Speaker 1: Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. We're stepping back in time
today for a couple of throwback stories, free mastered and
with a special surprise. Make sure you comment or reach
out if you recognize our guest storyteller today in our
second story of the night, my name is Edwin, and
here's a scary story. My uncle has a small ranch
in the Sonoran Desert. Whenever there is a family member's
birthday or some other event, we always assume that it
will take place there. It's about a mile from the
main dirt road and has amazing views of the natural
desert scenery. This must have happened six or seven years
ago when we were celebrating another event. My uncle was
hosting a barbecue with all of the family. I don't
remember exactly what event it was. I forgot many things
about that day, but I still vividly recall one thing,
the most inexplicable, chilling experience of my life. Before everyone
arrived at the ranch and we were getting ready, I
offered to go buy ice down the road at the
house of some lady who had made a shop out
of her property, which was also her home. I've always
liked technology, stuff like iPods, games and things like that.
This time around, I was really into two way radios
that'll let you scan around for others who were also
using them. Every once in a while we would mess
around with other conversations we would catch on our walkie talkies.
We would make them change the channels. I don't know
why we thought that was so funny. I had a
pair of them with me, so I left one of
them with my cousin and I left on my own,
updating him with my location and other random stuff. Just
to have something to say. I would always respond with
ten to four. I knew where the lady's shop was
and worked my way there, looking straight ahead. Maybe it
was a five minute walk, I assumed. I walked up
to the front window of the house, where apparently you
would order from. I asked for two bags of ice.
She grabbed them. I gave her my money, and she
gave me the change. I started making my way back
with one bag in each hand. Ten four, my cousin
said over the radio. I hadn't said anything, though. I
couldn't reply since I had no free hands, so I
ignored it. And as I saw the ranch coming into view,
the wind started blowing those desert winds are terrible on
the eyes, with dirt and sand blowing everywhere, so I
shut them. But I kept walking straight ahead for a
few seconds, and that's when I felt a push behind me.
It was no longer the wind, but some type of
bubble of strange force, like the kind you feel when
you put two magnets together with the same poles facing
each other. I turned around, but still couldn't open my
eyes fully, so I kept walking. I remember feeling very strange,
like nausea, nervousness. The wind now completely cleared up, and
the ranch came into view through the fence. From a distance,
the windows to the main house were shut and the
music was off. Ahead I could see that the four
cars that were parked outside across the field were missing.
It was very weird, but my mind didn't really process
the event until I walked up to the fence. I
found it with a chain and a huge lock attached
to it was holding it together. I rattled it, expecting
to hear the dogs come barking, but no dogs ever came.
At first, I thought that I had walked back to
the wrong place, to a ranch that looked similar to
my uncles, but I've been there many times, and I
knew what it looked like. This is the same place
we would visit in the evenings when I would come
with my uncle to feed his dogs, except they would
show up every single time. I began to panic a
little bit. I started feeling very confused and my head
was spinning. I walked around the property with the ice
beginning to melt and leaking next to my footsteps. I
put it down and grabbed the radio from my pocket,
and I pressed a button to talk. The walkie talkie
didn't make that little hiccup that it does when you
push it. Do you know what I'm talking about. It
wasn't really a beat, but just like a faint static
sound to let you know to start talking. Then I
noticed that it wasn't on, so I pressed and held
the power button until I started hearing loud static like
too loud. I immediately changed the channel, but the sound
wouldn't go away. I lost track of what channel my
cousin was on, but I knew what to do. Normally,
I would just scan all the channels asking for him,
and then waited for a few seconds for a response.
Ten minutes must have passed before I decided to just
head back to the lady's store, and maybe if I
still didn't find anybody, I would just head straight toward
the main dirt road. It would eventually lead to the
main city. So even if I had to walk for
three hours, I knew that I would eventually make it.
With all the static, I doubt my signal would break
through to anyone. I put the radio in my pocket
and picked up the bags of ice once more. I
figured I would just walk back to the lady's shop,
and I was a little shaken up. As soon as
the shop came into view, I heard the radio buzz.
I put the ice down and took the radio out again,
and then I heard a familiar voice. I didn't even reply.
I just started almost running back to the ranch, and
when it came into view, everything seemed normal and the
music was on. I walked back to the front gate,
which was wide open, and my uncle's dogs came running
up to greet me. I went straight to the freezer,
lifted the ice bags to place them inside, and then
I noticed that the ice was still frozen solid, with
no signs of water dripping out. I looked at my
faint footsteps in the dirt and checked for signs of
drops of water next to them, and I could swear
I was following the trail of water when I was
hurrying back to the ranch, But this time there was nothing.
It was a desert. After all, water evaporates fairly quickly.
The heat may have played the trick on me. Here
I go again, trying to convince myself that this is normal,
that this happens to everybody.
Speaker 2: When I graduated from college, I took up a job
that I thought was a dream come true, the gig
of a lifetime. My job was to travel around the
country and meet with business people to purchase and set
up software to manage some operations. It's pretty boring stuff
to me now, but back then I learned all of
the ins and outs of it in order to move
up in the company and get better commissions. The company
paid for hotel stays and gave me an allowance to
spend on food when I got to a new town,
and all I was in charge of was making my
meetings on time and of doing well on my reviews.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: One time I arrived in a town I hadn't visited before,
and despite the many warnings to pack certain things. I
completely forgot my laptop charger and had to look for
one on arrival. At the time, that alone felt like
the end of the world to me, risking not finding
an open electronics store in order to make my early meeting,
so I got in an uber to make the drive
to a mult type area to search for a laptop
charger that same night before everything closed. The first door
didn't have one, but I found it at a second
store about ten minutes away from there. My second hurdle
was to find a place to stay. Since I wasn't
able to confirm my stay through the email saved on
my laptop and it got canceled automatically, I had to
search around through Airbnb and other apps to find a
place that late. Fortunately, there was a house two bedrooms
at a super low cost, even though I really only
needed one room. I thought I had gotten lucky after
seeing just how cheap and close it was to where
my meeting was supposed to be held the next day.
I booked for that same night and got the confirmation immediately.
When I got there, the porch lights were off, but
the owner or whoever was in charge of the place
had left the key exactly where they said it would be,
and there was a note on the door welcoming me
by name to the house. The note was on a
post it over a Chinese takeout menu, and stuck all
the way in the back was the menu of a
pizza delivery restaurant. For some reason, my job took forever
to reimburse payments made through food delivery apps, so ordering
takeout like that would work out perfectly. The house itself
was old, or maybe I just wasn't used to houses
like those made out of creaky wood, and honestly, I
had no way to see even what the color of
the house was. It was just too dark outside. Soon
I'd realize that it would be pretty dark inside too.
When I first stepped in and flicked on the light,
the only response that came on was that of an
old desk lamp in the corner of the living room.
I looked around for the ceiling light switch, but I
was so tired I didn't even bother. I didn't even
order food that night. I just walked over to one
of the bedrooms and on the light switch. Same thing.
A tiny lamp on an old desk flicked on by
the corner of the room. Reflecting off an enormous picture
right in the middle of the wall across from the door.
It was too dark to see what it was about,
but it felt completely out of place, But it gave
off enough light to let me find the bathroom out
in the hall, which was also lit by a dim lamp,
so I washed up and got ready to go to sleep.
The light itself was so dim that I decided to
leave it on since I still needed to find the
outlets to plug in the chargers from my phone and laptop,
plus the switch to turn it off was all the
way across the room. It was strange. Before I started
traveling so much, I would have problems sleeping in new places.
But I guess I must have gotten used to it
at some point, because as soon as I plugged everything
in and set my alarm, I drifted off to sleep
in a few minutes. That wouldn't last long, though it
was around two or three a m. When I first
heard it, a tiny knock on the door. I opened
my eyes wide and was able to see the entire
room thanks to that dim orange light from the lamp
in the corner. I hadn't checked the rest of the
house like I normally did when I got to a
new Airbnb, snooping around the bathroom cabinets and stuff, an
odd habit I know. To my left was the large
frame of the picture on the wall, reflecting the lamp itself,
making the thing feel like a huge mirror. I turned
my head toward it, and as expected, I could see
the reflection of the bedroom door, the desk, the lamp,
but I was completely out of view. I remember the
place giving me the feeling of my grandma's house with
that smell of old wood, but that desk lamp, along
with the wood furniture and its long shadows, made the
place feel colder than it was. I stopped breathing for
a little bit, just here for that same tapping noise. Again.
There it was. I jumped a little bit when I
saw a moving shadow, followed right by the tapping once again.
I sat up on the bed and heard it again.
It was coming from the desk. But then I heard
the buzzing sound. I'm not sure what you call those
bugs that look like larger lady bugs, but there was
one flying around the lamp and I kept bumping into
the lamp shade, falling onto the desk flipping itself over
again and flying around until sure enough it went straight
back into the lamp shade and knocked itself to the
desk again. I felt relieved. I figured it would be
best to turn off the lamp. I uncovered myself from
the blanket and rolled out into the warm, carpeted floor.
As I walked over to the desk, my own reflection
caught my attention. From across the room. The image of
that glass moved with me As I took a step,
stopped and looked right toward the picture on the wall.
It was the photo of a bedroom. While it was
sort of a portrait, a man was standing dressed in
completely black clothing, looking right at the camera with a
sinister smile traced throughout his face with his own wrinkles.
It made me feel uneasy, so I flicked off the
switch and went straight back to my bed, trying to
not accidentally look at that picture on my way back.
Even though it was probably too dark to see anyway,
I did not want to risk it. My whole night
was strange, I thought. I kept waking up to the
voices of people calling my name, asking me what was wrong,
and then the sounds of panicked voices asking for a
person whose name I completely forgot. I remember feeling sweaty
when they asked me where this person was, and I
didn't know what to say. I blamed those nightmares on
that picture on the wall. I woke up tired promptly
at six am, but didn't hesitate getting out of that room.
I grabbed my things from there and from the bathroom
and went straight to the living room to finish packing
my bag. I would be going straight to the airport
from my meeting anyway. I double checked everything, closed the door,
dropped the keys and the mail slot on the door,
just like the note said, and hopped in another uber.
I checked out through the accommodation app and was asked
to leave a review, and it actually made me think twice.
Normally I just say something nice and leave five stars
no matter what. And though I admit that I hit
the five stars without hesitating on pretty much everything, I
couldn't find anything else to say except for simple check
in and check out process clean and had no problems. Thanks.
But then I checked the listing again. There's something wrong
with this place. One of the reviews said. My child
wouldn't stop crying all night because of the sounds from
the kitchen. I scrolled past a few generic ones, but
my mouth opened wide when I read a paragraph long
review of an experience similar to mine. It described the sounds,
the creaks, and even the strange dreams. This person did
have something positive to say about the place near the end,
which was that he was traveling with his family and
that he liked the odd layout of the house. He
specifically mentioned the night lights in the bedroom where his
children stayed, and in his own words, he said that
he liked the window because, even though it was oddly
placed inside the bedroom, it let him easily check on
his kids at night. That window, the window I thought
was a huge picture on the wall.
Speaker 1: Sapphire, thank you so much for joining me here on
Scary Story podcast listeners. If you want to hear more,
type in stories with Sapphire to listen to more creepy stories.
I'll leave links to everything in the description of this episode.
Use her name, mister Stan thank you so much for
suggesting the remaking of the first story. And Gabby, we
have an upcoming story that you suggested. I still have
to look for it because I couldn't find it among
the comments, but I'll find it anyway. Everyone, you can
support the show by trying out Scary Plus, thank you
very much for listening. Keep it Scary everyone, See you soon.