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5 min readLONG HEAD
Unexplained Encounters
The house had rules. Don't touch the dog. Come inside when it gets dark. Keep the back door unlatched. And if you hear walking at night, stay in bed. For three years, Wesley and his family lived by those rules without understanding them. By the time he understood, he had already broken the most important one.
The House and Its Rules
In 1996, Wesley's father left for work and never came back. Eleven days later he called from Jacksonville, and that was all his mother ever said about it. With the main earner gone, the family lost their home in town. Wesley's mother, Charlene, did what she had to do: she called her seventy-year-old Aunt Julie, who lived alone on eleven acres twenty minutes outside of town.
Julie said yes without asking how long they needed or about money. "Come on, I've got more house than sense," she told Charlene.
The house was a white clapboard two-story built around 1910, with a porch running the full front and around the east side. Inside, it was clean but worn, with yellowing wallpaper, box fans everywhere, and well water that tasted like a dirty penny. Julie put Wesley's sisters in one upstairs bedroom, him in another, and kept sleeping downstairs in the little room off the kitchen.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (02:44) **Setup: A Family’s Sudden Move to Aunt Julie’s** - The narrator, Wesley, explains that after his father abandoned the family in 1996, his mother moved them into his great-aunt Julie’s old rural house.
- 2 (07:20) **The Taxidermy Dog: Joyce the Borzoi** - Wesley describes the unsettling mounted Borzoi named Joyce, which stood on a low base in the front room.
- 3 (13:00) **The House Rules and the Nightly Footsteps** - Julie establishes three more rules: come inside at dark, never latch the back door, and if you hear walking at night, stay in bed.
- 4 (16:36) **The Realization: Julie Couldn’t Have Made Those Steps** - Wesley connects the walking sound to the impossibility of his elderly aunt performing it, deepening the mystery.
- 5 (22:17) **The Neighbor Kid’s Warning: Dewey and the “Stick Man”** - A neighbor boy named Dewey visits and tells Wesley the house is considered haunted.
- 6 (27:47) **Evidence Mounts: Dirt, Pine Straw, and a Damp Touch** - After Dewey’s story, Wesley becomes more perceptive and notices strange details around Joyce’s base.
- 7 (30:15) **Tessa’s Observation: No Light, No Sound** - Tessa points out another glaring inconsistency: if Julie were walking around at night, she would turn on a light to avoid a fall, but they never see a light under the door.
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Show Notes
In Georgia, there's a mounted dog. And if you don't take care of it, don't keep a door unlocked, then you will find terror on your doorstep or already inside.
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