Speaker 1: Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. The closer I got to
the truth, the more I wished I had stayed away.
Some mysteries are meant to remain unsolved. My name is Edwin,
and here's a scary story. There was a photograph at
my grandmother's home that always bothered me. The story was
that I had been taken by my grandfather somewhere in
the border of Washington and Canada. From what I knew,
my grandpa was not a photographer, and much less of
some expert that could modify or create anything artistic out
of images. But this image, to any one else, was
just of a scene of a cabin at the edge
of what appeared to be a tree line. The trunks
of these trees were dry, fog all around them, and
a log cabin with a stack of chopped wood neatly
stacked by the corner. It hung neatly on an empty
wall with the light green paint that my grandma had
chosen long ago, something she refused to change after my
grandpa died. In that room with the picture on the walls,
where I used to sleep whenever I visited my grandma
in the summers, being the only one of my cousins
to actually like spending time out there in the small
community where she lived, along with all these other small
houses and old neighbors, some who were always happy to
see a kid riding around in a bike up and
down the street. Now would often be the only one there.
I would go with Grandma to the store, always in
two trips, the second one to pick up what she
forgot during the first. It was eerie. I must admit.
Some of the things she would say, I wasn't sure
if they were real, things about how the man who
delivered the bread in the mornings had complimented her, but
would change her tone to say that she would never
do that to my grandpa. Except Grandma bought her own bread,
and no one ever knocked on the door. She would
pick up the phone sometimes, and without waiting for it
to ring, or without greeting anybody, she would continue a
conversation someone I always assumed was on a direct line,
like those toy phones who used to have as kids.
She always called her Meg. I never mentioned it to anybody,
not that they wouldn't believe me. Part of it was
because I didn't want them to think anything bad about Grandma.
The other part was that I didn't see it as important.
But it was about this photograph, the picture of the
cabin in the woods, that I found out that she
knew of something else, something that had been bothering her
about my grandpa's death. I told you earlier that the
image appeared to only be about this cabin by the
edge of the tree line in a foggy morning. But
I had a lot of time to look at this photograph.
Grandma's television would get two and a half channels, one
that Grandma would turn on in the evenings as a
soap opera would play, a foreign one with a young
girl who had the ability to tell the future and
wanted her parents to get back together. While she watched
and gave me the buttered toast with milk, I would
sit on the bed in the room to eat it
while flipping through the many magazines that she had collected
over the years, old news, in some of them stories
of old presidents. But while I gulped down the cold milk,
I would look at this photograph and see the strange
ways the trees seemed to be stuck together, almost like
a double image of tree trunks and branches, and yet
the logs on the cabin seemed still. When I think
of it now, I admit that it might just be
a blurry photograph. But one evening with a static on
the television on full blast from the room just outside
from where I was, I saw the image move, like
when your eye gets drawn in for just an instant,
but you're too slow to react to it. And I
looked at every detail, the branches in the trees, all
but two with leaves on it, the way the trees
faded through the fog, and that cabin, the dusty windows
that were divided into four. When I spotted it, the
figure through the window glass, a man with a light
colored hat looking directly at me, well, looking directly at
the camera. The way the grin glowed against the rest
of his face and window made me think that he
was not smiling, but showing his teeth in a menacing way.
Had it always been there. I had looked at this
same photograph for many summers, already looking at every detail,
but I had never noticed this man in there. My
eyes would dart open at odd hours of the night
as I looked over the picture in case the moonlight
had already shined away from it, and I don't know
what time had happened when I finally fell asleep, but
the light had already faded, and only the silhouettes of
the branches shined against that mostly empty wall. I could
still see that man in the window, waiting for something.
It was like this for the rest of the summer, though.
I did eventually ask my grandma about it. Oh, that picture,
your grandpa took it, she would say, And that was
without a care in the world about what I thought
about it and how much it scared me. Grandma, But
did you ever see the man in the window? She
walked up to it. Well, that's her grandfather, she said,
as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
She pointed to his hat, barely visible in the window
of that old cabin. But Grandma, didn't he take the picture? Why, Yes,
he took it, she said, losing herself a bit in
the picture before walking out of the room. Eventually I
started sleeping facing the other wall instead, as much as
I hated turning h out back on that man in
the window, my supposed grandpa. I never learned exactly how
my grandfather died. With my cousins one time, they said
that he wasn't dead. That he had just left one day,
taking a few of his things. He said he was
going to go on a hunting trip and just never
came back. I guess it was more common back then
for men to abandoned everything and start a new life
somewhere else, since they would say it as if it
were normal. My dad never talked about him. We only
had a couple of pictures of him, the wedding with
my grandma and another family portrait, A tall man that
looked younger than he was until he turned thirty, and
then age hit him like an avalanche. Dad said Grandpa
had gotten sick suddenly and died. Grandma knew the story,
but she ended up passing away one winter during my
first year in high school. I never got to hear it.
Our family had made the trip down there to take
care of her things, and I was forced to pick
one item from her house to take with me. I
didn't know why I picked that photograph, but it came
home in a box, along with my dad's old baseball
trophies and the large T shirt that Grandma used to
make me wear after taking a bath, saying that I
needed to wear something loose after the shower if I
didn't want to get sick. The photograph sat in a
box in the closet for years until my senior year
of high school. I would only think of it when
I stumbled upon that box while looking for something among
the mountains of sweaters and junk. I kept in that thing,
But things changed once that photograph came into my house.
Late at night. I would hear whispers, sometimes shallow and
other times the deepest chance chills that would come like
the wind, but not anything I could talk about anymore.
Being afraid at Grandma's house was one thing. I was
still a kid back then, but now scared of being
in my own room as a teen about something in
the closet, I wanted to stay quiet about it. One time,
I woke up with the strained sensation of my blanket
being stretched out over me like a thin plastic film.
It was close against my toes and tightening against my neck.
I found myself gripping the blanket as if it were
being pulled down and away from me with the force
that was definitely not coming from me. I was too
afraid to turn around. I never found out what it was,
but I knew I had something to do with that photograph.
There was something I heard once about how you shouldn't
take things from dead people, but I wasn't sure if
it still counted if the dead person was your own grandmother.
I finally picked it up one day when I was
sorting through things to take to college and what to
leave behind. The photograph was much smaller than I remembered it.
I think only the frame was large, but still the
black and white photograph was just as clear as it
was all those years ago. When summertime came, I knew
what I wanted to do. After pressing my dad about
what had happened to Grandpa, he finally showed me his obituary.
A caring father death in absentia is what it said.
He stayed quiet and gave me more details. The tombstone
was ordered, but never picked up, never placed anywhere. Everyone
was asked to stay quiet about it. I had to
look up what absentia meant, and it pretty much meant
he disappeared. Nobody searched, nobody talked about it anymore. There
were strict rules to follow when Grandpa had broken one.
Apparently there was something about those woods that people avoided,
not even the authorities investigated like they should have. They
knew about the strange occurrences in those woods. The vanished,
they used to say when they referred to the long
list of people who had gone missing around there. But
for me, it was like every chance I had to
learn about that photograph was cut off. Grandma was of
no help, maybe because I didn't ask all the questions.
My Dad was vague about it, and still I did
impress him even more. And now the only place that
might have held some answers was a place I should
not visit, but it would be my last chance, and
I was going to make the drive. Maybe seeing the
place would give me some answers about that photograph and
about Grandpa. I found myself staring at the photograph up close,
now that it wasn't nailed on a wall. For hours,
I would have it next to me, looking at every
detail again, every branch and imperfection. I couldn't believe I
missed a very particular thing. It felt like when I
first noticed the man in the window of that cabin,
except this time I noticed a figure, tall, dark and menacing,
barely sticking out of the side of one of the trees.
I thought it could have been one of those blurry
parts of the photograph I was looking at, but then
I noticed one of the eyes from behind the cabin.
I didn't tell anyone about it before I made the drive.
I didn't want to ask anything, and I didn't want
any answers. The town I made it too, deserves no attention.
They don't want it. In fact, they might find me
if I share it. But everyone knows, especially at the diner,
where I got some pretty serious warnings about that cabin
in the woods. They knew the area and were able
to figure out roughly where the place was. No one
should go there, son, You'd best stay out of there.
People go missing all the time, and I should have listened,
but I realized it too late. By the time I
was out there the dirt road that led to the
opening in the forest, it had gotten late and I
was looking for a place to park and rest up
before continuing the next day. But all I could see
were trees after trees, and little room to stop a car. Finally,
off in the distance, I saw a small space on
the side of the road right after a turn. The
air had gotten misty with fog rolling in from up ahead,
and I made it to the spot just before it
covered up the road. The last time I remember feeling
this scared was back at the room my Grandma's looking
at that photograph at night. And now to think I
was living in that photograph myself, with fog the trees
and my car to take place of the cabin. Feeling
just as afraid as an adult now, I put the
car and reversed over the trees, away from the road,
not sure who I was hiding from, but the small
sedan I was in would surely go un noticed if
I parked it just right. I locked the doors and
jumped into the back seat, afraid to look out the windows.
The blanket was already on the seat, and I don't
know so's why I grabbed it and put it over
my head so quickly. I could hear my heart beating
loudly as I listened for something, anything coming from those woods.
They were silent. I knew there was nothing out there,
and yet I felt like I had stepped into a
place I shouldn't be in. I felt the place get heavy,
suffocating enough to get me to roll down the window
no matter how afraid I felt, and I was about
to my hand already on the handle when I heard
knocking from behind me. The wind picked up so fast
it shook the car from all sides, and in an
instant all that I felt were the echoes of the
branches moving in the distance. As whatever this was moved
through the mist and the darkness away from me. I
froze in silence, my head still under the blanket. Maybe
it was a car passing by, one of those big,
fast cars that would rattle yours when they passed too
close a gust of wind. I thought, if there were
hills nearby, surely they would be gusts. It was too
hot into that blanket now, and I started to pull
it down, but I was met with more darkness from
the inside of that car, the dim glow through the fog,
one that I assumed was from the few stars barely
visible through the branches. I sat still, feeling silly and
comforted by being scared in a car holding onto a blanket,
just like I did when I looked at that photograph,
the one at my Grandma's house. But it wasn't until
morning when I realized just how close I was to
the real thing. The fog was a cold blue that
morning when I stepped out onto the wet gravel. A
trail waited for me, just off to the left side
of the car, behind the trees that were hiding me.
Without hesitation, leaving the doors unlocked and everything, I walked
up the trail that lead to a small clearing not
more than thirty feet ahead. It was there where I
saw an old abandoned cabin. The cabin, the one from
the photograph, part of the roof was still up the trees,
the fog almost in the exact position like in that photo.
My not couldn't help myself and ran back to the
car to grab the picture frame. I jogged back up
to the clearing and confirmed it. This was a spot
just off the dirt road what appeared to be an
old hunting cabin, maybe a refuge from something. I stood
there for a minute and I felt it again, the
strange wind that came from between the trees and stopped
right behind me. I took a few steps closer to
the cabin, looking behind me this time just to make
sure I wasn't being followed and that I was still
within running distance from the car, And with my steps
in a steady rhythm, I walked up to over the
side of the cabin and found where the door used
to be inside, an old table still standing, two solid
wood chairs, and broken glass on the floor. The place
rumbled as they walked across the open floor toward the
opposite corner. On it a candle holder, solid brass, it seemed,
and I thought about taking it. I honestly did, before
I remember the price of it. You don't take things
from a dead person. And though I didn't know who
this place had belonged to, I knew there was something
waving its finger no at me from somewhere, warning me.
The walls were lined with squares of a lighter shade
of wood than the rest, some vertical rectangles, and others
were wide, but there was one that stood out to me.
Held up the frame I was gripping the whole time,
and held it up toward the wall, A nail still there,
and it fit perfectly in the shape of that square.
Grandpa never lied he had taken the photo from this
cabin in the woods, literally taken it. I hung it
from the cable in the back of the frame and
stepped back. The haunting photo of the man in the window,
menacing figure watching the cabin from the trees. It all
seemed to belong in one place when I looked at it,
the way it blended with the wall, And it's what
I remember now when I tell the story of that photograph,
a part of something larger, something will never quite understand.
I walked around for a little bit longer, finally getting
back in the car without that photograph, I no longer
noticed those gusps of wind as I drove back toward
the diner. They had all been talking about me and
my drive to the woods. Hank here went up to
check on you last night. Were you parked by the
Ottison the entrance, the old guy said from the counter.
I think so, I answered, remembering that old cabin. Strange
things happen out there. Kid. They say there's a gold
somewhere around there, but I ain't about to go trying
to find out, the man said, staring back down at
his coffee cup. We hear about that dark man of
the woods, Hank, don't scare him. Don't listen to him, honey,
the waitress jumped in, that's why nobody stops here to visit,
just warning to leave everything where he found it. That's all.
Don't want I'm stealing some gold and finding him without
a head. The small group of four stayed quiet. Only
the old radio from the kitchen was heard for a
few seconds. But I just wanted to see the cabin,
I told him. They looked up at me, wide eyed.
The waitress tapped Hank on the shoulder, shushing him before
he even spoke up. What did you see, honey, Nothing,
I told her, It's just a broken down old cabin. Right.
Relief came over them all at once. I wanted to
ask and find out who was the man in the photograph,
the dark shadow behind the trees, the gusts that traveled
through the woods. But now that I was there with
people who knew all of the answers, I held my
questions to myself, and I could tell that they knew
it was best that way, too. Scary Story podcast is
written and produced by me Edwin Kovarugas. As always, thank
you so much for your support. If you can find
me on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram. Asked Edwin Cove that's
E d W I nco to follow our podcast accounts.
I'll leave links to everything in the description of this episode.
If you're subscribed and following the show, I will tell
you another story next week. Thank you very much for listening.
Keep it scary everyone, see it soon.