Jarrett: 00:00

Welcome to Real Creepy Estate, where we delve into the unexplained, the mysterious, and the downright eerie. I'm your host, Jarrett Lies, a real estate agent who's been inside thousands of houses over the years. In my time on the job, I've encountered more than just impressive layouts and stylish decor. I've had my fair share of strange experiences and have listened to countless stories from homeowners about their own. I was once a bit skeptical myself, but after hearing so many accounts from the most uns uspecting sources, I couldn't deny it any longer.

Jarrett: 00:32

There's something more to this world than meets the eye. Join me as we explore the paranormal one house at a time. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Real Creepy Estate. I'm so glad you're here.

Jarrett: 00:49

I want start this episode by saying that I am a lover of old homes. I've been selling homes for over a decade, and during that time, I've owned 11 old homes of my own. I think that they've all been charming, full of character, history, and quirks. Now my friends, most of them would disagree with me on that. Many of my friends think that some of my houses have been haunted.

Jarrett: 01:11

And at times, I do tend to agree with them. I have had my fair share of weird experiences. But I don't know. It's hard to say. Some of my friends swear it's me, that I'm the common denominator, not the houses.

Jarrett: 01:25

But I don't think that either. Old houses creak. They settle. They make noises. That's just how it is.

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And I also don't think that I'm a haunted person. I think that I just go into tons of homes for my job. And because of that, I have some weird experiences. I also travel a lot. And I have traveled to some very, very old historic places.

Jarrett: 01:46

And I think that when you're visiting those places, you have weird experiences. So I'm a firm believer in ghosts, but I don't necessarily think that the houses I've had have been haunted. Although, like I said, I think that my friends would mostly disagree with me on that. For example, in my very first house, I had a friend who swore she woke up to the sound of a piano playing early in the morning. I'd had a house party the night before, and I was 21 at the time, so people were sleeping all over my house.

Jarrett: 02:14

So she got up and walked from room to room checking to see if it was someone's ringtone. And then she checked to see if it was something outside, but nothing. She couldn't explain it. And to this day, she maintains that that house was haunted. I always laugh and tell her that I don't think that's true, but she's convinced that it is.

Jarrett: 02:34

And then there was another house that I owned that I was renovating, and it did kind of give me the creeps. But I didn't think it was haunted. It was just a really big old house with dark wood. And if you've ever lived in an old house, you know how loud it is when, like, the furnace kicks on or anything like that. It seems louder than a new house.

Jarrett: 02:54

And, yeah, it did creep me out, but I was there alone a lot, and it was big, old, and dark wood. So I just wasn't used to a house that size by myself. And I think that's the reason I was scared. I will say, though, that my German shepherd, Millie, was a puppy at that time. And I would bring her to that house often with me because I was fixing it up.

Jarrett: 03:15

And she would stand in certain spots of that house and just stare into the air. And that did really bother me. And then something weird did happen there with the lights, and I basically bolted out of the house. But even after that, I still told myself that the house wasn't haunted and that I was just being dramatic and scaring myself, which I do still think could be the case. But one afternoon, I was talking to my contractor and his crew, and they were like, Jarrett, can we ask you a question?

Jarrett: 03:41

And I said, sure. And they were like, is this house haunted? And I laughed, and I said, I don't think so. Why? And they just said, oh, just wondering.

Jarrett: 03:51

And, yeah, that did not exactly make me feel better. There's even been a time where one of my friends has seen something in one of my houses, but it was actually a rental house, not a home that I owned. And I really hope that I can share that story on the podcast sometime if she lets me. So, yeah, I've probably had more paranormal experiences than most people, but I'm still not convinced that that means that those houses were haunted. Here's my take.

Jarrett: 04:18

Every house, new or old, has energy. People live in them, leave memories in them, sometimes even die in them. That's a lot of history in one place. And if you think moving into a brand new house keeps you safe, think again. The land your house is built on has a history too.

Jarrett: 04:35

People lived here before us, and I don't think that there's any way to fully escape that. Still, I'll admit this. I personally do think older homes are more likely to be haunted. This is my theory. A house that's been standing for, say, a hundred years has a hundred years of people living in it.

Jarrett: 04:53

Their lives, their energies, all in one spot. That feels different than a house built last year, but it doesn't mean that a brand new house can't be haunted. In fact, I was showing an almost brand new house the other day, and my client and I had looked at about seven that day, all in the same area. And the one that we were in had a nice, clean, unfinished basement. But when I opened the door to it, she said, oh, I don't wanna go down there.

Jarrett: 05:20

Even though we had been in multiple basements already that day, and I figured I'd still take a look myself. So then I stepped to the top of the stairs where she had been, and I was instantly hit with this overwhelming feeling of dread for no reason whatsoever. The basement was spotless, bright, clean, and organized. But the feeling was so strong that I just shut the door and walked away. I have no clue what it was, and I'm not saying that it was haunted.

Jarrett: 05:45

I'm just saying that there was definitely something different about it. But the part of Kansas where we were does have a lot of history. I know people who still find arrowheads along the rivers and creeks right in that area, and I believe that land can hold on to energy. That's why I don't think it really matters if you're in an old house or a new one. If you are alive in this world, you are among things that we don't fully understand.

Jarrett: 06:10

I try not to let that scare me. I think the best thing you can do is to learn how to manage your energy so that you can protect yourself from those things or just completely deny that anything paranormal actually exists, which is honestly what I wish I could do. But I've had too many experiences to deny that at this point, one of which I will share with you today. Okay. So the story I'm sharing with you today is about a house I used to live in.

Jarrett: 06:36

It was so darling. I still love that house to this day. And now that fall is in full swing, I've been missing it even more. One of my favorite things was cooking in that kitchen. There was this window right next to the stove, and it was the best thing ever to make soup with the cool fall breeze drifting in Ugh.

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Next to a warm stove, it was just perfect. If you love fall like I do, you know exactly the feeling I'm talking about. Standing there, cooking warm food while the cool air rolls in. It is heaven. But here's the thing.

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As much as I adored that house, my friends thought it was creepy. Like, really creepy. They already thought a lot of my other houses had weird vibes, but this one in particular, it was their top pick for most haunted. It was a four bedroom house, so plenty of space for guests. But anytime my friends came to stay, they'd end up sleeping in my bed.

Jarrett: 07:25

Not because there wasn't room in the house, but just because they didn't wanna be alone in another room. And honestly, I totally understood. I had terrible nightmares the whole time I lived there, like really bad ones. I tried moving to different rooms, thinking it might help, but it never did. It was something about the upstairs.

Jarrett: 07:42

I never felt this way downstairs, but upstairs, something was just off. It got so bad that at one point, I slept on the couch in the living room for, like, a week straight because I couldn't get a decent night's sleep upstairs. So while I love the house, there was something that I could never quite put my finger on about it. It wasn't until my very last day in the house, the day that I was moving out, that something happened that made me realize that maybe I was justified in feeling like there was just something off about the home. And to explain the entire story, I need to start from the beginning, from the first day, move in day.

Jarrett: 08:19

It was move in day, and I had spent the morning doing what I always do before I move into a house, which is cleaning. I like to clean when I first move into a house so that I can get a fresh start. I had done the whole interior of the house, so I was moving to the outside spaces. This house had a screen and porch, so I walked out, and on the porch, I found a glass ashtray. It was really thick blue glass.

Jarrett: 08:41

I didn't have a need for it, so I decided that I would toss it out. And with moving comes a lot of trash, so I had already taken my trash bins to the curb because the trash pickup was the next day. So I walked that ashtray down the driveway, and I tossed it in the trash bin, and I did not think about it again after that. Time goes by, and I'm getting settled into the house. And I really like it.

Jarrett: 09:03

I mean, the nightmares do start coming, but there are a lot of things that could explain those. At the time, I was under a lot of stress. I was finishing up renovations on another house, and I was also getting back into the swing of my new life in Kansas because I had just moved back home from across the country. There are also other things that could contribute to nightmares, like maybe my head was facing the wrong direction. I don't know.

Jarrett: 09:25

Maybe my bed was uncomfortable. I wasn't really that concerned because there are a million explanations of why I could have been having nightmares, and I just wasn't thinking too much about it. But there was this other weird thing that would happen periodically. It was that sometimes I would walk into a room, and it would smell like someone had just been smoking. Now even this, I didn't really worry about.

Jarrett: 09:51

I sell houses. I go into houses all the time, and I know that they can hold on to smells. There are residual smells in pretty much every house. All it takes is maybe a shift in the weather or something like that to bring out those smells. So I wasn't even concerned about that.

Jarrett: 10:05

Although, the smells did seem a bit stronger than normal. One time, my sister was in town staying with me, and she walked into a room and was like, Jarrett, were you smoking in this room? It smells like someone was just in here smoking. I told her I had not been, but she was right. It really smelled like someone had just stepped out of the room after smoking.

Jarrett: 10:27

That was the first time where I felt like, okay, I'm not the only one who thinks that this is weird. Because up until then, I'd kind of been able to explain it away in my own mind. But truly, it would smell like someone had just put out a cigarette. It was way more than the normal lingering scent that a house sometimes has. But still, I continued to live in the house for a couple more years.

Jarrett: 10:48

The nightmares still happened, but I loved the house. I got used to the smoke smells, and I learned to live with them. And then at some point, I decided to sell the home. And on the last day when I was moving out, that's when something really weird happened. It was my last day in my house, and I had completely picked up everything on the inside of my home.

Jarrett: 11:08

So I decided to do one more sweep of the backyard and the garage just to make sure that I hadn't left anything behind. So I'm coming in through my back door, which, let me tell you, I had gone in and out of thousands of times during my stay at that house. I have two dogs. I let them out multiple times a day. I would go out into the backyard with them.

Jarrett: 11:29

And every single day, multiple times a day, for years, I came through that backdoor. And on that day, on the last day, as I took my final step inside, I looked to the left of my backdoor and sitting right on the electrical panel that is just to the left of the back door at eye level is that blue glass ashtray that I had thrown away the very first day I moved into the house. When I saw that ashtray just sitting there like it had always been there, my heart sank. How had that happened? I had thrown it out the very first day I moved into that home.

Jarrett: 12:09

And then years later, it was sitting right outside my back door in a place where there was no way I could miss seeing it. It felt to me like something was saying, this is my house. Get out. I immediately thought of all the times that there had been smoke in the rooms. All the times I had walked in and swore someone had just been in a room right before I got there.

Jarrett: 12:35

I was so upset that I just walked through the door, put a key on the counter for the new owner, and walked out the front door, locked it behind me, and did not look back. I should mention that during my time living at that house, I had put up a six foot privacy fence with a heavy duty latch on the door. So when I saw that ashtray, I also thought, if this is not paranormal, then that means that someone got that ashtray from a trash bin in my front yard, held onto it for years, and then decided that they would walk through my gate into my backyard and set it on that electrical panel. Was that some sort of mean trick? Had someone been watching me to know when to sneak into the backyard?

Jarrett: 13:16

How did they know I was moving and that it was the last day I'd be there? Honestly, the thought that a real person had done that, that scared me more than the thought of it being something paranormal. Ghosts, I can handle. But real scary people, that bothers me. Although, I don't really know that this house was haunted.

Jarrett: 13:35

I don't necessarily think that there was a ghost there. Despite what my friends say, because they'd all tell you it was haunted, I actually think that maybe it was just stuck energy in that house or something like that. I've been to the house since. I'm not scared of it in the least. I actually think it's so cute, and I would totally live there again.

Jarrett: 13:53

Although I will say, I think now in my thirties, I'm a lot better equipped to handle maybe darker energies than I was in my mid twenties when I lived at that home. My experience at that house also made me think about some other stories that I had heard from parents of friends and even my own family members about items disappearing and then reappearing later out of nowhere. What is this? Could it be a time slip, an alternate universe? I have no idea.

Jarrett: 14:21

I even had an experience like this recently at my parents' house, which, by the way, I do not think is haunted at all. But the bathroom drain stopper had been broken, and my mom had taken it out to fix it at a later date. And one day, her friend was over, and I was over at the house too. And my mom's friend said, oh, I'll fix the drain stopper. So my mom said, okay, and went to open the doors to the bathroom sink vanity where she had put the drain stopper, and it was nowhere to be found.

Jarrett: 14:49

This was the powder bath on the main level of their home, and there was nothing else under that sink, not even toilet paper. So to open the doors and see nothing there when she had set the drain stopper there, that was weird. My mom's friend went over and decided that she would also take a peek just to make sure that somehow my mom was not missing the drain stopper. So she looked under the sink, felt around, nothing. I did the same.

Jarrett: 15:16

My dad came in, Did the same. None of us knew where that drain stopper had gone. So we were kind of at a loss, but after a little bit, we just shut the doors to the sink and didn't think about it much. A few weeks later, my parents had a plumber to their house to do some work on an upstairs bathroom. And after he was done, he came downstairs and my mom started chatting with him.

Jarrett: 15:38

She told him that she wished he could repair the downstairs bathroom sink while he was there, but that she hadn't had time to get a replacement drain stopper. And then she walked into the bathroom to show him what was wrong with the sink, and she decided, for whatever reason, to open the doors to the bathroom sink like she had done many, many times before. And when she did that, sitting right there, just where she had put it before, was that drain stopper. So how did it get there? My dad hadn't put it back there.

Jarrett: 16:05

I hadn't put it back there. Who else could have done that? Did that drain stopper just rematerialize? It sounds crazy. It sounds far fetched.

Jarrett: 16:15

But I've heard several stories like this from people that I know and trust. Is that what happened with the ashtray at my house? I guess there are just some things that we'll never know for sure, and we have to be okay with that. Or you can do what I try to do to make myself feel better, and that's lie to myself and say that somehow there's gotta be some sort of logical explanation. So that's my story, and now I want to hear yours.

Jarrett: 16:39

I'm on the lookout for all kinds of strange, creepy, or just plain weird experiences, and I'd love for you to share any you have with me. Email me at hello@realcreepyestate.com, and your story could be featured on a future episode of the podcast. Do you have any spooky photos or videos? Send those too. With your permission, I'd love to share them on Instagram and give everyone a peek.

Jarrett: 17:00

I can't wait to see what you've got. I've already started working on another episode, and it's going to take a slightly different spin, looking more closely at the real estate side of things. What causes a house to be haunted anyway? Presumably someone dying in it? Next week, we'll be discussing what buyers are actually told when they step into a home and the things that are quietly left out.

Jarrett: 17:22

You might be surprised at what can stay hidden. If you've ever been concerned that you might accidentally purchase a haunted house, I think you'll really like the episode. Enjoy the rest of your week, and I'll talk to you next time. That concludes this episode of Real Creepy Estate. Thanks for listening.

Jarrett: 17:39

Talk to you next time.