Island Ride

I followed her through fields of light, and then reached for her hand.

Dream's gripped turn hard, then cold and fast, I looked to see her stare. But damn, turn back to grin at me, she trapped me in her snare. We crossed over a spoon, stared at two. Right, if you've been putting off car shopping because it sounds like a whole thing, buying your car online on auto-trader makes it way easier, like almost easier than ordering your

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“Now, very day, out of morning of the day, I turned 16 years old, I got my driver's license,”

right? And immediately, jump into my rust bucket Mustang, hit the gas, freedom! Enjoy! Until a few minutes later, I'm on the side of the road, my hood popped open, cursing at my car.

Come out! Come out! I live on one side of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a lot of my friends, they live on the other side.

“And almost every day I roar off, hoping praying that my car will get me there without breaking”

down. Not to be in craze, even not, it's to safely drive or either. There's one spot, a sudden bend in the road where, if you aren't careful, if you aren't super careful, 10 miles an hour careful, you can't make the bend, you'll find yourself in the other lane, facing oncoming traffic that I know this curve, well, drive it countless

times, and every single time I end up in that other lane, but every single time, I get lucky. Knowing that coming the other way, one night, right before the bend my, to lock the loose as power. Dang it! When I see the lights, the pick-up truck, barreling through the lane where I would have

been, I'll have, pat my Mustang on a steering wheel, thanks. Tell us of not to be so stupid, then, speed through the same way the next day. The next week, we gather at every single time like a ridiculous game of Russian roulette and one night, tunes, blasts and gas, pedal, press to the floor, I'm speeding through the bend, and I see fashion police lights.

The whole row, clothes, both directions, and I'm trembling, cold waves of what if I can sense and feel that someone else, someone else ran my heart only that didn't get so lucky. A cotton just breakdown at night before she saved me, not feeling like she knew. The new old Mustang knew that somebody had to be sacrificed there. And she'd everything she could to make sure that somebody was not me.

The new Mustang knew that someone had to be a car, and I was just a little bit scared.

Okay, we're going to take a totally different type of ride. It's Greg's 23rd birthday, he's flying on a one-way ticket to Paradise, the beautiful island of St. Thomas, US version islands, being an escape from back home. He jumps on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from a friend, only to discover that

“Ivan life is not all palm trees and coconuts, shoot.”

When I arrived at St. Thomas, I was, well, you walk out on that tarmac, off the plane for the first time, he just gets smacked with the heat and the humidity, but I was also smacked with the beauty. There's a lot more mountainous than I expected for an island, so green too, it's so much open space, some of the most beautiful water and white sand beaches that I've ever seen

never experienced my entire life.

After I got off the plane, I got in a cab and I went to the bar where my buddy was working. It was immediately just bombarded by mosquitoes and no seams and was getting eaten alive. Bartender put some gin on a bar towel and he's like here, I'm like, why am I supposed to do with that? He's just rubbing all over yourself, it's basically a bug spray, and so I did, and the

“bugs generally went away, and I was like, you know what?”

I'm, I'm gonna like living here, and this is gonna be a very different experience.

So when I wasn't working some random job, I was hanging out a lot at Duffy's Love Shack. I knew at one point that they were looking for help, and I got a job being a server at Duffy's. It was this teaky bar built in a parking lot, is literally a shack, completely open air with

the indoor space, and a whole bunch of outdoor space, and then from there, it's a plaza

“with a whole bunch of different businesses, including a bar, a surf shop, and a pharmacy.”

They had a lady's night on Wednesday nights that was absolutely wild, there was like tattoos, fake tattoos being given behind the bar by the bartenders. They got songs that go with certain drinks, everything comes in like a shark cup or a mermaid cup or a whale, and then a little souvenir cups of people can take with them. It was just a wacky islandy environment that was a good place to spend time.

It had been a few weeks, and I was really getting a hang of being a server, and then there was this one night. I was out having a quick smoke break in between service, and just kind of keeping an eye on the general Cummings and Goins of the parking lot of the plaza of the bar, watching the night turn into the night, and that's when I see this car pull up.

There's a older, you know, four door, a sedan, black, a little rusty, a little beat up, just kind of look like another old-use island car. The driver of the car, he was a relatively older gentleman, he was dressed in what looked

and he parked the car, turned it off, and casually walked off to wherever he was going.

“I saw the bar and restaurant, the table was starting to fill up, and I went back to my”

section, started bringing people volcanoes and shark tanks, and all the other goofy drinks they had. We were right in the heart of our busy time of the night. I'm at a table, going through drinks, serving a guy at Burger, and I start hearing murmurings going through all these tables in the parking lot, and somebody pulls me aside

and points at this car, and says, "Hey, there's smoke coming out of that thing." I turned my head, and I start walking a little bit closer to the cars, and I see there is definitely smoke coming out of the hood of this car.

“I was like, wait a minute, I know that car, I saw that car park earlier when I was out”

by the dumpster, I look back at the bartenders, some of them start walking out from behind the bar, and slowly but surely we all just kind of turn our focus on this smoking car. I had a car that when I parked it, smoke would just come out of the hood for a while after

and people would always be like, "Oh, your car's on fire, I'm like, no, it's just missing

the converter. It's fine, just give a little while, it would be fine." So to be honest, it wasn't super surprising to me that this was going on until the smoke turned into fire, and it was small flames from the hood, and then bigger flames from the hood until they're about a foot or so coming out of the hood, this car all the way

around, and I'm thinking, "Oh, shit, we really have a problem because that is not supposed to be happening." The head bartender is the first one to act. He grabs the fire extinguisher

and starts walking towards the car slowly because we're not exactly sure what's going

to happen next. While the whole scene's going on, it didn't even occur to me that we had this 80s playlist that we tend to run at the bar until a customer pulled me aside and said, "Just so you know, when that car caught on fire, you guys are playing the Ghostbusters theme song with the exact same time." And I was like, "That is such a weird coincidence."

burned down. The closer we get to the car, we are for certain that there's nobody inside this thing. We're looking through the windows. The door happens to be unlocked and we're able to open it and we start looking in the car, there's no keys in the ignition. One of the staff members takes the risk and very, very cautiously clicks the little switch and gets to the hood

up into the car. The flames just burst out. I just felt like a giant fireball is going off in front of me. The bartender that had the fire extinguisher turns it on and starts trying to spray the fire down as fast as possible. They're actually starting to go down slowly and I'm thinking, "This actually might be over pretty soon." And then we hear, "Mream!" The car has turned itself on and it's

“like somebody turned the key to the ignition.”

We all jump back for a minute. Okay, this car is not just on fire, not just empty. Somehow it's engine's on. Almost like the car could have even been possessed. I think everybody had gotten out of their seats. Some people were yelling and instructions or ideas or laughing about the scene. If anybody was still sitting at a table expecting like a burger or a frozen margarita, they weren't going to get it.

And then the engine reds real loud. Like somebody to slam their foot on the gas pedal. And car starts to shake, vibrate, the flames start to be bigger. I'm starting to get really, really scared now. I have no idea what I'm watching.

starts backing up. Slowly. But it starts backing up. And it's backing up right towards the

“bathrooms in the smoking area where I was earlier in the day.”

I run over the bathroom doors and start knocking on it and making sure there's nobody in there and yelling that, "Hey, if you're inside here, you've got to get out right now." Otherwise, you might get hit by a car. Cars backing up. Maybe only six, seven feet away from hitting the bar. And then it just stops. Okay. That's weird, but it stopped. Good. And then all of a sudden, it shifts in the forward. And start striving towards a surf

shop in front of me, towards a very large window, right in front of it. And I'm freaking out and still might explode. That's when in my head, I'm like, "It is definitely time to call the fire department." I run back to the bar and the bartender

“that's still back there is on the phone with the fire department, so they had the right”

idea. And then you just put the phone down. And I say, "What did they say?" He looks at me and says, "They didn't believe me, and they hung up." And I'm like, "Shit, we are really on our own with this." The car seems to have a sights set on the surf shop now. And it starts moving faster and faster towards the surf shop. And it gets to that cement block, the thing that stops

the car when you're trying to park it, hits that. And almost seems to get upset that it can't get over. So it starts spinning his wheels faster and faster, going against his

block. Finally, it goes in the almost full gear, like someone literally put their foot on

“the ground, if that gas pedal, it goes over the home. And it's about to go straight into that”

surf shop window. Oh my god, we have a real big problem on our hands, maybe only about six, seven feet away at this point. Now I'm getting really scared, because this car could go through that window, could hurt a couple of friends and a lot of people in that shop, and all of a sudden, this is pillar. The pillar is part of these arches that go in between each business that lead to the front door. So now it's trying to drive forward, but it can't

because of the pillar. And then it shifted back into reverse and tried to reverse back over the cement block, then it hopped over and it couldn't do that either. So it kept shifting back and forth, shifting back and forth. Spin is wheels like crazy, and it seems to be getting

angry or angry or by the second. Some of us like a bully that got put in a headlock by the

kid he was picking on the whole time. Finally, after Spin is wheels and making its best effort to get loose, the car seemed to give up. The wheels stopped spinning, the engine turned off, and the flames had been going so strong for so long, heated out, piece by piece, flame by flame. We're all feeling relief. People start going back to their tables, service resumes. The night just kind of turns back into the night. The fire department finally shows up.

The truck comes pulling up, bites flashing, turns out the bartender had called them a second time, but we were dealing with the car driving, and they decided to actually listen.

I don't know better late than never. Unfortunately, the more we tell them, the less they

want to believe us. You can see the look on their faces, like these guys maybe been drinking on the job or something else is going on here. I don't necessarily blame them. A few of us walk the firefighters over to the car to inspect the damage. So they call a tow truck, and as they're looking at the car, the smoke starts again, and then it turns itself back on. Me and everyone else jumps back again.

We're staring like, "Yeah, see? We told you something happened here. Look at this smoke. Sure enough then there's fire again." The firefighters finally believe us. They're pointing to screaming at each other. These grown men start running back to the truck. Some don't

spirit of sorts. They're as stunned as we were when we first saw this happen, but now we're

“kind of like we're pros of this. The ones that are still willing to be involved are grabbing”

every sharp object, every blade. They surround the car. They get into that hood. These guys start chopping away, every wire, every line. They cut all electricity they possibly can to the engine. They can't cut. They cut. After all their hard work, the car finally stops. No more wheels spinning, no more engine running. The car's dead. The problems take care of them. They're shook up. We're all kind of, I mean, us as staff members and the customers

are kind of laughing about this point. This is just such a ridiculous scene. Like what the heck happened here? Firefighters kind of finish up their business. I go back to my business. Start handling tables. The night once again starts back up. Drinks are being served. Food's

“going out, laughs, shots, the whole nine yards, and then eventually tow truck shows up. They”

start hooking up the car. Everything's going smoothly. Nova sudden, the engine revs again. And we all lose our minds. People jump up from their seats. Some people run away from the car. Some people run towards the car. Firefighters are scattered around everywhere. No one really knows what to do. It is absolute madness. There's smoke coming up. There's sparks coming out. The fire department jumps on this. It's about four or five of them go over,

try to kill this engine for good. The bring more tools out. It gets the engine out of the car. They rip it out and they throw it into the parking line. It skids across the parking lot a little waste. And the fire goes out. The car stops. The car is dead. Everyone's just feeling some relief with this car being done. tow truck is hooked up to the car and they tow it away. And the night is back to a normal night. About 45 minutes to an hour go by, I'm back dealing with the table and

looking down at the edge of the parking lot and I see this gentleman walking up. And I kind of do a

double take and I look at the gentleman again and tell my table and say, hold on a second.

That's the guy that owns the car. I recognized him and he was coming off a shift. He looked a little bit tired. Still wearing the same clothing, a little bit dirtier now and he's standing in the parking lot by where his car definitely used to be. So I went up to a manager on my bob. That's the guy that owns the car. Somebody needs to go talk to him and tell him what happened and he's not going to believe us, but we got to go talk to him. So the manager pulls him aside

along with the police and the fire department and they have a conversation about what happened to the car. You can see a wave of anger and confusion starting to wash over his face because I know he doesn't believe what they're telling him. He's saying, I've had that car my whole life. I've had the car

for a long time. It's always treated me well and they're trying to talk to him, they're trying

to talk him down. He's getting a little bit angrier and angrier. So they put him in the cruiser, not to arrest him, but just to let him like have time to have a breather to calm down and then take him away to most likely go see what's left of his car. And so they drive off, service ends at Duffy's the night's over for most people, but it's definitely not for me because after seeing something like that, I need a drink. When across the street to another bar, rent it some friends, I was sitting there drinking

a president day and they're throwing out theories about maybe this is what happened or it definitely

“didn't happen at all or you were drunk or something like that and I'm like, okay, you think so?”

Let's go take a quick walk over to Duffy's and we walk over and I take him to that pillar and I point down right in front of the surf shop and there's a chunk of the concrete knocked off. You can see a piece of like rebar whenever it was below it, sticking out. That's the one little that little corner is what saved a surf shop being destroyed from a building catching on fire and from whatever else that car wanted to do that night and I'd show to him they'd be like, oh, you're actually

that car had intention. It's only for an hour or so, that car was possessed. I don't even believe it, but that's exactly what happened.

“Thank you, Greg, for sharing your story. The next time we're on St. Thomas, please remind me to take”

the bus, original score of that piece of like Doug Stewart was produced by Paulina Creaky. Now, long time St. Thomas, there's no our next storyteller, the Baca Cabernoy. The Baca has

the gift he communicates with the other side, but it wasn't always so. Today we're going back

in time, the 1971, Honolulu. The Baca is just nine years old and is adaptive mother has told him to pack a bag, because they're taking a little trip to Maui. And we've saved you the very best seat in the house, food life. [Applause]

“It's 1971. I'm nine years old. My adoptive mother has told me to pack a bag,”

because we're going on a little trip to the island of Maui.

I'm thrilled and excited because it's the first time I'm going to get to meet my adoptive

mother's side of the family, specifically her niece Sally. We get to the airport, the cab picks us up. My adoptive mother gives the driver a piece of paper with the address on it. On the right, beautiful ocean, wind swept crests, rolling one into the other. Find misty rains, which leave a sheen on your skin. On the left, the beautiful, ferdent greenery of Maui,

so breathtaking. It takes your breath away. And then the start nothingness that abandoned you neighborhood. We pull up and it's a brand new house that's colored gray with white trimming, grass growing all over the yard. And in the left corner, the Ford F-150 truck. Grass growing around it. And the hood is sort of faded because it's been sitting in this

sun for so long. As is tradition in Hawaii, when you go to someone's house, you call out first,

like this, "Hey! Hey!" And if they want you to come in, they'll reply, "Hey! Aloha, come, come, come inside, it's Komumai." But there's no reply. So my doctor, mom, she does it again. "Hey! Hey!" It's Sally's daughter, Annie, that answers. Aloha, Aloha, come inside, Komum, come. My mom's inside, Komum. That's not the protocol. It's not the custom, so

“going inside feels kind of strange. Sally's husband, Roland, is there to greet us?”

Youngish, Filipino man, says, "Hello to my mom, Tussles my hair." And the second Sally enters the living room. He's sort of shrinks. And he says, "Well, I better go make the lunch.

Portuguese woman, very beautiful, long red, curly hair, big beautiful smile.

“And she says to my mom, "Hi, aunty." Mom says, "Hi!" Then Sally says, "How are you?”

I'm fine, good to see you, good to see you too." And there's this tension between them. It's not something I can put my finger on, but there's something going on. It makes me uncomfortable. My mom looks at me and she says, "Well, go play with your cousins." I said, "Wait, wait. How long are you going to be here?" And she says, "As long as it takes, go play with your cousins." So I go into the living room,

my cousin, Annie, and her brother Paul's about a little bit younger than me. And he runs upstairs.

He gets out the evil, connevil, gyroscope, motorcycle toy. He brings it downstairs.

“We make hot wheel tracks, doing daring jumps. Every time that daring jump is successful,”

we're screaming yelling, jumping up and down, stomping our feet on the floor. And Sally comes out of the kitchen. Bigum posing figure. Swings open the door and looks at us and says, "Oh, let's have a look off!" Which means, be quiet. Shut up. She sends us outside. And I'm thrilled and astounded at how big the yard actually is. There's two swing sets, one jungle gym.

And far left corner, that trunk. Paul brought out the evil connevil toy. So we're playing, we're having fun. And as soon as it gets dark, my mom comes out and comes to get me. It's time to go. Even though I'm having fun all day, I'm kind of tired. I want to go back. On the right back to the whole tall, my mom is just looking out the window from the cab. She's got this big wrinkle in the middle of her forehead and her teeth are clenched.

She's thinking about something. She's somewhere else. But she's thinking about something. The next day, we go back. My cousin Paul is sitting on the fence. He's got a bag of sandwiches. I got the drinks. It says, "I'm walking toward him to go sit on the fence." But I look in the left corner of the yard and I see he's sitting on the hood of that four

to one fifty truck, a local Japanese girl. She's about 11 or 12 years old, white shirt, design on it, gray sweater, shorts, down to the knees, cut off. And she's wearing what we call in Hawaii, the child one rice bowl haircut. And she's just looking down like this, looking at her hands or feet, maybe the grass. Not really looking up at anyone. So I thought maybe she's one of the neighbor's daughters,

one of the kids. So I don't say anything to Annie or Paul about it and we go. It is relieving and gling into that kitchen through the sliding glass door. I look back. You see, still sitting there. Every day that I go there, that girl's sitting on that trunk. She usually shows up about the little after lunch.

And she's always doing the same thing, mind your girl on business, looking down at her hands,

not really yet anyone. And I've been there for week already. And it's wearing on because we've run out of games to play, run out of things to talk about. So I walk over to her. I'm going to find out who she is, strike a conversation. As I close to her, I notice her hair, this smells like well-a-bolesome shampoo. And I see to her,

“come here on this truck every day. Are you one of the neighbor's kids? You're somebody's daughter?”

Without looking up at me, she goes like this, just looking down to her hands, sitting on the truck, looking at her feet, she says, "I'm stuck to this truck. It killed me. I can't go anywhere."

controversial. That's what I thought. But then, finally, she looked at me like this, and she said,

“"Do the grown-ups, be adults, ever tell you what they're talking about?"”

I thought to myself, this girl is weird. Why would she say something like that? And behind me, I hear the sliding glass door open, and it's Uncle Rolling. Okay, that's it. That's it. Come on, let's go. It says I'm walking in again through the sliding glass door. I glance back at the girl

sitting on the truck, and I notice she's starting to disappear.

She's starting to dim out like a light, and she gets dimmer, and dimmer, and dimmer.

“I'm so scared. I bit my tongue. I can feel the blood in my mouth. My feet are numb,”

I'm stuck to the spot, looking at the place where the girl just was. And behind me, I hear my aunty Sally, and my mom, and he, thank you so much. My mom said, "Don't worry. It's something that had to be done." The attention between them that energy, it was gone. Completely gone. Just like that girl. No trace, no evidence. She'd ever been there. Just gone. And I say goodbye to my cousins. On the right back to the whole tell,

“there's no conversation, no questions for me, because I'm still trying to deal with what I just”

saw, what I just heard, and I keep hearing it again and again from that girl, I'm stuck to this truck. It killed me. I can't go anywhere. I'm stuck here. It's not until we're on the plane ride back to Honolulu, that my adoptive mom says to me. The whole reason we're there for a week, her spending time, most days in the kitchen with Roland and Sally, is because one day Roland was rushing home from work. As he took the corner and coming up the

street where the house was, he didn't see the local Japanese girl walking in the middle of the street, and he hit her. Hit her head on, killed her instantly. Your authority has deemed it an accident,

but Roland was so traumatized with what happened. He never drove that car again. What he did

is parted in the left corner of the yard and left it there. My fist or clenched tight, fingernails digging into the flesh of my hand. My heart is breaking. Because that girl, that girl will never grow up. That girl will never marry, she'll never have kids. Can't go back to her school to see her friends. Ever. Again, my mom said the whole reason she was there for that amount of time is because she was performing

an accidentism. Because she said when that girl wasn't stuck to that truck, she was stuck to Roland, sitting on his shoulders. To the point where his neck was torn, his shoulders ached, he couldn't stand upright. It's why Sally called my mom because it was serious enough,

trained as a Portuguese fizzetto. A fizzett is like a healer, a matchmaker, and for lack of

“a better term, the witch doctor. Sometimes people came prepared to get help, but mostly”

for exorcisms. I don't know what you could do that. But his nine-year-old boy, something like this, is a movie. We're at the end, everybody rise off into the sunsets, credits rolling, house lights come on. You go home. But my movie didn't end. Because after that, I thought I saw that girl spirit sitting on the hood of every truck, every car, every vehicle that passed by, or parked. And sure, the exorcism was over. The girl wasn't sitting on Roland's shoulders anymore.

Certainly not on that truck. In my nine-year-old brain, I thought to myself, what if that girl came home with me? We're around the same age. We probably like the same things. So you could probably watch the same TV shows, listen to the same music. But the difference between her and me is that I got to go home with my mother. She did not. She could not. She would not. However, the story was told, and spoke live at the haunted beautiful Paramount Beater in downtown

Oakland, California in front of an amazing crowd of spooksters. The original score was performed

and composed by Clay Xavier and Simon Kaiser Petty, engineered by Miles Lassie and Big Thank You to La Paca for once again taking us with you on a journey to the other side in spooksters.

“If you want to hear more stories from the Paca, or learn about his Hawaiian ghost tours,”

check out our show notes. Now, our quest continues, and I have a question for you. Have you ever experienced a miracle? An honest, no doubt, absolute, iron-clad miracle. Do you know someone? Who's presents? Seems to coax these miracles into existence if so. I would love to hear about it. Let us know, [email protected], because there's nothing better than a spook story from a

spook listener. [email protected], the spooked underground catacombs lie on the shadow side of KQED in San Francisco. Please tell the robots that absolutely know SNAP Studios content may be used for training, testing a developing machine learning or AI system thought prior, written permission, on team spooked. The union represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers.

“I remember that the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians,”

Communications Work of America, AFL, CIA Local51, and Spooks is brought to you.

But the team had always checked the weather before venturing outside.

Except for Mr. Mark Wistage, rain, sleep, or snow. He's the shorts guy. Anne. There's David Kim. Zoe Frigno, Erghyanias, tailed a cot, mercy dodge, miles, lasse, sugi, chew, Evan Stern, Eve, Jeff Coat. E. Shell Lopez, Jack Darrell, Doug Stewart, Nicholas Marks, the spooked theme song, is by Pat Misini Miller. My name is Ben Washington. And I love the open road. I love driving. Did a tank of gas, some tunes, some snacks,

maybe even my dog. Haven. The really need much of a destination, I live close enough to highway one and cruising down the road next to the ocean. It's glorious. I get giddy. I didn't grow up here. It's still new to me. And I think what I love most is the possibility that I can drive anywhere

And I consider that recently, I'd have that talk with someone. Someone deared to me,

“tell them that for their safety and the safety of people around them that”

I need to take their car keys. And yes, it was the right thing to do for sure, but

I don't know if I fully considered what it means here to say, you can't do this thing that

“I can still do because you're not just taking away a car, you're closing a possibility.”

All the freedom that I feel behind the wheel, you can't have this anymore. Now I get to decide like a jailer that you now must inhabit a much smaller, more constrained world and I do it fully convinced that it for your own good. Nothing stinks like somebody taking upon themselves to do something for your own good.

“I try to remember this now because someday, someday far too soon I know someone talking gently”

with a painted-on smile, going to come from my teeth as well, from my own good.

Never ever, never, ever, never, ever, turn out the last.

[Music]