Night at the Aquarium - Classic

And what's left of the crew?

You listen to spooked, stay tuned.

“My brother, sloppy, lats about any kind of standard.”

If a corner needs cut and he's going to cut that corner, except for one weird thing, the aquariums.

This guy, Mr. Slipshy, Mr. Dreamy, is super meticulous about his aquariums, tipatures calibrated with

half a degree, pH levels check, recheck, salinity, monitor, he loves aquariums, often keeping four or five enormous tanks at a time. Saltwater, fresh water, even brackish tanks, limiting areas that turn fresh and saltwater together, every tank, a work of art. Brightly colored fish swimming through fluorescent coral, seaweed, floating plants, ground cover,

this riot of life. He says, he's trying to create the perfect ecosystem. Look at them. Bit over his reverse osmosis water, dual filtration machine, like a proud papa, you see, he loves these fish, like he birch them himself, some even swim to his hand, as he strokes their

belly.

“It's wild, and that's why helping him clean his prize fresh water tank, I ask him, why?”

Why? Why are you going to put this crazy ugly Oscar fish into the tank, this glorious beautiful tank? You'll know it's aggressive, you'll know it's going to eat all the pretty fish. He looks at me, almost like he's sad, and he says, no, there is no perfect ecosystem, without

a killer. I'm going to put this in the tank, and I'm going to put this in the tank. Each and every aquarium is its own contained world, and one of the best aquariums is in Monterey Bay, California. Years ago, Kevin Wright, he worked as a security guard there, but it was years before that

when he was just a little kid when he fell in love with the place, under the very first visit,

it was a little giddy, the light bouncing off the fish and the kelp, seeing darkness glides across the windows, almost like it was flying underwater, you get the sense that you're swimming in the ocean, how cool is that?

“I remember going into the kelp forest, the entire ecosystem from the bottom of the ocean,”

all the way to the surface where the canopy is.

look at this, come for us, my job was to patrol this giant place.

“The building is huge, it's three and a half acres.”

The property that the aquarium sits on, people have been on that land for thousands of years, 50,000 years ago, indigenous tribes were following the kelp forest that hugged the west coast of North America and they migrated south and settled in the Monterey bay. Then there was a Chinese fishing village, it was actually burnt down, there was the Sicilians who came here and overfished, sardines, overnight the canning industry shut down.

The aquarium is sitting in the footprint of one of the last canneries to close, certain parts of its still hold that same footprint and look and feel. My first night, working a night shift, that was super excited, walking around through the Splash Zone and the tropical fish.

“I stood and watched the Mola Mola for a while, it's the largest bony fish in the world,”

looks like a giant floating head. They're like missiles in the water and then I watched the way shark glide around this

million gallon tank for several minutes.

And the other fish moved out of the way and kept distance. I felt so lucky to be working here. Of course, everyone else like that, okay man, you got seven more hours of this, you got to calm down. Pretty soon after I started the security officers that had been there for a while, loved

“to start chiming in with little ghost stories that they had heard or things that they had”

experienced.

There are stories of a woman in a wedding dress swimming across the Cal Forest, like

she's a scuba diver, there are stories of a woman in a black evening gown as if the person didn't leave the event that was there that night. You go to escort her out of the building and then she's gone. Stories of footprints, wet footprints, leaving the building. And when you get to the threshold of the door of the footprint stop, so I just kind of

passed it off as, man, this is just folklore that people are passing down from year to year. One night, I was going over to where our vault was and I pulled on the door, just like any other night, shake the handle, handles locked, doors locked, doors latched, moving on to the next door, a couple minutes later, I get a call from the dispatcher who said, "Hey, can you go back and check the wall.

The door just swung open." I knew I had latched it, I was just really uneasy. So I go back, I checked the door, sure enough, it's wide open. I called dispatch and asked, "Hey, who else proxed into the door?" And dispatcher relayed back, "No one's buzzed into the door.

We looked at the video, it was just you." I didn't believe them. I go back to the dispatch office, I play the tape. You see me checked the door, you see me grab the handle, shake it and pull pretty hard on the door and walk on.

And in a couple minutes, sure as can be, you see the door slowly, swing open. I got goose bumps on my arms. It was like that moment when you go over the little hill too fast and your stomach kind of gets that wobble, I don't like this. I had two theories, someone was either inside and hiding on a camera site or when the air

But when I went to the room, no one was inside.

We watched the video, no one was in the room before or after. And when we went to the room, the air handlers were not on. I didn't cast off people's ghost stories as easily after that. I would take any creak and odd noise with a little more suspicion and spend some more time with my flashlight in those areas.

I wanted to find something that was tangible that I could prove that it was not a ghost. It was one of the other staff playing a trick or a door that just is faulty. One night I was coming across the bridge into the dark.

The bridge links the two ends of the building together.

Behind me I could hear someone jingling their keys. I turned around, no one was there. Probably just me hearing something. As you turn into the drifter's gallery, where all the jellies are, there's zero windows and zero light.

I could hear keys jingling behind me again. This sound was very distinct and right behind me. Someone was walking up behind me.

I turned around, turned a flashlight on.

Nobody's there. As like Essex is at you, Essex was a big, big guy at a deep baritone voice. I look around the exhibits to see if he's hiding behind one of the signs or something. Nothing. I figured I'm going to play along with this stupid game, do my rounds.

About three or four minutes later, I hear the keys behind me. I spun around, Essex come on, it's not funny, I got things to do. No Essex. So I get on the radio, base is, where's Essex? Essex answers the radio.

“I just got back from my lunch, what are you talking about?”

I'm like I've had enough of this, I'm going back to the office because I don't feel comfortable. There was just this sense that I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be out here right now. This could be the night.

I'm going to see the woman in the evening gown at the open sea exhibit. I needed to go back to the office, back to where the light is and where other people are. It was the longest walk I've ever taken back to the office. And it's probably only about 300 feet. I was coming across the bridge, I had to walk by this life-size model of an orca.

“This model, it's a little creepy because I remember looking at this large whale with an”

open toothed mouth smiling at you, and I can feel this whole breeze brushing against my arm as though something was walking past me. Every ounce of me did not want to be on the bridge anymore. I remember coming into the office, fleeing in the door open pretty hard to get inside the late room, I tried to explain the sound of the keys and the feeling of someone moving

past me on the bridge. The dispatcher thought I was just being goofy. Everyone else is like, I'm not buying the story, I know how to felt and heard. After that, when I knew there was other people that were working shifts, I was very clear when I'd go to do rounds.

“Okay, where is Chris working or where's Sanjury and working tonight?”

I didn't want to bump into them thinking of something else, but I also wanted to know exactly

I was morbidly afraid of the woman in the evening gown.

“About three months later, I met the aquarium in the dark.”

We have this giant, rotundab-shaped room that has a ring of sardines in the ceiling. Thousands of sardines swimming together all in one direction at the same time. Imagine looking up to see a shimmering silver and blue ring swimming around your head. You'll often see guests in this area laid out and stare up because it's so relaxing and mellow.

I was coming across the bridge and I could see Essex at the other end of the bridge.

I couldn't see details, but the way that they walked stood the size, it was Essex.

She walked over and lie down on the ground.

“I get up to him and as I start to say again, Essex, what are you doing Essex from behind”

me because what are you talking about? I turn around and Essex is standing behind me. I whipped my head back around and the figure on the ground was gone. He's like, what's your problem? I just saw you in front of me laying down in front of the sardines.

I'm standing right here, but I just saw you lay down like you're taking a nap. You've looked at me in serious? Yes.

“And he's like, I'm not doing rounds anymore tonight.”

He refused to go back out on the floor. I was a believer after that. I think I saw Ghost. About a year went by, strange things started to happen at the look-down exhibit, it's where you look down at the shell reef from above, and it's got these floating magnifying glasses.

So you can look at the cup corals and the enemies and the scallops and little clams that they would live in this habitat in the wild. The person in charge of the exhibit started to notice that things were missing. She would put in smaller crabs and scallops and clams and things like that. And over a short period of time, they would disappear.

It was a little frustrating because we have special permits to collect these things. We don't have a unlimited supply. We couldn't fare a why things just kept disappearing. So around this time, I was one of my turns to do training for the Graveshift. And Claire was the training that we had just hired.

We always do an orientation walk after we close.

She and I were coming around the corner and it goes from a very well lit area to pretty dark. Now is pointing out this exhibit on the right. You always want to make sure you're listening for water overflowing the top. And we're shining our lights at the base of the exhibits.

So you don't let the light startle the fish. Claire sees something on the carpet. Here's something over there, six, seven feet away from the closest exhibit. We shine our lights on it. It looks slimy and wet.

Just sitting there like this cold wet lump. My heart jumped.

This thing was round and at the end kind of moving.

Ever so slightly like tickling the air, putting feelers out. So as we walked up to it and shine the light on it, we both realized this is octopus. It took me a couple seconds to get the heart rate to back down.

“If you want to go home and say I got bit by an octopus today, that beak is pretty sharp.”

It can crush shells. I called animal care, pick it up, they put it in the exhibit. Once it got into the water, it sat there for a couple seconds and then scurried over

underneath some of the shell like octopus do.

Next morning we get a radio call from the animal handler that takes care of that exhibit. I was like we don't put octopus in that exhibit. My swear, I'm telling you, there's an octopus in there. Sure enough, she takes apart the exhibit, she finds it and she comes back and she's like, you know what's funny?

I was thinking about it. That octopus probably came in on one of the shell rocks that we installed a little while ago as a storeway and has been eating all the things that I've been putting in because

“that's what it does at night, it comes out in forages and hunts.”

And then got to a size where it was too big for it and decided it would go to the next title, not knowing that the title was actually inside a building. I thought how funny is that this little stowway octopus has probably been in there for a month or two, just living its best life and no one knew. I'm in a different job now, now I'm in charge of the public programs, and thank God

I don't have to patrol at night anymore. The mystery of the octopus and the missing clams and scallops that I've got solved. I'm still working on the other mysteries.

“Thanks so much to Kevin Wright and the magical Monterey Bay Aquarium and thanks as well”

to KAsEU Radio in Monterey, California for all your assistance. The original score for that story was by Yari Bundy and Renzo Goreo, was produced by Anne Ford. Oh, behind the veil, thank you for going behind the veil, instructors, have a question for you. Have you ever experienced something odd, something strange, something that shouldn't have

happened, something unnatural that made you think that perhaps, maybe, or with a victim of something outside the bounds of what is supposed to occur, but there's a curse of foot or perhaps

you have powerful enemies and they put something on you, place something around you or

maybe even you've placed a curse on them and then ran into some unexpected consequences if this is you, and most importantly, if you've done something to change how this generally works, if you've had something occur that is a little bit off, please tell me all about it. I promise, I'll only reveal your story to the legions of spook just walking this path of shadow

let me know, spook at stepjudgements.org, because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener. Spook is brought to you by the team that knows well the difference between a saltwater fish tank and a fresh water fish tank except from a smirk wristage, he just tops off the tank with tap water and hope for the best there's David Kim, Zoe Frigno and Ford, Eric

Yanyas, tailed the cut, Mercedogs, Leon Mory Motel, Miles Lassie, Yari Bundy, Doug Stewart, Paulina Creaky, Elizabeth Z. Pardou, Aditya Matou, and Lulu Timma, the spook theme song

Right now, right this moment, you are seeking something even if you don't know what it

“is, and that's something, the slippery, it's elusive, just nothing ever stays the same.”

Not you, they're not what you're looking for, and in this stew, this cauldron of mystery

in shadow and lies and sand it helps to have a North Star.

“And that remains constant even as the world around us boils, so something very small,”

something very trivial can help you find that which you seek, so I offered you the advice

what's offered to me, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, never, turn out the lies.