Episode 57

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Subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus to get early access to episodes, ad-free listening, and bonus scary stories.

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The following podcast includes scary stories with content that could be triggering to some listeners.

Listener discretion is advised.

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.

No, we don't sell radios.

No,

we don't rent radios.

Yes, I know, I know.

It's very confusing.

I don't know what else to tell you.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Well, yep, nope.

Of course I understand.

Okay, can...

Okay, can you just hold on for one second, please?

Just hold on.

Hello, Terry Carnation here.

Welcome into Radio Rental.

I'll be with you in just a minute.

I'm just dealing with a...

A difficult customer on the phone right now.

A real entitled douche.

Uh, what was that?

No, I said I was talking to a real

amuse bouche.

Because this is just the beginning of my customer service that I'm

doing.

Oh, hey,

I can't hear you very well breaking up.

Static.

I'm going through a tunnel and it's not.

I can't hear it.

It's no use.

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Call me back.

I'm going through over the hills.

Into the hills.

Hello, hello.

Oh, thank God that's over.

Sorry about that.

The joys of being a small business owner.

Now, I'm sure you're here to check out one of our scary, scary tapes.

One from our special collection.

Hmm?

Let me just grab the box.

I had to store it up high because Malachi confused it with his litter box last week.

Made quite a mess of things.

At least I hope he was confused and it wasn't some sort of act of rebellion.

Well, if you want my attention, Malachi, there are healthier, less shitty ways of getting it.

Pun intended.

Oh, oh, this one looks good.

And, well, it's relatively clean.

I'll pop it in the VCR.

Here we go.

As a 10-year-old,

I just felt danger.

Felt fear.

Felt like

there really were monsters in this world.

They weren't just under your bed and they weren't just in your mind.

I really think that we were in danger.

This would have been 1988

and I was up camping with my parents.

We were just getting ready to go on a camping trip like we had done many, many times before.

We were really outdoorsy family.

We went to one of our favorite lakes.

It was someplace I always had a lot of fun.

It was very dear to my heart.

I had my best friend with me.

My parents let me bring her along because it was my birthday and it was something I wanted to share with my friend.

So it was my father, my mother, my best friend, myself, and our dog Amber.

Amber

was

the most friendly dog.

She loved people.

If somebody came up to us while she was with us, she would immediately run over and just run around their legs and just be so happy and want to give them kisses.

Absolutely loved people.

We arrive at the trailhead.

We put on our packs, we get everything together, and we're going to start our hike in.

The lake itself was about a four-mile hike in.

It was a really nice trail, well maintained, so it wasn't a strenuous hike.

It was something we could just really enjoy and it was very casual.

Happy to be outdoors.

It was a beautiful day.

The sun was out.

The birds were singing.

It was a gorgeous time to be out.

We get a couple miles in.

My friend and I decided to hike a bit ahead of my parents and our dog was with us.

She was bounding up doing what golden receivers do.

She got ahead of us a little ways on the trail when she stopped.

She dead stopped.

She started to growl a little bit, and you don't ever hear her growl.

She wasn't a growly dog.

And her hackles came up.

She had never acted like that before.

This was not her normal.

I didn't see her growl at things.

I didn't see her hackles up.

I had never seen her bark or snarl or snap at anybody.

Nothing like that had ever happened before.

It immediately made my friend and I stop and we were just waiting to see what was going on.

I thought maybe she had seen something off trail.

I wouldn't think it would be something as simple as a squirrel or a chipmunk.

Could have been something as big as a bear.

It made us nervous enough that we decided to walk back to my parents and to let my dad know that Amber had seen something up on the trail and she was growling.

He went up to her to see if he could see anything.

My dad had his sidearm.

He was prepared to protect us.

But when he got up there with her, he didn't see anything.

They came back and he said, well, maybe it was just something off trail.

Maybe a deer, something that startled her.

As we started to walk on, she went back to being her normal self.

It was pretty uneventful for the next couple miles.

We get to the end of the trail and we're there at the lake.

My friend and I decided to pick the best spot to camp.

Shaded tree just above the water.

It was gorgeous.

After we had camp set up, my folks went off to fish just down the hill.

My friend and I took off with Amber to walk around to the other side of the lake to go catch some salamanders.

We only made it about a quarter mile when Amber stopped and started to growl.

We stopped and looked around,

and then we heard brush rustling.

Right in front of us, a man walked out of the trees.

And this guy was big.

He was tall, broad-shouldered, but skinny.

Very clean-cut.

He did not look like he was dressed for the outdoors.

He almost looked like he'd come out of church.

We didn't know how to take this in.

We just stood there.

We were trying to process the situation.

And Amber started to bark.

But the guy, he just stood there.

He was just looking at us

and smiling.

It didn't look like a friendly smile.

As my friend and I are standing there, Amber just starts barking and barking and growling.

She did not like this guy,

but he just kept standing there.

Amber's barking got my parents' attention.

They started to walk up from the lake and they

called out to us.

And as we're walking back to camp, my dad met us halfway.

He told us to go all the way back to camp and he was going to go talk to this guy.

I could hear my dad asking the guy if he needed help or was he a fellow camper or did we bother him?

Was he camped and we just couldn't see him?

I mean, my dad was being polite, but I could see my dad was on guard trying to fill out the situation.

The guy just said he was okay, he was camping, didn't mean to disturb us, and walked away.

My dad was thinking this guy is just kind of a yuppie camper.

He does not know much about the outdoors.

But my dad told us that he didn't really like a vibe that was coming off of him and that he was going to keep an eye out.

Amber had stayed by our side.

She was calm, but she just would not stop looking off toward the woods from the direction the guy went.

A while goes by and we're starting to relax and settle in.

We got the campfire going so we can make some dinner.

My friend and I decided it was getting kind of late.

We wanted to go to our tent and read some books and tell each other some scary stories.

Amber followed us over.

She wasn't allowed in the tent, but she laid right in front of the tent.

My parents walked down to the lake to sit, have a beer, and just relax.

They weren't very far away, probably not more than 50 yards away from us.

We were telling stories, we had our flashlights on, we were giggling.

Amber started to growl.

And we hear footsteps coming from the woods behind our tent.

We heard branches rustling,

leaves crunching.

This definitely startled us.

So we turned off our flashlight and we went quiet so we could listen.

And the footsteps stopped right at the edge of the woods behind our tent.

And we heard breathing.

This was heavy breathing.

This was a person breathing

and almost like a grunting sound.

Like somebody was winded.

We just laid there listening.

to try and figure out what we were hearing.

Amber started to bark,

and then we hear the footsteps retreat off into the woods.

It went crashing through the woods.

It wasn't quiet or stealthy.

The barking brought my parents back up from the edge of the lake to see what was going on.

I get out of my tent and I tell them what had just happened.

that we heard footsteps that sounded like somebody was breathing.

I told my dad, I said, I do not think it was an animal.

We weren't really sure what was going on, but we were scared.

I said, you know, what if it is that strange guy that came creeping around?

And my dad said that, yeah,

it very well could be.

He didn't have a really good feeling about this, and he said that we should move camp in the morning.

I'm pretty sure he probably didn't didn't sleep that night.

It was very hard to let my mind rest.

And having my friend there, of course, kids play off each other.

So my friend would say, I mean, what if it's that guy?

What if he's going to murder us?

What if he's trying to kidnap us?

Our 10-year-old brains are just all these what-if scenarios.

We were really worried.

It was not a restful night.

We didn't know.

It was the boogeyman.

Oh,

this story isn't over yet.

We'll continue this tape after the break.

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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And we're back.

I bet you want to check in with our storyteller.

But I'm glad I made you wait.

It only increased the suspense.

Anticipation is the best part of horror.

Okay, okay, okay.

Enough stalling.

I'll resume the tape.

Here we go.

Imagine if the machine just broke right now, or I just played a different tape, like big trouble in little China.

Then you'd all really hate me.

But I'm not going to do that.

No, no, no.

Here we go.

Back to camping.

So, the next morning we get up, we set up the fire, we have some breakfast.

Around lunchtime, we decide we were going for a short hike.

We started to hike around the lake to where this little waterfall was.

It wasn't very far, so we were only gone for maybe an hour

and we came back to camp.

We see that our tents had been opened.

Our sleeping bags had been drug out onto the ground.

One of our coolers was tipped over.

There were drinks and food scattered about.

My dad tells us to hang back with my mom, and he goes into camp to investigate.

He comes back out.

He says we should break camp and hike back to the car and just just go find another spot, decamp for the next couple of days.

I could tell he was not wanting to frighten us, but I heard the urgency in his voice.

It was not an animal that ruined our camp.

We broke camp fast.

Didn't take us more than maybe 30 minutes.

We wanted to go.

We were done.

We were not having fun anymore.

We started our hike back to the car.

We're all very nervous, very anxious.

We were looking over our shoulders.

We were looking off the trail.

As we approached the car,

my dad notices that we have a flat tire.

He bent down to look at the tire.

and he noticed it wasn't just flat.

Somebody had slashed the tire.

He got the spare tire out, got it on.

We took our packs off.

We threw everything in the car.

We weren't even trying to make anything neat.

We all get in the car.

My dad goes to turn it on,

but it wouldn't start.

My dad, he gets out of the car, pops the hood,

and he just says, shit.

Someone had taken the spark plug wires.

wires.

Somebody had tampered with our car.

Somebody did not want our car moving.

My dad

was immediately on guard and on edge.

After a few minutes of just taking a few breaths and clearing his head,

It was decided that my dad would start walking down the road until he could hitch a ride.

There was a town about 10 miles away that would probably have a parts store.

My dad could walk faster than all of us, and it was much more likely that he would be able to hitch a ride if it was just him.

And that's why he left my mom, my friend and I, and Amber there at the car.

Hopefully, someone would pull into the trailhead to help us out.

At least two hours had passed since my dad had left.

Nobody had come to the trailhead.

It was getting really hot.

It was getting later in the day.

We were getting hungry.

We were tired.

So my mom made us some sandwiches and we went to sit under a tree right there by the car.

Amber jumps up and she starts to whimper and growl a little bit.

As we look up, that creepy guy from the day before

is coming down the trail

and he walks up to us and he asks my mom if we needed help, if we were in trouble, if, you know, what he could do.

Definitely emphatic about wanting to help us.

My mom tells him, no,

we're fine.

It is being settled, and that my dad would be back soon.

This creep then says, well, my camp is close.

He is parked just by the lake and asks if we'd like to come back to his camp and wait until my dad returns.

My friend and I are just standing there.

We're looking at my mom.

My mom just tells him no.

We are going to wait here.

Thank you anyway, but we do not need need any help right now.

The guy doesn't like this.

He got really,

really angry.

And he tells my mom that it is not safe out here for her, a pretty lady, and these two young girls.

He was smiling when he said it.

He was watching my mom, but he did glance over to us a couple times.

He made me very uncomfortable.

My mom asserted herself again and just for the third time had said, No,

please leave us alone.

We're okay.

The guy just

stands there, smiles,

kind of puts his hands up and says, okay,

and just turns around and leaves.

Walks back up the trail.

My mom just takes a breath.

She comes over and tells us that we need to stay close to not wander and that we'll be okay.

That my dad will be back soon.

Even though she's doing everything to comfort us, my friend and I are really kind of freaked out and I just keep waiting for my father to come back.

My mom, I could tell that she was shaken up a bit and she had worry on her face.

I know that my mom felt like he had had something to do with this.

He had manufactured this situation in such a way that we would need his help

because I had never seen my mom like that before or heard her talk like that before.

That's what really made me feel as scared as I was.

Not even 30 minutes later, the creepy guy comes back.

He has a slightly younger guy with him.

He had a very stern look on his face.

Very stern, mean look.

The two guys walk up to us.

Amber starts to growl and her hackles go up.

She actually started baring her teeth and I'd never seen this in her.

I'd never seen this big fluffy golden retriever turn into Cujo.

The one we hadn't seen before lifts up his shirt to show us that he had a pistol tucked into his waistband.

The older guy

He tells us that we'd need to go with him

and that they weren't asking this time.

My mom backs up.

We're right behind her.

We're all pressed up against the side of the car.

Without eating her eyes off the guys, she reaches into her belt and pulls out her buoy knife.

My mom said,

no,

we will not be going with them and that they need to leave right now.

The two guys, they didn't even flinch at this, and they said that we will come with them,

or that somebody will get hurt.

As I took a step forward towards my mom, Amber goes from just growling to barking and puts herself between us and them.

She was thrashing her teeth.

She was growling.

There was foam coming from her mouth.

She was not going to let those guys take another step towards us.

Between her and my mom, I was almost in awe.

No matter what was going to happen, my mom and Amber were going to protect us.

I was scared.

My friend, she started crying.

My mom yells that they need to leave now.

And right at that moment, I look over and I hear a car coming in.

It's this truck pulling into the trailhead.

Those guys start to walk away fast and they disappear into the trees.

The truck turned out to be a forest ranger and he had my dad with him.

My dad jumped out of the truck and ran over to us, asking if we were okay, because he had seen the guys as they were pulling in.

The ranger came over and asked who those men were.

My mom told him real quick what had happened.

The ranger immediately then took off to see if he could find these guys.

When my dad came over to us and hugged us, I lost.

I started crying, I started bawling.

I felt so glad he was there.

All the terror of that moment just came washing over me and I was so happy that my dad was there hugging me.

After he knew we were okay, he said that he had gotten the part for the car.

that he had gotten about five miles from town when the ranger picked him up.

My dad had told the ranger that, you know, we were stranded and that we need to get back there.

And so the ranger drove my dad back.

He goes to put the spark plug wires back on the car.

That's when the ranger comes back.

He did not get a plate, but he got the description of the men, their truck, their camper.

And he radioed the local sheriff's office.

He took his little book out and he took our information and he said he would pass everything along that had happened to the sheriff.

So my mom and my dad told the ranger about everything that had happened over the last 24 hours.

Once we got back in the car and we started up the car, we decided we weren't going to camp anymore.

My dad said, instead, let's just drive to the beach and stay in a hotel.

So that's what we did.

It had all been just so scary.

I really do believe that

they had tried to take us.

They were predators.

They felt like monsters.

They were wanting to hurt us.

I don't think I'd ever felt that kind of fear.

I was just so happy my mom was there and that my mom is such a badass.

My mom would have fought to the death for us.

I know she wouldn't have let them take us.

It wasn't until I became a mother that I could understand how my mom felt in that moment.

She is my hero.

Well, that was truly horrific and titillating and scintillating all in one.

But I'm so glad we got to go through that together.

And now it's time for a word from our sponsors.

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I am afraid, dear visitor, you'll need to wait another week for more stories.

Until then, remember.

Think you're going absolutely mental?

Maybe it's just Radio Rental.

57 episodes in and we still don't have a good tagline.

Um,

scares are fundamental down here at Radio Rental.

Want to get scary?

Tune into Terry.

Uh, I don't know.

Down to your last lentil?

Find something more at Radio Rental.

Listen to Radio Rental.

All other podcasts are excremental.

Tired of re-watching Yentil?

Tune into Radio Rental.

Placental.

Is there something I could do with Placental?

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 Stedman.

Additional writing by Mark Lachlan.

Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan.

Associate producer is Jaja Muhammad.

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

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

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.

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other.

When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four-litre jug.

When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

Oh, come on.

They called it truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip.

Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

Whatever.

You were made to outdo your holidays.

We were made to help organize the competition.

Expedia, made to travel.