Hello and welcome to another creepy edition of Way Ahead, your 100% English-spoken podcast. This is teacher Fábio Emerim, and today I’m going to read four ghost stories that are supposed to be true. So may you be the judge and decide if they can be true or not. The transcription of this episode is published on www.englishinbrazil.com.br/blog so that you can read as you listen.

The Little Hands
“I’ve never lived in a haunted house, but my mother did as a teen. “Other houses on her street had strange things going on too. A few homes away from her lived a family. One night, the daughter went to bed with a bad headache. The next day, she was dead—she’d passed away from an aneurysm.
“After her funeral, the family went away to get their minds off the tragedy, and the father asked my uncle—my mom’s brother—to check on their pets. My mom and dad (who were dating at the time) went with him; my mother had heard there was a grand piano, and she wanted to play it. My dad was studying to be a veterinarian.
“After entering the house, my uncle and my father headed to the basement to see the animals, and my mother went to the piano on the ground floor. She was playing it when she felt something brush her ankles. She thought a cat must have left the basement and walked past her. She kept playing. And then she felt it again.
“She looked under the piano and saw nothing. When she started again, she felt hands clasp her legs tightly. She dashed to the basement door, called my uncle and father, and waited for them. Back outside, my uncle could tell my mom was rattled and asked what was wrong.
“She told him what had happened, and he turned white. And told her the daughter who had died used to play a game with her father. When he played the piano, she’d crawl underneath, grab his ankles and push his feet up and down on the pedals.”

The Phantom Patient
“The ambulance company that I used to work for had a ‘haunted’ ambulance: rig 12 “A lot of EMTs had stories about it, but I never put much stock in paranormal stuff. That is, until I had my own experience with rig 12.
“My partner and I were working in a rural community at 3 a.m., and it was pitch-dark and completely quiet. We were both dozing; I was in the driver’s seat, and she was in the passenger seat. I woke up to a muffled voice, but I thought my partner was talking. I told her I was trying to sleep and closed my eyes. I distinctly heard a male voice say, ‘Oh my God, am I dying?’ followed by a few seconds of heavy breathing. My partner and I sat up straight and looked back into the patient compartment, where it sounded like the voice had come from.
“Things were quiet for a couple of seconds; then we heard the click of an oxygen-bottle regulator and a hiss, as if it was leaking. I turned on the lights, and we ran out of the rig. I thought someone might have climbed in while we were asleep, so we opened the rear doors. No one was there. I checked the oxygen bottles; neither was opened. We didn’t sleep much after that.”

The Boy with No Eyes
“One night when I was 10, I was woken up by my bedroom door opening, followed by someone sitting on my bed,”. “I felt my leg grazed and the bed sink under a person’s weight. It’s just Mom, I thought, and I opened my eyes.
“It was not my mom. I found an eyeless boy—he had black, empty sockets—about my age sitting at the foot of my bed. He extended his hand, and in it was a little box. I was startled but reached out. He pulled back. I reached again and said, ‘Give it.’ Then I blinked, and when I reopened my eyes, he was gone. But I could still see the imprint where he’d sat on my bed.
“Fast-forward five years. My girlfriend came over to do homework. After she finished, she took a nap while she waited for her parents. When they arrived, I tried waking her up. She opened her eyes suddenly, looking up at a corner where the wall met the ceiling. She pointed there and went back to sleep. I shook her again. She came to full consciousness, and I explained what she’d done. She looked haunted. ‘Up on the wall, I saw a little boy with no eyes. He was there, in a Spider-Man pose, staring at me.’ I freaked out and told her my story about the same kid.
“Fast-forward another five years. I was with the same girlfriend, and we had a 2-year-old. We were living in my parents’ house, in my old room. My daughter started waking up at the same time every night, and she’d talk. After a while, I noticed she had almost the same conversation every night. I playfully asked her once whom she was talking to. She said, ‘It’s a little boy. He’s nice. He’s lost and looking for his mommy.’ My daughter’s nightly conversations continued until we got our own place later that year.”

The Ghost Who Came to Play
This true ghost story might strike you as more “aw” than “eek”—but only until you consider that we really have no idea what our four-legged friends can sense that we cannot. Can dogs see ghosts? Well, there are plenty of dog experts out there, including veterinarians, who will attest to the fact that there’s lots of documentation that could support the notion that dogs can sense paranormal activity.
And then there’s the fact that this story came to Reader’s Digest directly from a well-known psychic medium, Kristy Robinett, who has a strong record for using her ghost-whispering skills to help detectives solve confounding cases.
“Marlene settled onto her side of the bed and patted Jack’s pillow beside her,” Robinett told Reader’s Digest. “A year had gone by, but Marlene was still adjusting to widowhood. Maybe it was crazy to think that after 40 years of marriage, she would ever adjust. Elmer the golden retriever seemed to understand this from the very first. That cold, moonless night when Marlene returned, alone, from the hospital, Elmer did something he’d never done before. He jumped up onto Jack’s side of the bed and lay his head on the pillow.
“Jack would never have allowed it,” Robinett pointed out, “but Marlene didn’t shoo him off. Instead, she lay down beside Elmer and let the peaceful sound of his snoring lull her to sleep. The next night was the same, and the night after that.
“Over the past year, it had grown into a comforting routine. But not tonight. Tonight was the first time Elmer had left Marlene alone in the bed since Jack’s passing. But hearing nails clicking on the wood floor downstairs, Marlene recognized the sound of Elmer requesting ‘outsies.’ With a sigh, Marlene made her way down the stairs to the foyer. But Elmer wasn’t pacing in front of the big oak door. Rather, he was dancing. And wagging. And wiggling and bowing. Just like he used to do when Jack would come home after work.”
To Marlene, it felt as if Jack had just come home, and Robinett, who is known for her remarkable intuition about these things, believes that is, indeed, what happened.

Ok, so these were this week’s ghost stories. Make sure you follow the reading of the transcription of this episode on our blog! The link is in the description of the episode!
See you next time…