Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. I have a couple of stories for you.
The first is about a gift that makes a very unusual connection to a young
shopper, and the second explains how even healthy morning routines can go wrong.
My name is Edin, and here's a scary story. I try not to
think about this genuinely. I try not to, but it bothers me to
think that even my closest friends feel sorry for me after all these years.
But maybe I've given them a reason to. Part of me still believes that
it started off as a game. My sister and I lived in a house
up in a hill away from the main stores, and I don't remember many
things being around us. If we wanted to go to the store, it
would mean a ten minute drive into the shopping centers, and we need it
to make lists in order to remember everything, because there was no way we
could just walk up to a sevent eleven or a grocery store like I do
now whenever I want to, and there were lists for everything even as a
game. We listed easy things first, you know, colors that we spotted
around the room, the types of animals we would see on the way back
home, and random things around the house. Lists were everywhere. When the
sound of one of my sister's dolls started growing deeper as she giggled and said
good night, when you squeezed its hand and knew it was time to write
down double A batteries on the list. I used to catch things that Mom
forgot about, too, and whenever I reminded her of them at the store,
she would get so happy, and if she was in a good enough
mood, I would get to choose an additional thing at the store just for
me. But I made lists for other things too, and come to think
of it, I still make lists for almost everything. There are post it
notes stuck by the steering wheel of my car, reminding me of my lunch,
my wallet, and my phone, and down to more specific reminders like
taking cutlery and napkins, and reminders to call mom. I can't forget to
call Mom. It was about to rain that day and Mom was loading up
the little cart who would drag around the grocery store since this one didn't have
the push carts we have now. She reminded me to get my jacket,
and I reminded happy my sister to get hers too. That wasn't her name,
but she used to call me by a nickname too, so we just
stuck with it. Happy sounded good. Mom used to roll her eyes whenever
she heard it, though I don't think she liked it very much. But
it was like a game, or at least I remember it being that way,
and come to think of it, even my therapist now says that I'm
blending games with my everyday life. It's funny how it works. Anyway,
we got in the car and I helped buckle Happy into the back seat.
It was all over the television commercials to use seatbelts, but I don't remember
Mom and Dad ever using them more asking me to. But Happy and I
were close, and I even used to play that I was her mom.
I wanted to take care of her. But there I go again with the
games. You see. I loved going to the store. I still remember
Mark, the man who worked by the meat and dairy section. He would
always call me by my name and offer two lollipops. I would drag my
sister by the hand to go look at the toys, since it also had
a school and a toy section. A new mom would never buy us toys
from there. So we normally walked around pressing the buttons, the ones from
the packages that had that trimey sticker right on the front. Though some didn't
work, we usually went for the same one. I remember my sister's face
when she saw the doll for the first time. It was a baby with
yellow baby clothes and a blue hat. It didn't have a trimy button,
but the label said that it had three sound effects, just like a real
baby, and had an accompanying baby bottle and a rattle, and then in
big yellow letters, go to sleep, Natalie. That's what I was saving
my money for six ninety five and it would be my gift for my sister
Happy, so I didn't want to ask Mom for it, but I only
had a few dollars in the piggyback well. It wasn't really a pig,
but rather a plastic barrel type of thing that we found in the storage shed.
We had a good time cleaning it out the last time, and I
remember my dad drilled a hole on it, and not even a slot for
coins, but a full on hole that he made with a noisy drill.
That same day, I wanted one for my sister too, but Dad insisted
that we'd just share it. Cecilia was the woman that worked by the front
of the store who never really spoke to us, but loved to chat with
Mom, and whenever she wasn't moving her mouth to speak, she was using
it to chew the two or three pieces of gum she would stick in there
at the same time. Dad and I used a joke about it, then
pretend to be her sometimes, But this time she seemed extra friendly with us
and asked what toys we were looking at, and that we better hurry because
of some holiday that was coming up and that they would all be gone.
I got up to Mom with my list of things that I thought she had
missed, and she shot me that wide smile and pinched my cheek as we
walked over to get the flower and other things for my dad's birthday cake.
Pick something that you want, she said to me. But I looked down
to Happy, who always stayed quiet during times like these, Unable to choose
something. Can we get a doll? I asked, looking down at my
untied shoes. Mom sighed, but instead of saying no in the way that
she always did, she asked which one I wanted. I grabbed Happy's hand
and ran to the toy section as two other girls with their parents were walking
out of that same aisle and toward the cash register. I couldn't tell for
sure, but my heart dropped when I saw one of them hugging the box
with those yellow letters. I could feel my eyes swallowed with tears. All
hopes of seeing Happy smile like that went away. Still we walked over to
the toy section, not very hopeful this time, but then down at the
bottom of the shelf was another one go to sleep, Natalie. I grabbed
it and ran to Mom, a huge smile on my face as I wiped
away my tears that somehow managed to slide down my face into my chin Without
looking at it. She sighed again. All right, she said, and
then she let me set it right on the cart. When we got home,
I set the doll, the box and everything right on my dresser,
by the bed that my sister and I used to share. I told Happy
that we would wait until her birthday to open it. Mom walked in one
morning before I went to school to play some folded laundry into the drawers of
my dresser. She asked me why I hadn't used the doll. Mom,
it's for happy, I said, we're waiting for her birthday. Mom rolled
her eyes. She grabbed the box and asked me to open it that I
could play with it. I said no, but she placed the box in
front of me and told me open it or we would have to take it
back. I couldn't understand, but Mom's stern voice made my eyes swallow again.
It's for happy, I yelled, and then she turned the box around.
Her face went cold when I saw her mouth silently move as if to
read the label of the box. Go to sleep, Natalie. She looked
at me and grabbed the box and threw it against the wall. She yelled
at me as the cries of the doll seed out of the box. Never
act this way, not around me, and she told me to stop talking
about happy, that she wasn't there. The doll stopped crying after a few
seconds. It said, I'm asleep, Mommy, I'm asleep, Mommy.
Mom's mouth dropped as she wrinkled her nose and started crying. She covered her
face with one hand, telling me to fix up the box because we would
be returning it. I cried, too afraid to say anything. I walked
over to the doll, the box now open from the top. I grabbed
it with both hands and sat on the edge of my bed. Mom was
staring at me in silence. I looked over to Happy, who was hiding
in the corner. I grabbed the doll's exposed hand and squeezed it. I
heard it breathing. I squeezed again, and I heard it laughing. I
squeezed again, and I heard it crying. Mom snatched the doll from my
hat and squeezed its hand to We heard the same three sets of noises,
breathing, laughing, crying, and despite us both expecting to hear I'm asleep,
Mommy, just one more time, never happened. Mom cried, squeezing
the hand over and over and over again for a while. I remember that
I didn't go to school that day. I stayed in my room across from
Happy. Her real name Natalie, Natalie, who wasn't there. When I
was old enough, Mom explained to me about what happened to my sister,
how she died, how they told me when I was young, how Natalie
was happy and not in pain, but never told me that Natalie was gone,
and that Happy wasn't her nickname. I still saw her for a while
after that. She used to come in and sit in a corner of the
room as if playing with some imaginary toys, not making any noise, and
I see her sometimes even now. Mom never returned the doll. It still
sits at her house, and every once in a while she gives a doll
a squeeze to hear what it says. She's hoping for the same thing.
I'm asleep, Mommy, I'm only asleep. That was good to sleep Natalie.
A story that we brought back and it was originally published in season two
of Scary Story Podcast. Hope you liked it and let me know if you
want to revive any of the other stories anyway. The next story is called
always a Runner, and it's coming upward after this stay with me. I
don't know why I thought it would be a good idea to wake up at
five in the morning to go out for a run. Obviously, those Instagram
and Twitter motivational messages got to me in some way, but now my alarm
clock was punishing me for following along with trends. It was my fourth morning
like this one more, and I would break into my weak straight habit,
and then if I kept that going, it might even turn into a real
habit, supposedly, and I would feel so much better. I guess,
though I would have felt better sleeping more as well. But my shoes were
on. My trail was set on an app that I got, so I
figured I might as well go with it. I did my warm ups,
and off I went to the darkness of the morning. It wasn't that cold,
with winter being behind us now, but still, once sweat started hitting
my forehead, I knew that the wind would bring along that icy feeling to
it as well. I had gotten used to seeing some of the same runners
out on the trail that I used to do, the simple one what I
used to do when the sun was completely out, and I thought about going
back to it, but it was simply my mind trying to take the path
of least resistance, Just like those posts said. The trailhead was about a
five minute walk away from my house, and just by the looks of it,
I knew it would be two or three times as tough. No matter
how motivated and pumped up I showed up to the start of the trail,
I always seemed to get a small moment of doubt part of being knew that
if I just got started, I would start feeling a little bit better.
So I looked up at the trail with an incline toward the top of the
small hill when I saw an older couple walking down up ahead. No offense
to them, but if they could do it well, I could too.
So I started running up and they waved at me as I passed them going
the other way. It's a normal thing that I didn't know we were supposed
to do as runners. But it's nice, you know, to get a
good morning from strangers who were all out doing the same thing at those ungodly
hours. As I reached the top of the first hill, I felt relief
at seeing the mostly flat rest of the trail around a very small valley had
at trees and a view of the rest of the city into the distance.
The sun was rising too, just to add to the surprise. But soon
surprises became the last thing I wished for. Up ahead in the trail,
I spotted a person coming my way. For a moment, I thought that
maybe I started on the wrong spot, since he would be another person going
in the opposite direction as me. He was a young guy with dark pants
and a white shirt. But what stood out the most were the sunglasses.
I used to wear mine when I would leave a little bit later, but
not at five or six in the morning. The sun wasn't even completely out
yet, and if anything, those things were a hazard to use in the
dark while running. But it was running in silence, looking down at his
shoes and then straight ahead, no noise at all. I looked at him
as he was about ten yards in front of me, getting ready to raise
my hand to wave at him, but his expression didn't change. He didn't
even look my way. I slowed down and moved to the left as he
passed by. Some people just get really into it like that and ignore the
rest of the world. It was completely normal, but then something else happened
and I still can't shake that off. Up By the next curve, another
trail split off into the right, and then I wasn't sure if that was
the one I was supposed to take. If you ever hiked or walked around
a canyon, you know that a lot of the scenery looks the same and
that some trails can easily be much longer than others, even if you're within
the same area. The winding nature of it as you climb or descend into
the canyon kind of helps that the zig zagging through those places are what takes
up most of my time out there. So as I was approaching the fork,
I stopped to take a look at my phone's map, just a double
check I was on the right path, and that's when I spotted something else
again, a silhouette a figure moving from the top of one of the trails.
I couldn't tell exactly which one it was, but I looked up to
the one on the right, then to the left. This thing was apparently
off trail. It was getting closer. I looked through my map app when
I saw that the path on the right was the one I was supposed to
take, so I put the phone on my armholder and took two steps forward.
That's when I saw the figure right in front of me. It was
the same young man. He was running down the trail with the sunglasses laser
focused on his path. I came to a near full stop when I saw
him. I instinctively raised my arm to wave hello, but he passed again
right next to me without acknowledging I was there now that's what happened to me.
And even though it doesn't seem like a lot, that maybe the person
was just a quick runner and somehow managed to take the entire loop and pass
me twice in less than ten minutes. It's possible, but I promise that
even I want to believe that. I told some of my friends about the
trail running I was doing, and one of them met me at the trailhead
one morning. She was a fulld on runner, so I was a bit
intimidated and walked up to her car. She was sitting on the driver's side,
staring out into the semi dark trail, looking like she had just in
a ghost and from what she told me, I think she might have and
I think guy might have two. I got into the passenger side seat,
debating whether or not I should ask her about what happened, when suddenly she
started speaking on her own. She said that a man, a tall,
thin man with a white T shirt, had come down the path holding onto
the side of his torso as he fell to the ground in pain. She
quickly grabbed onto the inside handle of her door to open it and looked for
her cellphone to get help. When she opened the door and stepped outside.
She looked up towards the trail and the man was gone. She looked all
around the area the man had vanished completely. We sat there for a while
as the sun was rising. She had been googling for some type of explanation
of what she had seen at Jameson Park and managed to find something. The
search started off as random Internet articles, but soon she managed to find news
reports of a man who had died tragically from an injury while out on the
trails. But along with those came reports of ghost sightings. We had calmed
down by this time, joking around in disbelief when I told her that I
had seen him too, that we both had seen the silhouette coming down from
the top of the first hill. We both looked at each other, unable
to say a single word. I turned my head toward the top of the
hill first and saw it looked like the same man. His hand was on
the side of his torso his shadow was coming down toward us. My friend
started the car and put it on reverse, pulling out into the road.
I turned my head at the driver's side window, raising my shoulders, expecting
him to be rushing toward us. My heart was beating loudly against my ear.
My friend screamed that she put the car and drive and I could feel
it, that could sense that figure next to us, but refused to look.
We got back on the road, I decided to go for coffee instead.
Scary Story Podcast is written and produced by me Edwin Karubias. You can
stay updated with this and other shows that I make by going to scarystorypodcast dot
com. You can also get a short email whenever a new story comes out
with commentary and everything. All of these episodes are available at free over on
scary Plus that you can find on scaryplus dot com anyway. Thank you very
much for listening. Keep it scary everyone, See you soon.