Michael and Brandon married in 2016. Brandon is a tenth-generation Virginian, which makes what came next a small betrayal: about five years later they crossed the line into Maryland and bought a weekend cottage on a cliff above the Chesapeake Bay, on the Western Shore. They bought it for the view. They soon realized they were not alone.
The bay house
The cottage was built as the parsonage for the church next door, and the pastor who lived there longest seems to have loved it. Things started the moment construction did. An Alexa unplugged itself in the middle of a song, the cord crossing the room on its own, and then hissed static from a speaker with no power. Two pairs of brand-new rain boots flew off the breakfast-room table, not tipped over but shoved, as if someone had swept them away with an arm.
One stormy night after Christmas, Michael was alone in bed when he heard two men talking in the living room. The television was off. Then the dogs began to howl, a sound he still can’t forget. He ran out and found them sitting calmly, as if nothing had happened. Another day, while Brandon was vacuuming, a pair of hands took him by the hips, held on for a few seconds, and let go. Michael was outside. The day before, Brandon had seen a man in a brown suit standing beside the shower. He hasn’t closed a bathroom door in that house since.
Then came the knocking. At 11:37 one night, three hard knocks on the bedroom’s glass patio door, like a closed fist. The cameras caught nothing. It went on for about six months, almost nightly at first, always three, and stopped as suddenly as it started.
Their friend Kelley has seen a figure lean out of the library, and the spot it left smelled of roses, like the pastor’s wife’s old rose garden. She has heard her own name whispered in the guest room. When Michael heard someone whistling in the empty kitchen, it sounded like a happy old man. When Brandon heard old-time music, like a record player, coming from the same room, he called Kelley to keep him company. A few minutes into the call she asked how he couldn’t hear the whistling.
Hear it from the beginning in Season 1, Episode 1 and Episode 5, or read the story of the cottage.
The Annapolis house
In early 2025 they bought a historic house in downtown Annapolis. Its first owner-occupant was Matthew Strohm, boxing master at the Naval Academy for forty-two years. He died there in 1910, on the third floor. That room is Brandon’s office now.
During the renovation, with a mattress on the floor and no furniture yet, they woke to something running down the stairs from the third floor. Another day Brandon and his assistant were working at the dining table, with the contractors in the kitchen, when they heard footsteps come down the stairs, stop, and run back up. On a house tour before they bought, Kelley grew so lightheaded on the third floor that she couldn’t stay up there. At their July birthday party she brought Brandon a drink and mentioned, as casually as asking which vodka was in it, that there was a man in all white sitting on the couch. “Definitely a midshipman.”
The full story is in Season 2, Episode 1. Read more about the boxing master’s house.
Parker & Jackson
Two crazy Yorkies, and the show’s unofficial co-hosts. You can often hear them in the background of an episode, barking from the front door at the Amazon driver or a squirrel. Usually.
If they’re barking at an empty hallway, don’t ask.