Radio Rental - Camp Counselor >>

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

Golden Boy might not be quite so golden after all...  >> Slumber Party

Thank you. stories we tackle next. Plus, you could win a nice prize just for sharing your thoughts. Head over to tenderfoot.tv slash survey and let your voice be heard, and you'll be entered to win a $100 Amazon gift card plus a Tenderfoot merch pack. It only takes a few minutes, and it makes a big difference. Thank you for being part of our community. We can't wait to hear from you. To be continued... No, don't you dare, Timmy. Timmy! Well, Timmy has just run away with one of the raunchier videos in that collection. Good thing he's never even seen a VHS tape before. He's probably going to try and make TikToks with it. Whatever they do. Chapsnats. Anyway, apologies for the mess.

Like most people, I've fallen on some hard times here at Radio Rental, and I've had no choice but to open up a side business. It's a socially distanced summer camp. Not as easy as it sounds, let me tell you. At first I was flattered by the response. All these young protégés wanting to learn the art of storytelling, to be enlightened to the dark corners of the universe. And then I remembered how I really feel about children. This group, especially, they are a bunch of non-starters.

A real bunch of 0.0s. L-O-S-E-R-S. Losers. All Game Boys and Gatorade. No attention span, no respect for... Dammit! What? Timmy? No. Go get Evan to help you clean that up. No. I don't care if you're not talking to him today. Then just get whoever. Just do it, please. What? Yes, you can have a graham cracker after. Well, anyway, speaking of summer camp,

I think I know just the tape for you. This is pretty freaky stuff set in a camp far away from here. I'll just pop it in for you while I go deal with these tiny tyrants. Maybe I'll drop all their eye gadgets into the back of the toilet. But that would also make my life harder, wouldn't it?

Anyway, enjoy the tape. I was 17, fresh out of high school. There was this Christian camp that I'd gone to every year from, like, the third grade. You would just go and you'd take some time to get away from work and life, and the whole idea was just to get away from like your phones and the TV and media and have some time to worship and get closer to God.

That was the whole idea of it. They hire seasonal workers every year. So there's like staff housing, all the girls stay together, all the guys stay together. It's way up in the mountains, probably an hour from Fresno. Big, big pine trees. It's like near the redwoods. Ponds, there's a creek running through the whole camp. We had a bobcat incident, actually. You're not supposed to say bobcat, you have to call him Bob. I think Ted was bears. If you had a walkie and you saw a bear, because there were other people with walkies,

you didn't want to say, hey, I just saw a bear, because then everybody starts freaking out. Oh, I just ran into Ted. Then we know we have to get the kids very far away from that spot. We all kind of had time before work actually started to get to know each other and, you know, do the team-building exercises and all the hokey stuff. And there was this guy named Kyle who also worked at the camp. He was in Adventure Rec. They were the lifeguards

and there was some climbing courses and stuff like that so they would do archery belay and all of that kind of stuff keeping everybody safe and the fun stuff basically. He was tall like probably 6'4", really handsome, strong jaw, blue eyes, golden brown curly hair. All around good looking dude. Kind of golden boy. I mean, I was 17. Girls would kind of open up to him in particular. He just kind of had a way. You would do things for him and then realize he never asked you to do that.

He just kind of navigated it, just kind of pushed it that way. For example, the whole adventure wreck thing, sometimes they ended up working through lunch. So us in the kitchen would always just save them a plate if they let us know they had to work through lunch. Well, he came through the kitchen one time and he kind of grabbed a rag and like wiped something down where I was cleaning. Oh now that we're best friends and I help you out all the time you'll you'll bring me a meal right? You'll bring me some food for lunch? That's just how he was. Just certain things didn't feel right. He'd give you like the big winning pageant smile but it was never like a

real smile. You know the crinkles by your, but it was never like a real smile. You know the crinkles by your eyes? It like never went to his eyes, only the mouth. He would try and get you alone. The minute someone else volunteered to go with, he would just kind of, oh, okay, well you guys got it, and he would back out. But he would be really insistent on being alone with people. I sort of wrote him off in terms of the weirdness.

It's awkward. I'm awkward too. But I kind of wrote it off at first. He's just bad vibes. I mean, everywhere he went, fights started. People hate each other. You know, people group up into little friend groups. Everywhere he went, people would open up to him, and the next thing you know, this girl knew that, or they would open up to each other. Next thing they know, it's all over the camp. Shit that happened in their past, or, you know, how they grew up. There's a lot of rough childhoods growing up,

and he would, like, infiltrate these groups, group by group by group. Every time he was in one, it just completely like decimated friendships. He would introduce himself to the group and they'd be like, oh yeah, Kyle's been hanging out or Kyle wants to go with us to do this and Kyle wants to go with us to do that. And I was chatting with a bunch of my girlfriends one time. They're like, yeah, Kyle, he's just so sweet. Like I told him stuff that I've never told anybody. Like I don't even know if I could tell you guys. And the next thing you know, it's all around the camp that she'd been assaulted and all this awful stuff had happened to her.

I felt like he definitely got off on hurting people and just kind of watching the mayhem happen. He never asked for anything. He would just kind of twist, twist until it popped. I'm really scared of the dark. I'm terrified. And we had just seen a bobcat, so I had to walk a mile to upper camp in the dark to go back to my housing. It had been seen up and down this trail that I had to walk. It was like a mile. I grew up not far from that camp, so you know all the things as far as big cats like bobcats. You want to make yourself look big. You want to make loud, very human noises. You don't hunch over. You know all this stuff. If I see it, I'm going to grab a stick and I'm going to make myself look huge and scare the thing away. It was night. It was pitch black.

If I am walking through someplace dark and I hear any kind of sound, I literally, like, I lose all function. Like, I fall on the ground. And I was freaking out. I did not want to. I was very tired. And I'm walking through the camp, and there's Kyle and two friends of his. They're hanging out outside. Those three hung out quite a bit.

As we're walking up the hill, Kyle says something. How was work? I said, over. I didn't even stop. He's like, oh, let me walk you up. Oh, you know, it's pitch black. The mountain lion's been around. He wasn't even supposed to be in upper camp. You had to be, like, one of a few people to be allowed up there

because they were young kids. And I was like, no, no, I can do it. No, really, it's okay. Just really trying to get him to stay. I'm like, no, I don't want you to get in trouble. No, you should probably stay down here. No, I don't want to get in trouble either because our boss is up there.

And, you know, it's just really not a good idea. Why don't you stay down here? And I don't want to get in trouble either because our boss is up there. And, you know, it's just really not a good idea. Why don't you stay down here? And I couldn't make him not come. I couldn't make him not walk with me. There was nothing I could do. He's to my right and he kept slowing down. I wasn't walking super fast or like I would be hard to keep up with, but he stayed to my right and a little bit behind. Not where I could see him comfortably, and look where I was going. It was just like a very gripping fear in the middle of my stomach.

You need to get out of this situation. What do you have in your pockets right now? What can you see on the ground right now? Can you book it? What can you do? So we'd been walking a little bit, and then they caught up with us. The other friend of his ended up getting his truck. Thank God.

He was a really good guy, and I had a suspicion he kind of felt the same way I did about him. It ended up being his two friends taking me up, and he was like, oh, I'm going to stay here. And the minute someone else volunteered to go with us, he was like, oh, well, you guys got it. I kind of felt like he knew he was scaring me, and he enjoyed it. All that anticipation, and then nothing. All is well.

She's safe, but there's still that lingering feeling. Is something off here? Or is it just in my head? Ever heard the expression, a wolf in sheep's clothing? It's a scary idea. It implies that someone's true malicious nature can be concealed by beauty, charm, or just normalcy. So how do you spot a wolf in disguise?

By the end of camp, there's one meal you can't eat, and mine was the fajitas. Just looking at it makes you want to gag. We were all sick and tired of camp food. I said, Fresno's about an hour away, 45 minutes an hour. That's like the big city. So we were all going to load up in our cars. We had like a half day because the group that was there left early. There wasn't

really a set plan other than we're going to go to this place for dinner after. I think it was around 10, 11 o'clock we were supposed to go. So there is a sign out sheet because a lot of people go hiking in Yosemite or there's people going home if they can for the weekend to go see their family. The sign-out sheet was just a stack of papers and a clipboard pencil tied to that ring at the top. You would sign your name, where you're going, what time you'll be back, what time you're leaving. So I put my name down, just said I was going to Fresno with the group and the time I'd be back. The whole idea was just, okay, well we check the sign-out sheet and it's 11

and they're not back, so that's a problem. We need to start looking at the location they put down where they'd be. If you go hiking in the woods and you fall and you get hurt and you can't make it back, how would we know? So I was the last one off and I come down and everyone's pretty much broken up into their groups. A couple of us didn't have cars so everybody kind of found

somebody to ride with and I look around and pretty much everybody's full except for Kyle and he's like, no it's okay Taylor, I saved you a spot with me. And it was just going to be me and him and his little pickup. And I was like, no. So I start asking a couple of my other friends, like, hey, does anybody have a spot? Like, I'm literally just walking around. He's kind of getting insistent. And I'm like, no, actually, I'm just kind of tired. I'm just going to stay here.

I'm not feeling super well. I'm not getting in the car with that guy. I'm not going to be alone with that guy. I'm not going to go. I just said, I don't feel very good. I'm kind of tired. I'm just going to stay here, and I'll go back to girl staff housing, and I'll just knock out for the night.

I'm just, I don't want to go. And I never said, I don't want to go with you. I wasn't rude about it. I had never said a cross want to go. And I never said, I don't want to go with you. I wasn't rude about it. I had never said a crossword to him. And all of a sudden, he had like a completely different face. He was good looking. He was. Until he switched.

And I couldn't believe I'd ever found him attractive. He was so pissed. It went from golden boy smile to just gone. Dead. Just malice. And he was saying just about anything and anything I think that he thought would hurt my feelings or make me back down, make me feel bad about refusing to go. I was near tears. Honestly, he got me. It worked. I was pretty upset. Eventually, some of the guys are coming over like, dude, it's fine. It's fine. She doesn't have to go. Trying to calm him down, and they sort of go around by the pickup. And my friend Robin comes over and, are you okay? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, just not in the mood tonight. I'm just going to stay here.

She says, okay, well, we'll see you when we get back. I'll bring you some food or something. And she goes to give me a hug, and I'm like, do not fucking get in the car with that guy. Do not. She's like, okay, I won't. I turn around and I go back up to the friendship house to the sign out sheet to cross my name off because I didn't go. And I just and I go back up to the Friendship House to the sign-out sheet to cross my name off, because I didn't go. And I just wanted to go back to Girl Staff Housing and just be alone. I had to scratch off and basically say I didn't go. There's pages and pages and pages, and I think the very top page was from the year before.

So they have everybody's, all of them, for like a year. So I flipped through the page all the way down to the bottom because mine would have been the last one or the second to last. See this friend, this friend, this friend, this friend. And I do it again. I'm like, okay, maybe I put it on a different page by accident. So I flipped through all the pages I could find. What did I do?

Like, where did I put my name down? In like the year before somewhere or in a different week? I looked at the next page. It was totally blank because no one used it yet. It's not there. Where I was looking at every single name and making sure that was not me and checking every date and... It's not there. He was the last person to be around that sign-out sheet

until I went back up there after everyone had left. He was the last person to be around that sign-out sheet until I went back up there after everyone had left. He erased my name, and he erased my name before the argument because he didn't go back up after. I don't think I was coming back to that camp. You have like a true crime podcast, and my mom watched a lot of 48 Hours. I mean, you don't have to get very far off the road before no one can really hear you. I think he would have killed me. And I never said it out loud before as far as I think I could have been dead. I think he probably would have killed me. I think he's a bad person.

Every emotion he had was about as shallow as a puddle. There was no depth. There was no gravity. I just think if I had just given in like one more time, like how many times have you, you didn't really want to go out, and your friend's like, no, come on, you gave in. What if that time was your life? I think about that sometimes. You know, it's years later, and I've been married for years now,

and all that life that happened in between might have just not happened. It's just so weird to think about. Like I might've died. Be mean, be mean, be rude. You don't have to be nice to them. You don't owe them anything. You can say, no, I don't want to go. No, I don't want you to do this. No, I don't want you to go with me. You can stomp your feet. You can throw a fit. You can be loud. When it comes to your safety, like, why do you care if someone thought you were kind of a bitch this one time? Throw a fit. If you have a bad feeling, just do whatever you need to do to get out of that situation. Ah, summer camp.

What an impressionable moment in one's life. It's funny how we all have the same firsts at summer camp, isn't it? I remember mine vividly. Summer camp is when I had all my firsts. First love, first kiss, first punch in the face, first mortal enemy, first taste of mashed potatoes, first ghost sighting, first time meeting a child my own age. First time sleeping lying down.

Oh, magical. Timmy, what have I told you? Do not touch those. Those are Terry's movie machines. I'm warning you. Do not put that sandwich in the VHS player. Do not put that sandwich... Timmy, Timmy.

Waste of a perfectly good sandwich. Terribly sorry about that. Why don't we take a quick break while I get this up and running again. Get ready for Las Vegas-style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas-drift excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. Download the BetMGM Casino app today. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. BetMGM.com for T's and C's, 19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please play

responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Crime Writers On is the podcast where authors and journalists talk about the latest true crime series, documentaries, and podcasts. Talk about what's on the charts and find those up-and-coming podcasts you'll be talking about. It's like a fun and smart book club discussing what makes good storytelling

and teaching how to become a critical listener. Or not. And stick around for the Crime Writers Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down reviews. It's the original True Crime Review podcast. Crime Writers On, wherever you get your podcasts. Like probably right here. Ah, there we go. Good as new.

And I've even locked the little beasts outside. Don't worry, they're little gaming phone devices, double as a personal geolocator for each child. I always find them. Most of them just end up wandering into the liquor store across the street. I'll retrieve them with enough time for them to sober up before carpool. Anyway, let's continue with our next story. When you're a teenager, you do stupid things. You make bad decisions.

Often, without even realizing it. In pursuit of fun or new experiences, you might take some risk. But sometimes that risk taking can lead to some dire consequences. That's what you call walking on thin ice. I was a sophomore in high school. We were in West Bloomfield, Michigan.

I had a ton of friends, even though we were all total losers. We were having a sleepover at a friend's house when we decided to take a walk in the middle of the night. There's this beautiful part of the winter where it's like white and snowy and fluffy, but then when you actually get into the meat and potatoes of the winter, it becomes this like gray sludge. The roads are covered with salt. We were definitely in that phase of the winter, and I think it was probably at least freezing or below freezing, maybe a couple degrees below freezing.

We had boyfriends who were all staying about 10, 15 miles away. We decided on a Saturday night we would try to walk over to their house. It was separated by a huge lake. It had to have been at least 10 or 15 miles. It had snowed a lot, and we thought, we'll just get walking and we'll warm up. It'll be great, guys. We'll just put our little leather jackets on and our regular shoes,

and when you're a teenager, you don't want to wear an anorak or a parka or anything because it's just not cool. We left the house, and we were all in fantastic moods. I had a Walkman. I was listening to Nevermind. It was an old Discman, so I had that in the pocket of my little leather bomber jacket, and it just, every step I took, it would, like, bounce and skip.

We were singing songs. We were super happy. There was five of us, all girls. It took about 15, 20 minutes before we realized this was going to take a lot longer than we originally anticipated. My cheeks were starting to freeze, like, where we were, like were laughing and joking, but then

it would hurt to move your mouth because it was so cold. It was freezing. Our fingers were starting to hurt. I remember like my toes were starting to get wet. And I think all of us were sort of thinking it in our minds, but nobody wanted to be the first person to say this was a terrible idea. We were walking and all of a sudden we heard what sounded like somebody had a muffler hanging and dragging a little bit on the ground. And it just was this dragging, chugging noise. And we all kind of turned around and looked and like, you know, what is this? It was a red four-door sedan.

Muffler was hanging off of it. Something was causing that noise. And I just remember it being really beat up. It drove by and the sound sort of faded away and that was that. We just continued to walk. 15 minutes later, we heard the same sound. And I remember thinking like, that's really strange. Are there two cars that have the same muffler problem. We turned around, and this time, the car was going so much slower. We stopped and kind of looked at it as it was approaching.

There was no reason for any car to be going that slowly. We had maybe seen two or three cars. There was nobody out. As soon as he kind of pulled up next to us, we could see a man. He had bushy, curly hair, kind of Jerry Garcia curly hair. He was slightly overweight, and he was driving facing us. The most chilling stare that just like hit me right in the gut. It looked like his eyes were just black pits. This bolt of electricity hit me.

It was almost like he was looking into me. That's when we noticed that he was also holding a knife. He was driving, holding the wheel in one hand, and he was just holding the knife. He was driving holding the wheel in one hand and he was just holding the knife up to show it to us. Just holding it and driving so slowly. I think I had this moment where I'm like, is this real? Am I actually seeing this? I'm in a nightmare. I'm in a bad dream. We looked at each other and we're like, what the fuck?

What the fuck is this? It's the second time we've seen the car. He's got a knife. We stopped in that moment and we had a conversation like, oh, maybe he saw a bunch of teenage girls walking on the side of the road and thought, wouldn't it be funny if I just mess with these girls for a minute? So we laughed about it. That was really weird. We've got this great story to tell. That was crazy. And we just kept walking. Then we hear it again. The rattling, chugging, dragging. We just froze. And here he comes again with the

same knife and the same stare. He's staring directly at us. This was not a person who was just fucking with a bunch of teenage girls. He's up to something. I was 100% sure he meant to do us harm. And that's when he stopped the car and he got out. When he opened the door, we just started running. We are now running along the lake. There wasn't a plan. We're booking it, and he's chasing us. I'm at the very end. I've got these totally impractical shoes on. I'm freezing cold and numb, and he's close. He's close to us.

And I just remember thinking to myself, do I take a second to turn around and like look at this guy to see if he's close? And I finally turn around and he's gone. He's not following us anymore. That's it. The trip's over. Something horrible is going on here.

We're really freaked out. We decide we're going to turn around and go back. We realize our options are really limited. We've got a lake on one side and houses on the other. Do we knock on somebody's house? Do we turn back and just go the exact same way that we were going? He knows where we are now and that's when he comes back again. You can hear just the chugging and rattling coming at us again, and it's getting louder and louder. We're booking it through snow and ice, and we're soaking wet. We can hear the guy on the street. He sounded maniacal, screaming, I see you. I see you. Just unhinged. But we can't see him. We can just hear him. We're just running, freaking out.

We decide that we are gonna crawl like army people to the front of one of these houses that has a beautiful giant Douglas fir tree. It's big enough that there is maybe three feet of clearance below the lowest branches, and we're gonna hide and just take a look at the situation. We're hiding underneath this tree and I can remember every sound. The crackling of snow.

We are all panting. Half of us are crying. There's just this sweaty, hot panic. We're all huddled together under this tree, peeping through to the street, looking for him. For a moment, it's just really quiet. And then you hear the rattling. Rattle, rattle, chug, chug.

And we see him driving slowly. And we can see him, like, scanning. His head is swiveling back and forth, looking. The whole time, he's holding the knife against the steering wheel. We're all petrified to breathe. What do we do? I couldn't feel my fingers anymore. I couldn't feel my fingers anymore.

I couldn't feel my toes anymore. I was soaking wet. We decide that we are going to make a break for it and run. My shoe froze to the ground. And when I lifted both of my feet out, it stuck. We're running now, so I've lost a shoe. And as I'm getting to the curb to go onto the ice, I just hear this sickening, like, crack noise. My ankle without the shoe rolls onto the curb, and I fall face first onto the slushy, wet concrete.

And my friend Amy turns around and just physically lifts me off the ground and like shoves me forward. I run onto the ice with a busted face, a twisted ankle, and no shoe. He's running on the side of the lake as we are running onto the lake. He's screaming at us the whole time. I see you. I see you. And we are just booking it across the ice. All of a sudden, we heard this giant snapping noise. It sounded like a huge rubber band snapping,

and it echoed across the entire lake. Immediately following it, there was multiple snaps. Snap, snap, snap. That's when we looked down and we could see this sort of black web, this black spider web growing on the ice as we're running. When we realized the ice is cracking, we turn back to the shore.

We have to get off this ice. I'm not even afraid of the guy with the knife anymore. I'm afraid I'm going to die in this frozen lake. The man now has been completely forgotten, and that's when my foot falls through the ice. My right foot, with just the sock on, just falls right through a hole in the ice ice and I'm up to my knee with icy water. I'm like this is it. They're gonna find me frozen underneath this ice. I just managed to pull

my leg out of the ice and keep running and I see ahead of me that three of the girls have now pulled themselves up off of the ice. And I just launch myself in the air off of the ice in this pile of wet, shivering, crying girls. We just laid there in that puddle, just sort of like in shock. It had started snowing and it was these like big, beautiful, quiet flakes that were like falling shock. It had started snowing, and it was these big, beautiful, quiet flakes that were falling down. And it was so quiet. It had probably been several minutes before any of us thought, where is the man?

We looked around, and he was gone. No car, no man, no shouting. We were completely alone. We all just got up and started walking home. When we got back to the house, we all took hot showers and nobody said anything. We just sat on the floor in Megan's room, wrapped up in blankets, and just none of us slept. There was an unspoken agreement that we just weren't ever going to talk about it.

We didn't tell the guys why we didn't make it. We just said we changed our minds. And looking back, it's hard to imagine, like, to game it out in your mind and think, like, well, what would he have done? But it was more of a gut feeling looking into his eyes. If he got a hold of us, he was going to hurt us. I actually told my son this story in the hopes that if he does sneak out at some point, I get it. You're teenagers. You want to have fun. You want to have adventures, but be smarter than I was because it could have ended really badly. Creepy, no?

And well, that is all for today, my fellow fear enthusiasts. You can follow our little shop at at Radio Rental on Instagram and at Radio Rental USA on Twitter. You can also online stalk me personally by following at Terry Carnation on both the Twitters and the Instagrams. What a joy for both of us. See you next time in Radio Rental.

Timmy! Timmy! Come here, you little brat! Aliens. Radio Rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta. Executive Producers Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright. Hosted by Rainn Wilson as his character, Terry Carnation.

Produced by Payne Lindsey, Mike Rooney, and me, Meredith Stedman. Written by Meredith Stedman with additional writing by Mark Laughlin. Sound design by Cooper Skinner. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set. Additional production by Christina Dana and Mason Lindsey. Cover art by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan. Voice acting by Ryan Jones, Casey Willis, and the Tenderfoot TV team. Tina Dana and Mason Lindsay. Cover art by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan. Voice acting by Ryan Jones, Casey Willis,

and the Tenderfoot TV team. Shout out to Tiny Doors ATL for the creation of our real life miniature radio rental store. You can check that out and more on their Instagram at tinydoorsatl. Special thanks to Grace Royer and Oren Rosenbaum at UTA, as well as support from the Nord Group, Station 16, Beck Media and Marketing,

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I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for 20 years and have taken people into haunted places to uncover macabre tales and dark secrets. On my podcast, Haunted Canada, I share bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon Music

or wherever you're listening right now Then join me if you dare