La Pesca
Spooked
Giulia recounts her eerie experiences living in one of La Spezia's oldest buildings in Italy, where she encountered unexplained phenomena in
Key takeaways
- The building's ancient history and preserved frescoes may be tied to the supernatural occurrences Giulia experienced.
Main topics
- Supernatural experiences in historic buildings
Notable quotes
I felt like when you have a little bit of cold inside the bone. How we say in Italy, freddo nelle ossa, is cold inside.
Conclusion
Giulia's story remains unresolved—neither fully explained nor dismisse
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:07) London Bridge is falling down, burning down to the ground. Jen lit the match without a sound. She's a lone lady crossed over to Spook. Summer evening, camping trip with my crew. The fire pits go and the kids are shoving marshmallows on their sticks to hold over the flame. The adults drinking their drink, smoking their smoke. Out of cell phone range. The devices don't work, so this is magic hour. Story time. Gather round, children. I'm about to tell you. Just a few short months ago, not truthy. Eat your eyes. Look up at me. Adults, y'all think I'm playing? Look this up on Google or whatever when we get back. Look at Arrowhead Stadium. Kansas City, Missouri. Speaker 1 (1:36) World Cup match event, Argentina versus Switzerland. Projected screen outside. Thousands of screaming, beer-swilling, night-sweeping, pizza-gobbling fans, right? And after the big game, the crowd leaves. The venue's empty. His job is to do a final sweep of the porta-potties. And he's checking the units. And he thinks he hears a tiny voice from inside one of the toilets. Knocks on the door. Hey, hey, you all right? Hey, you okay? Finally, he tries to open the door. It's locked from the inside, good lord. Still he hears the barely perceptible voice, so he flags a policeman down for help. And this policeman, brave soul, honest and true, he hears the voice too. So, in fearing what he will find, the policeman forces open the door of the porta potty and inside he sees... Speaker 1 (2:48) A toilet. Nobody. The policeman leans in. The port-a-potty guy leans in. They look at the toilet lid. Pops open and a head, a human head, slowly rises. Says the policeman. Says the port-a-potty guy. What the hell? They flee. This is a job for somebody else. So they call the fire department. Sirens, lights, the big red truck pulls up and this head. Covered in muck, poking up from inside the toilet, says he's been stuck there in the most despicable filth imaginable for over eight hours. Speaker 1 (3:49) And yes, it's a man. Of course it's a man. All stuck in the toilet. What you think? How? Why? Who knows? Nobody wants to touch him, but he's held fast. So finally, the firefighters take out their axes and bravely chop him out of his crappy grave. And before he can spread crazy to the town folk, they hook him up to a fire hose and spray blast this man down with holy water. And soaking wet, without another word or a backward glance, the man lopes off into the wild and is gone. I tell this story to the kids around the campfire, and they scream, No! Bright eyes, wide with horror. But Uncle Glenn, they shout. Uncle Glenn! Why? What? Children, children, I don't know. I don't know the answer to your questions. I can only tell you what he told the authorities before he vanished. Speaker 1 (4:52) He said what happened was, look this up. He said what happened was he dropped a bottle of Mountain Dew in the toilet. We'll never fully understand the why. We can't understand the why. All we have is the story left behind. So please pack your bags because today we're heading somewhere spooked has never been before. To Italy, where the story takes place. Aspetsia. A small seaside city in northwest Italy, this is where our storyteller Julia grew up. This is where her friends are. So when Julia's mom gets a job in another city, Julia is devastated. She doesn't want to leave her hometown, especially not in the middle of her last year of high school. Speaker 1 (6:37) Luckily, at around that same time, Julia's aunt has an apartment right in the heart of the town. It's one of the oldest buildings in the city. It's covered in the kind of murals that rich folks would paint all over their palazos back in the day to show off. It's beautiful. And the best part about it is Julia's aunt says that Julia can live there. I'll let Julia take it from here. Speaker 1 (7:23) When you enter inside the building, there is this big entrance hall and at the first floor there was my apartment. When I came in, I smelled the fresh paintings on the wall that were all white. I knew that there were some frescoes inside the house, but they had already been covered up. That's because it's very common nowadays to paint over all the frescoes because they are really, really expensive to maintain. Speaker 1 (8:14) A fresco is kind of like a mural. It's a painting you do while the plaster is still wet to decorate the walls. It was common in the past to paint inside and outside the house for the people that were very rich. I was really happy for my aunt because it was her first house alone, but she met someone and she moves out with this boyfriend to a new house. So I was going to live there mostly alone for the next year in an apartment in the center of the city near a bar, shop, restaurant. I was like, oh my God, that's amazing. That's a party for me. I remember that was October. I just started university. I always study on the kitchen table. I