Halloween Special

Summary

The Sinister District opens its second season with a Halloween special built from three interviews. Michael Paul and Mr. Curbs welcome Daniel, Leafy and Myles, each describing experiences they say they still can’t explain away.

Daniel recalls the house his family rented in rural Maryland, near the Pennsylvania border, when he was a young teenager in the 1990s: four bedrooms for $200 a month. Neighbors later told them it dated to the 1700s and had been a speakeasy, a barbershop, a Civil War hospital and part of the Underground Railroad. What the family first blamed on wind and an old house grew into books thrown down the stairs, a fireplace screen found face up across the room, light bulbs bursting, and phone calls with only breathing on the line. Daniel describes kitchen cabinets slamming open and shut on their own, a coffee mug flying out to strike his stepfather, a commemorative plate sailing off a door frame like a frisbee, and what the family simply called “the sound”: something like a bathtub full of chains being dragged across the basement floor. He says the only term that fits is poltergeist activity.

A woman who said she was psychic told the family there was more than one presence in the haunted house: an old woman fond of Daniel’s little brother, a barber, and “a man in a hat” in the basement, which she warned them never to enter, a detail the hosts compare to hat-man sightings. The end came quickly. A skeleton key no one had seen before, hot to the touch, was thrown at Daniel’s sister down the stairs, and later her hair dryer switched on while unplugged. The family drove to an uncle’s that night and moved out within days, packing only in daylight.

Leafy has lived in his house with his boyfriend for about six years. He describes an attic door in the ceiling that opens and bounces shut by itself, footsteps, and one evening a tall shadow figure, roughly six and a half feet, filling the entryway before it glided up the stairs. The moment that shook him most came as the couple sat talking: the light chain on a ceiling fan in the next room yanked down hard, switching on the light, and flipped up into the fixture, with the windows closed. He calls himself a skeptical believer, but says there was no denying what happened.

Myles takes the story to Wyoming on Halloween night 2021, on a cross-country road trip at 22. From a snow-covered campground at dusk, he watched a black, humanoid silhouette rise on a ridge miles away and move in what he calls a dance no living thing could make, circled by smoke and by birds or bats, with an orange-red orb above its head. He estimates it at upwards of 18 feet tall, sensed a feminine presence, packed up, and slept in his car in a Walmart parking lot. The next night, near the Castle Gardens petroglyph site, he saw white and cyan balls of light drifting erratically around the rock carvings, which the hosts liken to ghost orbs. Myles weighs his own explanations, including a reflection of his state of mind at the time, and leaves the orbs unexplained.

Notable Details

• Neighbors said earlier tenants of Daniel’s house had lasted between two weeks and six months; some left in the middle of the night.
• Daniel’s mother and sister say they once saw a vaguely humanoid mist standing over his bed while he slept, and left without waking him.
• The activity largely spared the children but kept targeting Daniel’s stepfather, including mugs of hot coffee tipped onto him.
• Leafy and his boyfriend have tried to recreate the fan-chain incident, pulling hard and opening windows on windy days, and nothing comes close.
• While his boyfriend was away for a week and a half, Leafy heard a loud crash upstairs, slept downstairs, and found a bottle of beard oil knocked over the next morning; he says activity has eased since his boyfriend began burning palo santo.
• Myles, who says he is colorblind, still saw the orb above the figure as orange-red, and says he was sober for both sightings.