Speaker 1: Spooky season is here at Scary Story Podcast, So I
Speaker 1: have a bunch of campfire style stories for you right
Speaker 1: now here we go. My name is Edwin, and here's
Speaker 1: a scary story. It was Halloween two thousand and three
Speaker 1: when this happened. I was with my sister and we
Speaker 1: had gotten dropped off at the end of one of
Speaker 1: the main streets of my neighborhood, one where there's a
Speaker 1: straight shot through a bunch of residential homes. We were
Speaker 1: supposed to meet up with some friends and make our
Speaker 1: way back down that street, finally ending up at one
Speaker 1: of their houses where they would have a small party.
Speaker 1: Nothing big, just movies, pizza, scaring trigger treaters and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. It was eight in the evening, which apparently
Speaker 1: seemed too early because they weren't many trigger treaters out,
Speaker 1: But then again, the end of that street had a
Speaker 1: bunch of warehouses before you get to the dead end.
Speaker 1: As we were making our way back, we noticed a
Speaker 1: woman on one of the corners who was waiting at
Speaker 1: the street light. It didn't cross when the walking signs turned.
Speaker 1: My sister and I were still waiting at the bench
Speaker 1: of a bus stop for my friends to get dropped
Speaker 1: off diagonal to where this woman was so we had
Speaker 1: a clear view. You got to see this lady stand
Speaker 1: there for a good ten minutes. She kept looking both ways,
Speaker 1: making it seem like she was crossing, but then waited.
Speaker 1: My sister got closer to me on the bench and
Speaker 1: told me how weird she looked. I normally used glasses
Speaker 1: and wasn't wearing them right then because they would get
Speaker 1: stained with a face paint I had on. But my
Speaker 1: sister kept saying that she wouldn't stop smiling. I should
Speaker 1: have believed her, for at the moment, I only thought
Speaker 1: that she was either wearing smile makeup or a mask
Speaker 1: of some sort. I was looking out over the street
Speaker 1: to see if I spotted my friend's dad's car, because
Speaker 1: the street was pretty empty and quiet. But then my
Speaker 1: sister tugged at my sleeve and told me to run.
Speaker 1: She stood up and pulled me until I got up.
Speaker 1: When I looked at where she was staring at, I
Speaker 1: saw this woman walking very quickly toward us diagonally across
Speaker 1: the street. She was wearing a stained white and long
Speaker 1: t shirt, like the kind old women wear to go
Speaker 1: to sleep, or like hospital type clothing. I could tell
Speaker 1: she had gray hair, so it surprised me just how
Speaker 1: fast she was rushing toward us. But I was scared
Speaker 1: at which she was holding, because I couldn't tell if
Speaker 1: it was a pillow cover to put candy in something
Speaker 1: much worse. We were running for like five seconds down
Speaker 1: the block before we heard a loud honk of a semitruck.
Speaker 1: We turned around to see it crash into the metal
Speaker 1: fencing of the warehouse parking lot right across the street,
Speaker 1: completely frozen in place. Just happened so quickly, and even
Speaker 1: though it was kind of dark out, my sister and
Speaker 1: I both got to see the red stained clothes of
Speaker 1: that person in the middle of the street. It was
Speaker 1: the first time I ever got to see a body
Speaker 1: twisted in such an unnatural way that it even gave
Speaker 1: my sister nightmares for years. Neither of us had cell
Speaker 1: phones back then, so we ended up walking to a
Speaker 1: frame house and calling our parents to come get us.
Speaker 1: Much later, we found out that the person that chased
Speaker 1: us was a guy from high school. He was dressed
Speaker 1: up as a psych word patient. We didn't know him,
Speaker 1: but some friends say that they knew who he was.
Speaker 1: He was only trying to scare us. In my nightmares,
Speaker 1: I think of how things could have been different if
Speaker 1: we hadn't run away. Back when I was working for
Speaker 1: a place literally called Devil's Pizzeria, fitting name. Now, I
Speaker 1: suppose we used to get this caller that no matter
Speaker 1: how often our boss blocked his number, he would find
Speaker 1: a way to call from some other one. He was
Speaker 1: a weird guy, sounded to bee like in his sixties
Speaker 1: over the phone and would ask to speak to Sylvia.
Speaker 1: When I first started working there, I answered the phone
Speaker 1: and asked another coworker if there was a Sylvia that
Speaker 1: worked there. He kind of chuckled and asked if it
Speaker 1: was an old guy on the phone, and he just
Speaker 1: told me to hang up. Now, I don't like being
Speaker 1: rude to people, so instead I told him that I
Speaker 1: thought he had the wrong number, and he was about
Speaker 1: to explain himself pleading to talk to Sylvia when my
Speaker 1: coworker came by and hung up the phone by pushing
Speaker 1: the button on the phone holder. He told me that
Speaker 1: we had a clear instructions that if he ever called,
Speaker 1: we're supposed to hang up immediately. I had so many questions,
Speaker 1: but this guy at work was one of those know
Speaker 1: it all kinds of people, so I figured I would
Speaker 1: ask someone else during a break or something. A few
Speaker 1: days after that, I got to ask one of the
Speaker 1: guys who worked at the back if there had ever
Speaker 1: been a Silvia that work there, and what he told
Speaker 1: me freaked me out because there had indeed been a
Speaker 1: Silvia there, but she had been killed by her ex
Speaker 1: boyfriend a long time ago. I was taking journalism classes
Speaker 1: back then, and this was before true crime was a thing,
Speaker 1: so I wanted to make a project about her case
Speaker 1: turn it in at the end of the semester. But
Speaker 1: I ended up changing my mind after learning that her
Speaker 1: ex boyfriend had also died while in jail over medical issues,
Speaker 1: long before I even started getting the phone calls. If
Speaker 1: he was gone, then who was calling now? What had
Speaker 1: weired me out the most was that I got these
Speaker 1: calls more than once, and they continued all the way
Speaker 1: up until I found this out that her killer had
Speaker 1: also died. Whenever we would have someone new managing the phones,
Speaker 1: they would claim to get those calls. I don't think
Speaker 1: they ever stopped the business, and the phone company tried investigating.
Speaker 1: Some of the calls were traced to come out from
Speaker 1: out of state and others without a calor ID. They
Speaker 1: also got trace to random places, but the instructions always
Speaker 1: stayed the same. If someone calls for Sylvia, hang up.
Speaker 1: I used to live in a really old house up
Speaker 1: until I got to high school, and I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: it was haunted. That was nine only moved in, and
Speaker 1: I remember wanting my parents to walk with me upstairs
Speaker 1: when it was time to go to bed because I
Speaker 1: refused to walk there by myself. I am an only child,
Speaker 1: and I know this is really weird, but my parents
Speaker 1: had a room set up at the end of the
Speaker 1: hall that had a small bed and a few toys.
Speaker 1: It wasn't allowed in most of the time, except for
Speaker 1: when my mom was cleaning it and asked me to
Speaker 1: go in there with her because she was afraid of
Speaker 1: it too. One time, when we were both in there,
Speaker 1: something weird happened. That room had a really cool train
Speaker 1: set on top of one of the desks, and I
Speaker 1: remember trying to reach for it. Before I did, it
Speaker 1: turned on and I stood there watching it loop around
Speaker 1: twice and then stop. My mom freaked out and got
Speaker 1: us both out of the room, but didn't tell me why.
Speaker 1: I heard her explain it to my dad when he
Speaker 1: got home later that day and he got up from
Speaker 1: the dinner table, He went upstairs and came back confirming
Speaker 1: that the train had no batteries. I watched them both
Speaker 1: look at each other for a while and then look
Speaker 1: at me for my reaction, But honestly, all I could
Speaker 1: feel at the moment was relief and knowing that now
Speaker 1: they knew that I wasn't making anything up and that
Speaker 1: there was something weird in that house. A couple of
Speaker 1: months after that, my mom and I were home alone
Speaker 1: on a Saturday afternoon when he heard movement coming from
Speaker 1: that room. Clearly. She turned off the TV and we
Speaker 1: both heard footsteps. They were running from where that room
Speaker 1: was and down the hallway upstairs. She grabbed my hand
Speaker 1: and pulled me toward the front door, and that's where
Speaker 1: we sat on an old couch we had on the
Speaker 1: porch until my dad came home. This time it was scarier,
Speaker 1: I think, just seeing how frightened my mom was really
Speaker 1: freaked me out. I asked her about the room and
Speaker 1: what she thought it was, and I didn't understand her
Speaker 1: completely at the time, just the part she said about
Speaker 1: how the owner of the house wanted us to take
Speaker 1: care of that room while we lived there. When my
Speaker 1: dad got home and we all went inside again, he
Speaker 1: went up to check it out and said at the
Speaker 1: closet door inside that room was open and that some
Speaker 1: of the boxes that had been in there were now
Speaker 1: on the floor. Those boxes were some of my old toys.
Speaker 1: Looking back at it now, everything makes sense. Well, everything
Speaker 1: had an explanation, except for the haunted part, Like it
Speaker 1: would make sense that whatever was in that room didn't
Speaker 1: want any of my stuff in there, or that it
Speaker 1: didn't want me touching the toys or whatever, so we
Speaker 1: just sort of followed those rules. We didn't have much
Speaker 1: trouble after that, although Mom still asked me to go
Speaker 1: with her whenever she cleaned it. It was like that
Speaker 1: until our lease ended. The owner of the house, who
Speaker 1: was pretty old already had died and had left the house,
Speaker 1: who has grown children who were now planning on selling it.
Speaker 1: My dad told me much later now that we retell
Speaker 1: this story, that he didn't want to buy the house
Speaker 1: because even though it wasn't a condition for purchase, we
Speaker 1: all knew they would have to keep that room for
Speaker 1: whatever was living in there. Ever, that he would rather
Speaker 1: have someone else deal with it. While I was in college,
Speaker 1: I had a job working for a company that fixed
Speaker 1: monitors and other computer hardware. The only thing I was
Speaker 1: allowed to work on there were the power units and
Speaker 1: replacing the speakers or other minor things on the monitors.
Speaker 1: Anything more than that I was supposed to call the
Speaker 1: team leader, who was this super nerdy guy who had
Speaker 1: started his own business when he was even younger. Well,
Speaker 1: one time, we got this girl who came in super
Speaker 1: nervous about her broken computer monitor. When someone like this
Speaker 1: comes in all nervous and stuff, we usually know what
Speaker 1: it is, and they're usually worried about their search history
Speaker 1: or some virus that they got after downloading certain content online.
Speaker 1: But this girl had only brought in her monitor. Our
Speaker 1: story was pretty wild, and to this day it's still
Speaker 1: the creepiest thing I have ever witnessed. Aim was that
Speaker 1: there was a shape that kept appearing on her screen,
Speaker 1: and no matter what she did, she couldn't get rid
Speaker 1: of it. She showed me a picture of it, and
Speaker 1: I saw it clear as day, the face of an
Speaker 1: old woman, wide mouthed and a wrinkled face. Literally looked
Speaker 1: like she was screaming at you. When I'm saying this
Speaker 1: was clear. I mean you could literally see the reflection
Speaker 1: of someone in the darkness of her eyes, like they
Speaker 1: already looked watery and really shiny as is, but in
Speaker 1: front of me at just an old monitor, a common
Speaker 1: brand that's still in business today. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do with the information, so I called up the
Speaker 1: team leader and asked him what he thought of it.
Speaker 1: It burned impression on the monitor. He said something that
Speaker 1: meant that there had been an image, either a background
Speaker 1: image or something that was left on the same spot
Speaker 1: for too long, giving it enough time for the tiny
Speaker 1: little lights or pixels on the screen to burn and
Speaker 1: keep the same image there even when it was no
Speaker 1: longer there. The girl had been sitting on the waiting
Speaker 1: area by the desk of the shop while I took
Speaker 1: the call, so I asked her if it looked like
Speaker 1: something she had seen on her screen before, or if
Speaker 1: it was her screensaver or something. By her reaction, I
Speaker 1: knew that it wasn't something she wanted to look at,
Speaker 1: so I decided to test it. We plugged in another CPU,
Speaker 1: turned it on, and everything seemed to be working as normal.
Speaker 1: They opened up a notes program, a game and even
Speaker 1: the web browser, and nothing seemed to be triggering it.
Speaker 1: But I asked her to click around and open what
Speaker 1: she would normally open. Neither of us could see this
Speaker 1: impression of the woman. Honestly, at this point that was
Speaker 1: kind of skeptical, but I knew she was feeling bad
Speaker 1: about it, so instead I suggested that she bring along
Speaker 1: her CPU so we could really test it out. She
Speaker 1: brought it back later that same day with another one
Speaker 1: of her friends who carried it in for her. He
Speaker 1: also supported her claims of this impression of a woman's
Speaker 1: face on the monitor, explaining even more of the other
Speaker 1: things that they had tried so that they had tested
Speaker 1: before it in, including trying out other monitors that their
Speaker 1: friends had let them borrow. The woman still showed up,
Speaker 1: so we turned it on, even dimmed the lights at
Speaker 1: the shop to see if I could see this impression
Speaker 1: of the woman on the screen. Nothing. I kind of
Speaker 1: thought it was a joke, and I had a bunch
Speaker 1: of other things to work on, so I tried to
Speaker 1: convince them that maybe it was the angle of the
Speaker 1: light in the room, where maybe you a poster reflecting
Speaker 1: off of it, something that they both denied. I was
Speaker 1: really curious about this too, so when they asked me
Speaker 1: to go check it out, that they had the computer
Speaker 1: set up in the corner of their shriff apartment, I
Speaker 1: said yes that I would go that same night, not
Speaker 1: even sure of what to expect or if I was
Speaker 1: walking into the prank of the year. I was around
Speaker 1: ten at night when I finally showed up. The same
Speaker 1: monitor in CPU had been set up where it would
Speaker 1: normally be, and it was already turned on when I
Speaker 1: walked in. The guy from earlier rushed me in and
Speaker 1: told me to sit at the desk chair, and there
Speaker 1: it was. The thing was much creepier than they had mentioned.
Speaker 1: It was clear as day, like a mirror reflection of
Speaker 1: a woman completely frozen. She was pale and had dark eyes,
Speaker 1: with the very clear reflection in her eyes. It wasn't
Speaker 1: faded out or anything, but extremely clear when the screen
Speaker 1: turned dark, like when a video was loading. I moved
Speaker 1: the monitor around from left to right and actually got
Speaker 1: to see the whole image shift for just an instant
Speaker 1: before I went back to the same woman. The girl
Speaker 1: who had brought in the monitor kept her eyes on
Speaker 1: me as I reacted to this thing, trying my best
Speaker 1: to debunk or figure it out right there in front
Speaker 1: of both of them, but I had no answers. All
Speaker 1: I could think of was to get up close to
Speaker 1: the image and see the reflection of her eyes. I
Speaker 1: got it close to the screen very slowly and asked
Speaker 1: both of them to turn off the lights in the
Speaker 1: living room. We all huddled together as I got close
Speaker 1: to it, my face now directly in front of the
Speaker 1: screen with a dark screensaver to make the reflection easier
Speaker 1: to see. But as I did, my heart started beating
Speaker 1: faster and louder, and those eyes I could see three faces.
Speaker 1: I gasped and threw myself back in the chair, freaking
Speaker 1: both of them out. I don't know if what I
Speaker 1: saw in those eyes was a normal reflection of ourselves
Speaker 1: in that monitor, or literally of just her eyes. I
Speaker 1: tried to take a screenshot of the screen, but there
Speaker 1: was nothing that showed up there either. We had no explanation,
Speaker 1: and even when I brought it up to the team
Speaker 1: leader to see what we could do, he said to
Speaker 1: just get it replaced with one of the newer flat
Speaker 1: monitors with less reflection. We had a couple that we
Speaker 1: had fixed, but were no longer needed by the original owner,
Speaker 1: so we sold it to them for twenty bucks and
Speaker 1: called it a day. They said it worked. Now this
Speaker 1: is going to sound crazy, but the only thing that
Speaker 1: changed between those monitors is that the ones that they
Speaker 1: had tried all had the glossy reflective screens, while the
Speaker 1: ones that we sold them did not. It made me
Speaker 1: think that there was something in their living room all along,
Speaker 1: and not the monitor itself, something that's still there. We
Speaker 1: still use that monitor around the office where the invoice
Speaker 1: computer is. It's the one we print from. No one
Speaker 1: had any trouble with it. In the shop. There was
Speaker 1: an old tree in the middle of the apartments where
Speaker 1: we used to live that all the kids were afraid of.
Speaker 1: There had been a kid who had seen a pair
Speaker 1: of legs dangling from the branches one night when he
Speaker 1: was out there playing by himself. He was bouncing around
Speaker 1: to basketball, and he had gotten so scared that he
Speaker 1: couldn't talk for several days. The family moved doubt in
Speaker 1: the first month we had been there, so I only
Speaker 1: got to see him around a few times, but he
Speaker 1: always refused to go outside and play, so we never
Speaker 1: really became friends. His mom was a real talker though,
Speaker 1: and had told my mom and some of the other
Speaker 1: people from the other units all about the incident. She
Speaker 1: actually had the police investigate in everything, but nothing came
Speaker 1: of it. Ever since then, the rest of us kids
Speaker 1: would scare ourselves talking about it when we would stay
Speaker 1: out after it got late. It all changed one night, though,
Speaker 1: but the three of us all saw something we couldn't explain.
Speaker 1: I had two friends, Edgar, who was eight my age,
Speaker 1: and Anthony, who was a fifth grader, so of around ten,
Speaker 1: we knew each other from school, and thanks to a
Speaker 1: couple of other friends who also lived in the same complex.
Speaker 1: For a while we got into glowing the dark stuff
Speaker 1: like stars and rubber balls and all this other stuff
Speaker 1: that we would hold up to a flashlight then later
Speaker 1: throw around in the courtyard for a type of I
Speaker 1: don't know, treasure hunt. It had gotten dark out, and
Speaker 1: even though we normally stayed away from that tree, I
Speaker 1: knew that no one would try to look there for
Speaker 1: the treasure, so the timer would run out and I
Speaker 1: would win. Honestly, I can't remember the rules of our game,
Speaker 1: but that was the gist of it. I walked up
Speaker 1: toward the tree practically through a little alien head that
Speaker 1: glowed in the dark near the roots, and ran away,
Speaker 1: getting to my other two friends before the time ran out.
Speaker 1: Now they were supposed to look for it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's how the game went. So I got back
Speaker 1: to base and they started searching, and I was sitting
Speaker 1: there against the wall by the millboxes, staring at the
Speaker 1: timer when I heard both of them shriek loudly. Two
Speaker 1: of the neighbors got out and yelled, asking them to
Speaker 1: rush inside, and I ran out toward the courtyard as
Speaker 1: the doors were shutting. I looked around me and watched
Speaker 1: all of these window curtains move almost at the same time,
Speaker 1: looking toward me. I looked back toward my door, but
Speaker 1: in order to get to it, I was supposed to
Speaker 1: run right by that tree or either around it toward
Speaker 1: the dark parking lot. I panicked and couldn't get my
Speaker 1: legs to move, so I stared ahead and watched as
Speaker 1: this figure climbed down from the tree, gripping to the
Speaker 1: sides of the truck slowly. It was too dark for
Speaker 1: me to see what it was, but I watched as
Speaker 1: a glow in the dark toy floated back up toward
Speaker 1: the tree. In the darkness, and it disappeared in the branches.
Speaker 1: It was then when I felt someone pull me from
Speaker 1: my arms and shoulders and carried me toward my other
Speaker 1: two friends. Edgar was trying to laugh over his tears,
Speaker 1: while Anthony looked just as in shock as I did.
Speaker 1: The neighbors went to get our parents, and they walked
Speaker 1: over to get us one by one. The police showed
Speaker 1: up about an hour after that, and they searched the
Speaker 1: area along with us friends and our parents, where we
Speaker 1: explained what we had seen. It turns out that for
Speaker 1: Edgar and Anthony it had been much worse. They say
Speaker 1: that they heard a man whistling from the tree and
Speaker 1: they got to see his face, a bearded, bald man
Speaker 1: with large red eyes. The police never found anything and
Speaker 1: said that it was most likely someone who had sneaked
Speaker 1: in and tried to scare us. The rest of the
Speaker 1: kids in the neighborhood found out about the story too,
Speaker 1: and we had something cool to talk about for the
Speaker 1: rest of that year. But no matter how much I
Speaker 1: try to figure it out even now, I still have
Speaker 1: no idea how a person would be able to crawl
Speaker 1: down a tree trunk like that and then go back
Speaker 1: up last I checked that tree is still there and
Speaker 1: the stories still circulate with some details added. I hope
Speaker 1: children still avoid that area at night. You're following the show,
Speaker 1: I'll be back next week with more stories. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: find our other creepy shows from Scary FM right here
Speaker 1: on the same app. Thank you very much for listening.
Speaker 1: Keep it scary everyone, See you soon.