Speaker 1: Grandpa had been dead for a week, and the footsteps
had stopped completely. Didn't scare us anymore, not as much
as the noises, although Mom still had a tough time
with it, more with the memories, though. She was conflicted,
understandably so, considering that she was the only one that
chose to move us to come spend his final days together.
I don't know how she knew. Maybe a daughter's intuition,
if that's a thing. My sister and I had gotten
off school, and she was upset because she had to
skip summer camp in order to come with us to
his house, a large thing that we called the farm,
but we knew very well that it wasn't anymore. Grandpa
had no animals or land to tend to too old.
I assume I remember trying to convince my sister that
this was better than camp. This was a whole summer
of camping, and we could tell stories, laid into the night,
start campfires, and learn songs. I shouldn't have suggested that
I regretted it the very first day when she asked
me for a story. When I told her the first one,
she asked me questions about it, wanting to make up
her own. It wasn't scary enough, She said she wanted
a really, really scary one. Mom was doing her best
to get us settled, so I helped out where I could.
We had brought out two blankets and two sets of sheets,
along with our clothes and the rest of the things
we would need. We would have to scavenge around the huge,
worn down house. Grandpa was sick, but he could still
move around and go to the bathroom on his own.
We were supposed to be there just to keep them
company and hopefully convince them to come live with us
closer to town. We all knew that it was going
to be impossible, but we tried because we didn't know
we were going to be among a dead man who
would still walk for another thirty days. My name is Edwin,
and here's a scary story. It was hard to talk
about the problems around Grandpa. It felt like he had
pushed himself out of the world on his own, his
way to defend himself. Throughout his life, he was known
as a hard working man, leading a local group of
farmers to strike deals with some of the larger areas,
bringing along business and even tourism to the areas of
the locals. The ones I started offering things that were
hard to enjoy unless you were teaching them, like baking
or harvesting fruit. They made tourist attractions out of them. Halloween,
for example, started to become a day to look forward
to with the hay rides and the local legends. There
was one of the girl who fell on the well
and they shut it down. The headless horse. That's it,
not a horseman, but like a headless horse, a four
legged creature that roamed in the woods at night searching
for a head to replace his. But there were other
dark ones around the area. The stories never made it
to the status of legends because they were real. The
Troy children that disappeared under mysterious circumstances, the Gonzales widow
who was found atop the trees for the birds to find.
I think all those legends started circulating in part because
of my grandpa. He loved reading and talking to the historians.
That would have been one myself, he told me, had
it not been for your grandmother being so afraid of
those things. Mom used to tell me that Grandma was
like that. Around the house you would find countless bibles
of different salesmen, in churches. She visited paintings of Jesus
and a mix of little statues that belonged to Catholic
churches instead of whatever denomination of Christians she was supposed
to be. The word God was not allowed without it
being in prayer or with respect, a reason why Mom
picked up the word gosh as a habit. I had
never thought of historians as scare seekers until Grandpa taught me.
He would pull me aside by grabbing my shoulder tightly,
getting close to my face with that smell of stale coffee,
one that I didn't know had come from his shirt
rather than his mouth, and he would say, let me
tell you how the world works. I knew it was
story time. Then it must have been twelve when I
learned about what humans were capable of. The stories he
would tell about those towns were only in what point
zero zero zero one percent of the many we would
ever get to explore. And yet there were so many
tales of a thing that led to hate, that led
to fury, that led to death or mystery. He usually
started with jealousy or revenge. In a strange way, I
thought of life being worthless. After those conversations, events were
the birth of a child, and the many birthdays they
had became only a mystery countdown before they would go.
The joy of new parents, the laugh of the child
changing as they outgrew their clothes, all coming down face
to face with a gun or a knife, a whole
universe ending right then and there. But still I wanted
to know more more about everything, like there wasn't enough time.
About as many certificates and letters of accomplishment that he
had in his office, the key to the city more
like a collection of villages, though, the cigars and bottles
giving to him by the local businesses at one point,
all of them now dusty and covered with a type
of shame that he didn't deserve. After the rumor started,
we had an idea about it, especially now that I
was older and could understand more of our family's problems.
Why was it only Mom the one who came to
visit him? What had he done wrong? I don't think
anyone else would be able to understand it? And Grandpa
had lost all the energy to try and give us
the answers, but he still gave us questions. A scarier one, huh,
he said, coming up from behind My sister startling her
before standing up to help him sit by his chair.
Instead of a campfire, we had a lantern with a
tiny flame in the glass out by the porch. We
had turned off the lights for ambience, although it also
worked for the bugs. How was my sister's age when
I first learned about this? And I think Grandpa remembered
it too. I don't think there's an appropriate age to
learn how the world works without any immediate objection from us.
He leaned forward, stretched out his legs with the boots
stomping the wooden floor right by the lantern, nearly fading
it out completely, and he started telling us a story
that I didn't know, the one we had all been
wondering about the root of all the problems in our family,
and of why he ended up retreating to his house
waiting for his groceries rather than making eye contact with
anyone else in town. There was a boy who came
from nowhere. He started back then your Grandma and I
had just moved in here. It was a standing structure,
but nothing livable. I got some of the guys around
Elwood to come and help me, but those bums just
wanted the beer. We had set aside for Fridays. I
found them once sneaking a few but didn't say anything.
But your grandma hated it everything, really, she hated beer,
loud music, the books or stacks of newspapers that would
bring in word around town was that there was a
boy who was walking into different properties at night. Of course,
no one had cameras or none of that, so we
relied on guard dogs and the nosy neighbors to bring
us the news. Eventually, we all started to know him
around here as Lucas. I'm not sure where the name
came from, but that's what we called him. The weird
thing about him wasn't that he sleepwalked. I think it
was the easiest thing for us to process it was
that no one knew where he had come from. He
just showed up. No one knew where he lived, who
stayed with him, nothing like that. My sister and I
looked at each other with side eyes as Grandpa continued
this was a type of story. I knew him by
and no one would see him during the day, you know,
it was only at night, and he would talk gibberish sometimes.
According to some of the neighbors, the kids would call
him a ghost. Others would say that he was some
type of werewolf that lived out in the woods, but
I never bought any of it. Everything everyone said about
him pointed to the same thing. That he would walk
around with intention, not aimlessly, around properties. He would stand
by the windows, not looking toward them, but away. Like
if you were standing by the window right there, you
see that one, imagine facing out toward that tree. We
both snapped our heads towards the window and then back
at Grandpa. Now all along you might be thinking that
I'm talking of some teenager or something, So get a
hold of this. This boy must have been no older
than eight years old. Now that changes things, doesn't it.
I of course wanted to see where this boy had
come from, so I started asking around. People used to
know me around here. So I got a hold of
a young man. His name was Miller, forget his first name,
but he had kept his family's library going the thing
that turned into a museum by the entrance to this
road right here. That one's his. And it wasn't just
a tourist thing, no, no, no, that thing was a
real library with original pictures, letters that got photocopied into books,
and lots of other stories in the minds of that family,
the one who had lived here ever since this place
was nothing but a series of rest houses for horsemen,
the ones that were crossing over passed the mountains over there. Anyway,
Miller told me that he suspected the boy belong to
the George House, a place higher up in the hill,
maybe about halfway, that he had been born out of wedlock.
Now that that was a sin or anything for the
rest of us. God, I was about to say, Gosh,
God knows how much of that goes around here. The
truth was, he wasn't the product of any marriage or
lack of it. He was a product of a single family.
Now that's a sin for just about anybody. Mom peeked
her head through the doorway. When you're all finished here,
we have dinner ready, soup and sandwiches, like you asked, Maggie.
You're gonna want to hear this, Grandpa groaned, tapping on
the chair next to him. It was strange for us
to see Mom being the child of someone else, but
she followed orders, wiping her hands on the already crumpled
up paper towel and sitting down leaning back. Grandpa then
continued with the most terrifying story any of us had
ever heard. I was warned by your grandmother not to
mess with the Millers, the historians of this part of
the town. Grandpa continued. They were disliked by many, mainly
because they had something everyone lacked around these areas, truth, cold, hard,
solid truth, and they didn't care about it either. They
were well prepped out there. You don't outlive an entire
town not knowing how to defend yourself around here, and
they had close ties to the county records. They were
the first to make obituaries for everyone, and they had
the most concise list of deaths and curious cases by far.
There was no record of this boy, and Lucas was
always putting quotation marks in the records with his estimated
date of birth. The Millers never went out to ask
anything by the George House, where they suspected that Lucas
had come from. Again, we don't get to outlive us
by being dumb either. I could tell Mom was picking
up the story right away. Either she had been listening
the entire time, or she had already known about this part,
because she was now leaning forward her ear facing Grandpa
while she looked at the lantern that kept pretending to
die in front of us. Now you don't know about this, Maggie,
but that boy you all talked about was real. And
all those times I left early for the fair or
to chase after our cows and the neighbor's properties, I'd
always wonder if i'd see him. Until one morning I
caught up with him on the truck. He didn't run
or nothing. He stood still looking at me, and I
think he was smiling, but his face was strange, you
know how it is sometimes, so I couldn't tell. I
asked him where he came from and if he needed
a ride, maybe up to the George house. But when
he heard that word, I swear he lost it. He
started screaming, wailing like I had shot him in the leg.
He collapsed on the dirt right there on the path,
so loud I think he woke up the houses up
by the foothills. I stood there, saying sorry and asking
him what the matter was. But all I saw next
was how he stood up and started running full speed
toward the hill. And now I'm saying faster than a horse.
When he hit that mud rode up ahead, he hit
it with such a force that he tumbled over, but
he never hit the ground. I swear to you all
right here in front of me, that I saw him
float all the way up the road. I was standing
there and disbelieve, going what did I just witness? Do
I do? I head straight for the Miller's house. I
don't remember how I got there in one piece, with
the truck bouncing so much because of the rain from
the night before, but I remember walking up to his
door and knocking on it hard enough to wake him up,
soft enough, A said, not startled anybody, Miller, Miller, I yelled,
I just saw Lucas out there by the road. Miller,
you awake, hold on, hold on, I heard from the inside.
The light from the kitchen was flickering on. I watched
silhouette walking up to the front door. What's this you're saying, man,
he asked me as a front door opened, his face
growing with concern. I told him everything. I described the
boy as I had seen him, his right eye lower
than the left, and his mouth off to the side.
Had it not been for his round face or the
scream he let out, I could have sworn this was
some old man wandering the dirt roads. Early in the morning,
I described the way he left, though that part was
harder for me to believe. It wasn't so familiar, Just
as eyes expected, he said, his hand on his chin
while the other was extending out towards my truck, gesturing
us to go in there. He locked his door and
we went out for a drive to where I had
seen him. As I tried to repeat my story with
even more detail, the way he floated up the hill,
as if being dragged by an invisible rope, faster than
I had ever seen any human move in my life.
I shut off the truck and lowered down my window.
The sun was warming up the dirt enough for the
mist to begin forming around us. We sat there in silence,
when suddenly a loud gunshot was heard in the distance,
with those echoes of a scream. We were used to gunshots,
for sure, but not that early. Something about it didn't
sound right. It's now or never, Miller said, his voice,
suddenly changing from that softer voice that he would only
speak of facts and stuff he read on books to
that of a hunter. And so we drove halfway up
the hill to the George house to find it empty.
It wasn't abandoned like an old dilapidated house by any means,
but looked like it hadn't been taken care of in
a couple of months. Right at the front, by the
door was the body of that boy, part of his
head smeared on the steps that led up to it.
Upon realizing this, Miller barely managed to open the door
fast enough to vomit. Mom at this instant, looked over
at my sister to see her reaction. Her mouth was
open wide and she was completely still. But in front
of Grandpa, there was no asking him to tame it down.
Mom had tried many times. Grandpa told me his stories
never worked. Sometimes it even made it worse. We waited
for Grandpa to continue, and he stumbled on his words
a bit. I could tell he had lost his train
of thought. You found the boy, I said, right right,
he continued. I found the boy and got out of
the car, and I noticed that the blood was dry.
The smell was horrible out there, and Miller as my witness,
we can say that that boy had been dead for
much longer than a few days. The gunshot the boy
I saw, and might have all been in our heads,
not real not sure how it happened, but it was,
as you might say, impossible. Mom took a deep breath
and looked at us, putting her hands on her knees
to stand up, as if she was expecting more to
the story that she knew she wasn't going to get.
Grandpa reached out his hand to get help to stand
up as we all got up and walked into the
dining room area in silence and sat around four sandwiches
on the table while Mom brought along a pot of
soup from the stove. A few days passed and Grandpa
told us a few other stories, none as creepy as
a boy who came from nowhere, but still unsettling to
say the least. We had more time to talk with
Mom about everything, and my sister was the one to
ask about why Grandpa was always alone. Mom told us
that Grandma had left him because of the reputation he
gained around town after hanging out with Miller and his family.
In fact, he even got accused of killing that poor boy.
Of course, no one had any proof or motive, but
hearsay was more powerful back then. Grandma's pride was strong too,
and he shared it with her own children. Mom was
too young to be influenced, though Grandpa really wanted to
figure out who that boy had been from the George House,
and now there was no one left to ask. Grandpa
had said that Miller suspected that the George House was
empty because he wouldn't see their trucks going back and
forth anymore, but never cared enough to go out and
find out on his own. Neither of them were able
to explain the gunshot unless he had come from somewhere else,
and their finding had been just pure chance, not like
there had been a ghost gunshot. But what about Grandpa saw,
my sister asked stubbornly. I don't know, Mom said, sternly,
ending the conversation with that. When Grandpa died, his death
certificate was signed and we had a request to notify
the House of Records about the burial information. We just
needed to let them know. Sometimes, especially from small towns
without cemeteries like that, people request the places where they
want to be buried, and Grandpa was sure to have one.
We figured the only person who might know would be Miller,
Grandpa's longtime friend. It took a couple of visits until
we finally met him. All this time We had been
cleaning up the house and getting everything in order, with
the paperwork and the filings, the ones for the transfer
of inheritance and such. Mom was going to receive everything
to her name, but she wasn't sure if she wanted
to stay because of the strange sounds that came at night, footsteps,
small ones that would come up to the windows and
then vanish. Grandpa had been used to them in life,
and he wouldn't be afraid of them. It won't be long,
my little friend, he would whisper. We all heard them
now without Grandpa this time, and we all thought of
his story when it happened. Miller took out his book
and found coordinates next to a name on his book.
He put his hand on his chin and the other
pointed to the car, signaling us to go with him somewhere.
He took a stray to Grandpa's property, be parked by
the large oak tree and the logs by the old barn.
Behind everything, a small patch of wild flowers had sprouted
next to a flat rock. He walked up to it.
Miller kept checking his books. On the ground. Next to
the flowers was a headstone Lucas, the boy who came
from Nowhere nineteen sixty six to August second, nineteen seventy four.
Grandpa was a kind man, a man that the world
let down when he chose the truth. And yet he
never forgot about that young boy that had no voice,
the one who couldn't smile like the rest of us.
His little friend that would visit on those cold and
dark nights and stand by the window, the one who
had no patch of dirt set aside, the one who
was turned away with no friends or family. He understood
each other, and that unlikely friendship. Grandpa quietly gave him
a place to belong. The stories for Scary Story Podcasts
are written and produced by me Edwin Coarrujaz. If you
want to get in touch, you can find me on TikTok,
Instagram and Facebook as Edwin Cove. That's e d w
I nco V. I also have a bunch of other
shows on my website scary FM. If you like this podcast,
you'll also really like Horror Story, where I share true
paranormal mysteries and hauntings. You can look it up like
that Horror Story has big yellow letters on the cover. Anyway,
Thank you very much for listening. You're following the show.
I will tell you another story next week. Keep it scary, everyone,
see soon.