Speaker 1: It's midnight at the manor, and you're just in time.
Speaker 2: Shake off the chill, leave your doubts at the door,
and enter if you dare. There's no turning back now.
Speaker 3: Welcome listeners to the Modern Horror podcast, where we uncover
the strange, the haunted, and the beautifully tragic. Tonight, I
have a tale for you, one drenched in rain, buried
in secrets, and tangled in the vines of a love
that never had its chance. Imagine this a lonely farmhouse,
a forgotten garden, and a woman who never believed in
love until she meets a man who only appears when
it rains. Some stories don't just whisper.
Speaker 1: From the past.
Speaker 3: They cling, They haunt, and they demand to be uncovered.
So grab your tea, turn down the lights, and listened closely.
You're about to find out why he waits in the rain.
Speaker 2: I arrived at my aunt's farmhouse just before sundown. The
sky smeared in a palette of dusky blues and grays.
I pulled up the long winding driveway, the tires of
my car crunching over gravel.
Speaker 1: Leaves, rustling in the wind.
Speaker 2: The house sat at the edge of the dense treeline,
its weathered white paint peeling in places, the front porch
sagging just a little more than it had the last
time I'd seen it. I hadn't visited Aunt Bethany in years,
too many years, and now she was gone. I had
checked the weather before planning this trip, clear skies, no
rain in the forecast. But as I stepped onto the
overgrown path leading to the farmhouse, the grass was damp,
the ground soft beneath my shoes, as if a storm
had just passed.
Speaker 1: I frowned, listening in the distance.
Speaker 2: A low rumble of thunder rolled across the hills. Maybe
it was my imagination, just the house getting to me already, or.
Speaker 1: Maybe the forecast had been wrong.
Speaker 2: The keys were cold in my hand as I made
my way up the steps, my boots creaking against the wood.
I hesitated before unlocking the door, feeling that familiar prickling
at the back of my neck. I swallowed, glancing towards
the edge of the property. That garden was still there,
looming behind the wrought iron gate, and it had grown unruly.
Rose bushes strangled the splintering trellises. The trees loomed tall,
their leaves shifting restlessly in the breeze. Vines twisted around
the iron gate.
Speaker 1: The rusted metal spikes.
Speaker 2: At the top of the gate peeked out underneath the
creeping ivy. I noticed the padlock on the gate was
locked up, and I let out a I didn't know
I was holding. When I was a kid, Aunt Bethany
always kept the gate locked. She said it was because
the garden was full of poison ivy. But I knew
the real reason. Even if I couldn't see him now,
I knew it was only a matter of time before
he appeared, always in the garden, always in the rain.
I only had a week to get Aunt Bethany's house
ready to sell, so I got to work immediately, boxing
up framed photos and old teacups. Eventually I made my
way into the living room where Aunt Bethany had spent
most of her time.
Speaker 1: She had loved to read.
Speaker 2: Her bookshelf, now very dusty and neglected, was packed with
romance novels, spines creased from rereading.
Speaker 4: There's a sort of magic to them, Evelyn.
Speaker 2: She'd say, smiling over the rim of her teacup.
Speaker 4: True love is the only thing that lasts forever.
Speaker 2: I had never understood the appeal of romance novels. Love
made people reckless and desperate. It turned in the diversions
of themselves. They'd never recognize. The characters in those stories
experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows. I think
that was why I had never let myself truly love,
and that was fine with me.
Speaker 1: That night, the storm came.
Speaker 2: It pounded against the roof, a relentless drumming that kept
me staring at the ceiling of the guest room, the
same one I used to sleep in when I stayed
here as a kid. I tossed and turned until eventually
I drifted into.
Speaker 1: A fitful sleep.
Speaker 2: My feet carried me through the muddy grass, down the
overgrown path. The jagged point tips of the wrought iron
gate grinned at me.
Speaker 1: Like the teeth of a trap.
Speaker 2: There he was, right on the other side of the gate.
He was half obscured by the rain, his form wavering
like a reflection in moving water. As a child, I'd
only ever seen his shadowy form from the window of
my room. As I watched him through the rain, something
about his clothing struck me.
Speaker 1: Simple but off.
Speaker 2: His buttoned down shirt clung to him, darkened by the downpour,
but the cut of it looked old fashioned. The high
waisted slacks, the worn leather belt, even the scuffed boots.
They weren't just outdated. They were from another time, early seventies.
Maybe my stomach twisted. No one dressed like that anymore,
not unless they had never left that era. His face
was soft, sorrowful, and familiar. I'd seen that face somewhere before.
I took a step forward, then another. The rain had
drenched my sleep shirt. The cold bit at my skin,
but I barely noticed. I couldn't take my eyes off
this man, or whatever he was. I was close enough
to see the way the water ran in rivulets down
his cheeks. His eyes flicked down to my fist, where
I clutched a key. Before I could stop myself, I
shoved the key into the lock.
Speaker 1: Slowly I turned it.
Speaker 2: There was a click, then a creak as the gate
drifted open. I jilted awake, my heart pounding, my breath unsteady.
Just a dream, I told myself it had to be.
But why did I feel so cold? The house was warm,
the air was still, but the chill clung to me,
like a memory of a hand that never let go.
No way was I going back to sleep, not until
I knew what was going on. That dream had felt
so real. I had to know Aunt Bethany was gone,
So it was up to me to figure out what
to do with this apparition. Who was he and what
did he want? I decided I was going to find out.
I found a raincoat in the hall closet. Then I
grabbed the key to the garden gate from the hook
on the garage. At least that was still where it
was supposed to be. Using the flashlight on my phone,
I set out in the direction of the garden. Sure enough,
the gate was locked. I remembered the ghost pleading with me.
Speaker 1: Did I dare open it?
Speaker 2: Whatever was beyond that wrought iron fence, it was a
whole out worse than poison ivy. My fingers curled around
the rusted iron.
Speaker 1: I was drawn by.
Speaker 2: Something deeper than curiosity, something I couldn't explain. I was
no longer a scared little kid. I was an adult.
I could handle this right. The gate was heavy, stiff
with age, as if it didn't want to open, but
I pushed. I stepped into the garden, where tangled vines
crept along the ground, the leaves slick with rain, and
the air smelt of damp earth and decay.
Speaker 1: The rose bush stood.
Speaker 2: At the center, wild and overgrown, its dark petals weighed down.
Speaker 1: By the water.
Speaker 2: The air was thick with descent of wet earth and
something older, something unsettled, as if the ground itself were
holding its breath. I felt a cold puff of air
on the back of my neck. I whirled around and
found myself face to face with the man. Instinctively, I
grabbed the nearest thing, a thick falling branch, and swung
it at him with all my strength. It went straight
through him. The force of my swings set me stumbling forward,
nearly losing my footing in the mud. But the man,
he didn't move. The branch passed through his tour so
as if he were nothing, but missed, dissolving into the
air before solidifying again. A scream caught in my throat.
My body locked up, torn between the instinct to run
and the horrible fascination rooting me to the spot.
Speaker 1: He wasn't a man, not anymore.
Speaker 2: The realization made my breath hitch, But before I could
even think about bolting, he lunged for me. I flinched,
throwing my arms up to shield myself, but he didn't
hurt me. His icy fingers wrapped around mine, still gripping
the branch, sending away wave of unnatural cold through my skin.
The sensation wasn't painful, but it was wrong, a hollow,
aching loneliness that made my chest tighten. I gasped, trying
to gake my hand back, but his grip was firm.
He didn't try to drag me anywhere. He didn't attack. Instead,
he guided my wrist until the tip of the branch
pointed down. He pressed a couple inches into the mud,
then slowly, carefully, he started to move it. He was
trying to write. I angled my phone's light toward the ground,
heart hammering, but the rain was too heavy to make
out any letters or words. Each stroke of the branch
was washed away before I could make sense of it.
He gritted his teeth, his desperate eyes searching mine. He
needed me to understand, but the rain wasn't going to
let that happen. He disappeared into the night. The next
few days were so bright and sunny that it almost
made me wonder if I'd imagined all of that ghost stuff.
I stayed busy packing Aunt Bethany's things, going back to
the living room and the overstuffed bookshelves. Between the faded
hardcovers of Gothic romances and worn bodice ripper paperbacks, I
found a leather bound journal. Its pages were brittle and yellowing.
Speaker 1: The ink was faded but still legible. My stomach twisted
as I read.
Speaker 4: I don't know if I can bear this much longer.
Every time it rains, I find him there in the garden,
waiting for me, But my love for him is buried
under so much anger. I can't look at him without
remembering his betrayal. Every time it rains, my heart is
broken all over again.
Speaker 2: The journal was filled with grief, bitterness, and longing, like
someone who had read one too many romance novels.
Speaker 1: I kept reading.
Speaker 4: I was a fool to believe we could be happy,
that he could love me the way I loved him.
He was always distant, always looking past me.
Speaker 2: The ink was smudged, as if a hand had trembled
while writing. These had to be Aunt Bethany's journal entries.
I thought about what I knew of Aunt Bethany's life.
The scraps of stories I'd heard from my mother. She
had spent most of it alone, except for a few
brief years when she was young. In her late teens,
she'd been engaged to her high school sweetheart, but she
never got married. Mom always said it was because Aunt
Bethany changed After their brother left for the war. He
never came back, and she took it hard.
Speaker 1: She was often lost in.
Speaker 2: Her own world, drifting further into her romance novels, as
if searching for something in their pages that real life
had denied her. But maybe it wasn't just grief for
her brother that unraveled her. Maybe her fiance had betrayed
her and left her for someone else. Maybe the man
in the garden was her fiance. I wanted to stop reading,
to close the journal and give Aunt Bethany the privacy
she deserved, but the words pulled at me, unraveling secrets
I wasn't sure I wanted to know, but couldn't turn
away from.
Speaker 4: I gave him everything, but he chose someone else.
Speaker 2: My fingers tightened around the journal, the words pulsed with resentment,
and then the final chilling entry.
Speaker 4: The rain won't wash away what's been done. I see
him out there night after night, waiting, but he'll never
find what he's looking for.
Speaker 2: I closed the journal and shoved it back on the bookshelf.
Is that where the ghost came from? Did Aunt Bethany
kill her fiance and bury him in the garden? On
my final night in the house, the storm came violent, relentless,
a torrential downpour. This is what I was waiting for.
I opened the gate and made my way to the
center of the garden. I sat down on the stone
bench near the rose bush, and I waited, watching the
rain drip off the edge of my umbrella. A notebook
and pen lay in my lap, shielded from the rain.
The man in the garden appeared in front of me,
same dated clothing, same sorrowful expression. Is there a body
buried here?
Speaker 1: I asked him.
Speaker 2: I could see the tension in the way he stood,
his hand curling in the fists, his shoulders tight with hesitation.
He wasn't just weary, he was afraid. Finally he nodded,
Is it yours?
Speaker 1: I asked.
Speaker 2: He looked at me then, and something in his expression cracked.
Tell me what happened, I said, my voice barely carrying
over the storm. You can use my hand to write.
Speaker 1: He stepped forward.
Speaker 2: And sat down the side of me. I tipped my
umbrella so it covered us both, and I gasped. The
moment the rain stopped touching him, the illusion shattered. His
skin blackened, peeling away in sickly rotting patches. His lips
shriveled back from his teeth. His eyes sank deep into
their sockets, hollow and dark. The damp scent of earth
in decay filled the air. Thick and suffocating. File rose
in my throat. Tried to recoil my entire body, tensing
with instinctive revulsion, but he had latched onto me. The
moment his fingers touched mine, a wave of cold rolled.
Speaker 1: Through me, deep and aching. His flesh was.
Speaker 2: Rotted, wet, wrong. I watched as he guided my trembling
hand to the notebook. Our fingers curled around the pen.
Speaker 1: He began to.
Speaker 2: Write, not me, the man I killed. The pen dragged
across the paper in jerky, uneven strokes, each letter scratching
itself into existence, as if it pained him to confess.
I cared for her.
Speaker 1: I swallowed hard.
Speaker 2: I already knew who he meant, but I loved him
at first. I didn't understand who was him. The words
came out faster now, his desperation bleeding through the ink.
The rain pounded against the leaves, and the wind howled
through the trees. The storm had deepened, as if the
sky itself wanted to hear the story unfold. He was
her brother, her brother, I thought, her brother who went
to war. A lump formed in my throat, but I
didn't dare interrupt. The garden was ours only in the storms,
when no one dared to go outside.
Speaker 1: My breath pitched.
Speaker 2: I could see it in my mind, the two of
them slipping into the garden under the cover of rain,
hands grasping mouths, whispering secrets they couldn't say in the
light of day. These journal entries hadn't been written by
Aunt Bethany, but by her brother.
Speaker 1: She saw.
Speaker 2: I pushed him away. The words came slowly, shakier than before.
Speaker 1: He fell a gait, a spike. My stomach dropped.
Speaker 2: I turned to him, my lips parting, but I had
no words.
Speaker 1: Though it felt wrong to call.
Speaker 2: It relief, It wasn't murder, but it was still a tragedy.
Speaker 1: We buried him.
Speaker 2: He hadn't left for the war. Bethany lied for you.
A pause, then slowly he nodded and wrote, I wait
for him in the rain, but he's gone. The silence
between us felt heavier than before, thick with unfinished grief,
and now, even in death, he was still waiting for
the chance that had already passed. I gripted the notebook,
my mind spinning.
Speaker 1: What now?
Speaker 2: How could I help him find peace when the one
thing he needed, the person he needed, was long gone.
I looked at him again, his hollow eyes watching me, pleading.
I didn't want to help him for his sake. I
wasn't some tragic love struck heroin desperate to save a
lost soul. But Ambeccony had loved him once enough to
keep his secrets, enough to carry his grief, and I
loved her enough to do this for her.
Speaker 1: Tell me what to do, I whispered.
Speaker 2: He pointed to the rose bush and began to fade,
But I heard him speak one last word, dig.
Speaker 3: And so our tale of restless spirits and rain soaked
secrets comes to an end for now. But some stories
never truly fade. Some linger waiting, just like him. If
you listen cloth on the next stormy night, you might
just hear the whisper of a name carried on the wind.
And if you see a shadow standing in the rain,
don't look too long. He's always waiting. Join me again
next week for another tale of the strange, the haunted,
and the forgotten, written and produced by your host, Julie Hopkins.
Speaker 4: If you've enjoyed tonight's story, don't let it be the
last time you step into the dark with us.
Speaker 2: Follow the Modern warr podcast on your favorite podcast platform
so you never missy episode, and if you'd be so kind,
please leave a review. It helps the podcast grow, brings
more brave souls into the manner, and ensures the stories
keep coming.