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This is the written form of each Beyond the Veil Paranormal Tales Podcast episode. The conversations are transcribed, then storified, names changed, and this is the final product. For the podcast, I simply read this document to you.

14- Isabelle, and Her Haunted Houses

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Hello and Welcome, my ghost story lovers!  This is Beyond the Veil Paranormal Tales, and I'm your host, Becca.  You can also find us in blog form, at http://BeyondTheVeilParanormalTales.com, if you'd like to read instead, or read along.

Join me here as I sit beside a slowly crackling fire in my fire pit, beneath the summer night sky, as the crickets chirp and an owl hoots from a rooftop down the way.  Listen in as I tell you some real people's spooky stories, told in their own words.  Some of these spooky stories may contain adult language.  Listeners, be advised.

If you are new to the blog and podcast, while you should generally be able to pop in and enjoy any individual episode on its own, I do explain some things that make me different as I go along here.  So, you might want to pop back to Episode 1, and start there, but as always, follow your heart.

Names of the affected parties and some personal details have been changed, to protect the privacy of the storytellers. But, you have my word: All stories told here are real, to the best of my knowledge.

So! Go grab yourself a frosty beverage, or a snack, and settle on in with me, as we take a peek at the world that lies... Beyond the Veil.


Tonight is Episode 14, Isabelle, and Her Haunted Houses

Back in December of 2019, one cool winter’s day, I dropped by my beautiful friend Isabelle’s house for a visit.  We lounged, sitting across from each other at her colorful dining room table, each with a good cup of coffee, while her adorable toddler’s soft snores breathed from the baby monitor that sat beside her.  There, we happily chatted, catching up on how things have been with our families in the months since we’d last seen each other.

Our oldest kids, who dated for a few months, a couple years ago, sat chatting and catching up, in the living room, while loving on their family’s dogs.  Those two kids brought our families together, and the adults all had so much fun hanging out back when they were dating, we warned them we’d still hang out even if they broke up.  

They did date happily for several months, but then, as often tends to happen with those first real teenage relationships, Tony and Miguel drifted apart.  Tony cited time and distance as the main reasons for their fizzled romance, and was quietly sad about it for a while.  But I did continue to see their family.  It was awkward for Tony, for the first year, after the break up, and he stayed away when I would go visit.  I’d say hi for him instead.  I figured time would help and he’d join me again eventually.

After a while, I convinced him to come with me and see how things went, saying we could leave early if it was too weird for him.  It went much better than he expected, and he’s come back over there with me a few times since then.  But the family does live a good 45 minutes away from our house, so we can’t just drop by to say hi, whenever.  We need to plan it.

And then, Isa is also a fibro-buddy.  So, if either of us is having a high pain day, we might need to reschedule our plans.  It happens a lot, actually, where my chronic-illness friends and I will make plans, then need to cancel at the last minute.  

On that note, I want to take a super quick sidebar.  If I didn’t have my own chronic illness shit to deal with too, I think I might take offense with those friends who cancel plans.  I think it’s easy to assume the other person didn’t want to hang out after all, or is avoiding us.  But I also think a lot of that type of thinking is really just anxiety, and it’s lying to us.  

I think, more often than not, when a person cancels plans with someone else, there is a legitimate reason, even if they opt not to share it with the other person.  Let’s all try to be patient and kind with each other, especially as we collectively deal with this strange new pandemic world.  If someone cancels plans with you, try not to take it personally, and just be flexible and try rescheduling.  Keep reaching out.  Anyway.  

So, with Isa and I each having our own reasons to cancel plans cropping up, it had been a while since we’d seen each other.  We kept in touch online, of course, but it’s not the same as sitting to chat, in person.  

And then, there are plenty of things I talk about here, on this podcast, and in person, that I don’t really mention on my public social media profiles.  I save all the weird stuff for those who care to hear it.  Isa just happens to be another weirdo.  Love my weirdos.  

After a few minutes of chatting, Isa’s partner, Gustavo, joined us at the table with his own mug, and we started talking about our creative projects.  Gus is an actor and a writer, and is always working on something interesting!  He was involved in a few big local projects at the time, and after listing them and waving away my excitement for his work, he asked what I was up to lately with my writing and stuff.

I told him I was taking a break from my big Sci-Fi book project, and had started collecting paranormal stories from people, for a podcast.  Isa brightened, nodding deeply, excitedly saying, “Ooh!  I totally had some crazy stuff happen in my house when I was a kid.  A hair tie flew across the room once.”

My mouth dropped open, my eyebrows raised, I held my first finger up and asked, “Oooh!  Would you be open to me recording your story to share?”

She quickly agreed, “Ooh!  Yeah!”  

I dug in my bag for my audio recorder, as I explained my podcast format, “I change names and stuff so it’s all anonymous.  I gather the stories from the people, then write them out and read them.  Like a ghost story, told by a campfire.”  I found my little black audio recorder at last, grinned and held it up, victoriously.

Isa grinned, “That sounds great!  I can’t wait to hear!” 

I beamed, still a little worried about how it was all going to go.  I had only done the early work on the podcast by that point, but was excited about the new project.  I brushed my imposter-syndrome jitters off, and clicked the audio recorder on, then placed it on the table between Isa and myself, its red light glowing.

I glanced at the audio recorder’s little screen and noticed this was File 6 on the device.  I like opening these files by stating where I am and who I’m with, if anyone, to easily tell which file is which, as I listen back through them.  I keep them until I finish the episode they correspond to, then I delete them forever.  I need to check the person’s voice inflection that was used as they spoke, sometimes, but that’s all I keep them for, once they’ve been transcribed.  

I began by saying, “Alright, so, we're at Isa's house...  We're gonna record, cause I don't remember shit,” I shrugged and the group of us laughed.  I glanced Isa’s way, with a grin, and added, “I'm sure you know how that goes.”

Isa nodded deeply, fully understanding, “Yeah, I love my voice memo!”

I grinned, and gestured at the recorder on the table, “Yeah, so I do this just so I can transcribe whatever is said, and then will redo... but yeah, yeah… You had a hair tie fly across the room?”

Isa nodded seriously, once, “Yes. And a light switch turned off. And you could hear…”  She trailed off, squinting into the ceiling of her dining room.

Brow furrowed, I asked, “All by itself?”

She nodded, “Yeah, all by itself. I saw my light switch turn itself off.”

I tipped my head to the side, trying to understand.  I asked “So, the switch itself, like, switched, it wasn't just like the lightbulb?”

Isa nodded, and mimed the action, reaching out to an invisible light switch on an invisible wall, flipped the switch and made a clicking noise as she did so, “‘Click!’  Yeah”  She thought hard for a moment, and began, “Hmmm... so Monticello…  It was a property that was bought up and developed within a rural setting in Virginia, just in the middle of nowhere?”

I nodded, “Okay, yeah.”

Isa continued, “And so, it was marketed to people up northeast, in New York, with money…”  

I nodded, listening, “Yeah…”

She squinted off into the ceiling, remembering the area, “But that town is really old. I mean, we were just an hour and a half from Williamsburg, which, um, you know, is a huge slave area- just a lot of…”  She trailed off, shaking her head.

I nodded, understanding, “Lots of horrible stuff happened there.”

Isa’s voice dropped to a whisper, as she nodded, “Lots of horrible things.”

I sighed heavily, “All the bad things.”  There were certainly no shortage of injustices in the South, back in the days of the founding fathers, and then the Civil War.  Hell, even now. 

She nodded, agreeing, “A lot of bad things.  But I'm sure that the house was a lot older, than most of the development that was around.”

I nodded, “Mmhmm.” 

Isa squinted, thinking back, “Which is why we probably got it for a really good deal.”

I nodded, following, “Okay, yeah.”  

She took a sip from her mug, thinking, “Um, and I remember the first day that we move there, everything was in boxes, and my parents left me and my slightly younger sister there alone. And we could hear voices.

I nodded, and asked, “Were they saying things that were intelligible, or was it like... a conversation in another room?”

Isa bobbed her head back and forth, thinking, “It was like a mumbling.”

I nodded, “Kay. Not clear, yeah.”

She shook her head, squinting, “And the thing is, is like, I mean, random things would happen. I remember seeing a knife in the curtain-”

I gasped at that, “Aaaah!”

Isa laughed mirthlessly, and just nodded, “Yeah.”

I gaped, finding my words, “What the fuck?!”

She continued, “Or like, scratching in the tabletop, that weren't there before…  Things like that. Little things. Random little things. We weren't- I never felt threatened there, but…”  She trailed off.

I nodded, “Okay.”  Sometimes things happen but they don’t feel scary.  That makes sense to me.  Especially if you’re a little kid when these things are happening.

Isa clarified, “I was living with my bio-dad at the time. He was more threatening than anything could be, so for me it was just an anomaly.”  She shrugged.

I nodded, “Yeah, so it's just weird, it's not scary. Yeah.”

She nodded, “Exactly. There wasn't anything frightening about any of it.  It was like- It was almost like a call to attention, more than anything.”

I nodded, “It's just like, ‘Hey, I'm here.’”  I paused, thinking, then asked, “Did you guys ever, like, talk to... any of it? Or...?”

Isa shook her head, “No. So, at the time, because my parents were hardcore Catholics, we were forced to go to church.”

I tipped my head to the side, and asked, “Did they have, like, a house blessing done or anything?”

She thought for a moment, then shook her head, “No. The only time I had a house blessing done was when we were in San Antonio.”

Miguel piped up from the living room, where he and Tony still sat, “I remember that!”  He gaped, wide eyed.

Isa nodded deeply, and elaborated, “Yeah, Tio Jose came and did a house blessing for us. Um, those developments were far newer, so I don't think anything crazy.”  She hesitated, gasping, “Oh! That's not true! The house we lived in was over 100 years old.”

Miguel wandered over to the table, and sat next to his mom.  He wrinkled his face up as he thought, and asked, “In San Antonio?”  Tony followed him over, and sat across the table from him, next to me.

Isa nodded, “Mmhmm. But we weren't there very long. But the house in Virginia, that's the one where I remember the absolute most amount. I remember not really being comfortable being in the basement?”  She looked off into the ceiling, thinking back.

I nodded as she thought, “Okay.”

She looked back to me, “Like, going downstairs?”

I nodded knowingly, “Basements, it makes a lot of sense. Lot of stuff in the basements.”

Isa squinted at me, “Cold. Patches of cold.”

I nodded, listening, “Cold spots, okay.”

She nodded, “Cold spots. Yup, yeah. That was another thing. Like, ‘Why is it warm over here, but cold over here, but there's no window?’”

I nodded, brow furrowed, “Hmm, yeah, yeah.”

She shook her head, “There's no reason for it, there's no vents.”

I nodded and sighed, “Yeah, and did that cold spot like, stay in that same…?”  I wandered off, not finishing my thought aloud.

Isa nodded, “They'd just hang out.  In that space.  There were times where you would feel, like, your hair was kinda comin' up a little bit, cause there was an uneasiness about being alone in that house?”

I nodded, listening, “Mmhmm.”

She said, “Like you'd, like you never feeling really comfortable being by yourself.”

I shuddered, saying what I sensed off of her memory, “Someone's right behind you…”

Isa gaped, “YES. There's always that feeling.”  I nodded knowingly, and chuckled to myself at getting the sensation pegged.  She continued, “It was never outside. It was never... Like, with here, that feeling, I would get that feeling if there are people walking outside. Yeah.”

I nodded, understanding, “Yeah…”

Miguel said softly, “I always get that feeling…”

His mother continued, “Like, and that, yeah. And that house, you don't…  You don't really, because there's so many woods around it, and even though you have houses next to you, you knew your neighbors, there's no sidewalks. Eh... you don't really feel people walking around. But, you felt people in the house.”

I nodded, soberly, “Yeah.”

She added, “When you were the only one there.”

I shuddered, “Uh-huh.”

Isa thought back, nodding, “Yeah, yeah…”

I thought over what she had said so far, saying, “So, the hair tie flew across the room, you saw the light switch...  Anything else, like, specifics that jump out?”

She said casually, “The finding the knife in the curtain,”  and made a stabbing motion, toward the nearby window. 

I gaped, “It was just hanging there?”

Isa nodded deeply, eyebrows raised, “It was just hanging there! I mean, other- and the voices. When we first moved there- and the voices happened, I think we became just, accustomed to it. It was just something that…” She trailed off and shrugged.  

I nodded, understanding, “Yeah, you learn to tune a lot of them out.”

She nodded deeply, “Exactly. But, because you go on with your daily life, and you're like, ‘Okay, well this is a part of my life now, so, there's nothing I can do about it…’”  She shrugged.

I tipped my head to the side, thinking, “Did you ever, like- You didn't talk to them, though? You weren't like, ‘Shut up Frank.’”

Isa shrugged, “I was a high schooler- I was a teenager. I had no concept other than, ‘Ooh! Ghost!’ But my dog, the dogs, and the cats... there were certain places the cats just would not go.”

I nodded, “Okay- Basement? I'm guessing?”

She nodded, then shook her head, “Yeah. The cats never went…” She trailed off, listening to the baby monitor, for a moment.  The soft sounds of snoring were shifting.  Nap time might be over soon.

After pausing for a moment, I asked, “They hate the basement?”

Isa thought for a moment, then nodded slowly as realization dawned, “The animals never went into the basement.”  She gaped at me, and repeated, more sure of herself the second time, “The animals never went into the basement!”

I nodded deeply, “Uh-huh!”  There really is something about basements. 

She continued gaping at me, shaking her head, eyes wide, “I just remembered that, now! I remember the basement being so clean, because the animals never went down there. We didn't even have a gate. We didn't.  The door was always open.”

I nodded, “Yeah, no, you didn't need one.”

Her eyes narrowed, “Yeah.”

I added, “Something was keeping them out.”

Isa nodded deeply at that, “Something was there. Yeah. And they tried to put me down there, literally, in a room…”

I nodded, listening, “Mmhmm.”

She narrowed her eyes, “And I don't remember being bothered by being down there. I just remember it was always colder down there, which I think is normal for basements…”  She trailed off, thinking.

I nodded, “Yeah, yeah, that's pretty normal.”

She squinted at me, “But, I remember that I didn't last long down there. I was like, I was sleeping down there for about a month and they were like, no, you need to get back upstairs.”

I narrowed my eyes back at her, “They decided that you...?”

She nodded deeply, “THEY decided that.”

I thought for a moment, “So you were fine with it. It makes me wonder if something was…”  I trailed off, my mind going in several directions at once.  If she was doing weird things, in her sleep, or whatnot, she might not remember it.  Or there could have been activity she slept through, or something.  

Isa sighed, “The thing is that, as a teenager, at the same time, I was reading things like Anne Rice, and I was, like, totally not scared about any of it, because I had already had a horrible figure that was alive, making my life difficult. So, everything else was just... whatever.”  She shrugged, and continued, “Something to like, ‘oh! Okay!’ And then back to life.”

I nodded, “Yeah.”  Life situations definitely change how we see things, and people who are into horror stuff don’t scare easy, nor do people who have lived through domestic abuse situations.  

Isa shook her head, “But I remember me and my sisters talking about it. I mean, we always talk about that house like, ‘Yeah, there were ghosts,’ like it was nothing. There were ghosts in that house. There were people there.”  She shrugged again.

I nodded, “Just like it's this matter-of-fact thing.”

She nodded, “Yeah, it was a matter-of-fact thing. Me and my sisters have never had an issue with like, the spiritual world, even though we were always pushed Christianity, we never really felt like that was part of our world. So, but I feel that…”  She paused, thinking, then continued, “I feel like the people that suffer trauma tend to become more, like, sensitive to that stuff?”

I nodded deeply at that.  It’s come up in conversation before, and there seems to be some truth to that line of thinking.  I said, “It can open you to things, especially if the trauma causes like, dissociative states? There's something about that shift? That it, it changes something within you…”  I trailed off as Isa shook her head.

She pointed to her chest and clarified, “I don't get dissociative, but I get super super super sensitive. Like, I'm aware of everything.”

I nodded, “Yeah.”  That is the other end of that spectrum, for sure.  Everyone handles their things differently.  

She nodded, clarifying, “Like, hyper-aware. And so, like, that was the biggest moment of, ‘Wow, okay, this is real.’ This house is probably the only other time.  I counted it yesterday.  I've lived in 27 houses in my whole life.

My eyebrows shot up, and I nodded, “That's quite a lot.”

She nodded, shrugging, “Yeah, it's a lot. And this is the only other place that I've felt that. And I remember Lola would, my dog Lola, would come into the kitchen and stand in one spot, and just bark in one corner.”

Miguel piped up again, asking, “Was it the spot by the sink?”

Isa nodded at him, “Yes.”

He made an uncomfortable noise, and flapped his hands a bit, “That's where the- that's-”  He gaped and freaked out a little.

Isa nodded, “Oh! You say it!”

Miguel shuddered, “Aaaah- that's where the, um, the scrub thing? It was on the sink and it kinda just flew? Out? It was like- it was like- It wasn't like, knocked down. It was like, forced…”  He searched for the right word.

Eyes narrowed, I asked, “Like, thrown?”

He nodded, excitedly, “Yes!”

I nodded, and clarified, “So, something threw the scrubby thing?  For washing dishes?”

Miguel nodded, and Isa answered, “Yeah.”

I nodded, glancing into the kitchen from where we sat.  I could see the sink and the window to the backyard, from my seat.  There was an island in the center of that room, and the refrigerator was on the opposite wall in there.  I gestured that way and asked, “Where did it land?”

Miguel wrinkled up his face as he thought, “Um... I don't remember, I think it was either in the sink or on the floor?”

Isa nodded and shrugged, “It was a few years ago.”

Miguel nodded, “It was a long time ago.”

She shrugged, “Yeah, it was a few years ago, but I remember him telling me, like, yeah, Lola barks in that spot all the time. I've gone over there…”  She trailed off for a moment, then said, “I would sit there to cry. Like, that was the spot where I would take the stool and I would just sit there, if I was being like, really overwhelmed.  And I don't know why I would do that.”

She shook her head, thinking back, and added, “I remember one time, I was medicating, and I accidentally overdosed myself,” She laughed and shook her head, “Because I was using edibles, and it was... first time for that particular batch of Canna-oil, and I remember I started having a bad reaction to it. The first place I went was to stand there. And I just rocked back and forth.”

I nodded, “Mmhmm- That's interesting…”  My eyes narrowed as I thought, connecting all of those incidents to that one small spot in the house.  Lots of negative feelings in that space, for sure.  

Isa shrugged, “I don't know. I know I never felt threatened. I've never felt threatened by a spirit. I've never felt scared if I thought there was...”

I nodded, understanding.  I have never felt threatened or worried with regards to a spirit either.  I asked, “Never felt worried?”

She nodded, “Yeah.”

I shrugged, “Like, it's there…”

Isa nodded, “It's there.”

I shook my head, with a shrug, “But it's not going to hurt me.”

Isa nodded, but Miguel shrank back in his colorful chair, and said, “I don't know, it makes me scared.”

I looked his way, understanding.  “Well, you had some other stuff happen to you too. So what happened that made us want to give you the rocks?”  

I thought back to when Tony and Miguel first started dating, and he had come to me, worried over spiritual activity in Miguel’s house.  He asked me to help, so I got some stones to pass on to him, and did a remote cleansing that same day.  I’d claimed protection over him, and told whatever was bothering him to back the fuck off.  You don’t mess with my people.  

When Miguel didn’t respond, Tony prompted, “The painting…”

Miguel gasped and nodded, “In my room, oh my gosh, so when we first moved here, like, the basement was the scariest thing in this house.”

I nodded, “Basements are scary.”

He looked off into the ceiling, thinking, “I don't remember if this was a dream or not? In the 6th grade? It's very.. uh, it was so long ago, but, in 6th grade, I um... I either had a dream, or something... but the lights wouldn't turn on. And I got so scared, and I felt like... I don't know! It was very scary. And I…”  He trailed off.

Eyes narrowed, I clarified, “So the light switches wouldn't?”

Miguel shook his head vehemently, “They wouldn't work!”

I asked, “You'd just flip them and nothing would happen?”

He nodded, “Yeah, and like, I think I came back…”

His mom broke in, “Well, you wouldn't stay in that room. That was a time when I would also buy crystals randomly, and I would sage. I would be like, ‘Here's some incense, burn this.’”

I nodded, “Yeah.  Sensed something down there probably.”

Isa shook her head, “Not anymore. We, we took that room, we took everything out, we repainted it, and we put the baby down in there, and so far, he's fine. And that room feels actually, really…”  She trailed off.

I squinted, “Totally different?”

She nodded deeply, “Totally different. That big-ass window has been opened out, like, completely taken out, and like, furniture was put in. There's just a whole different vibe in there.”  

Miguel continued, “But the uh, the uh. And there's the painting. One of my paintings just-” He broke off, blowing out a breath of air, and miming a painting on a wall, a few feet away, moving straight across the room, toward himself.

I thought I understood, but asked, “Like, it jumped off the wall at you?”

He nodded deeply, “Yeah! And like, across the room.”  He looked at his mom, and continued, “And remember the painting that Sarah got us? That one? It was on the wall and then it just like... went... across the room? And like, all my stuff on the bookshelf right by the bed? It all fell off. Do you remember that? When it all fell off? The whole bookshelf-”

Isa nodded at her son, “Mmhmm. Remember, I was buying you little spiritual things? Crystals and incense and all that?”

He nodded, and said, “The girls would say some stuff too. Like, about dreams that they had? Or like- yeah, but, this like, woman with like, black hair with no eyes and no face…”  He broke off, making an uncomfortable noise.  He shared the large basement space with his two younger sisters.  The girls were at their dad’s house that afternoon.

Isa squinted at Miguel, shaking her head, “I don't remember that, because ya'll say a lot of things, all of the time.”  He stuck his tongue out at her, playfully, in reply.

I laughed, then looked to Miguel and asked, “So they said there was a lady? What was she doing? Was she like- watching? Or doing something?”

He squinted and shook his head, “I'd have to ask them again.”

I nodded, and commented, “Creepy description for sure.”

He nodded, eyes wide, “Yeah! It scared me!”

I nodded, with him, “Yeah!”

Miguel paused abruptly, and added, “But, the other room was just scary, for a long time.”

I nodded at that, glancing at Tony, “Yeah, I think I heard about- I think it was the painting part, and I was like, ‘Yeah, that's not good.’”  I shook my head firmly.  Things trying to hit or hurt people is always a red flag.  

Isa nodded along, “Yeah, I remember that.”

Miguel shook his head, “But yeah, downstairs is scary. I mean, it's a basement, and basements tend to be scary.”

I nodded, “Basements can be scary.”

Isa shook her head, “Well, it's not scary anymore though.”

Miguel thought, then agreed, “Well, yeah, I guess it's not.”

Isa looked at me, “Because it feels differently down there. It feels really different. And there's a lot that we changed down there.”

He agreed, “Yeah, we changed the whole room.”

Isa shook her head, “The room, though- we changed the room.  We painted over your demonic... Supernatural drawings,”  She and Miguel exchanged a look, and burst out laughing.  

He took a breath, and laughed, “That wasn't-”

I tipped my head to the side and asked him, “What were you drawin’ on the wall?”

He looked worried, and froze.  His mom answered, giving him a mom look as she spoke, “A lot of different things he should not have been. It's like the reason you don't play with a Ouija board. You don't mess around with that.”

Miguel shrugged, defensively, “It's Supernatural!  It's a tv show- Okay?  It was all over my Middle School.”

Isa shook her head seriously, “Yeah, but those people might draw upon real things, to then put in a show, and you shouldn't- like Ouija boards. I would never let you play with a Ouija board.”

I shook my head, “Not a game. Definitely not a game.”

Isa shook her head with me, “No.”

I decided to clarify my stance, so I added, “I've used one a few times. But always with protections up, always carefully. You have to be- like, there are very specific things…”  I trailed off, not wanting to get too specific.

Isa said, “Like, I've only done it outside of the house. Like, what, with friends at school or something, where it's like, you're leaving that place. You're not staying there, so…”  She shrugged.

I nodded, “Yeah- and, well, a lot of it is closing out. If you don't close out your sessions properly, no matter what you're using for communication, leaving doors open is always a bad idea. You're like, ‘Okay, we're done here, goodbye. Thank you for coming. It's time to go now. Go away.”  

I thought for a long moment, then looked to Isa, and asked, “So, yeah... so you were feeling stuff downstairs here? Did anything, like, weird happen to you that you saw?

She shook her head, “I never went down there. Just to do the laundry. I don’t even remember going into his room,” she nodded toward her son.  

I nodded knowingly, eyebrows raised, “That is such a common thing that seems to happen, like- you’re not even realizing that you're avoiding it, but totally just not down in that space, anymore.”

Isa squinted at me, nodding, “Yeah…”  Fussing and shifting noises came from the baby monitor, and Isa exchanged a look with her partner, Gus.  He smiled at her, stood swiftly, and disappeared into the house, to get the baby.

I nodded toward the kitchen, by the sink, and asked, “So the corner, no barking? For a while?”

Isa thought for a moment, and then answered, “It's been a long while. Before Mattie’s been born. Since before Matteo was born. Mattie came in and I redid everything down there... He came in and everything's just been different since he's been here. Babies do things.”  

I nodded, “They do.”

She looked up as her partner rounded the corner with their adorable baby.  The sleepy baby eyed me suspiciously, from his father’s arms, his fat little fists disappearing into his mouth.  He looked from me to his mother, debating if it was safe to come closer to me to get to his mom, but his father popped him into his high chair for a snack, instead.  I smiled at him and waved, but kept my distance.  This is how I win babies over.

I looked back to Isa, who sat gazing lovingly at her baby, and said, “A lot of times, a lot of people say that babies will bring in like, family... that want to come and see the new family member? You know, meet the new child, and play with the baby, and the baby will be like, babbling at something?”

She squinted at me as I spoke, then nodded, “So it's like a happy thing…?”

I nodded, and clarified, “Yeah yeah yeah, no, it's not a bad thing. Not a bad thing. It's like, “This is my grand-baby and I wanted to say hi.’ It's sweet.”

Isa smiled warmly and stood up, going over to love on her son.  She kissed his little cheeks, and fists, and gasped, “He's delicious!  My god, this baby-”  

I smiled warmly.  There is something extra sweet about the final baby.  Moms tend to soak up that baby-ness, while it lasts.  It truly doesn’t last long.  

Miguel thought aloud, his mind still in the creepy basement, “The only time I've been like, really afraid downstairs is when I had the night terror with the window.”

His mom looked his way, and asked, “That it came down on you? It fell on you?”  She looked horrified.

He shook his head, “No, no, no- OH! The window... no, not the-”  He laughed, finding the confusion hilarious.  

Isa was still confused.  She asked, “But, didn't it fall on you one time?”

He was also confused, squinting at his mom, “From the wind?”

She sighed, “The window. Like, the window came right off of the windowsill and everything- BOOM, fell right off of there-”

I gasped, “What the heck!?”

Miguel shook his head, “Well, but no, I'm talking about the window in the girl's room?”

Isa suddenly understood, “Yeaaahhh…”

He looked at me, and said, “It happened recently, a few weeks ago, when I had a nightmare that I couldn't close the blinds, and my sister kept opening the blinds, and then people kept on watching through the window.”

I bared my teeth in a worried grimace, hissing, “Oooh yeah.”

Miguel squinted, “I always feel like if I don't-”

Isa broke in, confused, shaking her head, “There are spiny, like, thorny roses all along those windows, so there's really no way that people will want to walk by there…”

He shook his head, lost in his own thoughts, “It was so, like, clear, like, it was like- the room was like, the same, and Miss Haddie's yard was the same, and there was like, people, like there was this person, who kept on coming back to the window, and climbing over the fence and going to the window.”

I shook my head firmly, “Aaaaaaah-”

He continued, explaining why his sister’s adjustment was so annoying, “But um, I just don't- at night, I don't like leaving the blinds open, like, even-”  He sighed, “Like, I kept on, when I just would be in my old room, I would have nightmares that people were like, watching through the window.”  He exchanged a look with his mom, and continued.  

“And once, I woke up and I couldn't move, and I felt like there was someone watching through the window above the bed? I was like, eew- That's why I kept getting, trying to get blankets over it? It's- It's scary.”  He looked at me, and we nodded as one.  

He continued, “The only time is when it's snowy outside? When it's snowy outside and you can see like, it’s kinda daytime? That's when I'd open the window, cause it's pretty! But, like, when it's dark outside, I don't like to open the window,”  he shook his head firmly.

Isa nodded, understanding that feeling, “Yeah.”

Miguel shuddered, “Scares me.”

Isa rubbed her son’s back, comforting him, “And I mean, I lived in the woods. I know that feeling.”

I nodded, “Yeah- There are eyes... watching…”  I shuddered.

Isa nodded, “And you can't see. Not like here. There's lights all over the place.”

I nodded, agreeing the countryside is worse for that, “Yeah. It's all dark, it's just the black, staring back at you,”  I shuddered at my own description of the night, and looked up to see Isa and Miguel staring at me, eyes wide as saucers.  I froze, torn between laughing at their twin reaction, and wondering about my own lack of fear.  

Isa regained herself, and gasped, “Dang, Becca, if I wake up with night terrors, I am texting you at 2 in the morning.”

I couldn't help myself, and laughed, “Bitch...”  The group around the table burst into laughter at that.  If I really did give her nightmares, she absolutely could message me at any time, and give me shit for it.  

Isa laughed, “Help! Whatchoo do to me??”

I laughed in reply, “‘Sage yoself!’” That's what I'll say. ‘Sage yoself!’” 

Isa laughed, grabbing a pair of pruning scissors out of a pencil cup, and ran over to her windowsill, where she had herbs growing.  I hadn’t looked at the plants too hard, but as she snipped off a trio of sprigs from the plant, I recognized the leaves.  

She was growing desert sage in her window box!  She smiled at me and waved it around herself, “I'm sleepin’ with this next to me tonight- Freshly harvested sage.”

Miguel continued his story softly, “It helps sleeping with the girls in the same room.”

Isa looked over to her son, “So you?  Oh, good. Good.”  She nodded softly as his words registered.  “Yeah, you never actually complained about that, which I found fascinating.”

She looked to me to explain, “They're all three in the same room, but you've seen it.  It's a long... it takes up this whole space.”  She gestured along the full length of the upper floor of the house.  Like many ranch-style homes, the basement was full-sized.  It was plenty big enough for 3 or 4 kids to share, and each have their own space.

I nodded slowly, listening, picturing their room in my head, “Yeah…”

Isa continued, “So, he's over in this space,” she gestured behind me, toward the living room,  “And the girls are over on the other end of the house.”  She gestured behind herself, and shrugged, “But it's all one space.  It looks like it should have been two different rooms.”

Miguel began, “The only thing that annoys me-“

His mother broke in, laughing, “Is your sister.”

He sighed and shook his head, “Well, no. It's when they wake up in the morning and they’re trying to wake me up too, or they leave the door open? Or they come in at like 7am when I'm trying to sleep and they turn on the light and get dressed-“

Isa shook her head, arguing, “Well, I changed that. They have to bring their clothes upstairs to get dressed.”

Miguel sighed, “No, I mean on the weekends-“

Isa conceded, nodding, “Oh, yeah, that's- that's a thing.”  She leaned in to her baby’s face and talked in her baby voice, as he giggled, “This little man has no problems sleeping in his room though. He- so last week, he's been sleeping all through the night, even when he hasn't been feeling real well.”

Miguel nodded, “After you changed the room, it seemed a lot…” He trailed off, searching for the right word.

His mom tried, “Nicer? A bit more peaceful?”

He nodded slowly, “Yeah-“

Isa bobbed her head about and tried, “More, like, comforting?”

Miguel nodded deeply, “Oh, yeah.”

She nodded in reply, “Oh yeah, I can just sit in the rocking chair in there and just almost fall asleep…”  She closed her eyes for a moment, and rested back in her chair; peacefully.

I nodded deeply, “Yeah, that's good! It sounds like it was a big change from where it was before, if you were avoiding the entire floor like, ‘Okay we're done here.’” 

Isa nodded, “Yeah. It was- I didn't even like doing the laundry. I would have other people go downstairs and do the laundry for me. But now I go down there all the time. I'm down there every single day!”  She almost seemed surprised by this revelation.

Miguel nodded, “And the cat's been kinda weird…”

Isa gasped, nodding, “Oh, yeah, she has been friendlier! And now she's even been coming upstairs!”

Miguel nodded, remembering how their older black cat had been behaving, “Yeah!  She was, she was under your bed, and she's been like, she's been more…”  He sighed, deeply contented, and relaxed back in his chair.  “She sleeps next to me every night,” he smiled over at me from his slouched position at the table.

Isa nodded deeply, looking at me, “Oh, right, dude. I was burning sage.”

I nodded back, “It makes a difference!”

Isa nodded, thinking back, “And talking to Evelyn, cause I was like, crystal lovin' sage burnin' sister. She's on another level now, though. Me and her we can go through some crazy shit at the same time and then we hit each other up right when we need to?”  She looked at me, and I nodded, understanding.  

She laughed, “Like, ‘I was about to text you! What the fuck, it's been, two months!’ ‘I was just about to text you too!’”

I nodded and grinned.

She bobbed her head back and forth as she spoke, “And we can Facetime, and it's funny because when we want to speak to each other, we have the time to speak to each other. It's so weird. But she's the only one. 

“But my Evvie, she told me, like, just perspective. So she helped me with a lot of the sage burning, she helped me do a lot of the crystals, and like, activating my crystals out in the moon, and like that. Like, she definitely helped me change whatever was going on in here. The energy, the vibe…”  Isa trailed off.

I nodded, understanding, “Yeah.”

Isa grinned, nodding, “Yeah. You gotta meet her one day.”

I grinned back, “Sounds good!”  Evelyn definitely sounds like my kind of people.

Isa glanced at her phone, a text coming in saying her ex was bringing their girls back to her place.  She sighed, “We definitely have to do this more often, for sure.”

I nodded deeply, agreeing, “Yesssss.”  It’s always a nice chill day when we get together.  It’s a nice break from the chaos that regular life can bring.


It truly is amazing to me how perspective of things in life can change how we see things.  If Isa’s home life as a child had been smoother, would the scary things in her home have stood out more, to her?  Perhaps.  

And that old houseful of scary things shaped how she viewed the things happening at her current home, as well.  I was just glad that her work with her crystals and sage had made such a big difference for her.

Even if her son felt like someone was watching him through his basement bedroom windows.  Even though, logically, he should know nobody can get through the surrounding bushes and actually do that…  It’s hard to brush off those things that we feel.  And I do feel like spiritual things don't necessarily have to follow the rules of the physical world.   So I can’t tell him not to worry about it.  

Like I always say, follow your heart, and your gut.  If you have a visceral reaction to something, trust it.  Even if you don’t understand why.  And if you’re concerned, take steps to ensure your personal protection, like Isa did for her family.


Quick aside, for this week.  While I had not initially intended this to be a seasonal show, it’s becoming clear it’s a lot to keep up with, for a single person, especially during a pandemic.  

The kids shifted to school at home, back in the spring, and my youngest didn’t handle the whole thing very well, so he’s been doing summer school all summer.  He’s still behind right now, and needs a little more prodding than usual.  Which then takes time away from my creative work, and the podcast has suffered as a result.

I also have several other writing-related projects I’m working on that need some love, too.  With the creative-work-time evaporating from my mornings as it has done, nothing much besides this podcast has moved forward at all.  

And, as I’m sure some of you have noticed, I’ve started running behind on my release times these last few episodes.  It’s not a trend I’m fond of.  I don’t like being late, or missing my deadlines.  

But…  if I have to choose between putting time in for my kids, or doing my own fun creative things, my kids always, always win that battle.  Sorry not sorry.  They’re only in our care for so long, and if they need me, they need me.  I will be there.

So, anyway, with all that in mind, I have decided to make a small shift for this podcast.  I will continue working on it in the coming months, and build up content to release, when I’m ready for Season 2 to come out.  

So!  Next week will be the last episode for what will now be known as Season 1.  I’m not really sure, yet, when exactly I’ll be back with more content, but rest assured, this break is temporary, and only applies to releasing new story content here.

I will remain active online, on all the social media platforms, and can be reached at any time if you need me.  Continue sending in your comments and stories, or asking any questions you may have!  I will still be around, I promise!


Thank you all so much for joining me! If you have a paranormal story of your own to share, perhaps you’ve felt eyes watching you from an unlikely place, or felt an overwhelming wave of emotion in one random spot in your house, send me your stories, and I'll read them here!

Send your stories to: BeyondTheVeilParanormalTales@gmail.com. Or, you can always email me to schedule a social distance interview, if you prefer! All stories will be anonymous, as always, for your protection.

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I think that about wraps it up for tonight!  You stay cozy by that fire there, until you’re ready to head on in for bed.  And if you feel weird; if you sense anything watching you from the dark corners on your way in, maybe it’s time for you to burn a little sage, yourself…  You’ll have to listen to your gut, there.  

Until next time, this has been Beyond the Veil Paranormal Tales, with Becca! Sleep tight...

*Some names in this story have been changed, to protect privacy. All other details of the stories remain true to fact.