The Bride

He told me that was bare room.

“That was not to go inside, but then we played a game one day, and I ran into hide.”

I didn't know it was secret. When I stopped behind the bed, when I heard their whispers, then my heart was filled with dread. The voices, they grew louder as the room began to breathe when I pound it on the door. They prized.

I could never leave you. [MUSIC] You crossed over a stooot. Stay tuned. [MUSIC]

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You might be surprised at how much you can earn with Vintage download the Vintage app for free to start listing with no seller fees, and for a limited time enjoy free shipping in the US. I move to Lansing, Michigan, and I don't know anybody except my roommate. My roommate who loves to tell me how stupid I am, and because I'm broke, I go to the subway

sandwich shop every Tuesday, because on Tuesdays they've got the two for Tuesdays special two foot long subs $5.5 bucks. I order two turkey subs with extra everything, and make sure that Trisha takes my order, not Allen, not just stupid Allen, because it's like Trisha understands. This has to last me.

She piles it on the turkey to cheese, to made us olives, to conversation the last rules of broken protocols ignored, the sandwich Trisha makes for me. It's like a sandwich or grandmother might make you, like I love her might pack you for long trip, the best sandwich, and I get home one day, after work, pull out my sub, my roommate

“looks at me, looks at my sandwich, he's like, what'd you get that?”

What'd you mean, subway? You got that, and subway, no way, to the girl making it, yeah, is she cute? Yeah, well if I were you stupid, I'd go back to that subway, and that's for digits. Really? Yeah, you were so dumb, so heart pounding, mouth dry, I pulled back up to the subway.

Trisha is not there, just Allen, hey Allen, where's Trisha? Trisha doesn't work here anymore, doing a sub or not, what happened? Somebody had to let the owner know, let the owner know, and Allen, Allen just sneers at me, let the owner know what Allen, you think, no one's sorry, special sandwiches, and maybe I am stupid, but my roommate thinks, because it takes

me a moment to understand what he's saying, then I want to murder him, got a fire, let's sneer, you want to sub or not, I try my best not to explode Allen, what is Trisha's name, it's against company, but Adam, what is her last name, are you threatening me?

see Trisha again, and I'm gonna go back to subway either, I still think about Trisha

“though, not because I knew her, I never really got the chance, because once someone saw”

me, saw me trying to make two sandwiches last to the end of the week, and she decides and piece of turkey, next to slice a cheese, a handful of olives, but for that, she made a surprise, looks tired of her now.

Now, they're all kinds of friends, the year is 2010, and 13-year-old Elisa Matt has just moved

from his eyes out in Tina, the Colesal City, the flight kill, something Ecuador, living embarrassing thorn toward the heat, the accident, the school, and making new friends, feels like more than shaking a handle, she needs some coal, things take a turn, I'll let Elisa take it from here. I am at Nicole through a mutual friend during recess, she had this really shiny black hair,

she had this like energy to her, very like enthusiastic, especially about the Jonas Brothers.

“That's how we started talking, because they told me every single fun fact that they could”

talk about the Jonas Brothers, I was like, "Oh, cool, interesting." We would have great conversation, your typical 13-year-old connection, you know. We had been friends for maybe like a few weeks now, though this one day during recess, a bunch of my friends and Nicole was there, the guy that introduced us, we're just talking about what are the weekend plans, and what's the cool thing to do, so then it kind of

“came up that our parents were not going to be there that weekend, just like, "Hey, that's”

all coming to my place since they're not going to be there." They're talking about it and I was like, "Oh, okay, nobody had said anything," but then they were like, "Oh, yeah, no, you're invited too," I was like, "Oh, yeah."

The day of the gathering, it was extremely hot, it's Ecuador, Ecuador is hot, it's always

hot, it has two seasons, it's either dry heat or just rain with heat. And then me and a bunch of classmates of my friends, we get to Nicole's house. It was probably like around, I want to say seven, we were in her living room, in her TV room, playing music from someone's phone, so it was that really crappy quality to the music and we were just enjoying talking, you know.

We had bought some snacks and some drinks, it was a very laid bag, just close friends gathering. We had this other friend, his name is Coco. He was very tall, skinny, he had a sort of like round head and a very big nose.

in like a malicious way, but more so in that pre-teen immature way, you will make fun of

“my accent, because I have an Argentina accent, they had the Ecuadorian local accent, you”

know? Oh, is that what you were trying to say? It go to a point where I got irritated. It wasn't funny anymore. And around like 10 minutes of me being in her house, I started having a headache. But it wasn't one of those headaches that you can kind of just ignore and keep making small talk. It was one of those headaches that get progressively worse to the point where

now you feel you're head pulsating.

“One of our friends had gone upstairs to her room, so then I asked Nicole, I was like, hey Niki,”

do you think it's okay if I go lay down on your bed? I know our friend Ivana is over there. Do you think it's okay if I just go and rest for a little bit? I really have a bad headache.

And she was like, yeah, no, that's fine. You can just go upstairs the first door that you

see to your right. So I was like, okay, sounds good. So I go up the stairs. I find her room and I open the door and my other friend Ivana, she's just laying there on her phone and I'm like, hey, I have a headache. She's like, okay, so then I lay next door.

“I had left the door open because I don't want to separate myself so much from our little gathering”

downstairs. I am facing the wall. I hear them laughing, just chatting, go go being annoying,

making me cringe so much. I'm trying to relax. I'm trying to get this headache to go away. And I started hearing the creaking of the staircase. I immediately thought, this is go go coming up to keep being annoying, right? And I turn around to face the door to see who's coming in. I'm like, this guy better not walk through that door because I'm about to snap at him. So I turn around and the creaking stops. Like immediately.

So I'm like, okay, fine. I turn my back back as facing the door right. So I turn around again and the footsteps continue. I kind of hear what feels sound like when you're walking and I turn around and I'm like, go, go, go, can you please go downstairs? Like, I don't feel too good. Just go back down. Nothing no response. So I turn around again and I hear like stilettos, right? And I hear them closer and closer.

So I'm like, oh my god, why is he insisting so much and being here with us? Right? I was so, so, so annoying. And I turn around and I go, go, go, go, please stop. So as I'm turning, I see this person, definitely not Google. It's a lady. Is this woman with long black hair all the way down to her waist? Kind of like, frizzy hair? She's wearing this white wedding gown. One of those old wedding gowns,

those I had like puffy sleeves kind of like a corset kind of thing and a very big gown at the bottom. But all I could see was dark eyes, like very either brown or black eyes. So this lady, I see her reaching towards the door knob and she looks at me. We locked eyes and I was like,

and her hair was like the last things that I see of her. The woman I see this lady, my blood ran cold. I can feel all the blood just rushing to my feet. I was so scared. And I turned around to see if maybe I know that was next to me,

“saw the same thing that I saw. And I actually asked her, I was like, hey, did someone come in?”

And she's like, what? She's on her blackberry because that was like the headphone back then. She's chatting with, I don't know who, but she did not see any of this. So I'm like, oh, okay, no, no, nothing. Nothing. And she goes back to her phone. I'm just thinking to myself, did I just see that? Was that a ghost or was my mind playing games? And our circles by and the boy friends that we had there, right? They leave because all the

girls are going to stay over for a sleepover. I hear them leaving. And then I finally hear my

“my other girlfriends come upstairs. And they're asking me, hey, like how's your headache?”

I'm like, oh, it's fine. I see all my friends like getting their things, unpacking their their bags for the sleepover, getting out their pajamas. And I'm trying to find like a with a little opening, you know, to tell them what I've seen. And then I finally get the courage and I'm like, hey, Nicole, hmm, silly question. By any chance, is there any ghost in your house? So she turns around. And she goes, oh, I don't know, yeah, I don't know what to say,

oh, you've seen the bride. No, don't worry. It's okay. It's just a ghost.

“When she said those words, I felt my heart beating hard. I was like, what the heck?”

She said it in such a non-chalant tone. And she starts laughing because of course, she sees my face. And I'm sedering, right? So I was like, what are you talking about? [speaking in foreign language] I told her, don't worry, this happens to me, too. It's the bride. Like, I was trying to calm her down, but really, I felt relieved when she asked me this question.

Like, a weight was lifted off my shoulders. [speaking in foreign language] We moved here in 2001. My mom, my dad, my younger sister, Amy.

When we first saw the house, it was only halfway built.

My parents went and took a look and were like, all right, we'll buy it. But something strange happened when they were doing the renovations. Every time they would arrange the tiles on the floor, they'd return the next day to find all the tiles removed and placed in a neatly stacked pile. Later on, when the house was built, my friends would come over and tell me,

[speaking in foreign language] It feels like someone is watching you. Something is off.

But for me, everything was totally normal. I never felt anything anywhere in my house.

One afternoon, it's around 2 or 3pm. My parents aren't home and I'm standing at the kitchen counter, chopping onions.

I look up and I see a lady walking from the dining room to the living room. [speaking in foreign language] I freeze and think, "What am I seeing?" She's wearing a white dress with a long skirt and I can't see her face. [speaking in foreign language]

I know I'm alone and that no one could have entered the house because of the metal fence. Right then, I immediately knew this is a ghost. So I just see her and I stand there as the woman walks by.

“Then I remember from horror movies that every kid who goes looking for the monster ends up in trouble.”

So, I tell myself I'm staying right here in the kitchen. I'll keep cooking. I'll pretend nothing ever happened. When my parents get back that evening, I tell them I saw a woman walking through the house. But they don't believe me. They just tell me, "Oh, you probably saw some reflection. Maybe you're making this up." [speaking in foreign language]

After the first time I saw her, I never saw her again.

But I did keep hearing her. Usually at night after 7 p.m., I'd be in my room and I'd hear someone walking up the stairs and high heels. Every time this happened, I expected someone to open the door. I used to think,

“"God, I have nothing to do with that." [speaking in foreign language]”

Maybe someone's coming to visit me. Maybe I'm about to see this lady again. I better hide under the blanket. But no. In the end, the footsteps always stopped at my door and no one ever came in.

I wasn't 100% sure what I was hearing, but I always connected it to the lady.

So I started calling her the bride because in my mind as a child, the only people who were white dresses and high heels were brides. So that's what I called her. [speaking in foreign language] But then again, I never saw her again. The one who did was Lisa.

“So for the next months of our friendship, I do not bring this up to Nicole.”

We don't talk about this just because I feel like the more you talk about things like this, the more you invite other spirits, other ghosts. Also, I didn't know the ghosts or the brides' intention. So I didn't want to see her again. After a few months, me and my friends go back to Nicole's house.

Around that time, she had broken her leg. She did not like using her grudges so she would crawl everywhere. And one little system that we had with her is that whenever we wanted to pick her up, or get her attention, anything like that because she was one of those girls that did not have a phone, we would grab little pebbles and throw them at her window to let her know that we were there. So then we're throwing the pebbles and we see someone on the window, like approaching the window.

It's this female figure. We see a woman and we're like, "Oh, Nicole, come down, come down, come down stairs." And this figure wasn't moving, wasn't doing anything. It was just staring at us. Oh my friends, I'm like, "Hey Nicole, they come down, come down." And while we're talking to her window and this lady and the window,

her front door, which is in the first floor, opens and you see her crawling. She's like, "Hey, I'm here."

You're so cute. I'm like, "What the hell is going on?" I was downstairs at the TV room, but once I crawl outside, they all tell me, "There's a lady upstairs in your bedroom." I'm like, "What lady, that wasn't me, I'm down here." Someone was up there.

So I'm like, "Well, it's probably the bride who else could be."

We also saw this figure in the window. We all just look at each other and we're like, "Okay, that happened." But then we had this one friend that was not okay with any of this, and he was totally freaking out. He started looking at us all of us and saying, "Am I the only one seeing this white? Why is need anyone freaking out?" Like, "I am right now and we're all just starting laughing."

"You know what I mean? I don't know what I mean. I saw this as normal."

This was unusual sure, but it didn't seem like she was trying to hurt me, so I wasn't scared

“when my friends told me they'd seen her. But I do remember thinking, "What does she want with us?"”

"You know what I mean?" Nicole and I remained friends after high school. I went to college in the US and whenever I had either winter break or summer break, I would go back to Ecuador to catch up with everyone. And this one time I was visiting her and she told me, "Hey, you won't believe what happened." She then tells me she's been dating this guy, right? Things are a little bit more official.

They're like actual boyfriend and girlfriend, so she decides to invite him over to her parents. Before he came to our house, I hadn't told him anything at all. Nothing. I just invited him over for a barbecue.

“So they get to her house for this barbecue. He's coming in. She's like heading towards the”

kitchen or somewhere. She starts walking ahead of him and he stops. And he's looking to the right, which is where the TV room is.

It just needs to use the bathroom first. So I wait for him.

And after a while, he comes to the kitchen where I'm cooking. I notice he's acting all weird. "Mesa, me olim, uchula gayese." He tells me, "I have a really bad headache." He's holding his head and closing his eyes. He looks rattled.

“I start to worry. I'm like, "What's wrong?"”

And he says, "I went to the bathroom, but then all of a sudden something called me into that TV room." "It was a dream. How can I say it's all blank?" He says, "It's like a lot of light." When I walked over, there was a lady on white. I saw this intense white light all over the room.

And I couldn't step inside because she was blocking the door. And then she spoke. When he tells me this, I was like, "Wow. I don't know if the right word is nostalgia, but something came over me." Even right now, I feel like crying.

She felt like family. I don't know how to explain it, but it wasn't scary. It was like, "Oh, she's been looking out for me. She loves my sister and maybe she's been watching us this whole time." So I feel like she's part of her room. It's like, "I'm a good girl. I'm a good girl."

So she tells me this and I'm like, "Oh, wait. That makes sense."

“He said that the right told him that she is like a mother to them,”

that she takes care of them, that she looks after them. So I'm like thinking, "Well, she trying to close the door of the bedroom because I had a headache, and she was trying to take care of me too." I kind of felt like that was my answer. And to me, that was it. I got my resolution.

[Music]

After all these years, I still don't know who she is.

“That's like the question of my life. Who is this lady?”

Nowadays, when I think about this, in respect to myself, I would say that this whole experience was definitely one of the biggest one that I've had that had kind of like taught me that there's this like spiritual realm. And nowadays, when if I do see someone or something because of what happened with the bride, I keep approaching everything with the same, the same ideology of just being respectful. I've passed on to her. I hope she's still around the house looking out for my parents.

And hopefully she's still keeping an eye out for me too. Either way, I just want to say thank you because, wow, for me having another mom looking out for me, that is something I truly appreciate. Alisa, now lives in New York, the Guayakeel lives in her still. The friends, the stories,

the glimpses on the other side, they never left as for Nicole. She still lives in Ecuador.

And every now and then when she visits her childhood home, she finds herself glancing at the old TV room, reminiscing and hoping, so somehow get one more glimpse of the bride. Thank you Alisa and Nicole for sharing this story and thank you, Juan Diego. Juan Diego is a podcast producer from Colombia, who focuses on climate storytelling and the oral tradition, learn more about his work and his podcast and our show notes. And special thanks as well.

Tuelena, Tinoco, flitting your voice to bring him this story to life. The original score was by Clay Xavier, he's produced and scouted by Juan Diego Bell John.

“Now, do you have a story? The world needs to hear about. That you need to get off your chest”

to reveal. Let us know. Snoop at snapjackment.org because there's nothing better than a spook story from a spook listener. And there is a secret place. The place behind the places that you know, a place where the person that looks just like you, that acts just like you, where it's the same close you do and loves everything you'd love, but this person is not you and this person, which is they were you. And they're waiting in the shadows right now of KQD in San Francisco. And

now, they know that you know. Please tell the robot overlords absolutely no snap studios content to be used for training, testing out developing machine learning or AI systems thought prior written permission on team spooked. The unit represented producers, artists, editors, engineers. Hermes are the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Work of America, AFLCA, a local 51, spooked is brought to you.

But the team that visits our shadows selves on their regular, especially the overblue semester marked wastage. In fact, we're convinced that a switch occurred sometime last April. And the real marked wastage is trapped there now. A well. There's David Kim. Zoey for ignore Eric Yanyas, Elliott Lightfoot, tailed the cop Marisa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Nicholas Marks, the spooked

if you learn about a thing, say a fancy purse. One day you've never heard of a

“Berkin bag, the next day you see him everywhere, it's like we have to be trained first.”

For our eyes are open. We travel through life the same way,

applying to the things we don't know to look for. Is it any wonder that so many cultures with

“different eyes are amazed by what we cannot see. Most of the world accepts as given that beings”

ancestors, spirits, entities, walk amongst us. But often we see through an entire the different type of lens, good for many things, but leaving us blind others and sometimes

“I feel that I need a new pair of glasses. I know something's in front of me, but like smoke,”

I can't catch it. Can't contain it, trap it, tame it, question it, can't use it, but perhaps. Wanting all those things is why I can't perceive it in the first place.

Never ever, ever, ever, turn out the lights.

[Music]