The Spirits in the Abandoned Barracks (and other macabre tales)

One night, while my mom and I were talking in my parents' room, a very clear sound was

suddenly heard, as if someone were dragging themselves across the floor.

It was a slow, heavy noise.

I climbed onto the bed because I knew my brother was trying to scare me again, but then

I heard him talking from downstairs, whatever was dragging itself down the hallway right

outside the door.

It couldn't have been him.

Community, I am so happy to greet you again and bring you an episode where every story you are

about to hear will stay with you. I promise, I hope you enjoy the next half hour of terror,

and remember, pay close attention after this episode ends. Any strange sound you hear in your home

at work, on your way home, wherever you are listening to us, will no longer be part of this episode.

Perhaps you will already be the protagonist of your own tale of the night.

Shall we begin?

Hello, Uriel and Community. I am Valle Gomez, a fan of this podcast for two years,

and I would like to share this story that happened to my parents several years ago during a pilgrimage

to San Juan de los Lagos. I am originally from a small town located between Celaya, Guanajuato,

and Querétaro. In my family, the tradition of going on pilgrimages has always existed,

whether to Tepeyac, to San Juan de los Lagos, or to Soriano.

And as many of you will know, strange and inexplicable stories among pilgrims are never

in short supply. At that time, my parents had been married for about a year, and as every year,

they took part in the pilgrimage to San Juan de los Lagos.

On the walk from León, Guanajuato, toward Las Gruces, Jalisco, you have to pass through a hillside,

surrounded by nothing but wilderness. It should be noted that the group we travel with,

the one I have also joined three times, only walks at night and in the early morning hours,

spending the entire day resting. Throughout this stretch, you can see

pilgrimages heading to other destinations, or small groups of people, making their way to see the

Virgin. So if someone falls behind to rest, or needs to use the restroom, there is no real danger

of getting lost, since people pass by constantly. That is exactly what happened to my parents.

They had to step off the path for a moment to use the restroom, and when they finished,

they rejoined the walk at their own pace, since their group had moved ahead.

Because of this, at one point they found themselves completely alone on the road,

in an extremely dark stretch of open land. There was nothing visible ahead,

and no sign of where their group had gone. It was then that they began to hear rattles,

like the ones Aztec dancers were. They turned around, thinking it might be a pilgrim group with

dancers, but all they saw was the silhouette of an extremely tall woman dressed in black.

The woman was approaching, and as she passed beside them, my father pointed his flashlight at her

to get a better look. What they saw left them so frightened that I believe, even today,

that fear has never fully left them. The woman had no face. All that could be made out was a shadow,

as though she wore a very dark black veil. After a moment, the woman moved far enough ahead

to disappear into the darkness of the night. My name is Santiago Rosas, at your service.

I took the liberty of sharing this story, which touches on paranormal events,

but also on a very difficult period of my life. I was born in a small town in the state of Guanajuato,

but from a young age, I was a troublemaker, a disgrace and a burden to poor Nana Meche, my grandmother's

sister. She was the only family I ever knew, and the one who had to raise me from infancy.

My mother died of complications after giving birth to me. The poor woman was only 14 years old.

My father, I don't even know who he was. Maybe that is why I was so rebellious.

I ended up stealing food from shops in the area, until someone told Nana Meche,

who swore she would give me the beating of my life for embarrassing her. On top of that,

people from the neighborhood were already looking for me to teach me a lesson, either because I was

cutting into their earnings, or out of anger at making Meche, a woman deeply loved by everyone's

suffer. The more they loved her, the more they despised me. She doesn't owe you anything. You are,

and always will be, a burden to that poor woman, they would tell me.

I was sad, though I never showed it, but no matter how hard I tried, I could not change.

I stayed in my life of petty crime, wandering from one town to the next.

I even spent time in Michoacan for a while, then drifted through Zacatecas before returning,

looking for whatever town I could settle into and keep surviving off what little I stole,

off whatever I could find. I arrived in a town whose name I will keep to myself.

I remember walking out of the bus station with no sense of direction, and then looking for something

to eat. Of course, I had not a single peso in my pocket, but I had nearly two days of hunger

inside me. So in an unguarded moment, I stole a tamal that seemed to have been left forgotten

on a table, as I walked away with it I heard a shout, and then felt a hard blow to my back that made

me drop it. A young man had kicked me, and another smaller one knocked me to the ground shouting,

thief. People started rushing over, thinking I had stolen who knows what, and in that moment I felt

certain they were going to lynch me over a wretched tamal. A tamal that had already been trampled to pieces

under foot. I managed to break free, throwing punches without looking at who I was hitting.

I only felt them against my fists, and I started to run. I ran and ran and ran. I don't know

for how long, or even where I was going, because I had blood in my eyes. Eventually I reached a highway

and kept walking along it for a good while, until I felt sure no one was following me anymore.

In the distance, I made out an abandoned building, a hospital or a school far from the road.

Since night was already falling, I headed toward it. It seemed like a good place to hide,

wait out the night, and wait for morning, to look for something to eat and tend to my wound.

I was exhausted. I felt I was on the verge of fainting. I barely made it to the place.

It was completely empty, but with signs that others had taken refuge there before, homeless people

like me. The traces were old. It seemed like at that moment the place was mine alone,

a shelter meant for me. I went deeper inside, searching through the long hallways in rooms.

It became clear that this was not an abandoned hospital, but a military barracks.

I had never come across one in that condition before. There I found some old blankets, arranged as

though some vagrant had used them to sleep there long ago, and they felt like a gift from heaven.

I was very cold. The moment I pulled that foul smelling blanket over me, I fell asleep.

Something woke me up. I don't know how much time had passed, but it was very dark.

The pain from my wound was more intense. I focused and listened.

Somewhere in the distance, probably on the second floor, someone could be heard crying out in pain.

I stepped out of the room where I had been sleeping and looked toward the far end of the hallway.

Well, I tried to. It was completely dark. So I waited and waited, staring into the nothingness,

until my pupils dilated enough to make something out. The walls, the hallway, anything at all.

When they did, it only made things worse. Because then I could just barely see that in the hallway.

Not very far from me. Someone was standing. And then stepped through one of the doors.

I was frightened. I had no strength left to fight or defend myself. Not that night.

So I called out that I meant no trouble. That I was only there to spend the night.

That I just wanted shelter. Nothing more.

Someone groaned beside me from inside the very room where moments earlier I had been sleeping.

I felt fear, but a different kind of fear than before. Because something in that sound,

in the way it filled the walls in the hallway in my entire body. Something was not right.

Not right at all. I tried to run as fast as I could, but when I reached what I thought was the exit,

the way I had come in. There was nothing there. I could not find the door. I kept running until I

hit a staircase and climbed it, hoping to find shelter from whatever was following me. And perhaps

find a way out from up there. But upstairs. Upstairs, it smelled of death of the dead.

It was a smell I unfortunately already knew. New well. Because of that, I was completely certain

that something was up there. But I kept walking, searching for a way to look out or get through.

I began moving as quickly as the pain would allow. But then I noticed that the echo of my footsteps

was bouncing off the walls. And it was not only mine. Someone was following my steps,

walking at the same rhythm as me, masking the sound of their own feet beneath mine.

So I stopped dead in my tracks. But someone kept walking behind me, getting closer.

I could not see anything. It was too dark. But something walked until it was just one step away from

me. Don't take my children. Something spoke into my ear. Something grabbed me by the shoulders with

two hands that felt like nothing but bones and squeezed. I felt my knees give out. I felt my heart

stop. I felt that this was where I would die. That someone would find my rotting body weeks later.

Just as Nanamichi had always told me I would end up. But in that moment, when I was about to give

up, something told me no. Something I heard like her voice. Like Nanamichi's voice. I swear it.

It told me to run. Run. And I obeyed. I broke free and started running. I don't know how I made it

down those stairs without falling. And there was the exit. Clear as day. Right where I had passed

through without seeing it. I got out and heard laughter. A woman's laughter at my back inside the

barracks. I don't remember how I made it back to the highway. Only that I collapsed the moment I

felt the pavement under my feet. And that I knew if I stayed there, I would be run over. But I had

no strength left to get up and keep going. I had lost a lot of blood. But someone came. An angel.

That is what I want to call him. An elderly man on his way home in a very old,

barely running little car, going so slowly that it cost him nothing to break when he saw me lying in

the road. Anyone else would have left me there. But not him. Not Don Benja, as I later learned his name

was. He lifted me as best he could, got me into the car, and drove me to his home in the neighboring

town where his wife called a nurse they knew. He helped me. They helped me. They saved my life.

They gave me food and a roof over my head for a week and a half. And when I had the strength to

move on, they asked me not to continue living that life of wandering. They had once had a son who left

just like me, to live off whatever he could find, drifting from town to town. I watched them dig

through coins and small bills. I watched them search through their savings. They gave it all to me.

They asked me to use it to go back home, to go back to Meche, and I promised them I would.

And that same day, I left. When I reached my hometown, it was too late. Meche had already been

buried days before. No one had found me or known where to reach me to tell me she had died.

They told me the house was mine, but I left anyway. I left.

I was ready to go back to wandering, to drinking myself to death because I had nothing left.

But something happened here in Celaya. Here I arrived and found a family that reached out

a hand to me. Another family, more angels. They gave me work. Here I met someone I learned to love.

Here I built a family. Here I found my companion. Today, years later and looking back,

my life is very different. I have a family. I have a small food business where, when someone needs

it, food is given. Where I look the other way, when someone hungry takes a piece of bread,

thinking I'm not watching. I have so much to be grateful for, and I would have loved

for Nana Meche to see who I became. I know. I know I have gone on too long, but I wanted to share

how this ghost story changed my life. Thank you for your patience, and thank you for listening.

A warm greeting. My name is Luis, and I am from the city of Medellin, Colombia.

I want to share a brief account of something that happened to me and for which any rational

explanation would require too many coincidences. I say explanation because, up until now, every

paranormal event that has happened to me, I have managed to find a logical reason for.

But this time was different. The scientific explanation would depend on so many coincidences

at once that it seems more likely to me to understand it as paranormal than as a simple sequence

of ordinary events. I was invited to a birthday party for a friend from school. By that point,

we were already in university, but we had kept very strong bonds among us. The celebration was

held at a country estate in a town in the Antiochia region called Venicia, a place well known for

rumors of witchcraft. The entire stay at the estate was completely normal from the moment we arrived

until the party began. Already late into the night, I became overwhelmed by all the noise,

so I stepped away for a moment and walked toward a pool area whose outer corridor overlooked a

ravine that, at that hour, was completely dark. You could not see the bottom. I decided to stand

at the corner closest to the ravine, lean against the railing that marked the end of the corridor

and kept people from falling and breathe in the fresh air. Something I appreciated, being away from

the city. While I closed my eyes, I suddenly heard a woman's voice. She was humming a melody I had

never heard before. Her voice was normal. It did not sound terrifying. What made the hair on the back

of my neck stand up was that the nearest person to me was at least 20 meters away, and worse still,

the voice was coming from the ravine. When I heard the singing, I confirmed it several times.

I made sure no one was nearby, and I even leaned far out over the railing to confirm that the

voice was coming from below. Not wanting to be left alone with my own perception, I went back to

the group and asked a friend to come with me to confirm something. We walked to the edge of the

pool area. I asked her to stand at the corner and tell me if she heard anything. I was very careful

not to give her any hint of what I had heard. Do you hear anything? She almost jumped. I asked

her what she was hearing, and she simply said, she's humming, and she began to reproduce the exact

same melody I had heard. Now, what was curious is that the moment we both stood at that corner,

I could no longer hear anything. Yet I knew she was hearing it, because when she hummed the melody,

it was exactly the same one I had heard before. I want to stress that I gave her no clue whatsoever.

She simply walked to that corner, I asked what she heard, and she told me. After that,

we returned to the group feeling somewhat shaken, and decided to keep the party going with everyone

else until six in the morning. With daylight, we felt braver, and went back to the edge of the

ravine to try to identify something. Some place, some thing, someone that could have produced that

singing. There was nothing, only a completely bare, dead tree, and dry leaves scattered across the

ground. To top it off, we heard something else, and decided to go quiet, as we approached the

railing once more. There was a rustling sound, like footsteps over the dry leaves beneath the tree,

but nothing was moving. When we heard the sound and confirmed visually that there was nothing there,

we looked at each other with a nervous laugh. That glance was interrupted by one step,

then another, then another. The footsteps grew faster and faster, until it sounded as though

something was running across the dry leaves. The problem was that whatever was walking,

whatever we could not see, was coming closer. The moment we realized it, we turned and ran back to

the group, and agreed it was time to go to sleep. My logical explanation, the ravine was shaped

like a canyon. Perhaps the singing of a woman carried up from some house located kilometers below.

Maybe the sound bounced off the walls at just the right angle to arrive clearly at the corner

of the pool corridor, and the footsteps, an animal, something we could not see. That is what I think,

that is what I want to think. What do you believe?

Hello, Uriel, and greetings to the entire tales of the night community.

Ever since we crossed paths at the International Book Fair, I have been wanting to send you this story.

In my family there are many tales, some quite strange that I hope to share with you over time,

but this one is different, because it did not only happen to me. My husband also came to have contact

with the same entity. On that occasion I briefly mentioned to you that something was happening to me.

Today I want to calmly tell you how it all began, and what has occurred up until now.

About four years ago, when I was still living with my parents and my younger brother,

a nephew came to live with us. During that time, our entertainment was scaring one another.

One night, while my mom and I were talking in her room, a very clear sound was suddenly heard,

as if someone were dragging themselves across the floor. It was a slow, heavy noise.

I told her I had climbed onto the bed because I did not want it to be so frightening,

if the boys were trying to scare me, and the sound kept getting closer and closer,

as though it was about to come through the door. Then, all at once, we heard my brother and my nephew

laughing, far away, in a room on the other side of the house, nowhere near us. There was no way they

could have gotten there without making noise. Inside that house, you could hear everything.

My mom and I looked at each other in surprise, but decided to let it go.

A few days later, I was woken up by the intense barking of Clara, my little dog. At the same time,

that dragging sound could be heard again, this time from the kitchen, as if someone were dragging

themselves across the floor. I could not bring myself to leave the room to look. I pulled the

covers completely over me and fell back asleep. Up until that point, it was only the sounds,

but later my brother told us that one night he had not been able to sleep because he had been

playing on his phone. At some point, he sat up slightly and he claims he saw a figure with my

same build and my long hair hanging down, covering her face, dragging herself along the floor and

moaning. He says he lay back down immediately and tried to sleep, and that he remembers nothing

after that. As time went on, these occurrences became sporadic once I moved in with my partner.

The first few months passed in peace, and I thought everything had been left behind.

I was very wrong. One night I woke up abruptly in the early hours of the morning,

and by instinct I turned to look at the bedroom door, to give a bit of context.

When you enter our room, the bathroom is immediately to the left, and beside it is the wardrobe,

leaving a small space between them. It was very dark, but when I focused my eyes,

I could just barely make something out. I saw a dark upright figure watching a sleep.

The silhouette took a step, and I could see it more clearly. It looked like me,

but with skin stretched tight against bone, its long hair covered its face,

reaching all the way down to its waist. Then it made a motion with its head as though shaking it,

and for just an instant, it revealed that it had no eyes, as though they had been torn out.

Then it collapsed to the floor like a pile of clothes and began dragging itself slowly toward the bed.

In desperation, I woke my partner and tried to explain what was happening.

He turned on his phone's flashlight, and there was nothing there.

He thought it had been a bad dream, but I fell back asleep knowing I had not imagined it,

that it had been completely real. Days passed, and I began to feel watched frequently.

Shortly after, I had a dream in which this entity appeared again.

It spoke to me in whispers, but I could not make out what it was saying.

The next day my partner asked me if I was a sleepwalker. He told me that the previous night he had

woken up and did not see me in the bed. He said he saw me standing, staring directly at him.

He laid me back down and went back to sleep. I remember nothing from that night. From that point on,

more things began to happen. I no longer got up while sleeping, but I began responding in my sleep.

My husband told me that it sounded as though I was speaking in a language he did not recognize,

words he could not understand. What was strange was that I would wake up with no memory of any

unusual dream, even though I normally always remember what I dream. My husband is a gamer and

tends to go to bed later than me. He began to notice out of the corner of his eye that I was sitting

up in bed looking at him, or that I was getting up. But when he turned to look directly at me,

I was asleep. The situation struck him as very unsettling.

Not long after scratches began appearing on his back, his neck and his face, he says that after

several incidents, he became certain it was not me, because he started paying attention to what I

was wearing to bed. He says that whenever the figure got up, it was dressed in something black.

And that when he checked, I was still wearing my own pajamas.

After all of this, we had a period of calm. However, recently the entity has reappeared in my

dreams, and at times I have felt that same sensation of being watched again. Nothing further has

happened so far, but I remain alert. If it manifests in any other way, I will send you an update.

Post script. As I mentioned at the beginning, there are many stories in my family,

some that I can personally attest to from as far back as my early childhood.

Perhaps we are more perceptive than most, if that is how you see it, even without any new developments

from this story, I will gladly send you more tales, wishing you all a very good night.