Speaker 1: Welcome to Scary Story podcast. Rules are meant to be broken,
they say, not realizing how important they can be and
keeping us sane. My name is Edwin and here's a
scary story. Come on, Dad, don't scare her like that,
I said. Natty's eyes were beginning to swell nervously as
she looked at me. I could tell she was trying
to decide whether or not to believe her grandpa about
how eating strawberry jam right out of the jar would
give her a third arm. I don't know about you,
but I'm okay with just two, he said, as he
started to double down on his story, just like he
always did. I had this friend Benny, you all remember him.
Don't believe him, I told Natty as I smiled, But
enough with strawberry jam. If anything that's gonna make you
lose your teeth before mine. My dad simply grunted, smiling
at Natty, realizing that she was actually scared. There were
so many things that Dad would say that used to
creep me out When my brothers and I were growing up,
especially around the old House by the lake. There were
reasons to be afraid, unlike now, when kids like Natty
were more scared about running out of credits on their
mobile games than about the bird's nest suddenly making chirping noises.
Stuff that I grew up with, and I was grateful
for that, although part of me wanted to share with
them what the real world was all about. Maybe once
Natty was older, I might tell her about my stories
at the old house just for fun. But for now
I had enough eerie things to deal with. Dad was
losing it magatell. His stories became longer and more paranoid,
talking about things that he had started to see around
the house since Mom died. Breakfast, he said, one day,
was there on the kitchen table. I kid you, not
just the way your mom made it, except there was
rotten and infested with flies. Of course, I thought at
the time that Dad had simply forgotten to eat the
food either he or one of us had made for him,
and it stayed at the table for several days, although yes,
it was unlikely because the man used that table every
day and routine was part of his life. Up at
five eggs and bacon with coffee and a bagel in
the afternoon. But no matter what, losing your life partner
is something with effects that few of us can understand
at our age, or think that it will never happen
to us. He might have forgotten about breakfast, although the
alternative that perhaps there was something strange going on at
the house was always a possibility. There were other things
who would say that would send chills down my spine,
and I blamed all of our experiences on the old house.
The place had been renovated sort of over the original place,
and had a few additions over the years. It had
a porch and a garden, now a guest house in
the back. But before then I remember just how eerie
it was to be there in the evenings, a lonely
house with hardly any close neighbors an old shed behind it.
Mom was a fan of lamps, like the old fashioned
ones that you would play somewhere outside by the door frames.
They would be all around the house on the outside,
with mosquitoes and flies circling around them. After sunset, there
was one by the window that would stay on, and
I clearly remember falling asleep to the buzzing of their
wings zooming around the glowing orange light. But I love
that house the way it creaked as a house cooled
down for the night, the tapping of the critters on
the roof as they started their own nocturnal adventures around.
The property had several rooms, a couple of them used
for storage and were made empty, but the fields around
it were huge. We had no driveway, but rather a
large dirt path that led from the wooded area on
the back to the entrance of the house and then
to a large, peaceful lake in the front, obstructed by
only a few large pine trees and an oak tree
smack in the middle of everything. I always felt like
my dad knew something about the place that we didn't know.
With these strange rules that even mom had to follow,
I never saw my dad angry except for when the
rules were broken, but they were simple. Stay out of
the shed, no going out to the lake at night,
and no pictures inside the house. The rules were followed
for most of my young life, with the few exceptions
as we became teenagers and we started having friends over
that wanted bonfires by the lake and then camera phones
coming around with pictures of family moments and dogs jumping
on the furniture, breaking the picture rule. But the shed
was avoided all the time, especially after the incident with
my younger brother. He had gotten a puppy for his
birthday and was out by the front of the house
trying to teach it some tricks when it suddenly ran
toward the back of the house. My brother chased him,
and before he knew it, he was standing right at
the entrance of the shed. I know my brother, and
even now I know that following the rules was what
he was known for, A straight a student, doing everything
he was supposed to, and a big part of the
reason why he was my parents' favorite, although they were
afraid to admit it. I was in the living room
when my dad came running toward the front door, yelling
for my younger brother, demanding that I tell him where
he was. I told him that I had seen him
by the front of the house playing with the dog.
As he ran out toward the yard. My dad ran out,
and when I followed him, I could hear my brother
screaming from somewhere behind the house. I followed my Dad
as you ran out toward the shed. The puppy was
standing by the entrance, and he shoved the door open,
and my brother ran out of there completely pale, stumbled
for a bit, and then fell to the ground. Dad
picked him up and took him inside, as my mom
closely followed. She had come outside from all the commotion.
We all stood there for a few minutes while he
came to and Dad asked him about what he had
seen in there, and all my brother could say was
the man. James. My brother further explained that he had
not gone in there on his own, that the puppy
was by the entrance to the shed, barking when he
was suddenly shoved inside, and the door was close behind him.
Even though Mom and Dad never told any of us
anything else about the incident except for making us repeat
the rules over and over that we would stay out
of the shed, I knew that Dad believed my brother James.
And what made this all the more disturbing was that
James had talked about the man several times already. It
was a thing that he would see when he was
sleeping at night, and a reason why I would get
woken up in the middle of it to walk with
him to the bathroom. He would say that as he
was sleeping, a man would stand at the foot of
his bed looking at him. He said that he would
tilt his head from side to side, and that his
smile would glow whenever he tilted to the right, illuminated
by the light from the lamps that Mom had fading
in and out for a while. James never knew when
the man would go away. He would simply hide under
the blanket and eventually fall asleep without telling me or
my older brother, who also shared the room with us
as kids. James never told us about what else he
saw in the shed, and to this day we haven't asked.
I was fourteen by this time and had two of
my best friends come over for a bonfire night in
front of the house. I remember Mom and Dad arguing
a little bit about it, with Dad wanting us to
stay away from the lake when we finally came to
an agreement on making the bonfire by the oak tree
that by ten we would all be inside. Dad had
gotten us some VHS tapes and microwave popcorn for the
Trouble movies he knew we would like, and that were
probably recommended by the woman at the video store, and
she was right. My two friends and I were out
by the oak tree waiting for another friend to be
dropped off a little later. We got to talking about
everything teenagers talk about boys, high school gossip to kill time.
When suddenly he heard someone crunching leaves as they walked
up over the tree. All three of us turned around,
expecting to see Ellie coming up, except there was no
one there, so we sat in silence, afraid of saying
anything about we had just heard. But we were all
thinking it. You see, it had told him a few
things about the house rules and the reasons why they
were in place, but I could tell that they couldn't
quite understand. You see, the steps were too loud to
be that of a dog's and too heavy to be
Elle's footsteps. There was no place to hide around there,
since aside from the trees in front of us and
the house, it was basically a large empty yard. We
kept looking at each other for a while until one
of them started laughing nervously at what we had just heard.
Your dad said no going out to the lake at night,
right why? I always assumed there was because he was
afraid of us drowning or something, and that's what I
told him, unaware that we were all about to uncover
the real reason. Without knowing it, Ellie showed up not
long after we thought we heard her coming up to us,
announced by the bright lights of her mom's minivan, drubbing
up to the house and pasted it where we were
by the oak tree. She grabbed her backpack, waved goodbye
at her mom, and then came up to sit next
to me. Now it's really you, Tina said, expecting Ellie
to ask why, but instead being ignored completely as Ellie
simply agreed and asked about what she had missed. Tina
was all excited about telling her about the ghost footsteps
that she called them, and then about my dad's warning
about the lake at night, but Ellie seemed undisturbed. Yeah,
Mom told me to stay away from the lake as
well the mosquitoes, and she's afraid of me drowning. We
all laughed at just how indifferent she seemed about it.
Ellie was always a chill friend that would agree to
just about anything. She was okay with everything too. Want
to see this movie okay? She would say. Did you
see that so and so was staring at you during class? Oh?
Really okay, she would say, and move on. Tina, on
the other hand, was different and wanted to make a
big deal out of everything. Jessica was more like me
in the middle I never wanted to talk about ghost
stories around anyone, especially considering how afraid the house would
make me feel sometimes. But when you're around friends, especially
at that age, I wanted to show off and talk
more about it with others, and so I told Elie
about the footsteps and how I believe that the house
was haunted. We talked about the shed, the man that
would roam around the house, what my thoughts were about
the lake. Parts of it were made up and others
were true, although I never considered just how serious they
were at the time. Like the story of the oak tree.
When my brothers and I were trying to hang a
tire to use as a swing on it, my dad
came out to help us with the rope, but when
he climbed up and mentioned the rope markings on the tree,
along with the tally counts carved high up on it,
he made us tie the swaying onto one of the
pine trees instead of the oak tree. This tree has
seen some things, he said, which is why we ended
up with the lopsided swing that would break off every summer.
Eventually we gave up on using it. But what about
the lake, Ellie asked, suddenly very quiet and looking directly
at me over the fire. I told her the story
of my older brother who ran back to the house
after trying to catch some fireflies out by the lake.
I barely remember that night. He had been out for
the majority of the evening, and Mom had asked Dad
to leave him be after he asked why he was
out there so late. He's growing up. Give him a space,
thinking about how much I wanted my space too, but
I didn't say anything. It was then when Paul came
running toward the house screaming, and once he reached it,
he was barely catching his breath. Dad was shaking him,
trying to get him to talk about what had happened,
but all Paul could do was point out toward the lake,
and so Dad ran out there, past the oak tree
and up to the edge of the water. Splashlight was
only a tiny dot out of the darkness in front
of the house, reflecting two or three times over the water.
He came back, got us to call James and told
us to stay away from the lake at night. Paul
was able to explain to us a few things once
he was a little bit calmer. He said he had
seen a man coming out of the water, his clothes
and face completely covered with mud. The man had said
no words, just made sounds as he slowly walked out
and walked over the branches of the pine where Paul
had been. Paul never talked about the incident after that night.
Ellie asked me if I had seen the man that
roamed around the house, and even though I wanted to
say yes and make up something, I told her the truth.
I hadn't seen anything in that house. The only creepy
things I had heard were the sounds of the house
settling at night, and that if you don't count the
screams coming for my brothers. I often wondered if my dad,
as he got older, would find an explanation to what
we had experienced at that house we were growing up,
But instead, with his age, he started sticking more to
his rules, talking about the man that roamed around the
house as if it were some intruder that we all
had to worry about. Ellie interrupted my thoughts to ask
about why was the guys in the house only they
had seen the man and not my mother or I.
Tina laughed at Ellie, saying that shoulgar to college to
study to become a detective. It's true, Ellie shot back,
surprising everyone. Ellie hadn't cared much about anything before. We
all stared at the fire, once again, hoping that another
one of us would speak up and ease attention. We
were all feeling when suddenly we heard a splash coming
from the lake. We all screamed and ran for the
front door, leaving everything as it was by the fire.
We were laughing when we finally made it to the
den of the house, Mom peeking at us through the
kitchen window while Dad came in asking what we had
all seen. We told them the truth that we were
telling ghost stories and that we got freaked out over nothing.
Ellie then asked Dad about the ghosts in the house,
and in order to not scare us even more, he
simply told her that maybe one day he would find
answers to what was going on. For now, to just
pick out a movie and that he would get the
popcorn going for us in the meantime. But what about
the pictures in the house, rule Elly asked, unwilling to
let it go the complaints of other girls. Why can't
you take pictures inside the house? Everyone started teasing her
and laughing as she finally let it go. We then
just watched movies, played games, and forgot all about the
topic for the rest of the night. A long time
passed before any of us talked about the man around
the house again. My brothers would get scared sometimes even
I would hear what they had heard every once in
a while, but after years of this happening, it was
normal around the house. Eventually, my older brother Paul moved
out when he went to college, and I went to
study as well and got married, while my little brother
joined the army after high school and left my parents
alone at the house. That's where they remained all these
years until I had my daughter and started making the
visits much more regularly to their house by the lake.
Mom died when Natty was two years old, and I
started taking care of Dad by visiting almost daily. I
was glad we had those times to remember. Near the end,
Natty was eight when Dad left us too, and soon
there was no other reason to go to the house
except for the last cleanup, as James called it. That's
when we had to pack our parents' stuff and decide
amongst ourselves what we wanted to do with the house
now that our parents were gone. And it's odd because
during these moments it feels like our minds aren't quite
grasping what is going on. It just goes way too fast,
and at times when everything seems insensitive to say or
even think about. But I was going through the things
in the kitchen and the bathroom, places where things expire,
first looking at the brands that Dad liked, the cans
of uneaten beans and corn that Mom had packed in
the cupboards, but Dad was too sad to throw away
or eat. And it was when I got to their
bedroom when I started cleaning up the closets and underneath
a bed, and I found a box of memories that
they had photo albums from around the house from when
we were little. I got to see the very few
photographs of us with birthday cakes and opening presents during Christmas.
Some of them were captioned by hand by my dad
on the back my fourth birthday, Paul's dinner to celebrate
the end of Little League Baseball, Jane's awards from school.
They were supposed to stay like that, good memories. Once
I showed my brothers the pictures during one of their visits,
we all noticed something along those photographs, a man in
the background, lurking around the corners, the man behind the
kitchen counter, the man in the group photos that nobody
could identify, who was always looking at the camera, always
with the straight face, and always hiding somewhere around the house.
It was too late to ask anybody who he was,
but my brothers all claimed that the man was what
had been terrifying them all those years at the house
when they were little, and now I understood the reason
for the house rules. Scary Story Podcasts written and produced
by me Edwin Kwarubias. Thank you for all your comments
and messages as we begin the spooky season. We have
so many more ideas for stories that you've suggested. Remember
that for antfree and to support the stories, you can
try out Scary Plus links to everything, including how to
get in touch with me or in the description of
this episode. Anyway, if you're following the show, I will
talk to you next week. Thank you very much for listening.
Keep it scary everyone, It's yo soon.