Hey, there at Edwin and This is Scary Story Podcast. Two nights at
Grandma's. I got settled in at the old dusty room that Mom used to
sleep in. What a fun Friday afternoon. Things had been moved around,
obviously since Mom was a teen and had moved out. Can you believe she
got married at nineteen? That would be in a few years, and it
really bothered me. I had fallen behind and everything already never taken a bus,
had never gone on an airplane without my family, and had just barely
gotten a cell phone at the time. Now things were getting better. I
think visiting my grandma and being able to have some room away from Mom and
Dad for a bit would help me out. Whenever my friends at school talked
about going out of state to visit a family member, it always seemed to
be a blast for me though it was just boring, but not this time.
I was determined to make the most of it, especially since Mom said
that Grandma was forgetting things and that if I didn't spend time with her,
she would ask me to introduce myself whenever I would visit. Kind of sad,
but it happened sometimes, and even though Mom said it as a way
to make me feel guilty. I took up the opportunity. I mean,
what else was I going to do this summer? As always, I looked
through the things in the room. The window faced a large empty field,
so the light was making a bright beam of dust directly across the room.
I took out my phone and snapped a picture. It looked terrible, but
I wasn't going to post it anywhere anyway, on the bed, finally relaxing
my back from wearing that enormous backpack. I don't know if all Grandma's houses
sound like this, but this one had the creakiest floors I had ever heard.
And ever since my Grandpa passed away, Grandma had been mainly by herself,
with the exception of the kids from the y and from the nearby schools
that they had programs, you know, the ones where they have to help
old people with things around the house. I thought Grandma would absolutely love the
idea of helping people around. But as the years went by, especially after
Grandpa died, Grandma changed. She smiled, but not in the same manner.
She would casually mention the visits she would get to the house, and
then her gaze would muffle her voice, and suddenly she would be staring out
to a corner of the room. I think that's why Mom thought that Grandma
was losing it. Grandma called me from the kitchen. I could smell the
apple pie from the room, so I knew she was making it, but
still I loved to act surprise whenever I saw her bringing it from the kitchen.
She knew it was my favorite and always wanted to surprise me with one,
but she did it every single time, so the surprise factor was gone.
I guess you could say. I looked around for my phone. I
swear I had just used it a second ago, but couldn't find it.
That's when I heard Grandma's voice again. I decided to be away from it
for a bit, and I just walked over to the door and went downstairs.
Grandma was taking out the pie from the oven when I walked over to
the kitchen, and it was absolutely magnificent. When I say that an apple
pie can have a golden color, no one believes me, but I think
the lights from the windows really helped put everything together. I put my hands
on my face and smiled as I ran up to Grandma as she set the
pie down, wrapped my arms around her back, now bony but still strong.
She made me an apple pie, she said, my favorite. Her
smile suddenly faded as she walked over to the living room. She opened the
door to the front porch and stepped outside. I could hear her steps as
she made her way to the chair she had out there. The pie was
still very hot. I couldn't even touch the plate yet, so I just
sat there in silence as I looked around the old house, the sun now
setting. Flies in the kitchen were starting to go through the bowl, still
sweet from the stuff she used to make the pie. I pulled my chair
back from the table and walked over to the living room to spend some time
with Grandma outside. Did I ever tell you about the sleep incident? She
asked me, but briefly, mainly because Mom didn't like remembering what happened back
when she was younger. It's a crazy story. You see, back when
Mom was in junior high, she used to suffer from insomnia. I mean,
she couldn't sleep. Mom's first question to me when I tell her that
I'm feeling something, as always, have you been sleeping well? For everything?
Headaches, stomach aches, if I'm upset over something, and even when
I scored a forty percent on my math test. Grandma says that Mom would
wake up in the middle of the night screaming her lungs out. Grandma made
her sleep with the nightlight on for a few nights because she was terrified of
her own room. At one point. From what I remember, here's what
happened. It was a Friday night and she had just gotten home from school
after a flag football game that she had gone out to with some of her
friends. She had been tired, but nothing out of the ordinary. It
was good for her, you know, for her sleep issues or whatever.
She had chicken soup for dinner and watched television for a bit until her dad
started snoring in front of it, and then she said good night to her
mom and went upstairs. She got into bed, and according to Grandma,
my mom was actually able to fall asleep right away, but at around two
in the morning, screams were heard coming out of her room, blood curdling
screams. My grandpa was the one that heard it first and woke up Grandma.
They both ran to the room, and as soon as they opened the
door, they found her fast asleep. Confused, they looked at each other
and then walked up to my Mom, making sure that she was indeed asleep.
Everything checked out quietly, They walked over to the all the way again
and made their way to the room once again, this time so slowly that
the creaks of the floorboard sounded like soft, continuous groans from the tired house.
It was then when they heard something hit the tile floor of the kitchen.
Grandma ran toward the staircase and Grandpa ran to the room to grab a
shotgun. When he met Grandma at the top of the staircase, Grandpa stepped
into the darkness. As Grandma tried her best to split her eyes between Mom's
room and the fading image of Grandpa stepping downstairs with a shotgun up to his
shoulder. She could see as Grandpa's shadow walked over to the corner of the
kitchen area and then lost him when he flicked on the light. A few
seconds that passed seemed eternal. She could wait no longer, so she called
out to him. Everything is all right, she heard Grandpa say. She
waited for a silhouette to come around the corner again, but instead she gasped
at the sight, two figures were there. Grandpa had his arm over my
Mom's shoulder as he carefully led her back to the staircase. Upon seeing this,
Grandma brushed over to Mom's bedroom once again, instead of frozen while standing
at the doorframe. Grandpa was making his way down the hallway with Mom now
having recently woken up from her sleepwalking episode, but Grandma was still staring at
the bedroom. The bed was empty now and the window was open, something
both of them had witnessed and agreed that simply couldn't be. Grandpa stayed with
my Mom as she fell back asleep in her room. Grandma made her way
back to the room down that long tunnel of a hallway they had. They
said that they talked about it a few times, Grandpa casually saying that people
do strange things when they're sleepwalking, that opening up a window and walking downstairs
was far from something they should be afraid of. What about the screams?
How does she get downstairs so fast? Mom acted strange for a few days,
walking out of conversations, randomly staring into nothingness. She would talk to
herself, well, my grandparents thought I had something to do with her,
supposed lack of sleep. The most Mom had said about the situation was that
she would see dark figures around her room when she was growing up. I
don't know why Grandma decided to tell me this story actually, when it would
only be me and her at the house, that creepy old house too.
But like nothing, Grandma stood up from the porch and walked over to the
front door. She then stepped inside toward the living room, and then made
her way to the kitchen. Finally she disappeared into the house. It was
getting cold out, so I made my way to the kitchen. I grabbed
some pie, and I heated up some milk, and I just sat there
for a while alone. Everyone had avoided talking about how Grandpa died, and
maybe that's why they didn't come to this house anymore. But all I could
think of it was just a many laughs and jokes. He would play on
my grandma and not my sister and I when we were children, we used
to love coming here because of him. I put the pie away and placed
the glass in the sink before making my way upstairs to get ready for bed.
Was cold now the wind had picked up, so I put the window
down and finally saw the curtains stop moving. I flicked off the light and
I put myself under the covers, and I could feel myself drifting off to
sleep, and suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was suddenly
so cold, I could feel it in my bones. I feel my hair
moving with the wind as I heard a distant voice coming from my left ear.
He kept asking me to wake up, reassuring me everything was okay.
I opened my eyes and held back the urge to run. I was standing
in the front porch. Grandma said that it was okay. As I looked
around, completely confused. My heart was beating so fast that I could feel
it up by my ear. Grandma gave me a light push to go inside
and shut the door behind us, all while telling me that everything would be
all right. She walked with me as we went upstairs, and I went
back into the room. I could hear as Grandma walked over to the window
and close it shut. They started at the ceiling with the moving shadows of
whatever was outside reflecting on the ceiling. So I could hold my eyes open
no longer and fell asleep once again. That morning, Grandma called me downstairs
to have breakfast and told me that my mom would be coming over to pick
me up as she was pulling out the last slice of apple pie from a
plate on the fridge. Mom was gonna be out of town. I told
her she's supposed to come pick me up tomorrow, but tomorrow's Monday. Grandma
said, you have practice tomorrow morning. Don't you say what you want to
say about Grandma? But she never messes up with day. I checked my
phone to see that, in fact, it was already Sunday morning. What
happened to Saturday? Her smile suddenly faded again. She locked eyes with mine.
She was waiting for me to say something, but instead she looked away
and whispered, well, you were acting a bit strange yesterday. The following
story is called an Old Doll, and it's coming up right after this.
I used to hate my friend. I know it isn't nice to say that
or whatever, but she never thought things through, and I hated how she
would always be around asking for money, especially when she used to spend it
on going out and buying dumb things every weekend and now could not afford her
car payment or her electricity bill. And she always had some excuse for it
too, like, oh, I didn't know it was going to be do
this month, or I never thought it would be this much, Otherwise I
would have saved up for it, or otherwise I would have not spent it
something ridiculous like that. But one of the worst things she would do was
to buy pets and then not take care of them, like her fish tank
that she was supposedly going to take care of every single day, she promised
when we went to pick it up, she bought all the stuff for it,
which, let me tell you, is a ton of money, and
then she ended up buying fish that were not supposed to be in the same
tank together, and one of them, an eighty dollars fish, died not
even a month later. And I used to buy things on impulse too,
of course, but they were usually little things like come at the grocery store
or a bag of chips. Most of my purchases were clearly planned, even
the ones that I knew were not necessary, but I would really like and
want to keep for a long time. That's something that my friendly says tell
me too. But I by dumb things as well, so that she didn't
know what I would be complaining about. She always brought up the time when
we both went to an antique shop across the street from where she got her
nails done, and I bought what she called a creepy doll. But I
didn't find her creepy at all. I mean, at first she was made
from composite material, but wore one of the most elaborate dresses I had ever
seen on a doll before, green and with shiny black shoes. The whole
thing was well kept for over one hundred and fifty years, according to the
shop owner, who actually struggled to give me a discount on it. Eighty
dollars was too my for it, But when we were about to walk out,
she sighed and said that she would take thirty for her. The employees
are going to be happy about this, she said, as she put her
in a paper bag. The doll's eyes now almost completely closed. And you
should have heard my friend Kathy when it bought her. She wouldn't stop talking
about how much I had spent, as if she just had n't paid almost
one hundred dollars for nails and whatever else she had gotten done at the nail
salon. It must have been a few weeks after that when she showed up
to my house with a large basket with dog toys and a blanket. She
was holding on to a leash. It was a puppy, a tiny Labrador
dog that I knew was going to be like dealing with a tornado. I
looked at her suspiciously until she finally said that she had bought a flight to
Las Vegas for a weekend and needed someone to take care of her dog that
she was supposedly given as a gift from some guy she was dating. I
just let her have it right there. Everything I had been wanting to tell
her just came out like vomit to her face. I was tired of it.
She was irresponsible and always had other people taking care of her mistakes,
always picking up her slack. I asked her when she was going to get
her act together, and she stayed quiet, with tears about to start coming
out of her eyes. I felt bad for a second, but quite literally
a second, because she simply let go of the leash inside of my front
door, set the basket down, and left. I couldnot believe this girl,
honestly. The puppy started biting at the carpet and then rolled around on
it before I let it out to the tiny patio in the back of my
house, which had a gate to the outside. I made sure that it
was shot and used a couple of tupperware dishes to put water in some of
the dry food that was in the basket, and then I let the patio
door open to my kitchen just a crack in case he wanted to come back
inside. I was in the bathroom when I first heard the dog come back
in. His paws were heard down the hallway and then toward my bedroom.
All I could do was listen and hope but it wouldn't poop or bite some
of my chargers and electrocute itself. But then something worse happened. He started
barking and growling aggressively towards something down the hall. I waited for him to
stop for about a minute until I heard him whimpering and then him running across
the house and then keep barking. I ran out of the bathroom and went
straight for the source of the barking. The dog was now standing at the
edge of the hallway, barking at the other end of the hall. He
completely ignored me as he would inch his way down the hall and then stop.
I looked around the hallway, but there was no there. I mean,
the only thing there was was a small table with a couple of books,
some decorations, and the old doll. The doll. I walked up
to it and grabbed it, folding it closer to the dock to sniff,
and finally stopped barking. His paws were shaking as he got closer to it.
He sniffed it a couple of times and then looked up at me.
Then, out of nowhere, he started barking even more uncontrollably at it and
ran at full speed toward the other end of the hallway. I knew I
was going to have a pretty bad weekend already. With the doll in my
hand, I walked over to one of the boxes I had by the kitchen
with some pots and other things that was reorganizing. I placed the doll inside.
I could see its dead eyes wide open, staring right at me.
As I closed a cardboard flap over it. The dog looked at me as
if it had done something good, wagging his tail and bouncing all around me.
I just sighed, wondering how I had gotten myself into this. I
took him out for a short walk around the block, and I stared awkwardly
in the other direction as he decided to poop on the grass in front of
the neighbor's house and didn't have any bags to pick it up with. The
dog tugged and pull on the leash the entire way for at least it was
burning some of its endless energy. When we got back, I checked the
back gate to the patio and decided to let the dog stay outside with a
little crack in the door so that he could come inside if he wanted to.
At night. It would get very hot in my house in the middle
of the night, but it would be a while. It was still some
time in the late afternoon early evening, so the dog had some time to
get familiar with the place. I went into my bedroom to lay down for
a little while. When I heard the dog making noises around the cardboard box
in the kitchen. I grunted as I got up and peeked out the door.
Fortunately, I could see the dog biting out one of his toys through
the sliding door that led to the patio. That was suddenly so tired.
Friday nights were typically like this for me. I just wanted to get into
bed, put on a movie, and fall asleep, so I walked over
to the patio, checked the water and food dishes for him, and walked
back to my room. I closed the door and got into bed to possibly
one of the strangest nights of my life. I started imagining so many things
as I was in this half asleep, half awake state. I remember opening
my eyes and seeing an older woman combing my hair, pulling it tightly away
from my skull as she firmly whispered to me not to move. The mirror
in front of me showed her silhouette, but not her face, her dark
brown dress that went all the way down to the floor, but still showed
those dark boots against the red carpet. I realized that I was no longer
in my room, not quite a nightmare, but not quite a dream,
and the images kept coming. We were staring at a small casket as the
woman cried next to me. Two large crows were above the tree where the
swing was as I looked at my brown shoes in front of me, the
fire suddenly going out as the thunder rumbled across the entire dark house. It
was then when I woke up noises footsteps coming from outside my room. My
heart began to speed up, and beads of sweats formed on my forehead before
the rush earned cold when I realized that I had been taking care of the
puppy. Tiny little footsteps in the kitchen area, slowly at first, but
unnatural. I know how a dog walks, I know what it sounds like.
These were little taps against the floor, and they made their way from
the kitchen area, slowly, tapping sometimes against the wall, but mostly against
the wooden floor. Ontil the sounds were directly in front of my door.
I looked at the area underneath it. A tiny shadow worked its way closer
to my door, and then just kept walking. We your dow, I
thought to myself. That morning, I woke up feeling much better, and
I opened up my door and stopped myself before going to the bathroom, and
turned toward the patio door. I called the dog over and waited, but
I didn't hear him. I stabbed past the kitchen and into the patio and
searched around. The dog's toys were gone the dog. The dog was gone
too. I called for him, whistling and making calling noises. Since I
didn't even know its name. The dog was nowhere to be found. I
ran back to my room to grab my phone and call Kathy. I answered
with a what do you want? Almost right away, I asked her if
she had come by to pick up the dog or what had happened. She
called me irresponsible before quickly saying that she had stayed home and had gone to
pick up the dog that same night from the patio. She said she had
knocked on my door, but I didn't answer. I sighed relieved this time
while standing in the middle of my living room. Kathy hung up on me,
but I didn't care too much. She would get over it. It.
Walked over to the hallway to go to the bathroom again, but I
thought that something was off. One step, two steps in, and I
started feeling a little strange. By the third step, I noticed it.
Doll was sitting right under the table at the end of the hall. It's
dead eyes staring right at me. Scary Story podcast is written and produced by
me Edwin Kovar Rubins. Add Free episodes as well as some of the bonus
content is available by going to scaryplus dot com. You'll also get early access
to the Stories, as well as helping out the production of this and the
other shows. If you can't join No Worries, you can still help out
by leaving a five star review and following on your favorite podcast app. Up
next, be sure to check out my other show called True Scary Story,
a podcast where people tell their scariest experiences. Find it on your app right
now. Thank you very much for listening, See us soon.