasting area that had been set up by the hospital, a producer stopped them, and she was like, Hey, what are you talking about? A man in a trench coat and a hat? And he was like, Yes, there was someone in there with me. And she's like, Well, it is haunted. I mean, that's why we do it here. This place is supposed to be haunted. Do you think you saw a ghost? He's like, It seems so real. And she's like, you know, we did a safety sweep, because we can't leave you in there if there's people in there. And in the weeks that followed, it really weighed on Jimmy because, you know, he didn't believe in ghosts, he didn't believe in things like that. And he had this very real experience. And then one day out of the blue he got a call, and it was the same producer that had talked to him on the way out that day. And she was like, hey, I just wanted to tell you something. I I just learned that they found someone living in the abandoned hospital, and they arrested him. And then she said, apparently it was some guy that had gotten in a bar fight like two states away. He accidentally killed someone, he got in his car and just drove off into the night, and he had been holding up in the hospital, hiding. And the reason we didn't see him during the sweep is because he had actually climbed up into the ceiling, and he had a tent up there, and he had food, and he was just living his life. And someone happened to see him climbing into the window the other day, and they called the cops and they arrested him. There was eventually a news story about this. Maria saw it first and she sent it to Jimmy, and it was a photo of the guy being arrested, and he had on a trench coat and a fedora.

This event did not cure Jimmy's depression.

It took him a long time and a lot of hard work to slowly get back into the swing of his life. But he does remember this fondly, except that portapotty that Fedora man had probably been using. Richie is especially grateful for Maria, who kept being his friend even when he didn't want any friends. And you could never really blame someone for walking away from a friendship when the other person isn't really trying, but Maria didn't do that, and it worked out. Our theme music is by Mitchell Hardidge. Our cover art is by Marcella Johnson. She also came up with the title of the podcast. Thanks to everyone who talks through these episodes with me before I record them. There are too many to list. And thanks to you for listening.