Speaker 1: Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Those who work when most
Speaker 1: are asleep know of things that only come out at night.
Speaker 1: My name is Edwin, and here is a scary story.
Speaker 1: I was walking toward the microwave when he came out
Speaker 1: of the break room with a stinky egg sandwich. You're
Speaker 1: not supposed to microwave those things, at least I don't
Speaker 1: think you are. But believe it or not, it was
Speaker 1: normal for people to do even weirder things. When I
Speaker 1: stepped in. Kate was blushing and sort of looking at
Speaker 1: the frame of the door where he had just left.
Speaker 1: When her eyes met she looked away and turned an
Speaker 1: even brighter red. I tried to ignore it. Up until
Speaker 1: this point, we had been sort of friends. She knew
Speaker 1: I was into her, and she was kind of leading
Speaker 1: me on. Honestly, we talked about whatever, but I only
Speaker 1: remember hoping for the microwave to hurry up, and instead
Speaker 1: shut it off with a minute and thirty seconds left,
Speaker 1: just so I could leave. Me and that guy, the
Speaker 1: one she had blushed at, talked a couple of times
Speaker 1: in passing. After a certain amount of weeks seeing each
Speaker 1: other around the office, it's sort of bound to happen.
Speaker 1: I swear I didn't notice this until one of my
Speaker 1: friends from deliveries told me that everyone could tell that
Speaker 1: I hated this guy. They tried to reassure me that
Speaker 1: it was cool because the guy was married, and that
Speaker 1: Kate had talked to another friend about me and such.
Speaker 1: I hated being part of the office drama and conversation.
Speaker 1: But when you work the late shift like that, in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night to be ready once we
Speaker 1: get the nighttime deliveries, you spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: with your mind just wandering. One thing I noticed right
Speaker 1: away was that this guy would get up and walk
Speaker 1: around the office a little before midnight, and then he
Speaker 1: would come back, but instead of going to the bathroom
Speaker 1: on our floor, go down to the basement. I had
Speaker 1: gone down there for some reason on a Thursday, the
Speaker 1: last day before my two day break, and because I
Speaker 1: didn't know what to say, I casually asked when I
Speaker 1: saw him, scared of the one on our floor, huh?
Speaker 1: His eyes opened wide. He sort of stuttered saying no,
Speaker 1: but then he changed the topic to something about the weekend,
Speaker 1: and it worked. I couldn't wait to get out of there,
Speaker 1: and I told him about some of my plans and
Speaker 1: all that. Before I knew it, he was walking up
Speaker 1: the stairs and I was standing there by myself, smiling
Speaker 1: like a weirdo. What I did next was something that
Speaker 1: to this day I don't understand. You see, to scare ourselves,
Speaker 1: you would talk about how the second floor bathroom was haunted,
Speaker 1: the men's one, and I kind of believed it. There
Speaker 1: was a man, Bill Corrigan, who had been found there
Speaker 1: on a Monday morning in the winter of nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: His body was draped over the bathroom stall, completely bent ill.
Speaker 1: How did he get up there? Nobody knows. I looked
Speaker 1: up the story when one of the old timers told
Speaker 1: me and some of the other guys about it. When
Speaker 1: we started back then, you had newspapers to look up,
Speaker 1: and it was true there was a guy that was
Speaker 1: found there. But over the years, more and more talk
Speaker 1: about this man started circulating. It started with one of
Speaker 1: the other people in the inventory department. I wasn't there,
Speaker 1: but it was recent enough so that everyone's details matched.
Speaker 1: When they told me, Jason, one of the guys who
Speaker 1: had gotten transferred in from downtown, went to the bathroom
Speaker 1: sometime around one in the morning and he came out
Speaker 1: screaming no lie. With his pants still down, he tripped
Speaker 1: and bumped into the water cooler so hard that it
Speaker 1: tipped over and he had to get stitches on his eyebrows.
Speaker 1: An incident report was written, and just a few days
Speaker 1: later he was gone. Some say he quit, another say
Speaker 1: that he got a compensation package to stay quiet, but
Speaker 1: either way, the rumors were circulating. Those that were there
Speaker 1: said that he kept screaming about the face, the face,
Speaker 1: and the hanging man on the stall. Even the janitor
Speaker 1: who happened to be on our floor agreed, and he
Speaker 1: only spoke Portuguese and understood very little of what everyone
Speaker 1: else was saying, And yet his story matched. I think
Speaker 1: this new guy had heard the story and was afraid
Speaker 1: of that bathroom. One night, I saw him going to
Speaker 1: the basement and coming back up. He was at two
Speaker 1: staircases at the opposite ends of the building. I just
Speaker 1: kept doing that. It was working. Finally I saw him
Speaker 1: walked over the hallway next to the breakroom of our floor.
Speaker 1: My plan up until that point was to lock that
Speaker 1: basement bathroom and see what he did. I followed behind him,
Speaker 1: and I saw him reluctantly go into the bathroom, and
Speaker 1: about thirty seconds later, I sped, walked over the door
Speaker 1: and banged on it as hard as I I could.
Speaker 1: I saw my co workers peek their heads out of
Speaker 1: their cubicles for an instant before going back to their calls.
Speaker 1: I ran away like a kid, back to the desk,
Speaker 1: hearing him scream in there. But after a few minutes,
Speaker 1: the bathroom was dead quiet. At the time, it was
Speaker 1: me and two other co workers on the entire floor.
Speaker 1: Everyone else was taking care of the new delivery. Starting
Speaker 1: to get worried, I walked over to the bathroom again.
Speaker 1: I knocked on the door and I heard movement in there.
Speaker 1: I opened it and found him sitting on the floor
Speaker 1: by the sink. He was grabbing a shirt tightly by
Speaker 1: his chest, unable to speak, but he kept pointing at
Speaker 1: the bathroom stall. He was able to crawl out of
Speaker 1: the bathroom, and I followed right behind him, sitting on
Speaker 1: the carpet, trying to call him down. He stayed real
Speaker 1: quiet until he finally stood up and went to his cube.
Speaker 1: The rest of the office started whispering about what had happened,
Speaker 1: and they kept talking for days after that, because the
Speaker 1: next night we found out that he had quit, or
Speaker 1: that he had been compensated to leave or to stay quiet.
Speaker 1: But we never saw him again. Now I can't say
Speaker 1: I saw anything strange, but I always felt it. Something
Speaker 1: about that bathroom always made it colder than the outside.
Speaker 1: Maybe I never paid enough attention. Mariya quickly reached from
Speaker 1: a headset and put her finger on her mouth, asking
Speaker 1: me to be quiet. I could hear the wind from
Speaker 1: the drive through ordering menu. The mic had been activated,
Speaker 1: signaling that a car had stepped over the censer. When
Speaker 1: she got one of the cooks to peek out the
Speaker 1: door at the back of the restaurant by the Tasty
Speaker 1: Wings sign, came running back to us, laughing and looking surprised.
Speaker 1: The Wai navie. There's nobody, but the censor was still on.
Speaker 1: That's how it works at drive throughs, or at least
Speaker 1: it used to anyway. You have a headset on the
Speaker 1: whole time you're in there, and when a car comes
Speaker 1: up to order, you get a beep followed by the
Speaker 1: sound of a car engine, and if you wait long enough,
Speaker 1: you get a hello. But this time nothing. Even though
Speaker 1: Maria was holding the headset, you could just hear the
Speaker 1: wind from the drive through. In that silence of the kitchen,
Speaker 1: I looked at Maria with wide eyes. It was my
Speaker 1: first time working the night shift there, and I figured
Speaker 1: she suspected I was gonna be a little bit scared,
Speaker 1: so she asked me to sit down and signal at
Speaker 1: the cook to go out there again. But he smiled
Speaker 1: nervously and yelled out for Bethro, the assistant manager, to
Speaker 1: go out there with him. They both laughed as it
Speaker 1: made their way outside, putting the track to hold the
Speaker 1: back door open, and then it got quiet. I was
Speaker 1: about to ask what was happening when Maria shushed me
Speaker 1: silently again and waited. She put the headset on and
Speaker 1: waited some more, and then, like the wind, we heard it. Well,
Speaker 1: I heard it from the loud speaker from the kitchen
Speaker 1: got to see hey, I'm sorry. I could feel the
Speaker 1: tension in the muscles of my face from holding up
Speaker 1: my eyes so wide. It was the voice of a
Speaker 1: man sobbing. Is Betho or Omar? I asked Maria in
Speaker 1: my broken Spanish, Is it Beto or Omar? Madia stayed
Speaker 1: still looking at me. She was sitting next to me
Speaker 1: now at the dining area, and then The crying came
Speaker 1: with sad, desperate cries, the kind you hear at funerals
Speaker 1: with the small coffins. The cries continued when out of
Speaker 1: the corner of my eye brought it to two figures,
Speaker 1: Omar and Betel outside by the window. They were circling
Speaker 1: the building. They were signaling that there was nobody there.
Speaker 1: Gotta see you, gotta see you. The voice sounded desperate,
Speaker 1: and then it got so loud that Madia ripped the
Speaker 1: heads off her head. She looked out over the guys
Speaker 1: with both arms and signaled them to come back. And
Speaker 1: when I tell you that these guys ran, I mean it.
Speaker 1: They were by the kitchen so fast and shut the door,
Speaker 1: laughing nervously. But this so did you hear that? They
Speaker 1: asked us another beat at the drive through, and I waited, hello, Hello,
Speaker 1: I heard through the speaker, welcome to taste these, I said,
Speaker 1: how may I help you? In order of the five
Speaker 1: piece original and a large coke. We all stood still
Speaker 1: before Madia snapped us out of it. For those few
Speaker 1: minutes we were okay. Older man in a security guard
Speaker 1: uniform showed up at the window in his old truck.
Speaker 1: He paid, asked for more hot sauce. Waited for about
Speaker 1: a minute to while they packed everything, and then he
Speaker 1: thanked me and drove away. Later on that night, while
Speaker 1: we were cleaning, it was oddly quiet until I broke
Speaker 1: the silence. Who did you think it was? I asked Maria?
Speaker 1: Who not who? She said what she did, the sign
Speaker 1: of the cross on herself and then on me. At
Speaker 1: first I thought it was her English that confused me,
Speaker 1: but it started making sense. They had all been hearing
Speaker 1: that strange voice from the drive through for years, every
Speaker 1: once in a while, and always late at night. Madia
Speaker 1: had been there the longest and could tell when that
Speaker 1: thing was there. One of the managers had heard the
Speaker 1: story and rarely worked nights, but when I asked her,
Speaker 1: she said she suspected it was the original part of
Speaker 1: the restaurant, Miguel Garcia and Ibra McAllister. They had a
Speaker 1: falling out when the restaurant had just started and was
Speaker 1: gaining traction. When Miguel was found dead in his car
Speaker 1: outside the house. The whole thing made the news, but
Speaker 1: no one was charged. Maybe something happened to the other guy,
Speaker 1: the manager said, looking at me, that's what he gets.
Speaker 1: She said, would have been. Let's just say for being dumb.
Speaker 1: The company I worked for started delivering at three thirty
Speaker 1: am because of the summer rush and people panic spending.
Speaker 1: Even though it sounds good at first being able to
Speaker 1: get packages extra fast, it's creepy for us to walk
Speaker 1: up to a property in the middle of the night.
Speaker 1: You never know when you're gonna get a crazy dude
Speaker 1: with a gun or with those big old possums that
Speaker 1: come out from God knows where those things hiss. I
Speaker 1: didn't know, but anyway, it was paying the bills for
Speaker 1: a time after graduating, so I only complained when everyone
Speaker 1: else did. For a couple of nights already, I noticed
Speaker 1: that a house wasn't picking up their packages from the porch.
Speaker 1: A short stack of envelopes and small boxes was gathering
Speaker 1: on the front, some of them delivered by me. A
Speaker 1: few sorry we missed you notes on the doors. I
Speaker 1: thought twice about telling my supervisor, considering the guy was
Speaker 1: on a power trip most nights, but one of my
Speaker 1: co workers said, it was cool that you were actually
Speaker 1: supposed to say something, So I did the meeting. If
Speaker 1: you want to call it, that went has expected. He said,
Speaker 1: to deliver, scan it and that it wasn't our business
Speaker 1: if they never picked it up from the warehouse to
Speaker 1: the door. You got. That took everything inside of me
Speaker 1: not to cuss him out, but I kept my cool
Speaker 1: and walked away from the warehouse to the door. He
Speaker 1: shouted as I got in the van. And so the
Speaker 1: boxes kept piling up for another few days, a thing
Speaker 1: at a time, then a couple of packages here and there.
Speaker 1: But one time, during a delivery, I actually got to
Speaker 1: see this house's neighbor. Thankfully. It was an older gentleman,
Speaker 1: looked like he was getting ready to go out, coffee
Speaker 1: in hand and sitting on the porch at four point
Speaker 1: thirty four forty am, mind you. I told him good
Speaker 1: morning that I had a question, and he stepped up
Speaker 1: to the edge of the porch and smiled. That's when
Speaker 1: I asked him about the house next door, but he
Speaker 1: didn't seem to understand me. He offered me some coffee
Speaker 1: that I politely declined, though he mentioned about the family
Speaker 1: next door kind, all of them, very kind in his
Speaker 1: hoarse voice. I wasn't getting anywhere, so I said by
Speaker 1: and hopped back in the van and then drove the
Speaker 1: next location. I would say that two more nights passed
Speaker 1: without a delivery to that house, but then finally it came.
Speaker 1: I was about ready to get out of the van
Speaker 1: and drop yet another package on the porch when I
Speaker 1: froze with my hand on the door handle. The porch
Speaker 1: was empty. A blue light like from a television was on.
Speaker 1: I stepped up to the house. A light motion censored,
Speaker 1: blinded me for a second while I scanned the barcode,
Speaker 1: and then the front door opened. Just a crack. Delivery
Speaker 1: for mister Bentley, I said, waiting for the door to
Speaker 1: open a little bit more, and out came a shirtless man.
Speaker 1: He relaxed his shoulders when he saw my uniform and
Speaker 1: scanner in hand. Glad to see someone here, I said,
Speaker 1: relief in my voice. I've been making deliveries for like
Speaker 1: a few days, and I saw everything was paling on.
Speaker 1: The guy explained that his daughters kept ordering things while
Speaker 1: they were on vacation, and apologized about the mountain of
Speaker 1: boxes they saw when they got home. That neighborhood was
Speaker 1: generally safe. Otherwise I would have asked if everything had
Speaker 1: been there, But in the voice of the supervisor, from
Speaker 1: the warehouse to the door, that's the job. I was
Speaker 1: freaking out for nothing all those nights. Well until I
Speaker 1: mentioned to him how I had talked to the neighbor.
Speaker 1: He said it had been a month since the old
Speaker 1: man next door had passed away. Could barely believe what
Speaker 1: I told him. I had described him as best I could.
Speaker 1: Dark colored shirt, maybe red with white stripes, perfectly iron collar,
Speaker 1: khaki pants. That's him. That's him, he said, rubbing his
Speaker 1: arms from the chill we both felt at that moment.
Speaker 1: He told me a few things about him, and I
Speaker 1: had told him what he had told me, that all
Speaker 1: of them were a very kind family. He would always
Speaker 1: tell us that, he said, smiling, super nice guy. We
Speaker 1: stayed quiet there for a little bit, thinking nice thoughts
Speaker 1: about a man who was no longer with us, before
Speaker 1: I thanked him and got back in the van. I
Speaker 1: didn't believe in ghosts up until that point, and I
Speaker 1: can't say I was scared, but man, I hope it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen again. On the drag back to the city
Speaker 1: from the airport, I picked up a young woman with
Speaker 1: the backpack heading for the U Tree bus station. She
Speaker 1: had missed the last bus, from what she told me
Speaker 1: as we loaded her bag on the back of the cab.
Speaker 1: She had a ton of questions about the area and
Speaker 1: was traveling from somewhere in Europe. I'm not very good
Speaker 1: with countries, so I can't remember this after all these years,
Speaker 1: but her accents was pleasant. We drove to the first
Speaker 1: part of the city, the industrial zone, alongside the meat
Speaker 1: packing plants, where the smell would creep into the car
Speaker 1: no matter how much air fresh you used. I remember
Speaker 1: begging this girl not to open the window, even with
Speaker 1: hand signals. Right when she took out her an instant
Speaker 1: camera from her pocket, I was glad she understood. Just
Speaker 1: as we reached a clearing, there were a set of
Speaker 1: train tracks that cut perfectly in the path in front
Speaker 1: of us. Nobody around for as far as those dim
Speaker 1: orange lights scattered down the road would let us see.
Speaker 1: When suddenly I saw a figure appear from the left
Speaker 1: side of the road and rush to the middle of
Speaker 1: the street right in front of me. The girl in
Speaker 1: the back seat screamed in a phrase I didn't understand.
Speaker 1: As I hit the brakes, we stood still in the
Speaker 1: middle of that dark road, but I didn't waste any time.
Speaker 1: I got out at the car and looked in front.
Speaker 1: There was nobody. I reached back in the car for
Speaker 1: a flashlight, the one that I had in the compartment
Speaker 1: in the car door, and I shined it all around
Speaker 1: the car. There was literally only a chain link fence
Speaker 1: and then enormous parking lots on either side, all lit
Speaker 1: by the same colored lights. The girl had also gotten
Speaker 1: out of the car and looked around. She was a
Speaker 1: little shaken up, but not terribly. Where is she? Her
Speaker 1: voice quieted by the emptiness around us. As soon as
Speaker 1: she said it, you saw her too, right? She stared
Speaker 1: at me, confused, and then her eyes lit up. The girl, Yes,
Speaker 1: the woman, the thing in front of us. Yes. Yes.
Speaker 1: We stood out there for just a little bit longer,
Speaker 1: and then went back in the car. When we started
Speaker 1: driving again, she had a new story to tell her
Speaker 1: friends back home about how she saw a ghost in
Speaker 1: the middle of the road with a weird taxi driver,
Speaker 1: and I, well, it was just another night on the job.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the first, It wouldn't be the last. Scary story.
Speaker 1: Podcast has written and produced by me Edwin Kovarubias. If
Speaker 1: you're listening while you're working late at night, stay safe
Speaker 1: out there. We don't know what lingers in the Dark.
Speaker 1: You can reach me through the comments or by using
Speaker 1: the information on the description of this episode if you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch, and if you're following this podcast,
Speaker 1: I will come back next week to tell you some
Speaker 1: more stories. Thank you very much for listening and for
Speaker 1: your support. Keep it scary everyone, see us soon.