What happens when you move back into a rental home, only to realize the strange occurrences you experienced as a child were just the beginning?
In this episode of This One Time in Kankakee, host Jake LaMore sits down with lifelong Kankakee County resident Ashley Hartman to unpack a true local mystery. Across from Bradley Central Middle School in Bradley, Illinois, sits a standard single-story 1950s house with white siding and a quiet lawn. But behind closed doors, Ashley and her family experienced two separate eras of unexplainable phenomena—first when she was six years old, and again when she returned as a teenager.
From an impossible handprint on a nine-foot ceiling and phantom footsteps crossing hardwood floors, to physical encounters on the basement stairs and an empty attic echoing with phantom scurrying, Ashley shares her story with the grounded skepticism of someone who relies on science, logic, and hard facts.
In this episode, we explore:
- Moving into a neighborhood rental across from Bradley Central Middle School.
- The early anomalies: a teapot filled with bizarre pink slime and an elevated red juice handprint.
- The childhood climax: a figure standing outside a window six feet off the ground.
- Moving back at age thirteen and experiencing an aggressive escalation.
- The turning point: phantom footsteps that forced the family to finally compare notes.
- The physical contact: a snapped waistband on the cellar stairs.
- Elvis the cat and the running steps in an empty attic.
- Why town property records and deed searches revealed zero tragedies tied to the address.
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