Hey there, it's Edwin and this is Scary Story Podcast. We have three
short stories here based on your messages. We're going back to how things used
to be. Abby turned away and walked out the door abruptly. She was
going to be late for work. A little ironic, I think, considering
that the whole ordeal had started because of work itself, my work. I
used to feel terrible about it, even though I wanted to be right.
I knew that I wasn't. I had been working long hours, but it
was because it was springtime and parts and entire air conditioning units were going up
in sales volume. During that time, I had started managing the team of
salesmen in my region, and soon I was going to be promoted to super
after meeting one of the co owners of the company. That meant I would
basically double my salary and Nabby and I would finally be able to go to
the honeymoon we never went to because we Yeah, I was busy with work.
Little did I know things would be changing. I just didn't think it
would be like this. Nabby and I were okay now, I mean we
had started talking once again after almost a week of awkward, passive aggression.
Neither of us knew how to move on from the problem. My perspective was
that if we wanted to get a house together and pay off her car,
and I would have to keep working. Her salary as a school teacher was
not enough for both of us, and I thought that it was such a
simple sacrifice to make for a better future. I really couldn't understand why she
shouldn't get that about my plan. Instead, what she said was that she
did not want to raise a family with someone who would not be there.
I mean, I could at least understand that. I grew tired of explaining
that it was only a temporary thing, but then things escalated. She strongly
hinted that I had a thing with one of the new saleswomen who had joined
as part of the huge growth hiring spree that the company had. The new
trainees needed help with their approach lead acquisition, so I used to take their
phone calls after work. Her main concern was with Ashley, who she claimed
had no right to be texting me with so many emojis, especially to one
of her bosses, akaa me. Honestly, I think Abby was just trying
to pick fights now, but I really did want to fix things, so
I made her a promise that I would cut back on my hours immediately after
my meeting with one of the owners. The rule would be that I would
stop working after six in the evening, that I would make a deliberate effort
to spend more time with her. Liked rules. So you can imagine how
hard it was for me to get those words out of my mouth. But
like I said, after that week, things slowly started to get better.
She started leaving breakfast on the pan for me before she went off to the
gym, and I started coming home promptly at five point forty five every single
evening. We planned out movies to watch, games to play, and set
time aside to go hang out with some of our friends from college. One
night, we're driving back from Billie's and the trunk was full of groceries this
time. When I got the call, one of the owners was going to
a convention in Arizona and needed me to be there to talk to some of
his other partners about assigning some of the major sales operations for the entire state
of New Mexico. Everything to me. I pulled the car over, and
honestly, I didn't even consider what Abby would say, But as soon as
I hung out, she looked over to me and wondered what the call had
been about. Of course, she was excited for me, but I saw
when her expression changed once I said that I would have to travel that weekend.
We had already made plans, but she knew that this was going to
be more important. It wasn't something I needed to ask permission for or justify.
But suddenly all of the problems we had and the ones that we had
just fixed, just started to come back, even the stuff about Ashley,
the supposed other woman. I will write to you and call you all the
time, I promised. I told her I'd forgotten that she didn't like being
alone in the apartment. But the day for my flight came and off I
went. I messaged her from the airport, and from the plane, I
sent her video messages of where I would be staying, in pictures of how
I got the wrinkles off the suit. Once I arrived, I was excited.
This was one of those opportunities that you don't come across too often.
There was no way that I was going to miss it. And that same
night was when abbe stopped replying to me. I called her at one in
the morning. I think I know that it was late, but she texted
back with the stern reminder that this was not going to be easy to not
talk to me anymore. She said. I must have called her ten times
and sent her even more messages asking what was wrong. The messages from her
stopped coming the whole night. I could hear her voice saying hello, I'm
here now. The next morning I went to my meeting, which didn't go
too bad. They offered me the job. I called her sister, who
also didn't answer. I called her mom, and I could tell that she
felt sorry for me, but also didn't seem to know what was going on.
Now, this wasn't the first time that had happened. Abby had been
a bit on edge for a while, and I think I lost her with
my work. But we had agreed to make changes. We were going to
make things right. The long silent ride home on the taxi felt like it
took forever. In the news radio station that the guy had on was interviewing
a woman who sounded a lot like Abby. She wasn't. I kept scrolling
through my phone the lost text messages undelivered, still resting on my phone with
nowhere to go, and a day turned into four and then five nights.
I knew where she was, but by the second day I knew that maybe
I should give her some space. Things were difficult, and maybe she needed
it more than I did. But those nights, man, there were something
else. I would wake up cursing at the sound that the air conditioning made.
I wondered what my life would have been like had I accepted another job,
had we never hired Ashley. I would pick up my phone and open
up YouTube, close it, open up my email, close it, then
open up my messages tabby I swear I would hear a woman's voice again,
and she sounded a lot like her, or at least pretended to sound like
her. The words were off, with the tone was spot on. Hello.
She would say, I'm here now. I tapped the media tab on
the messages and I ran through the last ones. She sent me a quick
how's it going audio message that I actually managed to say before it expilted.
When my phone was off airplane mode, and as I was coming into the
hotel room, I recorded a video showing her the room, and I clumsily
stepped in, nearly tripped over my suitcase and started searching for the light switch.
I walked over to it and flicked it on, and I gasped.
Good night. I said, I'll call you tomorrow. I replayed the video
again and again. Every single time I did, I swear her smile grew
larger. It was all in my head. When I stepped into that room.
In the background was a silhouette sitting on the bed. I could see
her. I left the suitcase against the wall. I turned around again.
There she was, her shadow, not moving. I flicked the light on.
She smiled polaroid. I had a pretty small group of friends back in
college, but we were all very close. Things were different back then.
It must have been what ten years before Facebook was invented. Our phones were
not even up to the flip phone style yet. But anyway, one thing
that I really appreciate was that we would all gather at each other's houses,
and those who had become roommates were probably the coolest people around. There was
one particular friend, Jessica, what happened to be one of the most fun
out of the bunch. She had absolutely everything going for her, so everyone
was surprised when she was found dead in her room just a little before we
all graduated. But this story is not about that, though. Just in
order to get to it, we have to know a little bit about her.
She used to live about an hour away from our university, closer to
the Central Valley in California. And if you think that they are underdeveloped now,
back then they still had dirt roads. I mean, everyone knew their
neighbors and everything, but still the houses looked like something out of a Stephen
King novel, large with fields and everything. Minus to reign. Jessica was
known for having a strange group of friends back in high school. They were
cool, but they all dressed in strange clothing and they didn't care much for
how much they hurt you when they would tell you the truth. Jessica would
avoid talking about them, but her dad used to be happy to have us
her normal friends. He would call us around the house whenever they had a
celebration at her place. It would all go. There was one particular time
when I was doing a course for winter breaks, and so I had to
retake part of my math classes for goofing off during exam season. I was
on a scholarship, so I was determined to do better this time around,
and for the most part, my friends didn't question me too much. Jessica's
birthday was on December fourteenth, but she had saved her party for a Friday
or Saturday night. Still, my final exams were that Monday, and there
was no way that I would mess around that weekend and risk falling behind losing
everything I had worked for. My friends had no idea, and honestly I
forgot the reason why I told them I couldn't go when we hung out from
the little party we had going on the phone. Take lots of pictures,
I asked before they all started hanging up. And so that weekend came and
went, and I studied as hard as I could, and I managed to
score a B minus as my final grade, with averaged my score combined with
the other one to a solid C enough to pass and stay on my scholarship.
Thank goodness, ones We had all come back from break and had already
gotten into the rhythm of our new classes and everything. The topic of some
guy that Jessica met at the party came up. Everyone seemed to know about
him, and they were all tangled up in gossip when Jessica then asked me
something about him and I didn't go. I told her. They all laughed
and try to continue the conversation with me, but I didn't get the joke.
I didn't go. What are you guys talking about? I asked him.
You did go, Jessica said, telling me a whole story about how
I surprised him for showing up after I had said that I wasn't going to
go. By that time, they had already assumed that I was making things
up and trying to be funny, and one of them, Monica, turned
directly to me and said, you were there. I agreed sarcastically, and
they all looked at each other again. I don't know how, but we
changed the subject. The very next day, Monica showed up in my dorm
room and asked about what we had talked about yesterday, smiling and telling me
that we had proof that I had been at the party. I remember sort
of just rolling my eyes and asking her to show me, and that she
did. She took out a polaroid photo from her purse and held it up
to me and the crowd around Jessica was Monica, Beth, two guy friends,
one of her weird of friends and off next to her me. My
jaw dropped immediately. I grabbed it and checked carefully. The photo had not
been cut or drawn over, and it was clearly me. The pink and
yellow top that I wore often was on this person. She smiled just like
me. But I was not there. I never went. I couldn't get
on a car, drive one hour to the valley, drive back, take
my exams and not remember doing so. In fact, one of my study
partners was able to confirm this with me. We had studied Thursday night,
all of Friday, all of Saturday, and we even met up on Sunday
at her dorm room. Monica showed me the other photos and I wasn't none
of them, but I could confirm that it had been the same event.
Had this been a practical joke, the picture edited on some sort of software,
which of course was expensive back then. Where if someone else had pertend
to be me the night of the party, I will never know. My
friends and I still talk about it sometimes and have found no explanation. The
following story titled When We Die It's coming up right after this. My best
friend and I grew up together. Basically there was a spot around town that
we always used to meet at, and it was by one of those courts
for a sport I forget the name of. There, we would talk about
games and girls and complain about our teachers. As we grew older, the
topics also became surprisingly deep. As we heard the ball slap against the concrete
walls around us, we talked about the purpose of life, and about what
the stars meant, what our dreams were trying to tell us, and whoever
would end up ten years from then. One question that always got to me
was about what happens when we die. It was around that time when we
really started talking about the topic when we made an agreement, whoever died first,
we'll let the other one know what happens. How I remember asking him,
if I'm going to be dead, how can I even call you or
write it on a post it or what. We both stared at the ground
for a bit, wondering how this quote unquote major problem would be solved until
we settled on dreams. Whoever died first would come back in a dream and
tell the other what happens when we die? And how will we know that
it isn't just a trick of our own minds explaining something. How would the
other know that this was real? Again, we took a few seconds and
almost said it at the same time. A secret. One will tell the
other a secret that nobody knows, and then we have to figure out if
it's true. And if it's true, then it was for sure that the
other person was speaking from the dead. When I think back on it,
I wonder why nobody else had thought about doing this before. It is basically
a full proof way of knowing if we are actually talking to a ghost or
not. Anyway, we both shook on it, and we both sort of
forgot. We kind of lost touch in college. He stopped going after the
first year and I camped at it. I finally graduated and got a job
in Phoenix, while he stayed at home back in New Mexico. I married
my girlfriend while he stayed single, posting once in a while about the many
adventures he was having as an outdoors guy, hiking mountains, fishing, you
know, the whole thing. I had nothing interesting to post about what happened
during my day between going to work and coming home to watch Netflix every day.
But eventually, like with most friendships, we just stopped talking. Gone
were the days when we would stay up to talk about our ideas and how
we were going to change the world. We stopped complaining and we stopped dreaming.
My wife was pregnant at the time, and I forget how many years
had passed since I had last talked to George. But it was my friend
Hannah who called that around eleven at night. I was surprised my phone still
remember her phone number. Will She said, George is dead. I won't
lie and tell you that I remember what it felt like because I don't.
My eye sort of drooped down loose to look at the carpet. My phone
in my hands started feeling warm. I don't remember much of our conversation after
that. About eight months or so later, George's family was about to celebrate
his birthday and had called me to invite me to their house and also for
a short visit to the cemetery. I agreed and got my stuff ready for
the trip. And had it been his name on my mind during those days
or something else, but it didn't take long for me to start seeing him
in my dreams. I shook myself awake at one point. I think it
was from fear, but also from the frustration of not being able to speak
to him. All I could do was listen as he told me about life
after death. That he was everywhere, he would say, and that I
was everywhere too. I had so many questions to ask him, but they
all kind of faded once I woke up. I wanted to know how it
could make sure that it was really him, And it was strange because we
would both be He's sitting on a bench by the courts of the park.
After the first dream, I could speak, talking like we used to,
but we weren't young anymore. He wore those same blue jeans and a black
hoodie, but he looked tired and sick, sad. And it was weird
because in the dream I didn't know he was dead until somewhere in the middle
it would click and I would ask him, how do I know it's really
you. He'd simply ignore the question, or I would wake up suddenly.
For a few days after that, he would keep visiting my dreams, and
for an instant after waking up in the middle of one of them, I
saw his figure standing right next to my bed. I actually saw him several
times. He would walk out from the window and lurk around to the other
side of the room to my wife's side, stand there well, then over
to me, just stare. I would then rub my eyes and look his
way, only to see the large smile form on his face as the yellow
teeth reflected from the exterior light coming from the window. The thing would then
vanish k me panic but also trying not to wake up my wife. I
would sit up on the bed and stare, trying to adjust my eyes to
the darkness, and just like that, it would vanish again. I brought
this up to one of my friends, who said that certain spirits try to
play jokes with you, especially when you open up a line of communication with
them, and that this entity sounded like something dark. The last dream I
had like that, the thing that looked like George collapsed in the park and
hit the ground. He had been looking worse and worse as the dreams went
by, though I hardly remember many of the conversations. Once I would wake
up, I didn't have the same dreams after that. The day came for
my trip to visit George's family, I was not about to bring this up,
so instead I went to the cemetery with everybody and I got the chance
to sit there alone. Once everyone was heading out to the cars, I
looked out into the hills filled with the white tombstones around those beautiful gardens,
wondering those same questions that George and I used to ask. What happens when
we die? I asked out loud. It was then when I turned around
over to the bench on the right side of me, and I stopped breathing
for a bit when I saw my friend George sitting still smiling. His teeth
were white now, and it was that same smile that I had gotten to
know from the many stories and jokes we used to tell. A soft gust
of winds surrounded the hills of the cemetery. Then a tiny bird, a
common gray one, landed on his tombstone. I looked back at him,
but he was gone. His tombstone read his name and the day that he
died, August twelfth. But it was much later when I finally got my
answer. August twelfth of that year was when my son was born. So
what happens when we die? Another life begins. And as for that dark
shadow that kept showing up in my dreams, I'll never know what it was.
Scary Story podcast has written and produced by me Edwin Komarrubias. Thank you
so much for all of your ratings and reviews, as well as the messages
that keep these stories going. If there's a comment or suggestion, I'll be
sure to leave my email address in the description of this episode. Up next,
be sure to check out my other show called True Scary Story, where
real people talk about the paranormal encounters. Just don't listen by yourself. Thank
you very much for listening. See as soon