The Iron Gate - Classic

From Snapchat with Underground Layer, listening to Spooked. Stay tuned. [Music]

My little brother is exactly one year younger than me. You always have been. My cousin and I are the same age.

We go back to Granny's house and my cousin says at midnight. Let's call Bloody Mary. My brother says no, no, no, we can't. And he looks at me for support me. He's older brother. But I want to be cool like my cousin. So tell my brother to stop me in a baby. And we laugh. No. He whispered that you gave the key. And I tell him at midnight, we're going to see Bloody Mary leap out the mirror and I tell him that if he doesn't help out.

I'm going to send Bloody Mary upstairs to his room while he sleeps. No, no, no. Don't joke, Granny. Because I knew he was going to tell Granny. He's got a com because we need three people to make it work.

“My cousin says, look, I tell him, don't even worry. All you have to do is be there.”

I'm going to hold the candle, all right. You just got to hold my hand. I. I. And he nods. And that night me wake. Excited.

And after my grandmother falls asleep after the six million dollar man after Hawaii 50 after the rat patrol.

It's time. My brother starts with this, cleaning sound. Quick, quick. What cousin likes a candle of granddaddy's light from the kitchen table. We turn off every other light in the house. Let me find him to the back room and line up in front of the mirror. We've only got 90 seconds on my brother's Casio watch.

Shut up, shut up. 30 seconds. I can see my little brother squeezing his eyes shut tight tight tight in the mirror 10 seconds. Say it. Say what I say to get a say it. Bloody Mary.

Bloody Mary. I don't see what happens next just something in the mirror and my little brother screaming in my cousin's screaming. And I'm wondering what? Have we done?

My grandmother first opened the door.

What I remember.

“What I remember is the look my brother gives me.”

Look at the trail. I'm shocked of her. I'm supposed to be his big brother and I let something come out at him from this darkness. I don't know what's sprang out of that mirror. I don't know what he did but 30 years later. I wish with all my heart I wish.

But I had said no. My name is now Washington. Some burdens are hard to put down. Spooked. Starts.

Now.

“Sometimes on our shell, you hear tales of people.”

You can be inexplicable in their own home. In the attic, under the bed. But this next tale that happens to our storyteller he was very, very far from home. Takes place in Baghdad. At the time when American troops were particularly unpopular in that city.

His soldier, think Dallas Sanchez, has been deployed as part of a sniper killed team.

[Music] Baghdad. Baghdad wasn't sane.

Baghdad was really intense.

Baghdad was just a constant sensory overload. Tons of extrajudicial killings. You could not leave the fog without finding like a dead body. Place down in a trash pile because there's no infrastructure. So talk about like the smell of the city.

It smelled like death. It smelled like old death. This was the end of '06. The ward been going on for three years. And we were in a really hot area of operations.

Can you describe where you lived normally? Was it just like a room where you were in a tent? Where are you living? It was so close to the green zone that it was a super, super-cush fob. [Music]

We actually had like barracks. It's like a room maybe a 10 by 12 foot rectangle. We decorated it. I had my little bed actually had a lury, live in Berlin poster. When you're in the service, not just downrange.

“I think that those little living spaces, it feels like a cocoon.”

It feels like you're a little bit safer. This was around Christmas time in '06. And like the mission that we were out on was a concurrent SKT. And what's an SKT? Sorry.

SKT are a small kill team or sniper kill team. Like the basic tactic would be we would leave the fob very, very late at night in trucks. Roll around the neighborhood with the lights out. For several hours, the trucks would slow down to a crawl. And we would try and like a silently open the rear doors.

Just a dismount from the truck without slamming anything or making any noise. Walk through the neighborhood as stealthily as you can. We reach like the target house.

Basically from there, you just break in.

And then set up a hide and just pull over, watch over the sector. And just wait basically for someone to do something a grimy, like digging a hole to bury an ID. And then we'd respond accordingly. Anyways, yeah, we would have probably at least six hours notice that we were going to be stepping off. Generally, before heading out on a mission, where there's particularly things that you would fear.

“Like do you remember anything about those moments?”

But I can remember one time and it ended up becoming a pre-mission ritual. His pelky had a really great sound system. And he'd be like, dude, we're about to get pumped up for this mission. Press play. Bany in the jets at 50 decibels, just cranking that out.

Bany in the jets became more anthem. You pack up like you're getting 120 pounds worth of kit and scramble to the top of the truck. Get your weapon mounted. I was a gunner. I had my head about the top, just scanning, scanning like a maniac. When you're moving across open ground walls, scanning, sweating profusely.

I don't know, like I know this public radio so this analogy would probably never make it on air,

but it really is just doing a fat rail. To have eight guys moving in a file through a neighborhood, it's the point of the mission, where you're most exposed, where you're most vulnerable.

“You have to maintain almost complete silence.”

Because aside from the sound of the wind, maybe some dogs barking, there is no sound. Like so for 72 hours straight, it's like basically like being in church. Because any sound could like compromise you and potentially get everybody that you love killed.

How many of these missions had you been on?

“So this was probably the seventh or eighth mission that I'd been on.”

The mission started out typically. It felt completely the same as any other mission. So it's probably like around midnight or one or two o'clock in the morning. We approach the building and before I've even gotten like a chance to drop my rug, like my best friend comes up to me and he just looks really shook in up.

And he's like, dude, there's something wrong here. There's just something bizarre.

So immediately walking in this place, the first thing that I noticed was the sound.

This dissonant noise.

“It sounded almost like a broken radio in a room down the hall.”

Just completely atonal and entirely disquieting on wholesome sound. It almost sounded like a congregation of whispers. Like thousands of voices trying to communicate something, but in a completely nonsensical way. And that really was the point where I felt like something was really different this time. I decided that you know, it was going to look around some of the upper floors.

So as I was walking around like that, the second story I came into this one room that it was completely stripped bare, simple cement floor.

I don't know what drew my attention to it, but I turned to face the interior wall. And just saw that the wall was pot-marked with bullet holes, with rounds. So I was standing there looking at these pot-marked walls. It just seemed like something wasn't right, that these weren't typical. And my squad leader showed me this like pencil trick.

You can insert like a pencil into like small arms fire against a wall. It'll tell you, like the direction that the fire had come from.

So this being the second story, I put the pencil into the wall, and it's parallel to the ground, just sticking in.

Like it meant that those shots had been fired straight across. As soon as I stuck that pencil in, everything fell into place. This had to have been a kill room, but they had to have lined people up in here and just executed them. And I just felt a little heave in my stomach. I'm standing in a kill house.

Instantly just felt like the walls just collapsed in on themselves, felt really claustrophobic. And I just needed to get the gather room. It seemed like there was a blind presence there that was trying to get somebody killed. And it was totally inexplicable.

“You have to imagine that all of this is under the backdrop under the soundtrack of this just discord.”

Just this ever present, oral presence. This feeling that you were feeling, what were all the guys feeling that? And was that like a palpable kind of like anxiety in the air? There's like a, there's an undercurrent of tension. It wasn't like we all huddled together in a circle and are trading this back and forth.

There was people would pair off with their best friend and be like, dude, you would not believe what just happened. Nobody's going to talk about that because you're showing weakness. I think that if one person were to stand up and be like, guys, this is kind of scary. We would have ripped them apart. So we were left with all of this downtime.

And so you have now like half a dozen 20-year-old children.

Someone is like, hey, there's a storage unit down on the first floor.

“And that immediately became something that all of us jumped onto because it gives you a chance.”

I guess like to prove that you're not afraid of no ghosts. To prove that you're not scared. As soon as that call goes out like, yeah, no, what, yeah. Yeah, how, yeah, man, I'll root through these people that I know business in. It's almost like an affront to whatever was there.

It was just like a gated off unit on the first floor and walked over there. They could get it off room? Yeah, basically like a storage space.

I mean, exactly like a storage space.

And there's just a very simple symmetrical rod iron gate on front. Those rod iron gates are so loud that three of us walked up and got really low to the ground and just grabbed the gate on the bottom and just lift a quarter inch. And then quietly walk backwards so that the gate's not rubbing against the ground so that it wouldn't be loud at all.

We left the gate like prompt all the way up and...

“So I think about half a dozen of us go into this storage unit.”

Upturn tables, chairs, clothing, decorations, silverware, all kinds of things. It smells like dust, old. And it's pitch black. And the only light in this storage area is coming from our little red tacklights. It's already like three layers of spooky.

Like we couldn't even use our nods in this space. Our night vision goggles because it's so dark. There's so little ambient light. And nods are really for looting anyways because you really want to... Yeah, there's an art to this deplorable practice.

The only sound is like a light rustling.

“I'd picked my way probably two thirds of the way back into the storage unit.”

And I find this cardboard box with a couple of cheap little paintings in it. One of just a like a pastoral landscape with a creek in it.

This is like, oh, these are going to look amazing in my room.

Then I turned after finding them immediately. I turned to my left to show off my bounty. Was just met with pitch darkness. Just blackness. There was no one else in the room.

I was completely alone. And I didn't feel like I'd tunneled out on these paintings. I mean, this wasn't like the Monalisa. It wasn't like I was just drinking in, starring night with my eyes. I was just like, huh, these are neat paintings.

Hey, check out the, oh, I'm alone. Makes no sense as to how six guys were able to creep out of a room. You couldn't step on the floor because of all of this furniture, all of the crap. Immediately, I feel like a lead and weight in my stomach. I just steal my nerves, put my paintings, took them under my arm,

and started trying to quietly move towards that gate. I'm climbing over this stuff meticulously, but the entire time I just want to run. By the time I got to the front gate, I had really worked myself up into a froth. I was really terrified. I just wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could.

And I get up there to the gate and the gate is closed. I get low and lift and start trying to push it open. And it just feels like it's sealed, like it's been, like, concrete in place. But I was not going to cry out. I stood there waiting for a solid two to three minutes, which probably doesn't sound like that long of a time.

But when you're sealed in a foreign space with, like, pitch blackness behind you and the weight of the entire mission security,

There was, like, a fear wailing up in me because there's so many different layers of danger to this.

“Locked behind a steel gate in an extremely dangerous area.”

And being muscled, like, effectively muted. When we return, spooked, the iron gate continues. Stay tuned. [Music] Dallas is part of an SKT, a small kill team, and back that.

He's out in the middle of night on a mission in a abandoned building. In the past a time, he and some of the guys on his crew are looting the place. Suddenly, Dallas finds himself separated from his team and trapped behind an iron gate. Spooked. [Music]

“The neighborhood where we were in Baghdad, Aldora.”

They're, like, a death squads basically, roving the neighborhood,

and if they saw someone alone, they just yoke him up, take you to the nearest trash pile, and put two rounds into the back of your head. But I caved, I broke. I was like, I don't care. At this point, I'm going to grow this gate open. I grabbed the gate with both hands and just shoved it.

As violently as I could. And nothing. It felt like shutting on a brick wall.

I remember shaking a little bit.

[Music] I turned my light off, and I stood there, like at the mouth of that gate. So I could see into the opening of the courtyard where there's a little bit of moonlight casting a shadow. So, and that's the only light source at this moment.

“I can remember consciously not wanting to look back.”

[Music] I had, like, a sweat coming out of every poor in my body. Because you can't, like, pant, you can't, like a dog, be scared, whatever, in situations like that. Like, silence is so important. So, it's like a controlled hyperventilation.

[Music] The fact that I'd lost my nerves such that I would compromise our SKT. Just speaks volumes about how terrifying I was. I was the alternate gunner for our squad, and I had this flawed automatic weapon. The casualty causing weapon on the battlefield.

Prove between eight and a thousand rounds on to the teeth against any physical threat. But in this instance, it's completely worthless. I felt really powerless. Whatever was there, whatever was lingering. In that space, just did not want us there.

Especially with us down there, rooting through all of their stuff is just wrong. Whatever was there, wanted all of us out. I stood there for maybe 30 seconds, and I just gave up hope and just resigned myself to the fear. And the gate just drifted open. Just completely silently, just like on well-oiled hinges.

The gate just drifts open right in front of me. And I thought I had chills before. I thought that I was scared before. But in that moment, it just... I just could not explain what would cause that thing to drift open.

It just wanted us going.

Like we're set up in the building, just an invisible force,

“waiting for someone to violate the rules of engagement so that we could kill them.”

So I came out of that gate in a mixture of rage and terror, and immediately sought out like my best friend to just unload on him. And I get to him, and I was like, in a whisper, in whisper mode, like, "What the hell is wrong with you dude? Why would you do that?" But he had no idea what I was talking about.

As far as he was concerned, we went in, checked it out, everybody came out, all in together.

And that was it. At this point, I'd been in the building for maybe eight hours.

“I'm ready to go home now. This has not been a pleasant experience for me.”

I imagine that for some people it would be really easy to dismiss this, like as nerves, or like the stress, like a battle. Yeah, trauma, things like that.

But the thing to keep in mind about that is this was one of maybe 50 missions that I went out on.

But nothing ever like this, nothing ever that came so close that was so blatant. Like a force. So as the sun comes up, the gun trucks pull up, and we exit the building. This is how just stupid you are. At 20 years old, those paintings, they stayed in my rook. I brought those things back.

So I'm back in my room in the barracks and take these things out. And I'm like, "Hey, check out these cool paintings that I got." And Cagoni, our platoon medic, is in there. And he's like, "I would very much like to have that." And I'm like, "No way, dude. Nope. This is my decoration.

I went through the haunted house for this. This is my prize. I am keeping it. Thank you, sir." So KG leaves, and Sam comes in one of our turps, one of our interpreters, Sam. And I was like, "What the hell is up with that place, dude?" Like, it's really, really weird. And he's like, "Oh, yeah. That place is unclean." And I was like, "What do you mean? It's unclean."

He's like, "Very many people died in that building." So it's unclean. And no one goes there.

“And when he said that, it really brought home to me. What had happened?”

And it's such a thing to admit. It's like such a bad thing, but I picked up that painting. And I was like, "Hey, do you guys know where Cagoni went?" Like, I want to, you know, and I found KG, and I was like, "Here, man, I know this is really special to you." I'd really like for you to have this, and I gave it away. Did part of you, any part of you, feel proud of this force or this spirit for fighting back in a way that had no military weakness?

That wouldn't come until way, way later. Now, looking back all of these years later, I have got a lot of respect for whatever that thing was. It was able to scare me. I felt like, anyways, like, I got my come up in five months after this whole episode in a May. As when I got hit by a V-Bid or car bomb. And even the fear was not as scary as that experience for the simple fact that I felt like, if I caught around in the noodle, I'd be dead. If I got ripped apart by an explosion, I'd be dead.

But whatever was inside of that structure, it felt like if you were to die in its presence, that it would have a completely different set of consequences, then if you were to die just out in sector somewhere. Like, you could become like trapped.

Thank you, Dallas Sanchez. Dallas also wanted to thank his family, and Suzanne, from encouraging him to share his stories.

“He's looking for a publisher. Dallas is a long time, snap doesn't listener.”

We love it. We listener share their stories with us, and if you too have an inexplicable tale to tell, make sure you drop us a line.

That's spooked. It's snap judgment. That'll argue. [Music]

“Now, if you dig it, and I know you dig it, let's embody no.”

Spooked podcasts.org and we count down to Halloween, be afraid. The Spooked goes hundred coups, includes marked listage, Elijah Smith, Jordicali and Jaden Eglera, original music for that story was by Leonardo DiMoto, the piece produced by Anna Sussan. Our theme song was created by Pat McEwn Miller, additional original music by Pat McEwn Miller.

DiMoto and Rizagoreo. And if you like real stories, from real people with no ghosts, subscribe to the amazing snap judgment podcast,

and it goes without saying, let me say it anyway. The friend of you are fine yourself, trapped behind an iron gate, with undead creatures closing in, please remember in the circumstance.

“The best thing you can do is to never, never, never, never, never.”

Turn out, the life.