Episode 43

You're listening to a Tenderfoot TV podcast.

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Hate waiting a week for the next episode of Radio Rental?

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.

Oh.

Hello, you.

Just in time for the big show.

Malachi here has been attempting to hack up this hair ball all day.

It's been positively thrilling, as you can imagine.

Malachi and the void were just playing fetch, which is annoying enough as it is.

And then Malachi just, well, he started retching everywhere.

Listen.

Just listen.

Listen to what I've been putting up with all day.

Listen to this.

Will you listen?

Ugh.

Makes me sick.

No, no, no, not.

Not over there, Malachi.

Those are my crystals.

Don't hack on my crystals.

How many times do I have to tell you I just aligned them?

Took me like an hour.

Well, I'm sure you would want to watch and listen to something a little bit more scary and a little less hairy than all this.

So I'm going to put a little tape on for you.

Here we go.

Dig in to this.

For the past seven or eight months, I've been working as a bus driver in the city that I live in, in Brighton.

Ever since I was a kid, I kind of always wanted to have a go at driving a bus or just something big like a lorry.

I know it's a bit sad, but it's just kind of always interested me.

So I thought I'll apply.

I went through all the training and within a month or so I was a fully qualified bus driver and been driving in service ever since and it's great.

I really enjoy it.

Driving a bus through the city at night is just a cool feeling.

You're sort of in the safety of your cab and it's warm and comfortable and you're sort of just observing the city.

Especially on a Friday night or a Saturday night, you're just kind of watching all the pub goers get drunk and stumble around and you're sort of in your little safe haven.

I only work the night shifts now, so it's about four o'clock in the afternoon to about one o'clock in the morning.

The last few hours of the night usually are pretty dead.

You run the whole route, sometimes not even picking up one person.

You might take a few people home from the pub or something.

Or if there's an event on, it gets quite busy, but usually it's just you and the bus driving the route, no one getting on which is quite nice you're effectively just going for a drive through the city in your bus

on this particular night i was scheduled to finish in a place called rottingdeen which is about half an hour from the bus depot so i was scheduled to finish there and then out of service run back to the depot and that's the end of my shift

I get to the last stop, there's about three people on board, they all get off.

Switch the sign over to say not in service.

Have a quick look around the bus.

Walk up and down the bottom deck and the top deck and just make sure no one's on.

You don't want to drive all the way back to the depot and then find that someone's fallen asleep and you've just taken them all the way back, the other end of the city.

So have a quick look around.

No one's there.

Great.

Get back in the cab, turn off all the interior lights, just to sort of help everyone see that it's not a bus that's in service.

and I make my way back to the depot

and about five minutes after driving the stop request bell goes

and it's an old bus it's quite an old analog bell

and I think

Shit I must have left someone upstairs or something I mean you have a mirror you can see the whole lower deck but upstairs you just have a camera and it's kind of hard to see sometimes if someone's at the back or something

so i pulled over and put the lights back on head upstairs expecting to sort of be like i'm so sorry i didn't realize someone was on but i get upstairs and

no one's there

so i have a good look downstairs again no one's there

i kind of thought okay that's a bit weird Must be just a, you know, fluke or something.

Or, you know, maybe I imagined it, you know, it's just kind of weird.

I got back in the cab

drove off again

about 30 seconds go by and it happens again

what's going on

when I pull over and have a look there's no bell nothing goes it stays quiet and then I start driving again and the bell goes

Maybe it's just some kids have like hidden or something upstairs and they're just trying to freak me out.

Maybe they were hiding under the seats or something.

Your mind starts to try and make up a reason.

So I pull over again, get out of the cab, have a good look around this time, literally walk up and down the bus, looking at every seat under the seats, go upstairs, do the same thing,

but no one's there.

So I'm kind of a bit freaked out now.

I'm sort of thinking, what is going on?

What is causing these bells to go off?

It's just a bit weird.

But what can I do?

I've had a look around, no one's there.

So I get back in the cab, drive off again for the third time.

And it just starts going again.

The bell's going ding, ding, ding, ding.

It just felt very human the way it was going off.

The way a kid might press it if they're just having fun, you know, they've found out that this bell makes a noise and they just start playing with it.

What the fuck is going on?

You kind of start talking to yourself almost to like calm yourself down.

I'm sort of just saying things like, oh yeah, very funny, you know, there's a ghost on my bus.

And then I start kind of playing with it and I say, if anyone's there, ring the bell twice.

The bell goes twice.

That's when my hairs kind of start standing up.

And I say it again.

I say, if anyone's there, ring three times.

And it goes, ding, ding, ding.

I'm really freaking out.

I don't stop because I know I've had a good look around.

I know no one's there.

All I'm doing now is just driving back to the depot to get rid of this bus and go home.

I'm just kind of freaking out.

And then it stops for a bit.

About 10 minutes go by with nothing.

All of a sudden, simultaneously,

the lights in the bus come on and the bell starts going crazy this time.

Repeatedly being pressed over and over again like someone's just going mad on that button, just pressing it harder and harder and faster and faster.

And I'm just freaking out.

I'm trying to get back.

I'm not going to stop again.

There's no point.

I just think I need to get back.

Like, this is just stupid.

I'm freaking myself out.

Looking in the mirror, half expecting to see someone or something just because i'm in that state of mind where you're scared

but then it stops

get back to the depot and kind of make a joke to all the marshals saying oh this bus is haunted by the way the bell's been going off on its own

they just want to clean the bus up and get it parked up for the night they don't really care

But the thing we have of all the buses is

they all have a name on the front of them.

Typically, it's someone that's important to the city important to the company or important to buses in general

I took note of the name on the front of this one it was Magnus Volks

okay I'm gonna google that name just to see what's going on there who is this guy

as I'm walking home I searched the name up on my phone Turns out this guy was an electrician in Brighton and he did a lot of work for the city

the most notable thing he'd done was develop the first electric railway station in Brighton named Volks railway station, obviously named after him, Magnus Volks.

And it wasn't until then that it all clicked in my head and I realised that when the bell started going crazy was exactly at the point I was driving directly past Volks railway station.

That's when I got quite truly scared.

Up until that point, I could have put it down to just coincidence.

I might have even forgotten about it, just thought it was some weird thing that happened, but now there's some kind of story that makes some kind of sense here.

It could have been any other bus at any other point in the city.

But no, it's the Magnus Volks bus

going past the Magnus Volks railway station.

when all the lights come on and the bell starts lighting up and going completely crazy.

I'm quite a rational person.

I wouldn't like to jump to conclusions and say it's anything supernatural or whatever it may be.

To me this is too much of a correlation.

The case of too many things lining up for it to be written off.

As stupid as it sounds, I almost believe that the ghost of Magnus Volks was somehow or another on the bus at that time with me.

Maybe him pressing the bells and playing with the electronics was his kind of way of, I don't know, saying hi, whatever it is.

I haven't been in that bus since.

Next time I happen to be in it,

maybe I'll just pay close attention when I'm driving past that railway station.

Oh,

oh god, I think it's the big one.

Oh,

oh, oh, yes, there it is.

There it is.

Oh,

there it is, all over my shoe.

All over my skecher.

Gotta love that.

Okay, how about an ad break?

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All right, so there's been a development.

Malachi's,

shall we say, offering has begun to move.

It is moving.

It has started moving.

It has movement.

Oh, look, it's revolting.

It's like...

It's like the blob.

It actually looks kind of...

like a blobfish.

Have you ever seen those pictures floating around the internet?

Blobfish, slimy little guys guys with a little coy smile.

They're kind of cute.

I wonder if you can get a pet blobfish.

Oh, look at me now, getting all attached.

Trauma bonding.

Okay,

I'm going to clean up this little moving blob.

And how about you?

You, lucky you, get to watch another tape.

Roll the tape.

I was in college in Chicago.

I had to take an elective.

A friend of mine, who was also my roommate at the time, had taken this archaeology class.

He had loved it.

The teacher was really cool, really laid-back, and a good teacher.

And so he recommended that to me.

And so I took that.

This archaeology course was offering a study abroad, and it was in the Bahamas.

Took place on an island called San San Salvador, which is very small, I think 13 miles long, one or two miles wide, has maybe 900 people on it.

We were staying in a converted naval base.

We were shown around by this local woman who lived near there.

She was giving us kind of the tour.

She was like, okay, here's where you will sleep.

Here's what they will sleep.

Here's the showers.

Here's where you can hang up your laundry.

This is the rec room.

If you see a Lacaan, put salt around the door so they can't get in.

She just kind of threw that in.

The Lacaans were the original native people to the Bahamas.

The first people that Columbus encountered.

Unsurprisingly, the lore is that their spirits are not very happy.

If you see a Lacaan spirit, put salt around the door door to protect yourself.

The year before I went, my roommate at the time had gone.

That year it was just him, two professors, and the TA, the teacher's assistant.

The site that we were working on was called Polly Hill, and it was a plantation.

The TA, the two professors, and my former roommate were all spread out in different corners of the plantation.

The TA was by herself in building four, the one that turned out to be a residence.

She said that she could hear buckets of water because the well was up near there.

And she said she felt like she was being watched in that building.

She said it got so acute that she finally said, I'm just cleaning up.

And then she stopped having that feeling.

The TA was somewhere else by herself.

My roommate told me he heard screaming.

And so he, hacking with a machete, gets there and the TA is balled up and screaming.

Just beside herself, lost.

It felt like she wasn't present.

She couldn't tell where she was or whatever for a while.

He had to like shake her for a while to get her to come back.

Once she was calmed down and back in control of herself, he asked, what happened?

What was going on?

She said that she had been working in that area, felt like she had been being watched, suddenly started to

see people,

ghosts of the enslaved people from this plantation from years and years before.

And they had been standing around her in a circle.

They kept pointing at her and saying, one of her, one of her, one of her, over and over like that.

That's when she started screaming.

My roommate said that he and the TA started calling that area the witching hole.

My roommate had told me that story months before I went.

Fast forward a year, we're on the trip.

We're having a blast.

We're in the Bahamas, we're college kids, you know, we're 22, whatever.

It's a dream vacation, and we get to do cool work while we're there.

The first time we got to Polly Hill, which was the plantation we were working on, I felt like weirdly drawn to a specific location.

I followed it a little bit, but I just had this bad feeling, so I didn't follow it anymore.

It was a palpable feeling, but I didn't really put too much stock in it.

We went back and forth to to the plantation for a couple of weeks.

My friend, who had identified Building 4 as a residence, she also reported hearing water buckets like the professor had done the year before.

She said she could hear it right up where the well was.

One of the nights, Building 4 girl and I were down on the beach at like 2 a.m.

Over her shoulder, I thought I saw some shadow walking down the beach toward us.

It was like a black, shifting shadow of a person with nothing casting it, maybe 150 yards away.

I didn't want her to think I was crazy and I didn't want to spook her, so I was just like, hey, let's go to bed.

Didn't sleep great that night.

The next day, we were at the plantation.

We were working on building eight,

and I had to go to the bathroom.

I took my machete, like you do,

hacked my way downhill.

I remember it feeling very quiet.

I started to feel like I was being watched.

Felt like I was being watched specifically by someone behind me and to my right, and ahead of me, a little farther away, to the left.

And I looked and I didn't see anyone.

I listened and I didn't hear anyone.

I walked away from both of these things watching me.

The feeling sort of dissipated a little bit and so I went to the bathroom.

As I was finished,

I got up and looked straight ahead of myself.

There was a a short elderly man standing there

and he had this amazing hair

it was like Einstein's hair

I kind of just stared at him for a while and he just stared at me

I felt that weird pull again to that location this time it was downhill and to the left

I had this distinct impression that the man

did not want me to go down there.

After I don't know how long of staring at each other, I just said,

Hi,

we're just here to help.

We're trying to figure out what happened here.

And then he nodded.

I blinked and they were gone.

Ran as best I could back to Building 8.

The TA was there.

She said, Oh my god, are you okay?

I just saw

something.

It was this short old man.

And then she cut me off.

With Einstein hair?

Yeah.

I've seen him too.

Where were you?

And I told her, and she goes,

oh, that's the witching hole.

Saying the detail of the man I had seen, the exact way I would have phrased it, before I said it, I don't know how to explain that.

You just made this real.

What I think maybe is going on is that there are spirits there, and some of them are mad, and some of them aren't.

I happened to be lucky and meet the nice ones, and the TA wasn't.

I'm not a religious person.

I don't believe in an afterlife.

I do think probably there are scientific things that we don't understand, and I think maybe consciousness might leave an imprint or something.

I I think there's probably an explanation for everything.

We just don't know it.

Prior to this happening, I was, I think, dabbling in an open mind about tarot and psychic powers and spirits and stuff like that.

And I think instead of opening my mind to the possibilities, this kind of closed my mind from wanting to know more.

It kind of scared me from looking into it any further.

I think for some people, this experience would have driven them into ghost hunting, or I'm gonna go to the old asylum or the old hospital and look for spirits.

You know, I know it's real, it's happened to me once before, and I could find it again.

For me, I was like, that's good, that's enough.

I still feel a desire to go back to San Salvador and go back to Polly Hill and check it out.

I feel very curious.

I want to know what was down there,

but I also equally know that it's bad.

Okay, so

I hope you enjoyed that.

Listen, over here, things are really,

really escalating.

This hairball entity has started growing.

I think he's picking up the trash all over the floor.

And I think it's making him stronger.

Don't judge.

I know I have some trash on the floor.

What do you expect?

You know, I'm a professional, but I'm also the keeper of a cat, a void, a terrifying demon child.

I've got my hands full over here at Radio Rental.

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You know what?

Now that I watch him,

I might keep this blob around.

Maybe he'll act as some kind of supernatural Roomba.

No, you missed a spot.

Right over there.

By the iced tea bottle.

And the gum wrapper.

And the cigarette butt.

Kids don't smoke.

Oh, look at that.

I couldn't reach those crumbs under the radiator before.

Keep going.

Keep going.

Over to the corner.

Wait, no, not there.

Malachi, stay away from.

It's got Malachi.

Just cut Malachi by the tail.

I'll be right back.

Malako, let go!

Let go, I say!

Oh, let go!

Malakai!

Hand me that broom!

Let's push it into the void!

Get into the void!

There's just far too many supernatural entities in this video store!

Oh!

Malakai, are you okay?

Stay away.

Oh, I've had it up to here with all the...

Supernatural shenanigans.

Oh, I need a bit of a break.

These last few weeks with you, well, they've been action-packed and, frankly, exhausting.

My sketchers have been ruined.

I'm taking a hiatus.

But I hope to see you all very soon, before too long, here at Radio Rental.

All for now and for a little while from now.

I love you all.

Goodbye.

Malachi,

pumpkin spice latte?

Not you, Susie.

You're too young for caffeine.

I'll get you a hot chocolate.

No whip.

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

Lead producer 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.

Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan.

Associate producer is Jajah Muhammad.

Editing by Eric Quintana, Mike Rooney, Sean Nerni, 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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