The Man in the Basement | Real Ghost Stories

0:00Today, on Real Go Stories Online, the parents couldn't see the man in the basement. Their son could. And for some reason, he didn't want his father anywhere near him. Come, you are about to enter the world of the unknown. If we possibly, they are dead. This is Real Go Stories Online.

1:00The basement is not all that creepy. They have a level of creep factor to them, if you will, just because of their location. Although you know what? I will say this. I am in my basement here. As I'm saying that, this is the first basement I think I've ever had that I don't have any iodide of creepiness down here. I don't feel any creepiness in your basement. No. It feels like a normal level of the house. Because it's a walk out that it's got a lot of natural light in the main room and so doesn't feel like a basement at all. Yeah. And I'm back here like the studio. This part is more underground. There's no windows in this room or that room. But I don't know. It feels, I don't know. I don't have the creepness to it. But I've certainly had a lot that did. When I was a kid, I would have a nightmare. And it would be this thing that, I think you and me, Todd have talked about this because you've had a similar type thing. Yeah.

2:00And you've described the feeling in a very accurate way. It's like something in mind would like grab me from some other part of the house and pull me down to the basement. It started. And my first house, when I was like, we've moved out of it at three and it had one of those old basements with the rock on the wall. It was old. It was like a turn of the century house. And the feeling, the worst part of the dream was the feeling. And it felt, the only way I can like say it, it felt like I was being tickled everywhere but which really like static electricity. That's what it was for me too. Yeah. And it's that overwhelming feeling. Like when you're a kid and people do that shit to you like, oh, tickle, you know, like I fucking hated that. It's an overwhelming feeling. And I think you described it like a extreme static electricity, which is basically kind of that same sort of thing. It's just an all over your body tingling.

3:00That is just, it's like being in a, every, I'm getting a chill right now as I'm saying it. But when you get that chill in your whole body, just kind of, it's like that. And it just doesn't end until you wake up. And then it goes away. That's how I learned like to get out of a dream, shut your eyes and open them. And. And so it works for you. That works for me. If I realize, but you got to realize your dreaming. So I've tried it in real life and in horrible moments going, God, I hope this is a dream. And surprise. It's not. It's not. It's not. I can't wake up. I am awake. Yes. This is real. But in a dream, yes, I, you know, I haven't done it forever in a dream. But when I was a little kid and had nightmares, I would do that. I don't know the last time I had a nightmare or I have him about, I'd say about once every six weeks, a really scary. Wow. Yeah. Is there a theme to him or is it just random stuff?

4:02Random. It could be really scary. But then I, my dreams are very weird. They could be pretty funny too. Yeah. It's just, I don't know. Like last night I had, I had to have been a dream because I woke up and I heard somebody talking and I'm like, somebody is talking and I jumped out of my bed and I opened the door and I go, stand it. I walk out a few steps out of my bedroom. My house is 100% quiet. And I'm like, that was weird. So I'm thinking I heard talking in my dream, but somehow I woke up thinking it was not part of my dream. But it was just weird. And then like my dog's sleeping on the bed. He's not freaked out. My cat comes in. I'm going to fall asleep. I go, okay, nobody else heard anybody talking. But you've had weird stuff going on in your house, right? With the member of the hamper moved and that bag is, could there be something going on?

5:08Maybe. Carol who never lives in the haunted house. I mean, she's been saying this on the air for 10 years now. But it's not haunted. In my last one, there was a lot of weird shit that happened in that house, but it wasn't haunted. Maybe it is. Maybe Carol's haunted. That's what I'm starting to think. There was just some weird shit that happened in that house. The last one. I still don't, and it's like this one. I don't think this house is haunted. Yeah. It's got, and if it is, it's got a good energy about it. It's super comfortable and it's not scary. Yeah. I haven't had a good nightmare in a while. I've got to say such a thing. He's the only one that would say something like that knowing it's going to happen. I know. Shit. I do. I was talking last night about dreams with my wife and we were, it was saying, you know, I should, I should write a map and I actually just started doing that right here. Um, because there's like this other place I visit in dreams sometimes.

6:10I can map out where to go. I can tell you, and there's a lot of creepiness to it too. There's like some nice areas and then there's a area where you kind of go around this bend and there's kind of like a little antique store there. It's got some neat stuff at it, but you keep going down that bend and then on the left side, there's all these old abandoned homes and buildings and there's like a resort there that's abandoned too and it's pretty creepy. But if you go off to the right, there's a road that takes you to kind of a decrepit little town that's not far off that you don't want to be there late at night because it gets really creepy and scary. Now, this is all in your dream. And there's a gas station there that I've been into a few times too. And it's not as scary inside as it looks. Yes, these are just like, it's a world. It's a fucking world. But you repeatedly have a dream and you're at in this location. It's not like a repeat of a dream. It's just this is the setting and it's not every dream I have, but every once in a while I'm there. And I'm like, I recognize this place. I'm like, oh, yeah, I dreamed about it before.

7:11And it's like, oh, I'm in the dream. And then I try to explore more areas. It's a scene. Yeah, it's fucking weird. Is that like past life sort of thing? Now, because this is all too, I mean, it's not, it's too fantastical. Like not if it really makes a whole lot of sense. Like there's an area where there's a mall that I can tell you in the mall, you start downtown and there's a walkway out of the downtown area that takes you over a river and then into the actual mall, which I think was actually a feature of West Bend. I think there was a, didn't West Bend have a mall at some point and there was a way to connect to it from downtown through some sort of little walkway. God, I remember that. But I do it. Yeah, I remember, there's a mall in West Bend. I know that. And downtown was like, downtown was not far from it. I remember that. I want to say there was a path over that there was like kind of a little like, oh, and

8:12you go this way through here. I don't, it probably doesn't exist anymore, but I see it, it's a figment of someplace I was where that was a feature. And like, oh, this is that. And the mall is in a disarray in the dream, but it's not, I don't know, it's all weird. I can tell you how to get to these different places. And it's, I don't know. That's crazy. It's a weird discombobulation of. You want to hear this? Yeah, that's it. The historic West Bend outlet mall opened November 1981 and featured a climate controlled pedestrian skybridge built in 1982 that connected the mall across the Milwaukee River from from Main Street. That's amazing. I freaking lived in that area. I don't remember it. So I probably went across two or three times when I was about three. Wow. Wow. So there you go. That's a, it's something that's lived up here since.

9:12I don't know. My mind like took on like retail stores and all that sort of shit. And I mean, I was like one of those fucking Google cars that goes around and takes images, but I was in a stroller and it was my brain. I can't even believe you could have any sort of memory from that time. That's crazy. The bridge is gone now. It was just, it was, it was taken down in 2007. Oh wow. Okay. What was there for a while? There you go. So I'm literally sitting here going, this guy's freaking nuts. What is he talking about a bridge to a mall? And then I look it up and there it freaking is. And it once existed. I mean, and I didn't really go to West Bend that much. I mean, I don't know. I've probably been to West Bend like 10 times or less in, if we're any stopping in my entire life. That's crazy that that little memory somewhere back in Tony's young mind still shows up in a dream from time to time.

10:13That's interesting to me. Yeah. And it's interesting that you visit the same place to where you, you know like the gas station down there and like what you're describing is kind of like the set of a David Lynch. Yeah. I mean, it really, I mean, that's what I, I really want to map it. I don't know that's going to make much sense when I put it on paper in terms of like, well, if you go here, like I'm assuming we're going to have some overlapping settings because it's like a dream, you know, like things kind of appear and disappear. But I don't know. I'm going to, I'm going to try and map this out. I'd be interesting to try and AI it. I was just going to say load all that information into AI and see if you can come up with a relatively close rendition of this setting. I think I could do it. I mean, it would take some prompting to go back and forth, but I think enough I could describe it and get something and be interesting. I'll build a whole world of dreams of Tony broskey. Tony's dreams come alive with Tony's dreams on ice this Saturday.

11:17We'll be at the West Port Mall. And the local radio stations will have the skaters on to talk about free tickets that you can win. Right after the podcast live right after the pack report. That's right. I'm the Humane Society coming on to let us know about who needs a new home. Yeah. So there you go. There's an idea. Dang. Oh, somebody going to the radio station and it's not pets. It's it's spirit spirits need a new home. Oh, that is a good idea. Spirit of the week goes to the week. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. And the person comes in from the spirit of what would it be? What would you call it? The spirit. Humane organization. I don't know. The we have to figure something out. There you go. There's a bet that that's coming coming to the show near you.

12:18Speaking of coming to a show near you after our ghost story here. It's tying in. It's basement better. It's a new product. It's a product that allows you to enjoy your basement again. If you get those creepy feelings and you don't know what's in that dark corner or sitting in grandpa's old chair, the basement better lets you know and it lets you also see you have nothing to be scared about. Even if you have demonic spirits in your basement, they're just hiding out there as their home base wreaking havoc in someone else's life. Not yours. They love your home and they want to stay. Once you know that they're there, it makes it all the better. The basement better. We're going to show you the commercial for that here in just a little bit. All right. Let's go to the ghost story. 855-853-4802 is our phone number. It starts out. Chris and Katie only expected to be in the rental for a couple of months.

13:19Their own house was undergoing a fairly extensive renovation. But it started as a project they thought they could live through quickly became something that required them to move out for a while rather than stay with the family or spend weeks in a hotel. They found a furnished house. They could rent short term. It was older than their own place, but comfortable in a quiet neighborhood and close enough that they could still stop by the renovation whenever they needed to. Their five-year-old son, Jack, adjusted quickly. He had his own room, a small backyard to play in and enough of his toys with him that the temporary move didn't seem to bother him. He was an easygoing kid who usually took things and stride. And within a few days, the family was settled into something resembling their normal routine. There was only one part of the house near their Chris nor Katie particularly liked the basement. There wasn't anything obviously wrong with it. The stairs were narrow. The ceiling was low in places.

14:20And most of the walls were unfinished concrete. The washer and dryer were down there. And along with the furnace, the utility sink, some storage shelves and an old work bench against one wall. It simply wasn't a pleasant space. Katie noticed the feeling first. Whenever she carried laundry downstairs, she had the immediate urge to hurry. She never saw or heard anything unusual, but she didn't like lingering there. A few days later, Chris admitted he didn't care for the basements either. And they joked about it because there really wasn't anything else to say. Old basements could feel creepy, especially in unfamiliar houses and neither of them let it meant anything. Jack had never even been downstairs. The doors stayed closed because the stairs were steep and they had told him from the beginning that he wasn't allowed to go down there by himself. What a week after they moved in, he mentioned the man. Katie was in the kitchen making lunch, while Jack sat at the table, coloring when he casually

15:21asked who the man downstairs was. And firstly, she thought she had misunderstood him, but when she asked what man he meant, Jack told her the man at the basement stairs. There was no fear in his voice. It wasn't whispering or acting nervous. She said it casually as if he had asked about a neighbor who'd seen through the window or he'd seen through the window. Katie immediately opened the basement door and looked downstairs. The light was off and everything appeared normal. So he called down and went far enough onto the stairs to see the bottom. Nobody was there. When she returned to the kitchen, Jack had already gone back to coloring. She asked what the man looked like, but his description wasn't helpful. It was just a man. He wore dark clothes. He was downstairs. It was about all Jack seemed interested in saying, when Chris came home, Katie told him what had happened and they both reached the same conclusion. Jack was imagining someone. Maybe the basement had caught his attention because he wasn't allowed down there.

16:23Maybe he had overheard them saying they didn't like it and created a story around it. A few days later, Jack mentioned the man again. This time, Chris was home. Jack looked towards the basement door and announced that the man was there again. So Chris opened the door, turned on the light and went all the way down stairs. He checked around the furnace behind the workbench and inside the small room with the back, but there was nobody there. When he returned to upstairs, Jack simply said he, the man, didn't always stay where Chris could see him. A comment stayed with Chris longer than he wanted to admit but children had imaginations and both he and Katie knew that they could make things worse by reacting too strongly. They decided not to ask about the man again unless Jack brought him up himself. For several days, he didn't. Then one evening, while Chris was carrying laundry towards the basement, Jack looked up from the living room floor and said, the man liked him. Chris stopped what he was doing and asked what he meant.

17:25Jack shrugged and said the man watched him and went right back to the toy he'd been playing with. Chris stood there holding the laundry basket suddenly much less interested in going downstairs. He went anyway and nothing happened. The basement felt just as unpleasant as it always had, but he heard nothing, saw nothing and came back upstairs a few minutes later. That night after Jack was asleep, Chris and Katie admitted the comments were starting to bother them. Jack was in fright and wasn't having nightmares and wasn't acting strangely in any other way. In fact, his complete lack of concern was part of what made the whole thing uncomfortable. They still believed there was probably a simple explanation. They had both disliked the basement from the beginning and Jack had likely picked up on that. Maybe he was simply giving their uneasiness a face. That explanation worked for a few more days until Jack said the man was waiting for Chris.

18:29They were eating breakfast when he mentioned it and Chris asked what the man was waiting for. Jack didn't know. When Katie asked whether the man had said anything to him, Jack thought for a moment and explained that the man wanted Chris to come downstairs. Either parent responded right away. Jack simply went back to eating as though he hadn't said anything unusual. Once he left the room, Chris and Katie talked about whether they were making too much of it. They'd only been there or been in the house a little over two weeks. Their home still wasn't livable and moving again would mean packing everything and finding another short-term rental for what might only be a few more weeks. Nothing had actually happened. So they stayed. A few days later, Chris was heading towards the basement to get something from one of the boxes they had stored downstairs. His hand was already on the door knob when Jack looked up and told him the man wanted him to come down now.

19:29Chris turned around and asked the man, or if the man was downstairs. Jack nodded, then after a brief pause added something he had never said before. He didn't think Chris should go until then Jack had never suggested there was anything wrong with the man. He had never seemed nervous when he talked about him or said the man was mean or frightening. Now for the first time, he was warning his father away. Chris asked why he didn't think it was a good idea, but Jack couldn't explain it. He just didn't. Chris didn't go downstairs that night. After Jack was asleep, Katie said she thought they should find another place. Chris understood, but part of him still felt ridiculous. He were talking about packing up because they're five year old and invented a man in the basement. And despite how strange Jack's comments had become neither of them had actually seen or heard anything themselves. Chris suggested they give it another day or two. They never made it that long. The following night, Chris and Katie were still awake after midnight.

20:30Jack had been asleep for hours and they were sitting in the living room watching television when they heard a heavy sound from beneath them almost as though something had shifted across the basement floor. Katie meted the television and for several seconds, everything was quiet. Then they heard a footstep. It wasn't the random pop or creek of an old house. It was a dull, heavy step from somewhere below the living room, followed several seconds later by another. Chris stood up immediately thinking someone might have gotten into the basement. He walked towards the door while Katie followed behind him. And before they reached, another sound came from below. One or something was moving down there. Chris opened the basement door and turned on the light over the stairs. The stairway was empty. He called down and announced that he was coming downstairs. But Katie immediately told him not to. He looked back at her and neither of them had to explain why. Jack's warning was suddenly impossible not to think about. The man wanted Chris to come downstairs and Jack didn't think he should go.

21:32They said to the top of the stairs, listening for a moment, nothing happened and then came a footstep near the bottom. Another followed. And this one sounded closer. Katie reached for Chris's arm as a third step came from the staircase below them. They could see most of the stairs from where they stood. There was nobody there. Chris shut the basement door and locked it. At that point, neither of them cared whether they were overreacting for nearly two weeks. They had been telling themselves, Jack was imagining things. And now they had both heard something moving towards them from an empty staircase. They were done. The next morning, they found another rental across town and began packing. Jack seemed completely unconcerned by the sudden move at one point while Chris carried bags to the car. Katie noticed him standing in the hallway looking towards the basement door. She asked him what he was doing. Jack said he was saying goodbye to the man. Katie hesitated before asking whether the man was going with them.

22:33Jack looked almost surprised by the question and told her no. The man lived there. They were out of the house by that afternoon. The second rental was completely uneven. Phil Jack never mentioned another man never talked about seeing anyone who wasn't there and never behaved as though anything unusual had followed them. A few weeks later, the renovations were finished and the family moved back into their own home. Or Jack settled right back into his old room and a life returned to normal. For a while, Chris and Katie expected him to bring up the man again. They wondered if he would ask about him or mention something he had seen in the basement that he hadn't told them before, but he never did. Eventually, Katie asked him once whether he remembered the man from the other house. Jack said he did. When she asked why he had told Chris not to go downstairs that day, he couldn't explain it any better than the ad before. He simply said he had it wanted his dad to go down there. Katie left it at that.

23:34As Jack got older, he remembered less and less about the rental. Chris and Katie never did. They occasionally wondered whether they should have tried to learn more about the house. When in the end, they never went looking for its history. Whatever had happened there had ended the moment they moved out and nothing like it ever happened again. Now it's perhaps the strangest part of all. Jack had never claimed to see people who weren't there before they moved into that house and he never did afterward. For those few weeks, though, he seemed completely certain. There was a man of the basement. He knew where the man was, knew that he watched Chris and somehow knew that he wanted Chris to come downstairs. For most of the time, Jack hadn't seen frightened of him at all, then something changed. Even later, Jack could never explain what made him suddenly decide his dad shouldn't go down there. Maybe there was nothing more to it than the imagination of a five-year-old and an unfamiliar house. But Chris and Katie stood at the top of those basement stairs and listened to footsteps

24:36come towards them when no one was there. And once they moved out, Jack never saw the man again. They still don't know who or what their son had been seeing in that basement. And maybe more importantly, they still don't know what made him finally decide his dad needed. To stay away. Well, that would be creepy when the entities trying to keep you and your child separated. That would creep me out. And I think after leaving, I don't think I would leave it. It hasn't followed us. We're good. Let's not go bringing it up. Would you have fears that if Jack started thinking about it, whatever, this thing might follow you there or you just want to forget about it. Yeah, but they kind of talked to him about that. And he said, no, he lives here. Yeah. And, you know, I think I would have done the same thing. Question him like, do you remember that? Like, you know, the way you would question a kid in a kind, gentle way.

25:40Yeah. But I don't think I would go looking for what's up with that house. Haunted Airbnb on Main Street. Hmm. I'm surprised. That would totally freak me out. I'm surprised he remembered. Honestly, I mean, sometimes you do have that conversation and they're like, I don't remember any of that. Like when Harper was talking about birding to death in a spacecraft. Right. She doesn't remember that now. No, no. Wow. Yeah. The weird thing and we've talked about this a lot, though, when it happened with my nephew when he was seeing my dad. He remembers it to this. So members. Yeah. Yeah. Very, very plainly, like very matter fact, like, you know, is what he saw. I wonder how many memories children have or just, you know, people in general have that when we, that do not stand out as paranormal, but maybe were.

26:43Because the world was so new and everything is just, well, it is what it is. And you're just kind of accepting of whatever comes at you because everything's a new experience. You know, because a lot of times people will look back on those sort of experiences and go, oh, maybe that was paranormal. Yeah. You know, because it wasn't quite in that context. I wonder, I wonder. Well, a good thing about basements is you don't have to worry about this anymore. There's dark feelings. If you suspect something's down there, worry no more because the basement better is here. You know the feeling, you're halfway down the basement stairs. The light's already on. But something moved. Over by the chair, your grandfather's old recliner, the one you keep saying you'll throw out, something shifted. You felt it. You've always felt it. And until now, all you could do was wonder. The basement better changes that. The basement better is a compact wall mounted device that illuminates the full spectral presence in your basement. The entity, every figure, every long dead thing that's been crouching in the dark since

27:47before you moved in. And here's what we found. Once you can see them, they're not so bad. Oh, I was terrified. For years, I wouldn't go down there after six o'clock. Then I got the basement better. And well, now I know. That's Alistair in the corner. That's the tall one by the water heater. And the thing under the stairs. Ah, that's just Margarit. She's been there since 1987. Miss Jones is one of thousands of homeowners who discovered that the entities living in their basement aren't there to harm them at all. They just live there. Your home, your basement, to them, it's a safe space. A quiet place to think, to focus, to plan, see these entities. And yes, some of them are demonic. We're not going to sugarcoat that. They have work to do. Important work. Just not on you. Take Alistair. Alistair has spent the last four years systematically unraveling a man's life in Tucson.

28:49The man's wife left. His children won't return his calls. He lost his business, his home, and last month his ability to sleep. Alistair did all of that from Miss Jones' basement right next to the dryer. He's very quiet about it, honestly. Sometimes I'll come down to switch a load and he'll look up from whatever he's doing and just go, ah. Evening Miss Jones. And I say, hey, Alistair, and that's it. That's the whole interaction. Then, there's Margarit. Margarit followed a woman's mother for 11 months, sat in the back seat of her car, stood behind her in the bathroom mirror. Dispurt her daughter's name and a voice the mother almost recognized, but not quite. The mother stopped eating in April. She doesn't leave the house anymore. Margarit does all of her best work from the space between Miss Jones' furnace and the old filing cabinet.

29:50She's honestly a sweetheart. She waved at me this morning. And the small one behind the water softener? That's Dennis. Dennis has been whispering to a seven-year-old boy and see her rapids every night for two years. The boy draws things now that his teachers won't send home. He bites. He stops saying his own name in January. Dennis takes his lunch break on Miss Jones' basement steps. Very polite. Always says, excuse me, when she walks by. They're also considerate. I don't know what I was so afraid of. The basement better doesn't remove them. It doesn't protect you from them. You are never in danger. It simply lets you see what's already there. And once you see them, the wandering stops and the wandering, that was really the scariest part. The basement better. Know your basement. Love your basement. It's their home, too. There you go. I want to know what that little creepy thing is. That little short little dog like.

30:52What the fuck is that? I said it makes demons. And that's what it came up with. It was a kind of a prehistoric demon dog. I don't know what it was. Yeah, I just wanted to I wanted demons. And that's what it came up with. And I don't know if it was Dennis or who it was that's sitting there in the recliner. Yeah, I don't want to see that, right? Like, I don't want to. Some fucking clothes on, please. But what did that make it? Would you feel better if you just knew they were all there rather than being like, what's moving my laundry basket? You know, I mean, I think I'd rather know that Dennis, you know, the demon is is there in his next set of heart. Some of his best work between the filing cabinets is the HVAC. Exactly. Right. Right. They're just tormenting people. Innocent people in other cities. I don't know. I mean, so I saw the headline of our show.

31:54It was a story about basements and somehow that's my mind game. Oh, I know a device that lets you see the dad that are in your basement, but lets you know they're okay because they're tormenting other people. Let's hear the horrible things that they're doing to the other people, but how they're completely harmless to you. And she's like Margarit. She waves at me. She's great. She's been here since 1982. So she's she's good. She's good. Here you go. The basement better, everybody. Go check that out. All right. That's going to wrap up this episode of Real Ghost Stories Online. If you want access to the bonus episodes, advanced episodes, all that stuff, check us out on Patreon and YouTube. Tell us your ghost stories in the comment section. Let us know what you think of the basement better. Would you put that in your house? Let us know there on YouTube. Search Real Ghost Stories Online and press subscribe. Until next time for Todd and Carol. I'm Tony. Thanks for listening to Real Ghost Stories Online.