Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Our two stories today are called Give Them Nightmares
and two Bodies in the Back. My name is Edward, and here it's
a scary story. When my grandpa died, my parents sat me down at
the kitchen table and they told me that one of his requests of the family
was at the house at the end of Vascondillo, the place where most of
my family would take their vacations in the mountains, would be left to as
oldest granddaughter, and that was me. I was seventeen at the time,
and they said that I would need to travel to meet with a notary to
sign some papers about it. I don't think I knew exactly what that meant,
because nothing changed. I didn't move or use a place for anything,
not that I could at that young age anyway, but everyone else kept using
it as if nothing ever happened. After I graduated from college and started looking
around for a place to live, my dad brought up that place that we
had in the mountains and said that I should use it as an airbnb while
I looked for work. It was a great idea. No one had been
there in a few years, mainly from what I thought had been a family
spreading apart little by little, but I didn't know that the reason went a
little deeper and a bit darker than that. The area was an enormous lot
with two units on it. One was a main house with the views of
the hills and a pool in the backyard, while the other section was like
a guesthouse, not completely finished but was still solid, with two small bedrooms
and a bathroom. From what I could tell, the place would only cause
what it took to keep it maintained, with all of the grass and the
bugs that would get inside, spiders sometimes crawling on the walls, something my
grandpa always took care of for myself and our cousins. The pool was antied
when we were gone, and honestly, I thought about filling it in permanently,
not with water, but with dirt and cement. A pool like that
out there was way too cold and it would get dirty right away. It
was my place, anyway, I would have time to decide. I thought
about it and decided to head out there for about a week, and it
was a four hour drive for my parents' house. I would take inventory of
all the things, come up with the list of stuff to fix and then
I would take photos to post it and then have people come and visit.
Plus I really needed the time away. Word spread about my visit, and
it's not like I was hiding it, but I didn't want problems with anybody
from my family. Fortunately, the only call I got was from my aunt,
the cool One, as she asked if Lucy could come with me because
she was going to be off of school and she didn't want her to be
alone at the house. Really, I think she just wanted to get her
away from her high school boyfriend, but that was none of my business,
and I agreed. I went to pick her up and then went to the
store, which we probably got way too much food and snacks for the road
and for the trip, but things were more expensive out there, so we
bought all the stuff and started driving. It was late when we got there.
I remember feeling this sense of dread upon getting out of the car to
open up the gate. It always happened with me with old and dark places.
I would close my eyes and see what they were like during the day,
with laughter and chatter quickly fading. As soon as I opened my eyes
to see the dark, empty places all around me. I thought of Grandpa,
and he would always be waiting for us to get out of the pool,
killing all of the spiders for us and making us his famous tuna sandwiches.
He pulled up to the house and got our flashlights, and Lucy waited
in the car while I went to turn the power on and the property.
Yes, the place had utilities and Wi Fi. It wasn't exactly in the
middle of nowhere, but it sure used to feel that way when I was
growing up with so much green space all around me. Like we did whenever
we got there. We grabbed the brooms, the mops and brought out our
blankets to put over the beds, after giving them a good shake and beating
with the towels that were there. Dust settles even in enclosed spaces, and
never understood why we opened up all of the windows to air out the space.
That was our first mistake. It was almost midnight when we went to
the room to sleep. We still had that quiet agreement about the place,
just like when you were little, the one that said that we didn't want
to sleep alone. You know, when you were little, we would hear
the adults in our family tell ghost stories and make fun of each other for
being scared of the house, something that my grandpa absolutely hated because it scared
us. I could still almost hear him. Don't talk about that, you're
going to give them nightmares. But I remember some of their chatter and the
things they say they would see as they were unloading something from the truck at
night. Why they couldn't finish up the guest house in the back. It
would creep me out when I was growing up. Once in the room,
we had a short conversation going something about her boyfriend and advice that Lucy's friends
had given her about one of those high school issues, you know, a
simple problem that turned big just for not being able to communicate properly. Eventually
I heard her take a deep sigh, and then dead silence filled the room.
Suddenly I heard a thought, a loud one coming from the kitchen area
of the house, the one that faced the tree line to see the birds
during the day, but only showed a pit of darkness that night lights every
once in a while were visible from there. For what my grandpa used to
say, they were fireflies, and he had promised to take us to see
them up close so that we'd stop being afraid of them. But never did.
My body went tense immediately, and I swear even my ears got more
powerful right away, being able to hear the beating of my own heart that
I desperately wanted to shut up so that I could listen to any other noises.
There was no one else in that house. My only explanation was that
it was an animal, a raccoon, or something opening up a window.
The windows had forgotten to close them right before going to bed, and like
I said, that's what I think started this whole thing. I knew I
would have to close everything. And I looked over to Lucy, her face
turned away from me, and the reflections of the outside light bouncing off her
dark hair. They were the only visible thing in the room. I would
have to wake her up. I heard another thought, but this time it
was followed by steps. The thing had gotten inside. There was nothing else
it could have been. It was an animal, and it was getting closer.
I put my hand on Lucy's shoulders and shook her a little bit,
and she reacted right away, asking if I had heard that. In a
half asleep state. Failing at hiding my fear through my voice, I told
her that we had to go close the windows and if she would please come
with me. I don't know what I was thinking. There was clearly something
walking around the house that was there asking to go out in the hallway and
around the house to close the windows. But still Lucy agreed, and so
we turn on the light, trying not to be quiet on purpose, hoping
that this animal will get scared and leave through a window. Before we got
out of the room, we heard the steps again, and suddenly another thud,
this time coming from the outside, with steps against the gravel on the
other side of the house. We both looked at each other and I opened
the bedroom door, stepping outside to flick on the light from the hallway.
We walked to the kitchen, trying to avoid the pitch black scene of the
trees in front of the windows and just closing them. We walked to the
living room, the bathroom, and the room that was in the back of
the house, closing each one one by one. If it was all ready
quiet in the house, this made it even more deafening. We made it
back to the room, got into bed, and stayed quiet as we both
thought, I'm assuming about the same thing. What had that been? The
next day, I woke up to Lucy walking up to the bedroom door and
squeaking it open calmly. She looked at me, asking where the food was.
I told her that we had set the bags by the refrigerator instead of
putting everything away, which was mistake number two. They're not there, she
said, expecting me to suggest another spot for her to look. I rolled
out of bed, trying to comb my hair with my hands as I put
my shoes on to go look for the stuff we had brought over. But
she was right, and when I looked at the kitchen there was no sign
of anything. We had unloaded four bags off to the top with things from
the grocery store. Some of those things should have been refrigerated even and we
had completely forgotten to put them away. But we didn't have to talk much.
We both knew we had unloaded him. Lucy even made a comment about
how I almost dropped one of the bags, and her first instinct was to
ask about the caeso dip at the bottom of one of them. There was
no other spot for those bags. But it was then when we both looked
at each other with white eyes, thinking back on the thing from last night.
We sat down in the living room, wondering what it could have been.
There are a lot of animals around the area, but neighbors are across
the field of trees, and it's unlikely that anyone would simply walk up to
the property without a car, something that we would have heard. The whole
night was still and quiet. Lucy wasn't going to call her mom since she
started freaking out and asking too many questions, but I called up my dad
and told him exactly what had happened. He asked about the torn bags or
scratch marks, obvious signs of an animal being there. There weren't any.
Whatever had been inside had taken the food along with the bags. He asked
if anything else had gone missing, but I didn't know. I told him
we would call back and hung up. We went through our things, but
everything was there, our phones, wallets, gee, everything. We knew
we would have to drive down the road a bit to get to one of
the grocery stores, but we agreed to go to Mel's Dieiner for breakfast before
going to the store. It was on the way, just an eight minute
drive according to my app, and so we did. We found the diner,
pulled up and went inside. It waited a while to be served,
until an older waitress came by, thanking us for waiting, explaining that they
had had some trouble with the preparation. From working in restaurants throughout college,
I knew how essential that was having everything washed, peel and chopped before the
customer rush hours, so I smiled and asked if they had been short staffed.
She smiled with that smile when servers realized that we're just another one of
them and said that no, that it was with their supply food had gone
missing overnight. Lucy looked at me and then at the waitress, almost shouting
that the same thing had happened to us too. The waitress a smile faded,
but she insisted on keeping it going this time not the same, as
she turned away to grab her pen. Do you know what you want?
She asked us awkwardly. This time we ordered two large pancake specials. Don't
judge us, and then we just looked around the diner. We remembered it,
after all, despite all those years, the Rundown horse ride that you
operate with the quarter and the claw machine in the front. But it was
then when we heard an older man as he was leaning toward us from his
stool, quietly asking us about the missing food. I know who did it,
and I've set up traps for them, he said. He didn't look
creepy or anything, just obsessed over what he had mentioned. Lucy was more
talkative with people, and I really wanted her to be quiet in case she
let it slip that we had been there alone in the house, but instead
she asked about what he was talking about. The man leaned in a little
more from the stool that was too away from us, telling us that he
had lived in the area for years that he knew almost everyone, also reassuring
that they had always had strange occurrences around this time of the year when autumn
came around. You're not from Gabriel's family, are you. Gabriel was my
grandpa's name. We told them we were, and so we talked for a
bit until our food came around. He talked about the fireflies and memories of
how the area used to be before everything started turning into airbnbs, painfully mispronounced
by the old guy. Lucy nudged at me as I try to nudge her
back to be quiet. Well, look, he said, Gabriel and my
family had heard about these areas and the tiny people that had been spotted.
I have a trail. Can I have them set up? You know I've
seen them, but oh, they're smart. Obviously intrigued by the comments he
was making, we asked about what he was talking about. Just as the
waitress came by with our glasses of orange juice. He leaned in a little
more. You guys, ever heard of goblins? He asked, his face
completely still. The waitress gave the guy a serious stare. Bill, leave
them alone. You're going to give them nightmares when the night is dark and
you have two bodies in the back. What would you do if you hear
something? I'll be right back with the story about a driver from a funeral
home. Some people think that we get desensitized to seeing the dead bodies in
front of us as we fix them up for burial. Even though it's true
that we sometimes stop to admire the clothing options that the family members have chosen
for their deceased, we still treat them with the respect that they deserve.
I'm about to tell you why. When I first started working in the field,
I heard many stories of strange things that would happen as we prepared the
bodies, from things going missing to sounds of cries coming from the storage areas.
I've heard them all, but we try not to think about it,
at least not when you're alone in the facility at night. It was in
my early days and I had just graduated from high school, and I would
run tasks here and there for one of the cemeteries in the area, replacing
light bulbs, running messages and the paperwork between the funeral home and cemetery or
the crematory, and answering phone calls. Of course, the owner of the
funeral home had some organizational issues with a business, and he struggled a lot
to keep things in order, even in his own office space, so most
of our tasks as employees overlapped. The only person who always did the same
thing day after day was mister Kingsford, the embalmer. Most of us were
afraid of him, yet he wouldn't speak much to anybody. I think even
the owner was afraid of him. Rumors went around that he had been involved
with the wrong crowd, which eventually got him into prison. Nobody knew for
sure right now, for a fact, that nobody would ever dare to ask
him. I still remember the day when the two bodies came in. A
mother and her adult son. Both had been found dead and had to be
removed directly from the holding area that they had near the police station. I
had been working there for a couple of years now, and I was in
charge with the transportation that day, so it was me the one who went
to pick them up and the wide van, the one that could handle up
to three bodies in the back. At the time, I remember that I
was in a hurry to do everything. I wanted to look good in front
of my boss, and eventually I wanted to work arranging the funerals for people,
since I found it the most gratifying. Plus, the flow of dead
people was unlikely to stop anytime soon, so there was lots of money in
the business. I was at the location within ten minutes from when the call
came in. I was there at exactly twelve o three am. I loaded
the bodies onto the van, briefly reading the tags to match them with my
list. Normally, we try to avoid finding out who we're carrying, mostly
in fear of being someone you know. But I always like to check the
security officer at the front would always tell me their tragic stories, or sometimes
just a comment about who they were. This time, though, there was
no one at the entrance, and instead the bodies had been left with a
note almost by the entrance. It happened sometimes, or so I'd heard.
I know this from when I used to run paperwork. Things don't always work
out the same way, and there were countless times when I'd have to go
get a signature from odd places. This time, though, paperwork was signed
and released ready for me to pick up. I went inside and sat in
the van and I started it up and looked at the destination on the list.
Was supposed to go straight to the crematorium. Now this was strange.
Normally they go back to the funeral home perhaped and viewed, at least in
my town, and then they make their way to get turned into ashes.
I wanted to double check, hesitating to do so because I would have to
contact the embalmer. Then asked to see if the names were in his roster,
and then I just gathered up the courage and managed to dial the number.
Anyway, the sound of the TV in the background startled me when he
answered. As I explained the situation. There's no one on for tonight or
tomorrow. Yet he said he was annoyed. When I asked him what I
should do. Then I knew what he was going to say, but he
said it anyway, do what's on the list. And that was the kind
of thing that he would say around the funeral home all the time. Do
what's on the list. And so I drove away and onto the dark road
to the right. This place worked all night, and it looked like an
old warehouse. I was glad that the families never got to see this place.
Honestly, the workers there usually had music blasting all night, one time
joking that they were the pitmasters and asking for their name tax to reflect that.
Of course, not everyone was like that, but that level of disrespect
stuck with me. As a van was humming down the road, suddenly I
heard a groan coming from behind me. At least I thought it sounded like
that. I looked in the rear room mirror only to see white backs,
perfectly still dead. Your mind plays tricks on you like that when you're dealing
with dead bodies. You know, if you've never seen a dead face and
wondered if they suddenly opened their eyes and what you would do. You won't
know what I'm talking about. But it happens with voices too. You look
at them and wonder what they sounded like, those people you've never seen before,
how they laughed or how they cried, how they lived, and how
they died. There was a scratching sound now, and I blame it on
my mind or the darkness, but I swear I saw something move from the
inside of the bag. My heart was racing, and I pulled over,
reaching for my phone as I heard another grunt, but this time a bit
louder. I called the owner of the funeral home, Stephen. I explained
as calmly and as logically as I could at the time, the bodies I
had picked up had been moving. He had also been awake already. The
TV or radio were on. These people were night albums. I tell you,
I think we all sort of are. And he was confused, asking
me if I was sure of what I was talking about and who the pickup
was for. I explained as much as I could, with us, finally
concluding that I should reach into the back and check on the bodies right there
on the side of the road. I was hesitant but another groan, a
softer one, brought me back to reality. I could see something moving.
I told Steven I would call him back, and I hung up as he
was saying bye and to keep him posted. I took a deep breath stepped
out of the van, unlocking the back doors. The still night, with
only my headlights lighting up the side of the road and the red one shining
on the gravel behind the car, the whole area seemed like I was in
another world. I opened the door quietly, my hands trembling against the door
handle. See them twisting, two twisting bodies, groaning in pain. I
shouted, hello, are you okay? They stayed still. I reached from
my pocket, only to realize that my phone was in the front seat.
But I had no choice. I was supposed to open up the bags.
They pulled the platform toward me, so I reached for the zipper. I
took a deep breath and closed my eyes as I unzipped it in one long
stroke. An arm wiggled its way out of the bag and reached for my
neck, and I could feel the cold sweat from it. They smell I
had never smelled before, as this thing, this person took a deep breath,
his eyes looking straight at me, paralyzed. I looked at the other
bag and unzipped it. A woman with dark hair, not moving as much
as a man, but still with those wide eyes. I took a step
back, my mind racing, trying to decide what to do. I try
to ask them what happened, who they were. My phone started going crazy
in the front of the car, and all I could think of doing was
to close the door and drive to a hospital. The closest one would be
in the next town, past the crematorium, and so I did. I
floored it, and not long after that I was rushing up to the ambulance
area, rambling and failing to put my words together as I explained to the
receiving doctors that the people in the back were supposed to be dead. They
helped me get them out, put them on stretchers, and bring them inside.
It was then when I checked all of the miscalls from the police department
and from the crematorium, all with voicemails accompanying them. There was one text
message from Stephen telling me to get them to a hospital as soon as possible.
From what I found out, they had been paralyzed. With some type
of medication, but the story from the police and the crematorium never added up.
They were saying that it was an internal error, but that didn't explain
the paralysis. Both people made full recoveries with minor complications, and they moved
away almost immediately. I get messages from them about once a year thanking me
for what happened that night, but I could tell they didn't want to relive
it and therefore never talked more about the situation itself. I left my job
and Stephen almost lost his business after a series of threatening calls. We both
moved away and started over. Steven retired and I still keep in touch with
him, especially for advice in running my own funeral home operation. Thank you
so much for the story ideas, and if you write short scary story,
send me an email with it so that we can share it on our Instagram.
I'll leave my contact info in the description of this episode. Look Next
be sure to check out a true scary story. It has been featured as
show of the Month for October twenty twenty two on Apple Podcast's Dark Side collection,
and you can find it there along with other creepy shows. Thank you
very much for listening See you soon,