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