Growing Up in a Haunted House: A Spooky Childhood Story – Ep. 330
October 28, 2024
Listen Now:
Laura and Shanna get in the Halloween spirit with a very spooky “Throwback” segment, in which Laura recounts unsettling moments from her childhood living in a haunted house. Also, Shanna reports on how the Halloween season disrupts her life, and Laura discusses the evolution of her 3-year-old’s Halloween costume. Finally, they share their BFPs and BFNs for the week. Shanna’s kids are 5.5 and 8.5 years old, and Laura’s kids are 5.5 years old and 3.5 years old.
Topics discussed in this episode:
-Halloween
-Costume ideas for your kids
-Celebrating Halloween with your kids
-Growing up in a haunted house
-Doing Halloween crafts with your kids
-Seeing “The Wild Robot” movie with your kids
Want to get in touch with Shanna and Laura? Send us an email and follow us on social! Instagram, Facebook or TikTok at @bfppodcast
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Big Fat Positive: A Pregnancy and Parenting Journey is produced by Laura Birek, Shanna Micko and Steve Yager.
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Episode Transcript
Laura
Welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shanna and Laura. On this very spooky Halloween episode, we share our check-ins, including what our kids are wearing for their Halloween costumes. We do a special spooky throwback where I share my story of growing up in a haunted house, and we close with our BFPs and BFNs. Let's get started.
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 330. Hello, Shanna.
Shanna
Oh, God. Sorry, Lord. God, that was so scary.
Laura
Oh, you spooked me. I know. I am so spooky. I know. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. It's just I'm in the Halloween spirit, you know? I am, too.
So listeners, if you are listening as we release these episodes live, if you will, it is Halloween week, 2024. And Shanna, we always like to celebrate Halloween on the show because it's one of our favorite holidays.
Shanna
It is. It's so fun. The kids love it. And we always have a Halloween themed episode. So here we are.
Laura
Here we are. So even though in our real world right now, we are a few weeks away from actual Halloween, I'm getting into the Halloween spirit. I know that you probably are too. You're always good at putting up Halloween decorations and everything super early. So I am curious how you guys are getting into the Halloween spirit over in your world.
Shanna
First of all, I have to say I currently have a beef with Halloween.
Laura
Ooh, tell me more.
Shanna
So you're right. We decorated everything, the house, the yard. We got some new inflatables. We got some decorations from our neighbor that are like really spooky, like scary clown heads and I put them out in the yard and all kinds of stuff. that combined with some spooky content my kids have come across on TV, like some of their favorite shows or like featuring Halloween episodes. My kids are like terrified and have been sleeping with the lights on in their room, which I don't mind until CECE wakes up in the middle of the night, comes to get me because she's scared and drags me back to her room and I'm like, can I please just turn off the light so I can get back to sleep? And she's like, no. And cries about that and I'm like, okay, okay. And then she's like, I'm wide awake.
Laura
I want to start the day and I'm like, it's 3 a.m. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.
Shanna
So Halloween has scared my kids and pissed me off and made me tired.
Laura
I am so sorry. That is some bullshit, Halloween. Get your act together. I feel like... Thankfully, my kids are still a little protected from like the actual scary stuff that's happening, right? You know, we don't have really, really spooky decorations yet. We're still in the cute little bats and pumpkins phase of life. So as much as they want to watch the scarier movies and stuff, I won't let them. Probably for this exact reason, because I definitely watched scary movies way too young. And I think I was scarred by it for sure.
Shanna
Yeah, yeah. And it's funny because my kids aren't watching scary movies necessarily, like if there was an episode of Kiff that they came across, which is like a cartoon show that they always watch. It's really funny. And they were scared by this little cartoon episode. I wasn't there. I wasn't watching it. To the point where CeCe's argument for keeping her light on is, when the lights off, I see a monster that's trying to attack my head and chop up my body. Oh my God. Very specific. I'm like, whoa, OK, OK.
Laura
Wow. Yeah. That is unfortunate. I am so sorry. Well, you need to do a media cleanse and maybe, I don't know, do you think your decorations are too scary?
Shanna
Maybe they are. Maybe instead of doing a media cleanse, I need to hire a medium to come in and cleanse the energy in my house. I don't know. Anyway, we will get over it.
Laura
OK, but what I really want to know is, are your kids so afraid that they're not going to participate in Halloween at all? Are they just forgoing costumes this year?
Shanna
No way! We've got everything planned out, Laura.
Laura
Okay, I know you guys are really good at family costumes. Are you guys going that route this year or is everyone doing something different?
Shanna
We have a bit of a theme.
Laura
Okay.
Shanna
Cece announced out of nowhere that what she wants to be for Halloween is a banana cat. What is a banana cat? I don't know, I don't know, Laura. I asked her what it is and she's like, it's a banana cat. And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna run with this because this sounds amazing. So I bought her a banana costume on Amazon and then I also bought her a set with like ears and a tail and paws and stuff like that. So we're gonna combine the two and she's gonna be banana cat.
Laura
I mean, that's amazing. I do feel like she is following in my footsteps of always having a Halloween costume you have to explain to people. That was like the story of my life all through my life. It's like, oh, well, it's conceptual, you see.
Shanna
Oh my gosh, that's great. So you get it, you get it. So the idea of combining a fruit and a cat reminded me that one of my kids' favorite songs that they've listened to over the years is called Watermelon Meow Meow.
Laura
Oh, I'm familiar, yeah.
Shanna
It's very funny. It's ridiculous. And so I was like, oh, what if I go as watermelon meow meow. So I'm going to be a watermelon cat. I'm going to dress as a watermelon and then have the accoutrements. And then Elle just wants to go as a black cat because she's cool. So that's Steve. I don't know. I don't know what he's up to.
Laura
So she's like a rotten banana cat.
Yes.
Laura
the banana you've left out too long.
Shanna
Yeah, yeah, I like that idea.
Laura
Well, that is an exciting and unexpected theme, I must say. But also, I am truly appreciating your family's transformation into a cat family. Like, it's everything I could have ever wanted, Shanna. It's what I've been working on since day one becoming your friend. 20-something years ago when I met you, I was like, I am going to turn this family. There's future family that she doesn't even have yet into a cat family. Just you wait and now. My big plan has worked.
Shanna
Look at us now. We are literally going to be cats for Halloween and we literally have two cats. Aw, it came true for you, Laura. Your dream came true.
Laura
Or maybe it was toxoplasmosis. Did you know about that theory?
Shanna
No, what is that? Is that the disease you get from scooping cat litter from the cat poop?
Laura
Yes, and it's really dangerous if you get it for the first time ever when you're pregnant, which is why a lot of doctors ask pregnant people to not scoop cat litter, which I knew I'd probably already been exposed to it because I've had cats my entire life, but it was a great excuse to not have to scoop the cat litter while I was pregnant. So I just ran with that. and let Cory take over those duties. But there's this theory, and I don't know how much water it holds, but this idea that like, I think it's toxoplasmosis in rats. When rats get toxoplasmosis, it does something to their brain, which makes them like cats. So it like goes towards cats when it has toxoplasmosis. So what? Yeah. So it's a parasite. And the Theory is that this parasite has developed has evolved so that it knows that it will be replicated it will continue to survive.
If it infects animals and then cats eat them right or other animals eat them so it'll infect a rat and then a rat is suddenly like. That cat looks pretty good. I'm going to go hang out with that cat. And then it goes to the cat and the cat eats it. And then it continues the process of spreading toxic plasma. So anyway, the point is genius. It's very ingenious. And then there's a lot of people who think that this also affects humans in a similar way. I don't think there's any evidence. But the idea is like cat people are literally like infected by a parasite that just makes some love cats more and more.
Shanna
It just creates a vicious cycle. Or my takeaway is, what were you sneaking into my food all the years I was hanging out at your house, Laura?
Laura
Just some parasites. Don't mind me.
Shanna
That's so gross. That's all right. It's a Halloween episode. We can get away with it.
Laura
That's true. It is spooky to think about our brains being taken over by a parasite. But I mean, if the end result is that you love cats. Not so bad, right?
Shanna
Not bad. Not bad. That's a parasite that don't mind happening.
Laura
As long as you're not pregnant. As long as you're not pregnant.
Shanna
Right. Oh my gosh.
Laura
All right. Well, I can't wait to see pictures or maybe in person. I doubt it though. We live so far away from each other on actual Halloween. It's like, forget it. I know.
Shanna
I know. That is really tricky. The last thing about Halloween, which you just reminded me of is that we have decided this year to host a little Halloween party on Halloween. So the girls are inviting their friends over here. Here, around four, we're going to have a party and games and pizza. And then we're going to walk over to this really big decorated street and all go trick-or-treating together.
Laura
Oh, that is super fun. I love that.
Shanna
Yeah. So I'm looking forward to that and buying lots of stuff to get ready for it.
Laura
Well, I mean, any excuse to buy a bunch of Halloween decorations, right?
Shanna
Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know me. I know you're far away, but of course you and your family are invited if you want to make the trek over here. But if not, I understand. I know your neighborhood has cool stuff, too.
Laura
Yeah. I can't make any promises. I feel like the kids are still young enough that like they can't last that long, you know, and to add a big drive into it is tricky. So we'll probably just stay local, but we will be sending lots of picture updates.
Shanna
Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, let's transition to you and your family. What's going on Halloween in your world?
Laura
Well, recently we got out all the Halloween decorations from the attic, which is already spooky. Like you have to go to the attic to get the Halloween decorations. And maybe there's a spider in there for real. I mean, I have to say my quote unquote Halloween decorations are pretty sad right now. Like I keep hoping to add more every year, but I've just been so busy and focused on other things and without a lot of budget that I just haven't broken down and gotten a lot of stuff. So honestly, a lot of it is like the same crap I bought at the dollar store like two years ago. And, you know, half of it's fallen apart, but it's fine. We're reusing it. I'm reusing these cardstock bats that I cut out of my cricket. I think I did that last year or maybe the year before, but super simple. I just cut out bat shapes on my cricket and then you fold the wings up and put them up with some masking tape.
And that's super easy and so effective and so cute. I did get those Harry Potter floating candles that I talked about in a previous episode. So those have been up for a little bit. That was the first to go up. And actually, when that went up, Sebastian was like, Mama, where are the decorations? Where are the decorations? Go get them. We're pumpkins. We need pumpkin. I was like, OK, we'll get pumpkin. I do have the addition of some of those gel prints I made, like jelly plate prints I made last year that I talked about. Oh yeah, those were cool. Those briefly my hyper fixation and then I haven't touched again. But I saved those from last year and put them up. So it is looking spooky-ish around our house, but not too scary because Sebastian is not okay.
With those are super scary stuff yet, and Augie pretends he's okay, but that one push comes to shove he gets scared So we're we're holding off on the the truly spooky decorations Yeah, but I mean Sebastian's been obsessed with the nightmare before Christmas for like over a year now and I It's not seasonal here. So the Nightmare Before Christmas is playing all year, year round in our house. So it does just feel like a natural progression, but we have been listening to more Nightmare Before Christmas in the car. We've been noticing all the decorations around town. We have to pull over and look at this giant animated 13-foot Jack Skellington that's on the way to Sebastian's school. Like we have to look at that every day.
Shanna
Nice.
Laura
Yes, it is very exciting. And then he wanted me to look up if we could buy it and we could. It's available for $400.
Shanna
Oh, come on. You don't want to drop four hundos on a big old Stellington that you're just going to keep in your attic most of the year.
Laura
I mean, I actually, honestly, if I had $400 that was burning a hole in my pocket, I would. I think it's super cool and I know how happy it would make Sebastian and Augie too. But no, I have a better use for that $400, which is mortgage food, that sort of stuff. So he was pretty sad about that. He was like, just buy it. I buy it. I'm like, oh yeah, you buy it. You have $400? I have $400. Yeah, sure.
Shanna
Cracks me up when the kids offer to pay for things. I'm just like, okay. All right, you'll buy your own iPhone.
Laura
All right, sure, kid. Oh man, I guess at some point I have to teach them about financial literacy. But not today, not today. Yes, yes, yes. I guess that's a good lesson at some point in time.
Shanna
All right, cool. So what about costumes? You guys have anything figured out yet?
Laura
Yes. Okay. So as you know, I am a huge fan of Costco costumes and they showed up mid August per usual. And so I asked the boys what they wanted and Augie has been really consistent. He said he wanted to be Harry Potter because he's been introduced to, I don't remember exactly like how he first found out about Harry Potter, but oh wait, no, I do know. It was because we were listening to movie soundtracks. And the first movie, maybe the first two movies were scored by John Williams. So like we were listening to a John Williams playlist and Harry Potter would keep coming up. And so he was like, what's Harry Potter? What's Harry Potter? And then finally Corey was like, you know, you might be okay with watching like the first Harry Potter. Maybe not the last one. But like, he was easing into the world of Harry Potter and he freaking loves it. Oh my gosh.
Shanna
Yeah.
Laura
But yeah, he absolutely loves it. And, you know, JK Rowling, not my favorite person in the world, but he loves it. And I'm not going to, like, squash his joy, right? It's their only kids once, right? So he really wants to be Harry Potter. And thankfully, Costco had a Harry Potter costume in his size. So I picked up one of those, gosh, back in, like, August or early September and held on to it until really recently because I was like, I don't want this to get ruined before actual Halloween. And I also held on to it because I wanted to make sure that I presented Halloween costumes at the same time for both boys. And Sebastian, he was waffling about what he wanted to be. For a while, he kept saying, I want to be spider. I want to be a spider. And I was like, what? You mean spider-man? No, a spider. I'm like like a big black spider. Yeah, I'm like like a big black widow.
And I should mention that this was before we went to the Spider Pavilion that I talked about, I think in the last episode. This was just he wanted to be a spider. And so finally I was like, OK, I'll try to figure out a spider costume for a three year old. And I talked to my mom about.
Shanna
I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm sorry to interrupt. But I'm just picturing him being a daddy long legs like that. Can you just make one with like these incredibly crazy legs? I don't know why my mind went to that, but I think that'd be funny. But I don't think he's thinking a daddy long legs, right?
Laura
I think he's thinking black widow or tarantula. I don't know. I mean, yeah, he said black spider. And he knows that the black spiders are the dangerous ones because, you know, we have black widows in our yard. And I've just had to like, I'm trying not to give them a phobia of spiders. And apparently I've done a good job because he liked the spider pavilion and he wants to be a spider for Halloween. But I have had to tell them, like, if you see a black spider, don't touch it. I'm like, best case, don't touch any spider. But especially if it's one of those black ones, guys, like those are the dangerous ones. So he knows he'll go, you don't touch black spiders. No. So he wants to be a black spider. So I strategically mentioned this to my mom because I was sick of buying costumes. I mean, we have so many costumes. And she was like, oh, I'll get him one. I'm going to go on Amazon.
And she likes doing it. Like it's a hobby. She likes shopping for stuff for the kids. So she found this really cute like backpack thing that has LED lights. all along it that you can turn on that turns him into a spider. And she ordered it. And I was about to like present both costumes to the kids, Spider and Harry Potter. When he goes, I want to be Spider-Man. I want to be Spider-Man. And I was like, I thought you want to be a spider. He's like, no, Spider-Man, Spider-Man. I was like, OK, well shit. I'm like, that makes more sense though, right? Like that kind of tracks. It's more exciting of a costume. Like this is just a backpack. And so I was like, we'll get you a Spider-Man costume. So you don't feel like Augie's getting all the attention too. You don't like he's getting he's getting the cool branded costume. Yes.
Shanna
I'm surprised you guys don't have a Spider-Man costume.
Laura
I am also surprised that we don't have a Spider-Man costume. We have pretty much every other costume. We've got a Black Panther. We've got a Iron Man. We've got a C-3PO. We've got a... Wow. We've got multiple ninjas. We've got multiple pirates. We've got the Flash for some reason. We have a Superman. We have two Batman's. like all black scary Batman and like the old school blue and like yellow waistbanded Batman. The list goes on, Shanna. Every time someone posts a costume in my kid's size range on my mom's group, I snatch it. Because they love it. They love it. So anyway. So I got a Spider-Man costume for him from Party City or something and it came a couple days later. So I finally presented them both with their costumes and oh my gosh, Shanna. They were so happy. They wanted to live in these costumes. But the biggest surprise was how much Augie looks like Harry Potter.
Shanna
Oh, yeah, I could see, I could see that.
Laura
I'm gonna send you a picture because we put the scar on his forehead one day while he put the costume on, and it's uncanny.
Shanna
Oh my gosh, okay, let me see. Oh my gosh, he is a little Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter. Oh, he's serious too. He looks like he's serious about doing magic.
Laura
Oh, he's very serious about doing magic. Yes. So he's an adorable Harry Potter. And yeah, we're really excited for Halloween. We have a couple pre-Halloween events we get to go to. Like there's a Harvest Festival at Augie School that we get to dress up for. So we're going to really milk it for all it's worth this season.
Shanna
Yeah. Awesome.
Laura
I've also signed up for Sebastian's school's trunk or treat, so I have to design a trunk for our new Minivan. So of course I have all these ideas. No time to execute them, but all these great ideas. So you can find me at midnight working on a Nightmare Before Christmas backdrop for the trunk of my car. So yeah.
Shanna
I'm sure you'll stay up late into the night to finish that, but it's going to be amazing, I'm sure.
Laura
Yes. And I'm so excited for Halloween. I hope everyone out there has a wonderful and safe Halloween and we are going to want to see those kids costume. So you better go to our Facebook group and share them with us because this might look like the highlight of my year is our yearly Halloween costume thread in our Facebook group.
Shanna
I know. I love it. I love seeing everyone's little cuties.
Laura
Yeah. So that is my Halloweeny check in for this week. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled program next week when there's no fun holidays to report on. Right, right. But for now, should we move on to our special segment? Yes.
Shanna
We are back and this week's special segment is of course a spooky segment and we are doing something special today where Laura is going to tell us a spooky throwback story. If anyone remembers way back in episode 54, we had an episode called Ghosts in the Nursery where Laura told us a little bit about some hauntings that she experienced as a child, and we did not dig deep enough, we realized. So we are back to dig deeper into that part of her life about these hauntings and what better time to do it than Halloween. I am thrilled for this. Laura, are you ready to share some more deets about your past spooky experiences?
Laura
I am with a caveat, okay? Because I need to get ahead of this. I need to let everyone know that's listening, that I too am a skeptic, okay? I know that there's a lot of people out there who straight up don't believe in any type of paranormal activity and are going to immediately write me off as a kook for all of this. And I'm here to say, I would also have done that if these had not been my lived first person experiences. However, I have a bunch of stuff that happened to me growing up that I just have no explanation for, and it's spooky as hell. So I thought I would share here.
Shanna
Yes. Okay. I'm here for it.
Laura
Okay. So I'm going to start in, I don't know, late 80s, early 90s. I think it was like eight or nine at the time. So I was sitting in my house doing my homework. And I lived in this big old for Fresno house. It was about 100 years old, which in Fresno, California, which was probably about 100 years old, like at that point in time from the time of its founding, that was considered a very old house as far as, you know, my neighbors went. I was sitting downstairs. It was a two-story house and it was very large. It was a lot of square feet. I don't know how my parents maintained it, to be honest. And the layout of the house is interesting. There was a front door and like an entryway and a half staircase came up from the front of the house and met on a landing with a back staircase that came up from the family room, which is where I was doing my homework, right?
So if you imagine like two staircases converging in a landing halfway up the level and then combining into a single staircase to go up to the second level, right? So it's pretty easy to visualize, right? So me and my dad were both downstairs. My brother's upstairs. My mom is doing laundry downstairs. My mom throws a bunch of laundry in a hamper and she starts walking up the back stairs to go upstairs to put the laundry away. At that moment, we hear my mom yell, Jeffrey locked the door. There's someone coming up the stairs. And my dad and I like run to the stairs to be like, what's going on? What's going on? And my mom had dropped her basket. She was white as a ghost. And then Jeff runs out because he can't take directions very well. I was like, what? What? What's going on? No survival instinct there. But my mom says, I'm so sorry.
I saw a man in blue walking up the stairs and then he disappeared and we're like, oh, Okay. You know, like what?
Shanna
Oh my gosh. So this is your first experience with something weird in this house?
Laura
Very first experience that I had of something weird happening in the house. Whoa. But then my mom says, well, the psychic did tell us this house was haunted.
Shanna
Wait, what? Back it up, Susan.
Laura
I know. Record scratch. Yeah. We go back to 1984. My parents had just bought the house, the house that I grew up in on Forkner Avenue in Fresno, California.
Shanna
Is that the house that I went to?
Laura
No, that house was also on Forkner. So when my parents got divorced, my mom moved down the street.
Shanna
Oh, okay, but I was like within blocks of this house that you're talking about.
Laura
Yeah, I want to say like a half mile down the road was this house. So when my parents bought the house, it was in North Fresno that had not been developed. It was literally surrounded by fig orchards to the north and to the west of the house were old fig orchards, which was a big crop that people grew in Fresno. So Fresno, has like an area of town called Fig Garden because there were a lot of fig trees, right? And our house was this big two-story, I don't know, I want to say like colonial style house. It had these big brick pillars in the front that held up my parents balcony, which came up from like the front of the house. And it was set way back from the street. It was on two acres, I think, or two and a half acres of land, right? And so it was like plopped in the middle of it. So we had this super long driveway.
And speaking of figs, the driveway was like lined with fig trees because it used to be a fig orchard too, right? And my parents bought this house on auction. I don't know why no one else wanted to buy it, but it had like sat on the market for months. No one wanted to buy it. So it went to auction and they got it for supposedly a bargain. And the day after they bought it, they were standing outside of it admiring it because they had bought it on auction. I'm not even sure they got to tour it, to be honest. I don't know how that works. But they were looking at it, gazing at the new house from the street. And as I mentioned, there were a lot of abandoned fig orchards on the street. They weren't active, I should mention. It's not like there was a farmer living on it. They were just old fig orchards that were no longer maintained.
We were the last house on the street, and so no one would come down that way unless they were coming to our house. But my mom and dad were looking at the house they just bought, and a car drove by, and the story goes it screeched to a halt, backed up, a woman inside rolled down her window and said, excuse me, did you just buy this house? And my mom said, yeah, we just bought this house just yesterday or whatever. And her response was, oh, I could tell because the house is glowing. The spirits in your house are happy that a nice family has moved in. You'll be happy as long as you live in this house. And then she rolled up her window and drove away.
Shanna
So this is the first year learning about the psychic and the spirits in your house?
Laura
Yes. I mean, to my parents' credit, they did not think that it was a smart move to convey this information to young children.
Shanna
Oh, it's good. Yes, true.
Laura
Right. Like, oh, we just bought a house. We've closed on it. There's no going back, no matter what, you know, Bluey will tell you about moving, not realistic.
Probably best to not tell your kids that it might also be haunted, right? But then my mom was like, well, she did say that. So I was like, okay, cool. You know, at first we're like, well, maybe mom saw, you know, maybe mom didn't know what she saw. Maybe she just saw something out of the corner of our eyes. She's the only person who saw this, right? So we kind of wrote it off as like a fluke who knows, right?
Shanna
Yeah.
Laura
But then experiences started accumulating shot. Oh, my word. I don't remember the exact sequence of events. And I will admit that with something like this, the more stories that come up, you can see how it would like infect other people, right? Like if we really all are all imagining spooky things happening in the house, hearing other people's experiences would make you more prone to seeing more things and whatnot, right? Like it could have a snowball effect.
Shanna
Right.
Laura
But let me just tell you, sort of lay it out on the table what was reported, okay?
Shanna
Okay.
Laura
Shortly after the man on the stairs experience. I was at my house with my good friend Andrea. She actually, you know, she was kind of like a sister to me. Her dad and my dad went to medical school together in Romania. And my parents were like instrumental in getting them out of communist Romania before Ceausescu was who is the dictator of Romania was he was removed from office violently in 1989. But before that, you had to like escape. And so my dad and my mom helped their family escape. And then they were basically she's like basically my sister, right?
So we grew up together did everything together her mom Annie was always the one who would like pick me up from school take me home You know we we were just always together and on this particular day Annie was coming to pick us up And I'm like will be home alone because the story goes that we were home alone I'm like why were 10 year olds home alone? But maybe it was just a different time or maybe it was just like a short window like My grandma had to leave and then Annie was coming to pick us up or something. So like we were just there for a short window. Whatever the case, Andrea and I were home alone. And we hear her mom like honk to like summon us to go outside. And we run to her car and Annie says, girls, was there some who's in the house with you? And we were like, no one. It was just us.
And she's like, no, I looked up to your parents' bedroom and someone pulled back the curtain and looked out at me. What? Yeah, and we were like, oh, that's weird. That is when I told Annie about the psychic.
In following years, Andrea and I like to play a lot of Ouija board to summon the spirits of the house. And yeah, I don't know. Those are experiences that we were too primed to do a good reporting on because we would hear things and just get freaked out by every sound. So I don't know. I will say maybe not the best plan to get your kids a Ouija board in a house that you suspect is haunted and just let them do what they wanted. Like that is a horror movie premise, right?
Shanna
Am I right? Yes, I think it is. I think there is actually a movie called Ouija.
Laura
Someone stole my story.
Shanna
Wait, wait, wait. Back up, back up. So when your friend's mom was like, I saw a guy opening the window. Who's home with you? Did you investigate? Did you go see if someone was in the house or were you just like, ah, that's our old ghost pal?
Laura
We were just like, that's our old ghost pal, basically. Because... You know, in 2024, as someone who's listened to true crime podcasts, like the instinct would be to go back inside and see who's like living in your attic when you're not there, right? Yeah. It comes out when you're not there. But no, and which, you know, in retrospect, maybe the thing that explains all this doesn't explain the disappearing. OK, so now I'm going to tell you about the incident that freaked me out the most that was early on in this whole, oh, it turns out your house is haunted saga. So I had my own bedroom and I had two twin beds, I guess for sleepovers or who knows, that were separated, right? It's not like one big bed, but separated with a night table in between. And I think at this point, it must have been like 11 or so. And I always had a hard time sleeping in my room. I was always unsettled by it.
I mean, from the time I was little, I would always end up crawling into my mom's bed, you know, in the middle of the night because I was just totally freaked out about sleeping in my room. And so I was already pretty unsettled in my room. And I think at some point, probably around 10, I got a little TV to have in my room that I would like keep on all night to have a little bit of light and stuff going. On this particular night, I woke up and it was dark and the TV must have turned off at a timer or something. Who knows? And I opened my eyes and I was awake. I wasn't sleeping like it was clear that I was awake to me. And I saw a man sitting cross-legged on my other bed and he turned and looked at me.
Shanna
What?
Laura
And I was so scared. I grabbed my phone with one hand, which I think was like a Mickey Mouse phone. And with my other hand, I flipped on the nightstand. I was about to dial 911. I think even dialed the nine. But when I flipped on the light, there was no one there. That spooked me to my core because I was like, I know I was not asleep. You know what I mean? Like this wasn't a hallucination. Like maybe you can explain it that way. But I was just like, it was so incredibly creepy. And it was so real. Like since then I've had weird sort of half dreams, right? Where you're like half awake and weird things are happening. But you're usually frozen, right? Like you're usually paralyzed in your sleep. You have sleep paralysis. But I was not. I grabbed the phone and turned on the light, right? How much detail did you see? So what I remember thinking is that he looked like Michael Jackson.
He was super skinny and gaunt and very pale skin. That was what I remember and kind of like longer hair.
Shanna
Whoa. Yeah. So creepy.
Laura
That did not make me want to sleep in my room more. Yeah. What did you do? Did you scream? Did you run out of your room? I think after the light turned on, I ran out to my mom's room. But I also did that almost every night. So I think from that point on, I actually just asked her if I could start the night in her room and she agreed. So I think I didn't really sleep in that room all that much because it gave me the creeps. Yeah. Okay, so lest you think that this is just a suggestive hallucination that everyone in our lives are having, right? Because You know, the power of suggestion is strong. I totally agree with that the brain is powerful, hallucinations are powerful, you know, all that stuff. I present to you the case of my friend Allison, who knew nothing about this because we weren't like the best of friends.
She was kind of a neighbor, but she wasn't in the inner friend group, right? And I definitely did not feel comfortable telling her about potential ghosts in my house. because even though I was younger and maybe a bit more fantasy-minded at the time, I still knew that that kind of made you sound a little bit crazy, right? Going around talking about the ghost in your house. Plus I didn't want people to not come over, right? Yeah, of course. So I had not told Allison or anyone in her family a thing about this, right? When she asked to do a sleepover. And so she came over, this was like around age 11 again, that she came over for a sleepover when we had a great time and we chatted and blah blah blah. It was just two girls sleepover, right? When she woke up the next morning, she said, the weirdest thing happened to me last night.
I thought I was awake, but I must have been dreaming because I woke up and sat up and there was a man standing at the end of the bed looking at me. Oh my God. And I was just like, that's so weird.
I must have been dreaming. Yeah, that's I've never heard of anything like that happening around these parts.
Oh, that's so wild. Yes. And I talked about the one incident where like the toothbrush flew across the room in episode 54. So if you want to go back and listen to that, I won't rehash that. But that was also a very significant situation. But here's where I want to pivot to talk. It's not just about the spooky things that happened, but I want to pivot to sort of how my parents handled it as parents and how it's sort of informing my parenting right now. Okay. Because while I think it was probably not like the smartest choice of my mom to disclose the psychic situation, the beginning. Once that cut was out of the bag, there was no stuffing it back in, right? Like she probably she was spooked by whatever she saw or thought she saw. And so I don't blame her for bringing that back up. And my dad verified it.
And I should say the fact that my dad verified this is big because my mom is a very amazing storyteller who sometimes embellishes the details for dramatic effect. OK. My dad, on the other hand, was very factual. He was the type who, if there was a difference of opinion, he'd always give a caveat, much like I do. He always wants to make sure that he's conveying accurate information. So when he didn't argue with the story and said it was super weird and that's exactly what she said, I was like, okay, well, that truly must have happened, right? Yeah. So once that cat was out of the bag, I think my parents realized like, oh, shit, like whether or not the house is haunted, like these kids are getting scared of it, Laura, especially. And like, how are we going to manage that?
And at some point, I don't remember when exactly what the next time the topic came up, probably after like the first situation. My mom came to me and she said, you know what? These are nice ghosts in this house. The psychic said that the spirits in the house were happy that we were here, right? So they must be nice ghosts and they're here to protect us. So you don't need to be afraid of them. They're nice to us. They want us to be happy. So if you ever see them, just feel happy. And did that work? I mean, I don't think it worked in the moment of seeing spooky things. It was always chilling, you know? But it did give me this internal mantra almost. Like every time that happened, like I remember one time I walked by my brother's room and thought I saw my grandma sitting in my brother's computer chair. And I thought that was super weird because why was my grandma in my brother's room?
And I doubled back to go say, like, grandma, what are you doing in here? And there was no one there. And, you know, stuff like that, I would say to myself, they're nice ghosts. They're here to protect us. They want us to be happy. And it really turned that phobia into a feeling of ownership in a weird way. I'm like, they're my ghosts. These are my protector ghosts, kind of. And I now realize that she just pulled that out of her ass. You know what I mean?
But it was so much so that like I felt a kinship with the quote unquote spirits of our house to the point where when we moved out when my parents got divorced and my dad ended up selling the house and I was really mad about it because it was my like childhood home. But I was also kind of mad about it because I was like leaving our ghosts. And so I took the drawer out of one of the built-in cabinets in my closet, and I wrote a little note on the underside saying our names, saying we were here, that there were ghosts in the house when they were here to protect us, and put it back in to leave a little Easter egg. But that's how passionate I felt about it.
Shanna
I had no idea.
Laura
Yeah. I'm just going to add one more bit of supporting evidence before I move on to the conclusion of my story, which was after my parents got divorced and my dad started seeing the woman who became my stepmom, she started staying over. Little risque, I know. But especially when my brother and I were at my mom's house and the house was just empty with my dad.
Shanna
Oh, this is before he sold it.
Laura
Yeah, there was a period of time between the divorce and when he sold it. There was like, I want to say a year. I think he gave it a try and then decided he wanted to sort of move on, start fresh. So she spent a lot of time at the old house in that period. And you'd think she'd be sleeping with my dad, you know, because that's what they were doing. But no, my dad snores worse than I do, very bad. I mean, he was a very bad snorer, rest in peace. So he so no one could sleep with him. So she said one night she was over. My dad started snoring really bad, so she couldn't sleep. So she escaped to my room thinking she would actually catch some Z's in my bed. And she said the minute she put her head down on the pillow on my bed, she felt an ice cold wind blow over her from like toe to head. And she got this deep pit in her stomach of fear. And she left.
And she said to me, I know your dad doesn't believe in this stuff, but I honestly think your room is like the center of everything. She's like, I will not step foot in that room again. And I was just like, great.
Cool.
Shanna
Yeah. Oh my gosh. That gave me chills.
Laura
Yeah. And she's not a particularly woo woo person either. So coming from her, I was like, ooh, that's that's quite a thing. Okay, so speaking of my room being the epicenter as I said, I always thought I just was a bad sleeper, right? I always thought I was nervous sleeper I could never fall asleep unless I had a TV on extra lights I always ended up in my mom's bed. I was just like the most nervous sleeper ever, right? Mm-hmm my mom moved out after the divorce got a house, you know half mile down the road mm-hmm I got my brand new room all set up, and on the first night in that house, I was prepared to go through the whole rigmarole, have the TV on, be freaked out. I had the mental plan of how I was going to get into my mom's room and all that stuff, right? The very first night in that house fell asleep without a problem, slept through the night without a problem.
My fear was absolutely gone.
Shanna
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Have you researched this house and the history of it? Like, I want to see pictures of it. I want to see who lived there before and all that jazz. You know, it's so interesting.
Laura
The house used to be in a different location, and at some point, I think this was pretty common back in the day. I don't know. It was like a historic house for Fresno again, historic, all relative for Fresno. And it was in an area that now houses a Chase Bank branch location, I think. So it was re-zoned. The place it was originally built was re-zoned for commercial use. And I think instead of demolishing the house, they decided to move it to a new location. But it was so big they had to cut it in half to do that. So they literally had to apparently cut the house in half and drive it halfway across Fresno and relocate it. And of course, as kids, we came up with all kinds of stories, right? Like, oh, there must have been a person who died in this house. We never could find anything. I do wonder if there's more now.
I do have a kind of pipe dream of making a podcast where I like interview everyone about their memories of the house. Yeah. But what I really want to do is interview the current owners, and I'm nervous about that. I had this idea a couple years ago, and I didn't do it because my dad was really nervous that we were going to get sued for selling a haunted house for not disclosing that we sold a haunted house to people. He was like, you never talk about the haunted house. You never tell people about it. I was like, OK, Dracula, if you say it like that, I won't say it.
There's very few upsides to your dad being dead, but one of them is that you can talk about shit he didn't want you to talk about. Oh, good point, good point. And I feel like there's got to be a statute of limitations for like not disclosing something when you're selling a house, right?
Shanna
I think so.
Laura
And anyway, it would have been my dad. He's dead. What are they going to do? So I kind of have these ideas that I want to like send a letter to the house to like current residents. Like if you'd be willing to talk to me, I used to live here, that sort of thing. But it makes me nervous. And then I'm like, ooh, I don't want to like invite these ghosts to like come visit me or anything. I don't know. I get all superstitious about it. But you like them, so it'll be like opening your arms to your old friends, right? Did I like them in a way that like you like an abusive partner, you know, like I was gaslit into thinking that they were helping me, but I just still couldn't sleep at night. I don't know. I feel like I'm not sure. And also, so, OK, just real quick to recap and bring it back to my own parenting.
So we live in a house that's actually like the layout is pretty similar to the house I grew up in. It's not as big, but we do have like two staircases that meet in the middle, right? It's not quite as high, but like you can go from the kitchen and the front and then you go up and it's like an old house and all that stuff.
Shanna
Oh, yeah.
Laura
And Augie has to sleep in a room that has the stairs to the attic in his room. Right. And he's kind of spooked by that. And I have to say that like as much as I appreciate my mom trying to like sugarcoat the haunting and everything. I have decided to take the like, there is nothing here to scare you. There are no ghosts. There are no monsters tactic. I don't want to like, incept his brain with the idea that the house might be haunted because honestly, I've never experienced anything weird in this house. No one feels weird about it. My mom, who is a true believer in all that stuff, she's like, yeah, this house isn't haunted. I'm like, okay, good. But I just don't want my boys to like pick up an anxiety about it, especially if they're sleeping in a room with stairs to a creepy attic. So yeah.
Shanna
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I think that that is a good decision.
Laura
Thank you. Thank you. And I hope we didn't lose any listeners from this segment. I promise we'll get back to my evidence based. stuff going forward. But yeah, there's just a lot of stuff that happened to me. That is even all of it. Those are just kind of the highlights. But there was a lot of stuff that happened in that house that I just can't explain.
Shanna
Wow. I don't know. I always am fascinated by ghost stories and hauntings and stuff like that because I have never experienced anything like that. Not that I want to, but I am intrigued by it. And know, if you want to go get coffee sometime and tell me more of those stories, I will lend an ear.
Laura
Oh, anytime, Shanna, anytime. But I do think I've gone on plenty long about my previous hauntings. I hope that was spooky enough for Halloween week for everyone. But I do think we should move on to our BFPs and BFNs. What do you think?
Shanna
All right.
Laura
So we close every episode with a Big Fat Positive or a big fat negative from the week. And Shanna, you're up first to tell us whether you have a BFP or a BFN.
Shanna
I have a BFP. Yay. Yay. We did a really fun family Halloween craft that just really uplifted my weekend.
Laura
Oh, Shanna, you had me at craft. Okay. Tell me more.
Shanna
I know how to hook you, Laura. I know. So I don't love carving pumpkins, but it is a, you know, a kind of a crafty Halloween tradition. But I went to Michael's thinking maybe we could do an alternative to carving pumpkins if I can get away with it. If my kids let me get away with it. So let me see what they've got in the Halloween section. And they had these really cute wood cutout nightlights that are like balsa wood that you can paint yourself. And I was like, that sounds fun. I'll get a couple for the girls. And so I bought a couple for the girls. I bought some paints and brought it home and they dug right in. And I looked at Steve and I said, that looks really fun. I wish I had one. He's like, I need two. And I was like, I'm going to go back to Michaels. I'll see you in a bit. So I went back to Michaels and I bought one for me and one for Steve and brought him home.
And the girls, you know, they love painting, but they aren't quite as meticulous about it as Steve and I are. Paint their things and then run off and do their stuff. Steve and I sat at the table together painting these little night lights for hours, I think on Sunday. Just kind of, you know, in and out throughout the day with our duties, what we needed to do. That was not on the agenda when I woke up that morning. Like I had no idea that I was going to spend the day painting with my husband, doing a Halloween craft. It was so fulfilling and like soul nurturing. And just like a fun quality thing to do with Steve.
Laura
I love that you accidentally created like one of those painting with your husband dates, you know? I don't know. Have you seen those floating around the internet? You know? It's like have a stay at home date night where you just paint something or the really fun ones or where you paint each other. Have you seen those?
Shanna
Those viral videos. I love those. Those are so funny. The reveals are so funny. Luckily, he was not painting me. He was painting a calavera. So he didn't have to do any like weird reveals on my face. So that's good. But here, let me show you the finished products of our little nightlights.
Laura
I want to see.
Shanna
Okay, I sent you a video.
Laura
Okay, let's see. Oh, first of all, oh my gosh. Okay, this is not what I thought. I thought like it was just gonna be like in the shape of a pumpkin, super straightforward. But no, these nightlights, first of all, they change colors. So you can have all kinds of different flashing colors. And then the main shape is either like a cat or a coffin. And they're so clever and cute. Okay, wait, let me guess which one you did. Hold on, hold on. Okay. Okay, so I see a black cat with pink ears. I see a cat in a coffin with a green outline and a white moon. That is, I'm not gonna say that's you. You already told me Steve did the Calavera, so that's cheating. Steve did a great job on that Calavera. Yeah, he did, huh? I see a three-toned ghost coffin that says Boo. And then another cat and moon coffin. This time with the moon is yellow and the cat is black.
So okay, I'm gonna guess the pink coffin with the black cat and the yellow moon is L.
Shanna
Yes, yes, that is Elle's. She actually did a couple. The girls did a few, yeah.
Laura
I'm gonna guess that the coffin ones are done by the girls. And obviously you told me you spoiled it for me and said Steve did the Calavera. I would have guessed that was you, because he did a really great job. And you did the black cat with pink ears?
Shanna
No, you know what, Laura? Mine must have been so good that you thought I bought it that way, because you went right over it and didn't see the one that says it's just a bunch of hocus pocus.
Laura
Oh my gosh, I thought that was a different decoration. Like I didn't think that followed. I didn't think that fell in this category because you're right. I thought it was a professional. product. This is beautiful.
Shanna
I'm just tooting my own horn. But yes, that that is one of them as well.
Laura
Well, now that I know that it's obvious it's yours. But yeah, no, you had me fooled. I really thought that was just a outlier and you were just showing off all your decorations. Well, that is fun. And now I want to go do this.
Shanna
Yes, you should highly recommend it. It was a very fun activity. And now we have some extra Halloween decor that we can bust out every year.
Laura
Yes, in 10 years. Can you remember when they were so little and they did this one?
Shanna
So cute. Anyway, so that's me. What about you? Do you have a BFP or a BFN? I also have a BFP. All right.
Laura
Mine is not really Halloween related. I hate to break the spell of this episode, but I do have to talk about this because we went and did something that the kids have been dying to do for months now. I want to say at least six months, which is we went to go see the wild robot in the movie theater.
Shanna
Oh, awesome. My family went without me, so I did not see it yet. Tell me about your adventure, though.
Laura
So the reason why they've been anticipating it for months is that Augie saw a trailer. I want to say in the Kung Fu Panda 4, like, lead up. I think he went to go see Kung Fu Panda 4 and saw the trailer and then asked to watch the trailer about a hundred times and there was a period of time where we had to watch the trailer every day. And they were so excited about the Wild Robot and I actually ended up then finding out that it was a book series and we went and got the books and we read the books and we were all in on the Wild Robot, right? And I think he even talked about the books a while back as a BFP. So we've been counting down. Like the kids keep asking, when's Christmas? When's Halloween and stuff? And I'm like, well, it's coming. It's coming. But I'm like, but you know what happens first is the wild robot comes out.
Like, and so Sebastian be like, wow, well, one wild robot come out. And so I was like, oh, we've got two weeks. We've got one week. And so finally I was like, you guys know what this weekend is? And they're like, wild robot. And so of course we had to get tickets to the opening weekend. And we went and saw it in a very packed theater. And it was wonderful. It was a really fantastic movie, first of all. It's one of those kid movies that adults can fully enjoy. But it's also one of those kids movies that is so freaking sentimental for grownups. There are so many little things slipped in for parents in there. You know, the story is kind of about the basic premise is that there's a robot that washes ashore on a wild island and her name ends up being Roz. Roz immune it, blah, blah, blah. So Roz and Roz has to like find her way into motherhood because a little Gosling adopts her, right?
And so like the movie really focuses on her like path to motherhood more than the book does. And Shanna. There is a scene in the movie where she has to... This is not a spoiler, guys. It's a kid's movie. You know what happens. She gets a Gosling. The Gosling eventually has to fly away, right? Okay, so I'm sorry. This is kind of a spoiler, but if you have any logic, that's what's going to happen, right? I'm not going to spoil too much, but there is a scene where she has to allow her baby Gosling to finally fly away and be free, right? Oh, boy. Cue the waterworks. There was not a dry eye in the theater. And I'm like sitting there trying to not sob, right? And I thought to look away from the screen to try to like break the spell a little bit. And I looked behind me and there were just like wet faced parents everywhere.
Like this couple behind me, they're both like passing tissues back and forth and just like full on sobbing.
Shanna
Oh my God.
Laura
So be warned, it's one of those movies. But it was a very heartwarming, like very touching movie. I think it's beautifully done. So I definitely recommend seeing it. See it in the movie theater if you can. I will say Sebastian, he was getting really antsy by the end of it. Like it was kind of long for him. So he made it mostly because he could walk around like he's still small enough that he can like walk in front of our feet in an aisle. But it was a little bit dicey for him. But Augie was wrapped the whole time. And as far as my research goes, I think by the time this episode comes out, it'll be available to rent on demand. So you don't even have to go to a theater. But it is beautiful in the theater. So yeah, that's my BFP. We were just so happy. And it really met our expectations, exceeded them, if you will.
Shanna
Awesome. Well, I'll have to see it. Sometimes soon or not cuz I don't know I don't know if I can handle that kind of emotion right now Even my girls when I saw them when they came home from the movie the first thing Al said was like I was choking back tears and CECE was like is a very emotional movie very emotional So they were feeling it too.
Laura
Oh, that's so sweet But that is it for me and I think that's it for this episode
Shanna
It is listeners. I hope you have a wonderful Halloween. Please come visit our Facebook community group on Halloween and share photos of your little ones. And we'll share ours. We always love doing that. And in the meantime, please, if you haven't had a chance yet, do us a favor, head on over to Apple Podcasts, leave us a five star review, say a few things you love about the show. I mean, might read it on an upcoming episode. But this isn't just for you Apple users. If you listen to us on Audible or Amazon, you can leave reviews on there. So please say a few things you love about the show. We might read it on an upcoming episode. If you have any thoughts or feedback on today's episode or Laura's history of hauntings, please reach out. We love hearing from you. Laura, where can everyone find us?
Laura
We are on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook at BFP Podcast. We have a website, bigfatpositivepodcast.com. If you want to send us an email, you can always throw a voice memo in there. We love those. Just send it to contact at bigfatpositivepodcast.com. And finally, if you want to join that awesome Facebook group we've been talking about and share your adorable or spooky, scary Halloween costumes, just search Facebook for Big Fat Positive Community. It's a private group, so you're going to have to request to join and make sure you answer those two membership questions so we know that You are not a robot or maybe a monster or creature from the black lagoon. But if you do that, you will be sent straight through to the amazing conversations we're having in there.
Shanna
Our show is produced by Laura Birek, Shanna Micko, and Steve Yager. Thanks for listening, everyone. Have a big, fat, positive week. Bye. Bye.