Episode 44

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

Listener discretion is advised.

Oh, oh my God, oh my god.

Hello, hello, hello, come in, come in, come in, come in.

Make yourself at home.

Can I get you anything?

A pair of slippers?

Would you like my slippers?

Here, have my slippers.

Take my slippers, please.

Take them.

I insist.

Wait, wait, wait.

Terry, don't sound too desperate.

Remember last time?

Oh, okay.

Cool, cool, cool, cool.

So cool.

Hi, how's it going?

You've come to Radio Rental, a video store filled with tapes of real-life horror stories told by real-life people.

I'm Terry Carnation,

owner of this this magnificent video emporium and the host of Radio Rental.

Oh, oh, wait, have you been here before?

We have so many people coming through here.

I wouldn't remember.

Oh, it's been such a packed summer, full of fun in the sun, and popsicles, and Frozé, and

Barbenheimer, and

who am I kidding?

I've been stuck in here all alone, sweating all summer long.

Well,

not alone exactly.

Actually, alone time would have been preferable.

These misfits.

You see, last time I saw you, I was having some interdimensional issues with this void that opened up in the corner of my store.

Oh, yeah, my niece got dropped off here one day with no note, no return address.

I tried handing her to an Amazon courier.

That didn't go over so well.

So, everyone, say hi to Susie again.

Susie,

where did you get that scythe?

Can we, um, you know what?

Never mind.

I guess all this to say, I'm very excited to see you.

Not that I've been planning our reunion for months or anything.

No.

No, because that would be off-putting.

Anyway, this installment of Radio Rental is going to be a good one.

A real banger, as the kids say.

After all, October is here.

Tis the season.

I guess you could say I'm in my Halloween era.

So, without further ado, tape number one.

The click of the VCR.

Oh, God, that feels good.

I had

always

been a hunter.

The hobby is pretty expensive.

I was always looking for avenues to hunt on a budget.

I specifically liked to hunt boar.

Boar are an issue in the United States where they produce at a rate that the Department of Fish and Wildlife can't keep up with.

They eat up crops.

They destroy the wildlife.

New Mexico and Texas both allow the hunting of boar with night vision.

I had been going down the rabbit hole researching the base entry scope that I could buy that I could go and enjoy a night of hunting with night optics.

I had found a scope for a good price.

I wanted to dip my toes into that facet of hunting.

I was initially supposed to go on that hunt with other people.

You're supposed to go on them with other people.

You'll have people that are all set to go, that flake out at the last second.

There was a little of that happening.

I didn't want to be one to back down from a hunt just because I didn't have other people there to hold my hand.

The area that I go hunting, my friends and I enjoyed a lot of leeway with because the public lands.

A lot of lands in Texas are bought up and owned.

So it was an area that we could enjoy that not a lot of people had access to.

Loaded up my truck, drove out to the spot, managed to use a game trail to get to a spot that I had in mind.

I set myself up a perch.

that I could be in for a prolonged period of time.

Got my gear set up,

started to find landmarks at different yardages, one at 25, 50, sighting in the area in increments of 25 yards.

The area was surprisingly still.

Not a lot of things were making noise.

I'd been out in that area before.

Even at night time,

there's still a lot of wildlife that's up and active.

A lot of things are nocturnal.

There are a lot of things that wake up at night.

I had my back propped up against a tree for comfort.

After a couple hours of that position,

I really wanted to do something.

There was

another area that wasn't exactly better or worse than the spot that I was currently in.

Picked up my gear and moved.

It gave me something to do at that moment.

Maybe I'd see something.

Thought maybe if I set up maybe I'd get another angle.

As I set up, I'm glassing the area, setting up new landmarks.

I had noticed

something

moving.

I could see it in the brush.

Assumed I was looking at a black bear.

It was moving dominantly on their hind legs,

but still using their front legs to get through foliage.

I thought that it was interesting that he was moving in the direction that I had just left.

Straight towards my previous spot.

He got to the spot that I was just at

and the tree that I was just propped up against.

I noticed as he got upright,

it wasn't a bear at all.

It was a person.

This person was transfixed with the area that I had just left.

He is running his hands up and down the tree, examining the bark.

He was smelling the area that I at.

He moved like an animal.

He wasn't moving like a person.

I could see his form and as I adjusted my optics to get a better look at him, I saw that he wasn't clothed.

He didn't have anything to protect him from getting through the foliage that he was just crawling around through.

He was naked head to toe.

Once he had gotten done getting the information that he wanted out of that tree,

he squatted down and put his palms between his feet

and aimed his head straight up the way that you would imagine a dog or a coyote howls.

It's at that moment I heard a voice call out

from his direction

a voice that I would never imagine to come from that frame I thought that I was looking at an adult age man but the voice that came from that person was a distinctly female voice

help

I'm lost

is anyone there

please

Everything was rushing through my brain.

I felt petrified and confused in the strongest senses of the word.

I allow a little bit of time.

I try to think about what I should do next.

I'm trying to understand whether this person is lost.

Before I can really get an action out of me, they call out again,

Help!

I'm hurt.

I can't walk.

Can somebody help me?

That's when everything clicked into me.

This person didn't need help.

This person could walk.

And they were moving through the brush and the foliage better than I could.

This person is trying to trick me.

What this person is saying isn't true.

This person is trying to get me to go to where they're at.

I

start to get all my gear together frantically.

Really needed to get my backpack on and I needed to get my rifle back up.

I needed to keep my eyes on this person that I know that I can't trust.

I bring my rifle up

and I get my eyes behind the optic.

I see that this person is still in that position,

but their head is pointed in my direction.

I got that distinct feeling that we were making eye contact.

I could see their cheekbones, I could see their jaw, I could see their teeth.

All of the details that I would need to see a wide smile across a person's face.

Like someone just got a punchline to a joke.

At that point, I knew

this person was looking for me.

This person now had a good idea of where I was.

They start to take these long strides towards me.

That was all I needed.

I was freaking out.

Whatever was going to happen next didn't feel like it was going to be good for me.

I discharged my rifle and I sent a round sailing over his head.

A normal person would run away.

Be frightened in some way, shape, or form, but he wasn't.

He was still transfixed on me.

The gunshot that just went off over his head hadn't deterred him.

I have no issues with pointing my crosshairs directly on him.

We stood there staring at each other for a long time.

It felt like an eternity.

I was prepared to let that trigger touch off if he continued to come into my direction.

Almost like a jump scare out of a horror movie.

Something had clicked in his head.

He bolted to my left.

I could not keep him in my scope.

I was really struggling.

Brush and trees are getting in between he and I.

I'm only getting flickers of the white of his heat signature through the tree line.

I wanted to let him know, hey, I still see you.

So I sent another round into the tree line after him, still very high

in his direction.

I wanted to hear the branches crack.

I wanted him to know that I know where you're going.

I became very aware that the gear that I had on me was not set up to get in a fight with somebody.

I really wanted a fresh magazine inside of my gun because it only carries five rounds.

I was fumbling around looking for a fresh one and as I dropped the one that was in the weapon, it hit the ground.

I didn't even bother looking for it.

He was only getting deeper and deeper into the trees, opposite of the direction that I needed to go.

I didn't want him to regroup.

I didn't want him to get his confidence back.

I decided that this was a good opportunity for me to get out of there.

I wanted to get to my truck and I wanted to leave.

Start to get all my gear together frantically.

All of my movements aren't nearly as adept as they usually are.

There's no dexterity to what I'm doing.

I'm sure I left things behind, but I didn't care.

I just really needed to get my backpack on.

I start running back to my truck as fast as I can,

and I start to hear him.

He starts to give off this awful scream,

really just wailing into the night.

He's not really saying anything.

He's not calling out to me.

Sounded like if you blended a laugh and a cry together.

The sound must have been playing tricks because I couldn't tell if it was coming from left, if it was coming from right.

I could swear that it was coming in front of me.

15 minutes to get to where I was at, but I made my way back to the truck in half that time.

Seeing that truck was probably one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen.

I got the keys and the ignition and I backed up and drove back the way that I came as fast as I could.

I remember feeling frightened that whole time.

This awful feeling of anxiety.

It wasn't until my truck got back onto the freeway and I was speeding back towards my house that I got any sense of security.

That fight-or-flight reflex,

it's a hell of a drug.

It was one of my go-to campfire stories for a very long time until my nephew had heard the story.

And he started telling me about Wendigos and rakes and things like that.

I think it frightened him that I had had never heard of any of that.

And I think it frightened him that when I was telling him that story, we were camping.

The area that we were camped out that night was the same woods.

He refused to stay at that campsite that night.

His mom was real upset with me because she had to take him back home.

He would not stay out in that campsite that night.

Ooh, whoa.

That was creepy.

Extra creepy.

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

Unless, of course, you subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus.

In that case, no ads for you.

Except what I'm saying right now.

Which is, I suppose, kind of an ad when you think about it.

Let's add adjacent.

Add jacent.

In that case, I guess I owe you some money.

Well, I gave you my slippers after all, so we'll just call it even.

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Bless her, she played along.

We chatted just long enough for him to leave.

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

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Well, welcome back.

Off to a good start, yes?

Hmm?

Yes?

Hmm?

Yes?

Please say yes.

Yes.

Oh, God, not you, Susie.

Ugh.

Ugh.

Give me the creeps.

How many times must we have this talk?

No sneaking up on Uncle Terry.

No hiding in cabinets.

No shaving Malachi.

No.

Wait, Where'd you go?

Where did you...

100%.

She's hiding in a cabinet again.

I swear to God.

Is she in my spice rack?

Don't knock over my oregano, Susie.

I use that.

A lot.

Yes, I know it's in a baggie.

And it's not actually oregano, if you know what I mean.

Wink wink.

Um.

It's

parsley.

Well, let's escape from this horror to the next.

Another tape.

Here we go.

I was about 13 years old.

Me and my three best friends were at my friend's house.

It was me, Macy, Becca, and Stephanie.

When the four of us were together, it felt like we were invincible.

It felt like no one could touch us.

It felt like we could take over the world together.

It was a weekend.

It was late at night.

We spent the night dressing up ridiculously, chatting on AIM, watching terrible movies, talking to boys on the phone, doing prank calls to the local pizza store.

We got really bored at one point.

We decided to ask my friend's parents if we could go on a walk up to the gas station.

That's pretty much the only thing to do in her neighborhood.

We were just going to walk up to the gas station and get a soda, a snack.

We ventured out into the night.

The moon is super bright.

Super chilly outside.

We're all decked out and all black because we're little goth girls wearing the most ridiculous clothes.

We see a tractor crossing sign on the side of the road like you see out in the country.

We were messing with it trying to see if we could take it out of the ground just being 13 year old kids.

We're looking at the bottom of this tractor sign.

We are trying to figure out how we can get it out of the ground.

All of a sudden we hear a voice say,

Hey guys, do you want to go to a party?

It came from behind us, so we all turned around.

We saw this figure standing there.

The tone of its voice didn't have any inflection, didn't have any emotion, didn't feel like a person.

He had a hoodie on.

Where his face should be was literally nothing.

It was just black.

Like a big black circle.

We weren't near anybody's houses.

No one should have been in the road except for us.

It was jarring to hear and see someone else behind us.

We saw that he was carrying a baseball bat.

I felt my chest tighten up and immediately thought something is not right.

The four of us eyed each other,

made sure that we were all on the same page.

One of my friends goes,

no, we don't want to go to a fucking party.

He proceeded to say, are you sure?

And he just kept saying,

hey guys, do you want to go to a party?

Do you want to go to a party?

Are you sure?

Do you guys want to do a party?

Do you guys want to go to a party?

Do you guys want to go to a party?

Over and over again.

We started backing away,

walking slowly, creeped out.

Unfortunately, we started backing away in the opposite direction of my friend's house.

He just kept following us,

saying over and over again, hey guys, do you want to go to a party?

We

just kept saying, no, we don't want to go to a party.

Then we just took off running.

He just kept following us,

dragging this bat.

along the road

the worst sound that you could possibly

We didn't know why anybody would have a bat out in the middle of the road at night.

While we were running, we would look behind us and he would still be there, but he was walking.

Just like in a horror movie where the victim is running and you turn around and the killer is keeping pace with you.

We were kind of talking amongst each other.

What the hell is happening?

Who is that?

Do we know that person?

My friends are talking back and forth, trying to figure out what our options are.

Do we try to run all the way to the gas station?

The gas station was still about a mile away.

Do we need to hide?

We knew that turning around and trying to run past him would probably not be the smartest thing to do.

We saw an abandoned house that had these huge grown-up bushes in front of it.

We decided we would jump behind the bushes and we would try to hide.

There was nowhere else for us to go.

We jumped behind the bushes.

We just waited to see if maybe he would go away.

if he was still gonna try to find us.

We hear the back dragging on the road for a long time, but then

it's silent.

We thought maybe he was waiting us out.

We thought maybe he had turned around.

We thought maybe he gave up.

I'm holding Macy's hand.

She's trying to calm me down.

Stephanie and Becca,

they are the ones trying to figure out Do we jump out?

Do we try to circle around?

What is the plan?

We were kind of all huddled together, trying to stay as close as possible, trying to stay silent and trying not to freak out.

Then we just hear the figure on the other side of the bushes say,

You stupid girls don't think I know where you are.

And then he started laughing.

But there was no emotion in his laugh.

It felt very hollow.

We all just got really silent and we waited for a while.

It felt like an hour went by.

Then we decided we would jump out of the bushes

and we would try to fight him.

He could probably not take all four of us.

If we tried to overpower him, we could take the baseball bat from him.

We were ready to fight.

We were ready to try to get that bat away from him and maybe possibly get hurt in the process.

It was going to be life or death.

And we were ready to go down together.

So we decided to jump out.

We saw no one.

There was no figure in the road.

No sign of anyone following us or anyone there.

No noises.

Nothing.

We just ran all the way back to Macy's house.

We ran up the stairs, trying to be as quiet as possible.

Ran up to her room.

Shut the door.

We sat quiet for a really long time.

And then one of my friends says,

did that really just happen?

We were pretty much quiet for the rest of the night.

We would bring it up to each other from time to time, trying to make sure that all of us remember,

to make sure that we weren't crazy.

To make sure that this actually did happen to us.

It wasn't just this weird, made-up thing.

Me and my friend Macy still talk about it to this day.

When people say, what's the scariest thing that's ever happened to you?

I tell them the story.

There was a brief period after this, maybe a few years after, where I started going down the rabbit hole of things like legends, like the Mothman, and shadow people and weird stuff like that.

I just get really creeped out because I don't have an explanation for it and I kind of just stop trying to figure out what a shadow figure is.

We have not seen anything like that again.

We've never seen any signs of whatever that figure or that shadow person is.

We've never heard any other stories about it.

I'm not sure if it was just a moment in time, that we were just the lucky ones to encounter it that night, or if there's other stories that maybe people just haven't told yet.

I know it wasn't a real person.

I know it was something supernatural and something

not human.

Yeesh.

Let's take a break.

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Oh, what fun!

Ha ha!

Oh, dude, we have fun, don't we?

We really have fun.

Ha ha!

Ha ha!

We're just like a couple of old college pals, a couple of bedfellows.

No, Malachi, it's a turn of phrase.

You know I sleep alone, unfortunately.

All right, all right.

You can hop up tonight.

We can snuggle.

Well, that's our show today, and I'm so pleased you could be with me.

I mean, us here at Radio Rental.

We've got some incredible tapes to share with you this go-round.

All real, all scary, all the time.

I'll see you next week, my beloved.

Was that too much?

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 Albrey.

Posted by Rain Wilson as his character, Terry Carnation.

Written and produced by Meredith Stedman.

Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan.

Associate producer is Jajah Muhammad.

Editing by Eric Quintana, Mike Rooney, Sean Nerny, and Sidney Evans.

Additional writing by Mark Lachlan.

Sound design, mix, and master by Cooper Skinner.

Additional sound design and mixing by Devin Johnson.

Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set.

Video editing by Dylan Harrington.

Cover artwork by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan.

Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, the Nord Group, Station 16, Beck Media and Marketing, and the team at Cadence 13.

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, radiorentalusa.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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