Speaker 1: Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. A strange sense of being watched,
Speaker 1: not feeling like yourself eventually turns into a nightmare. My
Speaker 1: name is Edwin and here's a scary story. It was
Speaker 1: to eighteen am and I had probably seen everything there
Speaker 1: was to see on Instagram and TikTok, so I opened
Speaker 1: up the Facebook app and saw the same fifty eight
Speaker 1: notifications still waiting for me. I had been a few
Speaker 1: weeks a month now that I think about it, Getting
Speaker 1: to sleep was much harder now. Plus the whole Milly
Speaker 1: thing wasn't helping. I pushed her away, this time a
Speaker 1: little too far, and she never came back. She took
Speaker 1: her things while I was at work and texted me
Speaker 1: saying that she wanted to go no contact, and I
Speaker 1: just accepted it. Part of me wished for her to stay,
Speaker 1: like wishing that I could love her again. Splitting up
Speaker 1: in this case also split me in two. Two thirty am,
Speaker 1: now lost in between those apps and staring at the
Speaker 1: dim ceiling lit up by the headlights of a car
Speaker 1: passing by, when I heard the doorbell ring. Curious but startled,
Speaker 1: I rolled out of the couch and onto the carpet.
Speaker 1: I had been sleeping there ever since Milly left, that
Speaker 1: place felt smaller, less empty. The doorbell rang again. I
Speaker 1: crawled closer to the couch. The window was right behind it,
Speaker 1: and I stood up slowly to peek between the blinds
Speaker 1: of that dark room. I was leaning over the couch,
Speaker 1: making up characters in my mind, but I was never
Speaker 1: expecting what I actually saw. There was an old man
Speaker 1: out there in what looked like a UPS uniform, holding
Speaker 1: a box with both of his hands. He didn't move,
Speaker 1: didn't blink, just stood there with his eyes staring straight ahead,
Speaker 1: completely motionless. I thought about going to the door, but
Speaker 1: only for an instant before realizing that I shouldn't open
Speaker 1: the door for any one this late. I didn't even
Speaker 1: consider how absurd the idea of a delivery man being
Speaker 1: out so late was, or how I hadn't ordered anything.
Speaker 1: Call this part paranoia, I don't care, but it defined
Speaker 1: what I had been feeling. Watched that old man was
Speaker 1: somehow always watching me from inside the house in that
Speaker 1: same manner. Sometimes I would end up in the kitchen
Speaker 1: wondering what I was doing there or what I needed.
Speaker 1: Felt like I wasn't myself. The reflections in the bathroom
Speaker 1: mirror looked off. It was that of a stranger with
Speaker 1: a look of disappointment in his face, looking at me
Speaker 1: in the eyes. With those thoughts, I fell on the couch,
Speaker 1: my head buried in the corner between the cushions, as
Speaker 1: a figure that this man outside may have been a drunk,
Speaker 1: a man just as confused as I was, who just
Speaker 1: needed a few more hours of sleep. But as I there,
Speaker 1: I heard a soft noise from the door. I jolted up,
Speaker 1: went for the window, and I saw the man slowly
Speaker 1: walking away, his arms completely still by his side. He
Speaker 1: went to the street and got lost in the darkness.
Speaker 1: There was no truck out there. I waited until morning
Speaker 1: to check the package was still there. No return address,
Speaker 1: no postage. But my name was printed clearly on a
Speaker 1: white label, and it wasn't handwritten or smudged. It was clean, precise,
Speaker 1: almost like it had been stamped there at the exact
Speaker 1: moment I stepped outside to retrieve it. I picked it up,
Speaker 1: turning it over in my hands. The box itself was
Speaker 1: heavy for something so small. It was sealed shut, no tape,
Speaker 1: no flaps, just a perfect solid package. For a moment
Speaker 1: I considered throwing it away. Something about it mid my
Speaker 1: stomach churn. But curiosity is a funny thing. It overrides
Speaker 1: the gut, making you do things you wouldn't normally do.
Speaker 1: So I carried it inside. Sitting at my kitchen table,
Speaker 1: I hesitated before opening it. My fingers hovered over the edges, waiting.
Speaker 1: I told myself it was fine, that it was just
Speaker 1: a package. I peeled back the cardboard, revealing a small
Speaker 1: black velvet pouch. I tipped it over and something dropped
Speaker 1: onto the table with a soft clink. It was a
Speaker 1: USB drive, no label, no markings, just a plain black
Speaker 1: drive resting against the wood. Waiting. I almost tossed it.
Speaker 1: Who even used USB drives anymore? But something about it
Speaker 1: felt intentional, like it was meant to be found by
Speaker 1: me in this exact moment. I hesitated, but eventually I
Speaker 1: plugged it into my old laptop, the one I barely
Speaker 1: used anymore. I figured, worst case it was a scam
Speaker 1: or some kind of virus, and if my computer crashed,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't miss it too much. The screen flickered, A
Speaker 1: folder popped up, containing just one file, a video. My
Speaker 1: hands felt plammy against the keyboard. My gut told me
Speaker 1: to unploy the drive, to walk away and forget it ever.
Speaker 1: Showed up on my doorstep, but of course I clicked
Speaker 1: on it and it opened. It was security footage, grainy,
Speaker 1: black and white. It was my single camera, the one
Speaker 1: I had outside. It was pointing at my doorway. The
Speaker 1: timestamp said last night, around one point fifteen am, an
Speaker 1: hour before the delivery. At first, nothing happened. The screen
Speaker 1: flickered slightly with static fuzzing at the edge, but then
Speaker 1: there was movement. A figure appeared, stepping out from the
Speaker 1: shadows at the edge of the frame. It was me
Speaker 1: standing on the porch. I leaned forward, my fingers gripping
Speaker 1: the edge of my desk. I tried to recall if
Speaker 1: I had gone outside last night. Maybe I had stepped
Speaker 1: out for fresh air. But top down I knew the truth.
Speaker 1: I had not been outside. The figure on the screen
Speaker 1: stood still for a few seconds, and then glanced left
Speaker 1: and right, as if making sure no one was watching. Then,
Speaker 1: with precise, deliberate movements, I reached into my jacket pocket
Speaker 1: and pulled out a key. My breath hitched. I watched
Speaker 1: as the other MEE inserted the key into the lock,
Speaker 1: and it twisted and stepped inside the door, slowly closing
Speaker 1: behind him. Green went black. A deep nauseating feeling settled
Speaker 1: in my gut. I swallowed hard, trying to rationalize what
Speaker 1: I had just seen. Maybe someone had doctored the image,
Speaker 1: like it was a prank or a sick joke. I
Speaker 1: rewound the video and played it again. This time, I
Speaker 1: paid closer attention, and I looked for anything unnatural. But
Speaker 1: there it was again, myself standing on the porch, unlocking
Speaker 1: the door and disappearing inside. I reached for my phone
Speaker 1: and pulled up my home security app, searching through the
Speaker 1: previous night's footage. Nothing not a single recording between one
Speaker 1: and three am, just a gap of static, as if
Speaker 1: nothing had happened at all. Something had I looked back
Speaker 1: at the USB, a small black shape resting next to
Speaker 1: my laptop like a silent taunt. Someone wanted me to
Speaker 1: see this, and I had a feeling that someone wasn't
Speaker 1: done with me just yet. I replayed the footage, my
Speaker 1: pulse hammering in my ears. The person on the screen
Speaker 1: moved like me, acted like me, but something about him
Speaker 1: was off. There was a hesitation in his steps, a
Speaker 1: precision to his movements that didn't feel natural. It was
Speaker 1: as if he was following a script. I paused a video.
Speaker 1: At the moment he or I reached into the pocket
Speaker 1: for the key, my breath caught in my throat. I
Speaker 1: had no memory of going outside last night, let alone
Speaker 1: unlocking my own door, But there I was on the screen,
Speaker 1: turning the handle and stepping inside. I checked my locks again.
Speaker 1: Dead bolts was still fastened, the chain latch was untouched.
Speaker 1: I even tested the door, shaking the knob, but it
Speaker 1: didn't budge. Still, the thought nagged at me. If I
Speaker 1: never went out, how did that footage exist? I grabbed
Speaker 1: my phone, swiping through my security app again. Then I
Speaker 1: scrolled back to the timestamps from the video. There were
Speaker 1: no recordings there. A cold sweat broke out across my back.
Speaker 1: Someone had tampered with my security system, But who and
Speaker 1: why leave me the footage. I turned back to the laptop,
Speaker 1: staring at my frozen doppelganger on the screen. The more
Speaker 1: I looked at him, the more I noticed tiny discrepancies.
Speaker 1: The way his shoulders sat too stiff, how his fingers
Speaker 1: curled around the doorknob just a fraction too tightly. It
Speaker 1: was like someone was pretending to be me, but not
Speaker 1: quite getting it right. I directed the video's progress bar forward.
Speaker 1: The screen cut to black as soon as my double
Speaker 1: entered the house, and that was it. No movement, no sound,
Speaker 1: just a number upt end. I felt a presence, a
Speaker 1: weight in the air around me. Just then my apartment
Speaker 1: suddenly seemed too quiet. I shut the laptop and stood up,
Speaker 1: running a hand over my face. My mind cycled through
Speaker 1: rational explanations, but each one dissolved under the weight of
Speaker 1: the truth staring back at me from that footage. I
Speaker 1: wasn't alone, and whatever had come inside I was still there.
Speaker 1: I searched the USB again, my fingers trembling over the keyboard.
Speaker 1: The drive wasn't empty. There was another folder. I learned
Speaker 1: about hidden files way back in the dial up days.
Speaker 1: But there I found hundreds of video files. Each one
Speaker 1: was security footage from different houses, different front doors. The
Speaker 1: file names were just time stamps going back years. I
Speaker 1: clicked on at random. The grainy, black and white video
Speaker 1: showed another porch, this time belonging to a house I
Speaker 1: didn't recognize. The angle was the same as before, a
Speaker 1: single fixed camera watching the front door. The door was closed,
Speaker 1: the porch was empty, and then after a minute someone
Speaker 1: stepped into view, a man mid thirties wearing a hoodie
Speaker 1: in jeans. He looked up and down the street and
Speaker 1: then pulled a key from his pocket. He unlocked the
Speaker 1: door and went inside. My stomach turned. I clicked another file,
Speaker 1: a different house, a different person, this time a woman
Speaker 1: in a long coat. She checked her surroundings, unlocked the door,
Speaker 1: and then stepped inside. Every single video was the same,
Speaker 1: different houses, different people, but always the same scenario. I
Speaker 1: clicked into more files, each one making my skin crawl.
Speaker 1: Some showed figures that strangely, their limbs slightly off rhythm
Speaker 1: and their heads turning too sharply, as if their bodies
Speaker 1: weren't used to moving the way that they should. One
Speaker 1: video showed a man unlocking his door, stepping inside, and
Speaker 1: just before shutting the door, his head snapped back unnaturally,
Speaker 1: as if he had heard something behind him. The screen
Speaker 1: cuts a black before I could see what happened. Next.
Speaker 1: Another file, another home, and this time a woman was
Speaker 1: in a business suit, but when she turned over the
Speaker 1: camera before going inside, her face was blurred, and not
Speaker 1: by poor video quality, it was intentionally obscured. A sickening
Speaker 1: thought took root in my mind. Who was recording these
Speaker 1: and why were they sent to me? And then I
Speaker 1: found the last video in the folder. The timestamp was
Speaker 1: from tomorrow. I hesitated, my throat dry and I clicked it.
Speaker 1: The footage loaded, showing my house, my front door, a
Speaker 1: long empty stretch of time, no movement, and then at
Speaker 1: exactly two forty five a m. The door opened, just
Speaker 1: darkness beyond the frame, and then something stepped out. It
Speaker 1: was hard to make out at first, just a shifting
Speaker 1: outline at the edges of the light, moving in slow,
Speaker 1: deliberate motions. The shape didn't seem quite human. Its limbs
Speaker 1: were too long, its posture was wrong. It hesitated at
Speaker 1: the threshold as though adjusting to the air, stretching its
Speaker 1: limbs like it was waking from a long sleep. And
Speaker 1: then it took a step forward. I squinted at the screen,
Speaker 1: barely breathing. The image flickered, The figure wavered in and
Speaker 1: out of clarity, as though the camera itself wasn't sure
Speaker 1: it should be recording it, And then the details clicked
Speaker 1: into place. It was me. I clapped a hand over
Speaker 1: my mouth to stop the gas from escaping the figure,
Speaker 1: my double was standing in my doorway. Its movements were
Speaker 1: too fluid, too calculated, as if it had practice being
Speaker 1: me but hadn't quite mastered it. It tad twitched its mouth,
Speaker 1: forming something that looked like a smile, but the expression
Speaker 1: never fully took shape. And then it did something that
Speaker 1: sent eyes through my veins. It turned and looked directly
Speaker 1: into the camera, directly at me. I didn't move, I couldn't.
Speaker 1: My pulse pounded in my ears. The double in the
Speaker 1: video stepped forward and off the porch. My stomach was
Speaker 1: to or was it going? And what was it doing?
Speaker 1: The screen glitched again, distorting into black static, before flashing
Speaker 1: back to the front door. It was wide open and
Speaker 1: the figure was gone. I shot out of my chair,
Speaker 1: my breath coming in ragged gasps. My gaze was darting
Speaker 1: to my front door. It was still closed and still locked.
Speaker 1: I worked back to the screen, my fingers trembling as
Speaker 1: I rewound the footage. Had I really seen that? The
Speaker 1: video resumed and the figure was no longer there. Instead,
Speaker 1: the footage cut to something else, something worse. It was
Speaker 1: the inside of my house. The camera angle had changed.
Speaker 1: The view was now from within my living room, as
Speaker 1: if someone had set up a camera just from outside.
Speaker 1: Looking through the window, the furniture was all in place,
Speaker 1: nothing looked disturbed except for one thing. A shadow stretched
Speaker 1: across the floor, and it was not mine. The video
Speaker 1: distorted again, and when it refocused, the shadow had moved closer,
Speaker 1: closer to the camera, closer to me. I slammed the
Speaker 1: laptop shut, my hands shaking controllably. Somewhere in my house
Speaker 1: a floorboard creaked and I realized that I was not alone.
Speaker 1: I grabbed my phone and stepped outside. I walked randomly
Speaker 1: around the block for about half an hour. I went
Speaker 1: back to the house to grab my car keys, and
Speaker 1: then went to get some food. Doing anything to stay
Speaker 1: out of the house for as long as possible. I
Speaker 1: managed to stay out until about ten at night, roaming
Speaker 1: around stores sitting in my car, but eventually it was
Speaker 1: time to come back. The first thing I saw was
Speaker 1: that USB drive by the laptop. I imagined the footage again,
Speaker 1: but I decided to head to the couch and instead
Speaker 1: try to get some sleep instead of messing with it
Speaker 1: one more time. It was around two forty am when
Speaker 1: I was woken up by the sound coming from the hallway.
Speaker 1: I sat up, trying not to look into the darkness.
Speaker 1: But then I saw it, a shape walking up to me.
Speaker 1: The figure moved strangely, its limbs slightly off, like a
Speaker 1: video with corrupted frames, as if reality itself was struggling
Speaker 1: to render it correctly. It stood just beyond my front door,
Speaker 1: rocking slightly on its heels, watching, but I knew what
Speaker 1: I was looking at. It was me re lee. It
Speaker 1: wasn't its face mimicked mind, but the expression was wrong,
Speaker 1: a grin that didn't fit. The lips were too stretched,
Speaker 1: the teeth were too visible. Its head was tilted slightly,
Speaker 1: the movement unnatural, deliberate, like it was considering something. I
Speaker 1: was trying to convince myself that this was a nightmare,
Speaker 1: a hallucination brought on by stress, but my body refused
Speaker 1: to move. My breath came in short, panicked bursts, and
Speaker 1: then it twitched, a sharp, sudden jolt, like a puppet
Speaker 1: whose strings had just been yanked. Its arms flexed, fingers
Speaker 1: opening and closing, as if it was trying to get
Speaker 1: comfortable in its own skin, my skin. I pushed my
Speaker 1: chair back instinctively, my heart hammering. My laptop screen flickered
Speaker 1: as the video continued to play, but I didn't need
Speaker 1: to watch it anymore. I could see it happening in
Speaker 1: real time. My phone buzzed duck against the table. The
Speaker 1: sound made me jump, and my hands shook as I
Speaker 1: reached for it, barely able to hold. It's steady when
Speaker 1: you text message from my own number. Look outside. I hesitated,
Speaker 1: the weight of the moment pressing down on my chest.
Speaker 1: My body screamed at me not to look, but I
Speaker 1: knew I had to. Slowly, I turned my head toward
Speaker 1: the window, pushing down the rising nausea in my throat,
Speaker 1: and through the blinds, I saw a movement. Someone was
Speaker 1: standing on my porch, not knocking, not ringing the bell,
Speaker 1: just watching. And then in the dim glow of the
Speaker 1: street light, I saw its face, my face, and this
Speaker 1: time it didn't just grin. It waved slowly, patiently, like
Speaker 1: it had all the time in the world. My vision blurred.
Speaker 1: I stumbled back, my legs barely holding me up. The
Speaker 1: air in the room felt thick and suffocating, and I
Speaker 1: tried to convince myself that I was still asleep, that
Speaker 1: none of this was happening, but the weight in my
Speaker 1: chest told me otherwise. The figure didn't move from the porch.
Speaker 1: It just stood there, unwavering, its reflection barely distorted by
Speaker 1: the glass. And then, as I gasped for breath, it
Speaker 1: did something I will never forget. It reached into its pocket,
Speaker 1: pulled out a key, and I heard the dead fold turn.
Speaker 1: The front door creaked open. I lurched backward, nearly tripping
Speaker 1: over the chair. My breath was loud as the door
Speaker 1: creaked open an inch and then another. The cold night
Speaker 1: air seeped in, carrying with it a silence so heavy
Speaker 1: that it made my ears ring. I didn't want to look,
Speaker 1: but I had to, and through the widening gap, I
Speaker 1: could see it my reflection, and no, not my reflection.
Speaker 1: It was standing outside. It stepped forward, one foot, crossing
Speaker 1: the threshold, and moved deliberately, like someone savoring the moment.
Speaker 1: It said, was still tilting at an unnatural angle, examining
Speaker 1: me with an expression that wasn't quite right. The two
Speaker 1: white grin remained frozen in place, but its eyes, its
Speaker 1: eyes were not mine. They were empty, hollow, as if
Speaker 1: whatever this thing was had never really been a person
Speaker 1: at all. I scrambled for something, anything to defend myself,
Speaker 1: my hands fumbling across the table, a coffee mug, my laptop,
Speaker 1: nothing that would matter, nothing that would stop it. And
Speaker 1: then it spoke, and not with words, not with sound,
Speaker 1: its lips never actually moved, but inside my head I
Speaker 1: heard it clearly, let me in. The voice was mine,
Speaker 1: my own tone, my own inflections, but stretched, warped, like
Speaker 1: a recording that had been played too many times that
Speaker 1: was starting to decay. I clapped my hands over my ears,
Speaker 1: squeezing my eyes shut. You're not real, I whispered, You're
Speaker 1: not and then footsteps inside My eyes snapped open. The
Speaker 1: thing was still at the door, but I could hear
Speaker 1: it inside the house, the creak of the wooden floor boards,
Speaker 1: the soft rustling of movement just out of sight. I
Speaker 1: wasn't looking at the real threat. It was already in here.
Speaker 1: The realization hit me like ice in my veins. My
Speaker 1: own breathing was too loud, my pulse roared in my ears,
Speaker 1: and I turned, scanning the dimly lit room, the corners
Speaker 1: where the shadows stretched longer than they should have. A
Speaker 1: shape shifted near the hallway, and then another, and was
Speaker 1: it looking at just one of them any more? There
Speaker 1: were more dozens standing in the doorways, crouching in the corners,
Speaker 1: waiting in the dark spaces I had never paid attention
Speaker 1: to before. They were me, All of them were me.
Speaker 1: The thing at the door finally moved, stepping inside, completely
Speaker 1: merging into the others. Their forms blurred, their faces distorting
Speaker 1: into grotesque parodies of mine, smiles stretched, two wide, eyes,
Speaker 1: black and endless. I stumbled back, pressing against the wall.
Speaker 1: My mind screamed at me to run, but where there
Speaker 1: was nowhere to go. That's when my phone vibrated again,
Speaker 1: a new message for my own number. It's your turn.
Speaker 1: I understood now the figures had seen in the videos,
Speaker 1: the ones entering their homes. They hadn't just vanished. They
Speaker 1: had all been taken, replaced. They had become part of
Speaker 1: whatever this was. I had watched their fates unfold, unaware
Speaker 1: that the videos weren't just warnings. There were instructions, a process,
Speaker 1: a cycle, and now it was happening to me. The
Speaker 1: shadows around me deepened, stretching unnaturally across the walls. The figures,
Speaker 1: my figures, stepped closer, their forms flickering like a distorted signal.
Speaker 1: My breath hitched as I backed into the farthest corner
Speaker 1: of the room, but there was no escape. I realized
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna leave. I was going to become another face,
Speaker 1: another file, another timestamp in the folder for someone else
Speaker 1: to find. The air turned thick, suffocating, and the shadows launched,
Speaker 1: and then darkness. Scary Story podcast is written and produced
Speaker 1: by me Edwin Karubyez. Thank you very much for your reviews.
Speaker 1: I love the story ideas that you guys are putting
Speaker 1: on there, and if you want to support the show
Speaker 1: and get stories without ads, try out Scary Plus. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much for listening. Keep it scary everyone. Let's
Speaker 1: see you soon.