Episode 58

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Take a break from the same old boring blockbusters and experience a new kind of movie night with Radio Rental.

At Radio Rental, our videos come to life in your living room, defy all logic and reasoning, and make you question your own reality.

This is not your ordinary video rental store.

At Radio Rental, we carry one-of-a-kind videos so frightening, so mind-bending, you won't be able to sleep at night.

You've gone.

Radio Rental.

Oh, trash.

Oh, bye-bye, West Craven's Wishmaster 4.

I'll have to rewind this one manually.

Oh, hello, hello.

Welcome into Radio Rental, a VHS rental shop that's home to the most terrifying collection of real horror stories in the world.

Yeah, I'm just gonna claim that.

I feel good about that.

I went out on a limb with that, but I...

I feel good.

I feel good about that choice.

Anyway, I'm Terry Carnation.

I run this here joint.

Right now, you've caught me doing one of the most important jobs in the industry.

Rewinding the tapes.

And here, here goes another one.

Hmm.

Ah, that sound.

Rewinding is kind of a meditative, reverent practice for me.

It's contemplative and...

What?

You damn you machine!

I know it's not the most glamorous job.

In fact, it's pretty thankless.

Most people can't be bothered to rewind their tapes anymore, so I'm left sitting here day after day pushing one button like a mindless rube.

And I'll have you know, I wasn't always a shopkeeper at Radio Rental.

I used to be a pretty big deal.

I don't mean to brag, but I was a nationally recognized late-night AM radio host in the early 90s.

Dark Air with Terry Carnation.

Check it out if you can.

Reddit is half and half on it, as usual.

Assholes.

It was really quite a hit, so from time to time, I still get some fan mail.

In fact, here's a little stack over here I've been saving for a little pick-me-up.

Let's see what we've got here.

Fan mail, fan mail, fan mail, fan mail.

Ah, this one is from the UK, all the way from the UK.

TN Crumpets driving a lorry from the boot.

This is a bit of a sticky wicket, isn't it, Governor?

Ah, beautiful handwriting too, Lee.

And a little hand-drawn picture of you in a Radio Rental vest.

Top-notch.

Let's see.

Lee writes, I've been a massive fan of Radio Rental since my sister introduced me when I was 14.

I'm 17 now, and I think I've re-listened to every episode at least five times.

Well, Lee, this is just music to my ears.

I am big with the teens.

I have Riz, as they say.

But also, I am just so touched to know that Radio Rental is an international sensation.

I mean, after all, the name Radio Rental is actually British cockney slang for going crazy.

You've gone Radio Rental.

So our little shop here really has a lot of ties to your hometown of foggy old London town.

Say hi to King Charles.

While he's still alive.

He'll probably be dead soon.

And then it'll be Queen...

the woman from suits.

Malachi, say something nice to Lee.

Oh, he's very impressed that you spelled his name correctly, Lee.

Well, now that I'm in a better mood, let's pop in the first tape, shall we?

I was about five.

My family and I had a caravan at a holiday park.

We had a permanent residence, so we would go up there every school holiday.

The son of the family that owned the park, he would come around on his tractor and pick up people's rubbish from their caravans.

And he'd always like stop out the front of our caravan.

There was always kids playing out the front.

It was me and my cousins playing.

Our families were out.

And he would stop and talk to everyone, chat to my dad and pander to the kids a bit.

He worked in the kiosk at the caravan park.

They would sell like snacks and drinks and stuff and he would always give me free food.

But he would always linger a little bit too long after the conversation had naturally died off.

And it would be uncomfortable.

And that's when my dad started to get an inkling that.

He probably wasn't the best person to be hanging around.

Then my dad would be like, all right, kids, like, let's go inside.

And he was sort of just still lingering there and like watching.

And my dad would be like, there's something wrong with him.

I thought he was nice.

He was always really nice to me.

I gravitated towards people that showed me a lot of attention and a lot of kindness.

I was like, oh, he's a nice man.

I was the only child he paid attention to in the park.

It wasn't any of my cousins.

It wasn't any of the other kids that would come and go.

It was always just me.

I came running up to the caravan one day and I said, Daniel's going to take me down to the river and we're going to let the dog play in the river.

And he's going to take me out on the boat.

My dad was like, you're not going anywhere.

Where is he so I can talk to him?

I remember him saying that he walked up the side of the caravan and my dad was like, you're not taking her anywhere.

Why do you want to take her down there?

That's really strange.

He was like, well, there's nothing.

Dog wants to go for a swim.

I just thought she likes the dog.

I'll take her down there and she can watch the dog swim.

He was riding his tractor around the circuit one day and I was playing outside on my own.

He came to pick up the rubbish and he said, hey, do you want to go for a ride on the tractor around the park?

park?

And I was just like, yeah, absolutely.

He put me on the back of his tractor and he drove around.

We did one loop of the circuit.

We got back around to the front.

My dad stormed out the front of the caravan and didn't say a word, but I could see that he was angry.

He saw me, stormed up to me, grabbed my arm and just ripped me off the back of the tractor.

I was like shocked.

I didn't know what was happening.

I think I started like crying.

Like I was just like, I didn't understand why my dad was so angry.

No words were exchanged between anyone.

He just took me inside.

After I had calmed down and we were inside, my dad sat me down and he said, I don't want you hanging out with him.

If he asks you to go anywhere with him, do not go with him.

If he talks to you or tries to take you anywhere, you have to come and tell me.

Don't talk to him.

I just was like, why, dad?

He's so nice.

He's a nice man.

He gives me lollies.

He gives me sandwiches.

Just don't hang out with him.

I don't need to explain it to you.

Just do what you're told.

I was a free-spirited child, so even when my dad had sat me down and said, I don't want you to hang out with him, I don't want to see you around him, I was just like, why?

I don't understand, you know?

Why?

Why, why, why, why, why?

There was a time after that where

he had come around on the tractor and taken me for a ride, and I sort of remember getting back towards my caravan.

It wasn't the end of the circuit, but I had said, oh, you know, my dad said I'm not not supposed to talk to you.

I remember him sort of being like a bit put off.

His demeanor changed completely.

Why?

Why doesn't he want you to talk to me?

Did he say anything?

What did he say?

And I just said, I don't know.

He just said, I'm not allowed to hang out with you.

He was sort of prying for the information.

When he realized I didn't actually know, he had said,

well, if your dad says that we're not supposed to hang out, then maybe you shouldn't hang out with me.

And that's when I got off the tractor and walked home.

The energy had changed, everything had sort of shifted, and then I started to feel uncomfortable.

That person that had said, well, maybe you shouldn't talk to me was not the same person that picked me up.

They were two different people.

He didn't leave me alone completely.

He would see me out and he'd be like, oh, come down to the shop.

I'll make you a sandwich.

Come on, come on.

It's alright.

You know, you can come with me.

You can trust me.

It's alright.

We'll only be down there for like five minutes.

It was always sort of behavior like that.

There was a time I fell off my bike and I had like a scraped up knee and a scraped up elbow and that.

And he had taken me into the kiosk and was trying to calm me down.

And he would tell me that I'm pretty.

It was just me and him.

There was nobody else there.

When you go into the shop there was like this whole wall of lollies and it was like anything that a five-six-year-old kid would want was on that wall.

He was like, oh, go and pick whatever you want.

And I was like, I'll have this lollipop and I'll have this sherbet.

I sort of was looking up up to him and I was eating

and he was like,

don't tell your mom.

Don't tell her that I gave you this.

She won't let you talk to me again.

I didn't think anything of it.

I just thought, oh, he's a nice man.

He gives me lollies.

I'm not allowed to have lollies and sugar at home.

Nothing else really happened.

that we knew about at the time.

I don't remember seeing him at all after that

until the news report.

About 10 years later,

me and my family were in the lounge room one night watching the news.

My dad,

he was sitting and he stood up

and he was like, oh shit.

Oh shit.

And I'm looking and I'm like, what's wrong with you?

He's like pointing at the screen and he's like, do you recognize recognize that man?

No.

That's that guy that used to take you on the tractor rides at the caravan park.

His face came up on the screen.

And I'm looking at him and I'm like, nah.

His face had changed.

He'd like put on weight and he had like facial hair and stuff.

That's the son of the family.

of the people that own our caravan park.

My stomach just dropped.

It was coming up on the news he had killed two people with these pills that he used to call his lollies.

He had been alleged to have tried attempted poisoning and murder on six other people,

including a teenage girl persuading them to take toxic pills for fun.

between 2000 and 2005.

That was dead set around the time that this was happening with me.

What he would do was give people two different kinds of antidepressants, which would cause serotonin syndrome in a regulated person, and then they would die.

He was well aware of the effects of the medication.

He got 10 years with a non-parole sentence of 7.5,

and I believe he's been released.

This could have been me.

He used to give me lollies.

He used to share all this food and stuff with me.

It was a sickening feeling.

Ugh, disgusting.

Never accept anything edible from anyone you don't know.

Do you hear me, kids?

I'm serious.

You never know who might be doing a little Munchausen by proxy.

Actually, being poisoned slowly by someone I know and love is one of my worst fears.

Hmm.

Oh, thank you for this ice pop, Malachi.

Thank you.

Just a trace of almond.

You ever fake like you know someone just to get out of an awkward situation?

One time I was at a gas station and this guy was giving serious stranger danger energy.

I spotted a woman walking out of the store, made eye contact, and just blurted out, oh my gosh, hey, like we were long lost friends.

Bless her, she played along.

We chatted just long enough for him to leave.

I owe her my life, or at least a coffee.

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Welcome back, and without any further ado, I know why you came here.

On to the next tape.

My story takes place in 2016 at a very well-known public university in North Carolina.

My move-in day was in August, toward the end of the month.

We were given a time slot to move in.

The southern woman that I am, I overpurchased for my dorm, which led the need for us to obtain a vehicle bigger than mine.

I picked up the rental van with my mother, picked it up around 12 o'clock, loaded everything,

made it to campus roughly at 5.45,

parked in a parking lot on the edge of my dorm building to give us as much space as we needed to load everything in.

Any given time, either myself or my mother, who was in her early 60s at the time, would be outside moving items from the the van to the building.

After we unloaded, we stayed just long enough to make up a bed for me to sleep in the next night, came outside, got in the van, exhausted, sweaty, ready to head home.

We turn on the van and immediately after turning on the headlights, because it was starting to get dark, the black sedan across the way also turned on and also turned on their headlights.

The residential street street was directly across the way.

This black sedan pulls to the stop sign there.

They take a left, which ultimately puts them directly behind us.

I did make a note of it.

Always been raised to be aware of your surroundings at any given time when you are a single female.

I don't believe my mother had noticed it, but I picked up on it.

Now in order to get to the highway, we had to make a diagonal across campus.

Across the college campus, it was maybe two miles.

Two miles on a college campus is quite a trek.

Multiple turns, multiple exits from roundabouts, pausing to let pedestrians pass wasn't exactly a straight shot.

Every turn we took, every roundabout exit we picked,

This black sedan is right behind us.

I'm starting to become just more and more alarmed and my big thing was to not alarm my mama unless I absolutely had to.

When we were almost to the edge of campus, that was when I first mentioned it to mama.

I said, hey, not to freak you out, there's a black sedan behind us.

When I pulled out of the parking lot at the dorm, He fell in behind us.

He's been behind us the whole way across campus.

Every turn I've taken, he's been right behind me.

There's never been a car length between us.

And she responds, I noticed him about a half mile back.

I've been keeping an eye on him as well.

I haven't been able to see his face, have you?

I said, no, all I've been able to make out is it's a male in the shape of his head.

And she said, okay, I'll keep an eye on him too.

You just focus on getting his home safe.

There was no doubt in either of our minds, just because the nature of how he was driving, the length of time he had been behind us, the sheer number of turns that we had taken, that he also had taken.

There was definitely something up.

We turned down a two-lane highway leaving campus.

that ultimately would connect us with the interstate.

It's a very quiet, very curvy two-lane road that passes by the lake.

We were completely away from campus, going past a pretty decent body of water, knowing that it was just us and this guy,

surrounded pretty thickly on either side by trees.

We'd been on this highway, I'd say, for maybe a mile.

Immediately after I noticed he was still behind us,

he floors it

to the point where he is so close behind us, I can see his back door and trunk in my rear view.

Can't see the front of his vehicle at all.

I knew if I tapped my brakes even slightly, he was hitting us.

He stays there for a mile, mile and a half,

weaving back and forth, almost acting as if he wants to pass.

Floors it to the point where he almost rear ends me,

maintains that speed behind me, forcing me to speed up to a level where I was uncomfortable,

almost like he's pushing me down the highway.

Then the next thing I know, he backs off so far I can barely make out his headlights.

He stays there for maybe two miles

then immediately back on us so close.

It got to the point where he was cutting off other vehicles to be the vehicle directly behind us.

I slowed down to maybe 25, 30, hoping he would have the sense to pass.

Nothing.

He's revving his engine

i'm having to go around pretty sharp curves not slowing down

because if i slow down he's going to hit me

and then he backs off all the way

and falls back completely

i'm slowly becoming more and more panicked The scariest thing about all of it is all I can see is a shadow of this guy's head.

I never saw his face.

If I had to pick him out of a lineup, there's no way that I possibly could.

And I mentioned to my mama, if he flies up behind me again, if he acts this way again, I'm going to pull off the road.

This guy's putting us at risk.

He's putting our safety in the balance.

I don't have time for this.

I'm starting to freak out.

I'm pulling off the road.

She looks at me like I'd I'd grown a second head.

She said, the last thing you're doing is pulling off the road.

He's trying to run us off the road.

Don't give him the opportunity.

About this time, my phone rings.

I don't recognize the number.

I answer the phone.

It ends up being dispatched from the rental van company.

And I hear a voice on the other end of the line that says, hello, my name is Amanda.

I'm giving you a call because we have received a very alarmed call from the man in the car behind you, letting us know that you are driving very erratically,

letting us know that you also have two taillights that are out, in addition to two brake lights that are out.

And because of this, he has almost rear-ended your vehicle multiple times.

And because of your erratic driving and failure to maintain the safety of your vehicle, I'm demanding that you remove the van from the road and wait until we are able to get to you to fix this issue with your taillights.

As a matter of fact, this gentleman has also offered to wait with you until we are able to arrive.

We froze.

My blood went cold.

The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

And I looked at my mama and she grabbed the phone from me.

And she said, Amanda, I'm here to tell you this man has been behind us for miles now.

He fell in behind us when we were leaving my daughter's dorm.

He watched us unload the van full of dorm supplies.

He knows it's two women driving this van alone.

If we remove this vehicle from the road, especially if he waits with with us, chances are you're not going to see your van again.

Because my fear is he's going to get us into the back of this thing and take us Lord knows where.

Amanda tells us that we are to pull the vehicle off the highway immediately or else she has a way to remotely disable the vehicle.

And we tell her that this is not going to be happening until we're in a safe location.

Amanda ultimately ended up getting extremely frustrated with the both of us.

And she tells us, I'll give you 20 minutes, get to where you need to get to, safely check and make sure that our lights are functioning.

She ends the call.

I wondered if I was dreaming.

I was speechless.

I'm near panic attack behind the steering wheel.

At this point, we're within two miles of our exit onto the interstate.

And my mind is starting to sink in that this is a very dangerous situation and we are working with somebody that's obviously very mentally unhinged, very unstable,

and potentially willing to put his own safety at risk to impact ours.

I decided if we take this exit onto the interstate and he remains behind us, we're going straight to the Sheriff's Department.

If he flies past me, I'm going to get his tag number and we're calling Highway Patrol.

I am sweating,

fingernail gripped on the steering wheel, hoping and praying that he flies past us.

We turn down the on-ramp.

He

floors it.

Whips around us, going at least 85 miles an hour.

Flies past us so quickly that I'm only able to get the first two and the last two digits of his tag.

So here I am with no description of his face, no description of the vehicle other than a dark colored sedan with a partial tag, completely defeated.

And I'm watching this guy fly in front of us off into the sunset to do Lord knows what to Lord knows who.

We stay on the interstate for maybe seven miles, see an exit coming up with multiple gas stations.

We take that exit, find a very well-lit gas station.

I circled the parking lot twice, confirming in my mind that he was also not at this gas station.

We park at the edge of the parking lot.

Breathe a sigh of relief.

My mama tells me, I'm going to run inside, get us something to eat.

You stay in the car with the doors locked.

About the time she reaches the front door of the gas station, my phone rings.

And it's Amanda from Dispatch wanting to know if we have been able to safely remove the vehicle from the road.

By the time she exchanges some choice words with me, My mother's back to the van.

And I have her get in the driver's seat.

Me and Amanda on the phone go around around to the back of the vehicle.

Mama taps the brakes.

There's two perfectly functioning taillights and brake lights staring back at me.

Amanda was ultimately extremely frustrated with me.

She didn't understand why we felt so uncomfortable.

She said he sounded really helpful.

He told me he had been in this situation himself before

and that he had seen you guys unloading the van at your dorm.

He just wanted to provide comfort and possible aid if he could.

As she's telling me all this, I'm near nauseous.

I'm thinking, lady, if you only knew the last 45 minutes of our life.

My mother ends up taking the phone.

And she tells Amanda, I'd really like to report this guy to local law enforcement if you could give me his phone number.

She tells us, we don't have it.

We don't have caller ID.

Really can't help you much, lady.

Glad you're okay.

Return our van safe.

Ooh, that was a...

That was a nerve jangler.

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I think, you know what I'm going to do?

I think I'm going to read another little bit of fan mail in order to self-soothe a little.

Hmm, let's see.

Mmm.

Riffling, riffling, riffling, riffling.

Let's do this one.

Hi, Terry.

I hope you're doing well.

I met you once while you were on ayahuasca several years ago, and you told me about how you view Malachi as your own biological son, who you gave birth birth to.

I think that is so sweet as a pet owner.

Love you and miss you dearly.

Luca and Cat Mark, I don't remember them.

I don't remember anything about that hazy 48 hours.

No, I don't.

No, I don't think of you as a biological son, Malachi.

Didn't you hear the letter I was on ayahuasca?

I was out of my mind.

I was vomiting and shitting into a bucket in a tent with a shaman who just so happens to live in Riverside, California.

Don't let it go to your head, Malachi.

If you're not careful, I'll put you back in the dumpster from whence you came.

Oh, that quieted you.

Dumpster.

Threat of a dumpster always shuts you up.

Radio Rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenderfoot TV.

Lead producer is Eric Quintana.

Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright.

Hosted by Rain Wilson as his character, Terry Carnation.

Written and produced by Meredith Steadman.

Additional writing by Mark Lachlan.

Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan.

Associate producer is Jajah Muhammad.

Editing by Eric Quintana, Mike Rooney, Steven Perez, and Meredith Stedman.

Sound design by Cooper Skinner, with additional sound design by Steven Perez and April Ruha.

Mix and Master by Cooper Skinner, with additional mixing by Steven Perez and Devin Johnson.

Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set, with additional score by Jay Ragsdale.

Video editing by Dylan Harrington.

Cover artwork by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan.

Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTI, the Nord Group, Station 16, Beck Media and Marketing, and the team at Odyssey.

If you have a Radio Rental story that you'd like to share, please email us at yourscarystory at gmail.com or contact us via the form on our website, radio rentalusa.com.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Radio Rental.

You can also follow the illustrious Terry Carnation on social media.

Just search at Terry Carnation.

On behalf of the Radio Rental store, we'd love it if you'd subscribe, rate, and review.

Thanks for listening.

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