Radio Rental - Crematorium >>

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

Honest work doesn't always feel honest. >> Window Scratching

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. Hey guys, it's Payne here. We've been hard at work on a new season of Radio Rental, and I promise you it's worth the wait. Season 3 is coming this October, and I know it's a long time from now,

so we're dropping episode 15 today, just to give you a little something while you're so patiently waiting for the new season. Radio Rental Season 3 is coming October 1st, but in the meantime, we have something special to offer you guys. If you subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus on Apple Podcasts, you'll get ad-free listening across all of our shows. And you'll get bonus Radio Rental stories and exclusive content while you're waiting.

Tenderfoot Plus on Apple Podcasts is $4.99 a month. And there's a special bonus Radio Rental story waiting for you right now. You can sign up for Tenderfoot Plus on the Apple Podcast app. And look, if you don't want to pay five bucks a month, I get it. Don't worry. Radio Rental is returning for free on all podcast platforms on October 1st. But our team has made some amazing bonus content for all the diehard fans out there. Each week this month, for Tenderfoot Plus subscribers,

we're dropping exclusive Radio Rental stories. Just search Radio Rental in the Apple Podcast app and subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus. Tenderfoot Plus is available right now on Apple Podcasts for ad-free listening across all of our shows, bonus Radio Rental content, and much more to come. All right, now on to episode 15. Hope you enjoy. Greetings, creeps. Terry Carnation here, host of Dark Air and keeper of the Radio Rental tape collection. I have good news for you. After 40 years, I finally solved a Rubik's Cube.

Also, you can expect new episodes of Radio Rental this fall. Mark your calendars for October. It's going to be a spooky month. Oh, right. Malachi wants me to remind you that Halloween is a time when people are mean to black cats, and that is total superstitious garbage. So don't be an idiot.

I was probably 19, 20, just coming out of high school, not making a whole lot, boring pizza job, local pizza place is monotonous. Same thing every day, minimum wage, not making a lot of tips. This town is real small. There's nothing to do, nothing fun. I mean the most you got is a movie theater and movies are kind of going out of the trend now. No offense to Terry. But I got an offer to take on an apprenticeship

at a local funeral home. They were looking for some help and I just went by and spoke to him and he said, you could start next week. Starting out, it was just mainly cleaning, vacuuming, washing the hearse, organizing death certificates, running death certificates to doctors to be signed and then taken to the health department to be certified. That was for about a month or so and then they started slowly easing you into riding

along on death calls. They kind of ease you into it real slowly so you get acquainted with the terminology and how to speak with a family and I guess how to handle a difficult situation. They kind of slowly teach you that. It can be tedious but I mean once you do one death call they just kind of all routine after that. This day, it was a slow day. I know it was October. It was kind of cool. I was cleaning the hearse, and then we get a phone call, and it's the hospital. They said we had a deceased, so they told me to go take care of it.

I throw on the vest, the jacket, and I head toward the hospital. I know it was October because the Monster Mash was playing on the radio. When Monster Mash was playing, you usually got to crank that whenever you're going on a death call. It's toward the evening, windy, cool. There's not a whole lot of traffic on the road. I get there, and I page security and take me to the third floor. Usually, I'd say 90% of the calls are people over 75, 80 years old, and usually at nursing homes.

But he was pretty young. I would say mid-50s. There wasn't any injuries injuries or it just looked like natural causes but he was pretty young. I'd load that individual from the hospital bed onto the cot and I seat belt the cot make sure that he's secured. You have three safety belts, one at the upper body, one mid, and one at at the legs I take him back to the van I load him up in the van and I head back toward the funeral home on the way back I had the music cranked it wasn't quite as loud I was driving and I was

actually on the bridge at a red light the cock cover it just seemed like it shifted. It goes over the individual to cover them up. It sounded like it just moved. There's no way that that's happening. That stuff only happens in the movies. I was sitting still. There's no way that he moved. I thought maybe where I secured the arms the arm came loose and moved it

might have fell to the side try to rationalize it or just kind of downplay it because you think there's no way there's no way they'd let somebody go unless they were 100% deceased it's Friday let's get this body unloaded

and go to the house and I left the red light I tried not to think about it again. I pull up the hill and unload him and put him on our elevator. Send him up, took off the cot cover, pulled the sheet back. A typical body is pale sheet white. And this guy, he had all of his color, just like he had went to sleep. It was just weird. Usually, whenever you pick up a deceased individual,

they're cold to the touch. But this one was particularly warm. At that point, I got kind of nervous and I started trying to check for vitals. Tried to shine a light in his eye to see if anything dilated. And it was nothing in his eye, but it did feel like there was a pulse. Barely. I mean, this was a first,

and I'd been there probably five years. I'd never experienced anything like this, and I didn't know at that point what to do. We had a lady that worked at the front and she had been there 40-50 years so I went up and asked her if she could come back and kind of give me a second opinion. She did agree that he was unusually warm. She thought that she felt something as well and got a stethoscope from the chest to the wrist to the neck. I was just staring at her face trying to read her reaction. She said that she thought she heard something faint, but then once she started checking other things,

then she kind of backed away and said maybe that she's just hearing things. She thought maybe she was mistaking hers for his. Maybe she was hearing, you know, her own in her ears where she had the stethoscope. I was going back and forth, you know, I'm like, are you sure that you didn't hear anything? Check again. She thought it was just me overreacting. I'm about 75% sure we both heard something. Hey, Torontonians.

Recycling is more than a routine. It's a vital responsibility. By recycling properly, you help conserve resources, reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, and protect the environment. Toronto's Blue Bin Recycling Program ensures the majority of the right items are recovered and transformed into new products. Recycling right is important and impactful.

Let's work together and make a difference. Because small actions lead to big change. For more tips on recycling, visit toronto.ca slash recycle right. 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. up thumbs down reviews it's the original true crime review podcast crime writers on wherever you get your podcasts like probably right here i didn't know anything about this individual they were out of town i'm not sure if they were here for halloween or visiting family or what but i know they were out of town me and the lady at the front desk were the only ones at the funeral home at that time, but whenever the boss come back, he said that this individual's significant other was wanting to hurry up and cremate him because they were leaving town.

So he was kind of put in a rush on getting this individual to the crematory, get this process done, get him back to her as quick as possible before they had to leave town. It's usually a few days. You have to get a death certificate signed by a doctor. You have to get copies of it. You have to get certified copies. I was kind of thinking, you know, it's Friday, how in the world are we going to get the doctor. You have to get copies of it. You have to get certified copies. I was kind of thinking, you know, it's Friday, how in the world are we gonna get the doctor to sign this?

If we were gonna get it done, it had to be that day. And it was already late afternoon and everybody was on a time crunch. Living in a small town, everybody knows everybody. The funeral director knew the doctor. He called the doctor and the doctor agreed to sign that given the short time frame. Usually when someone passes away the last thing on your mind is get them to the crematory as quick as possible. Sheila's wanting that done as quick as possible.

I get a cremation box which is just a cardboard box, two by fours in the bottom. I load the individual into the box, load him into the van, and I make a beeline for the doctor's office. On the way to the crematory, it's probably a 25 minute drive. I'm driving, I hear something else in the back. Another weird sound, like something hitting the cardboard box. It was just weird. It was loud enough that I knew something had happened. I knew something had hit that box. I was thinking, and I was kind of praying, you know, show me the right thing to do here, because I never experienced this before. And I praying, you know, show me the right thing to do here because I never experienced this before.

And I figure, you know, I'm going to make it to the crematory, and then I'm going to get a third opinion from the guy at the crematory. I back in, and I open the hatch, and I tell the fella at the crematory, I said, weird story, I got a guy, I need you to take a third opinion just to be sure, because I don't want to do anything, you know, that I'm going to regret for the rest of my life. And he kind of looks at me weird, and we take the top off. And the body had definitely shifted.

It was not how I'd put it in there. It was almost like he was on his side. I just had a feeling deep down that something wasn't right. There's no way I could have turned him over on his side with my driving. And I said, listen, I said, you're going to think I'm crazy. I've never had this happen before. But there's just something not right. I've heard a lot of sounds.

He's warm to the touch. We thought we heard a faint pulse. I said, I just need you to get a third opinion here because I want to be 100% sure before we load him in the crematory that he's a hundred percent deceased. I don't want to take a chance of putting somebody in there that may not be a hundred percent deceased. At that point he went in his office and he had this stethoscope as well. He came out and he tried to listen as well. His eyes got real big.

He started listening to his wrist, to his neck. He said he heard something very faint in the chest. And I said, well, what do you think I should do? And he said, let's call the main funeral director in charge and see what he wants to do. I give him a call, and he's very adamant that he needs that cremation to go through tonight. This lady wants him cremated tonight.

She has to pick him up tomorrow. She's leaving town. He says, get it done. I hung up the phone, and I looked at him, and he looked looked at me and we just kind of shrugged. He wasn't making any sounds. I tried to feel for breathing and I didn't feel any breathing. It was almost like he was in a coma. I don't really know how to explain it. It was just different.

It was like, yeah, he wasn't fully dead, but he wasn't fully alive. And I said, well, you know, what's the verdict? And he said, I don't know what to do. I think I hear something faint, but I think you've just got me paranoid. I said, no, I think something's going on. He just looked at me and he said, you know, I think you have me paranoid. Shrugged his shoulders at me. He didn't know what to do and I didn't know what to do. I got to do something here to stop it. But whenever I asked the lady at the front desk,

whenever I asked the guy at the crematory, when I asked my boss and everybody was just, you know, shooting me down, doubting me, I thought, you know, maybe I am kind of overreacting. I'm kind of crazy here. But in the back of my mind, I just had that sinking feeling that something's not right. Three people against me.

I tried to convince myself at that point that I was the issue. We load him into the incinerator there. It's almost like a movie. This is the point of no return now. He hit the button to close it. It was like it was in slow motion. He started the incinerator up, and then I just sit there.

That two hours, I was doing a lot of reflecting. Did I make the right decision? Did I not make the right decision? It was one of those internal battles. This is someone's kid. Could be someone's dad. But everybody is just calling me crazy. I wanted to be 100% sure and I wasn't 100% sure at that point. What if I made the wrong decision? You know, what if I would have went

against everybody else and been right? When they take the cremains, they put them in a plastic bag, tie it up, and put it in a plastic box. We get them boxed up. After the cremation, I take the individual back to the funeral home, and I sit him on my desk there and head out for the weekend. I just go back and forth with myself all weekend. I just overreacted. Something just didn't feel right though.

Monday, whenever I got there, I was in a rush to get to the health department as soon as it opened to get those certified death certificates because I thought she was coming early, you know, lunch. She was supposed to be in a hurry, so I was in a hurry trying to get everything prepared. We have like a little bag, we put the cremains in, the dust certificates, cards where they could send thank you cards to people, and I had everything ready. It was before lunchtime. They had a lot of security cameras there so I was watching every

security camera waiting for someone to walk in. Everybody had walked in I'd go out to meet them. They would be there for something else. They'd be there for a different service or they would be there asking to sign a book on somebody else. I was thinking where is this lady and I I asked my boss, I said, you know, have you called her? Has she called you? Have you had any contact? He had our secretary try to call her. She tried to call her two or three times and never got an answer. I didn't eat lunch. I didn't have an appetite. The whole day kind of was a daze. We wait Monday, we wait Tuesday, Wednesday. You know, no one could get a hold of her.

Maybe she's visiting with family still and she's stayed an extra day. By the time it made it to Friday, I just kind of knew this lady ain't going to show up. I think I just really messed up bad. She never showed up. She don't even come in to pay for it. The cremains and the bag sit on my desk for a month. If she was in that big of a rush to get him cremated and then wouldn't even come and pick him up, something was definitely just not right.

I felt like I had made the wrong decision. If she was in such a rush to get that done, and she was in no rush whatsoever to pick him up, that just spoke volumes to me. She was concerned about the wrong thing. Once he was gone, she never showed back up. The funeral home was stuck with the cremation bill. They were stuck with all the death certificates. A month went by of nothing. At that point, I just had so much guilt that I couldn't do it anymore.

I had to find something else. So at that point, I resigned from the funeral home. That was just eating away at me. And it still eats away at me. It's something I think about every day. What if the individual you loaded in there was still alive? You know, you're there to help people in their darkest times at the funeral home. But what if you took a life and didn't even mean to? When somebody's cremated, there's no turning back. You can't do an autopsy or anything and see if anything was up.

Because cremations are pretty final. I mean, you see that stuff on the movies. I mean, you hear podcasts all the time of people killing for life insurance and all the drugs that people could give people and make them not fully dead. I don't know. I just ran a million things through my mind. I don't know. I just ran a million things through my mind. I don't know what fully happened. My gut feeling was... My gut feeling... Man, I'm sorry.

You're welcome. My gut feeling was... She did something wrong, and she was wanting to get rid of it as quick as possible and then never face it again. I've never really got over that. The town I lived in was about 6,000 people. Very small. I was 19. I was attending community college.

I was a music major there. I was living with my mom and my dad, and I have two older brothers, and so we just had a house. It was a one-story house, so my bedroom was the ground floor. So I really enjoyed doing makeup at the time. I was watching YouTube, Candy Johnson, stuff like that.

It was brand new online back in that time. No one really knew I was the makeup girl. I don't really wear a lot of makeup day to day. It was just a kind of a hobby I had. My stepdad had built me a vanity. I have a big mirror and my stepdad had put those light bulbs where they kind of stick out all around it so it looks like a drama room. I never did my makeup anywhere else besides right there at my vanity. It was to the right of the window.

I would stay up pretty late. I was the last one awake in my house. I would do makeup mostly through the night. One night I noticed there was just like a little bit of scratching in my window. And I thought, you know, that's strange. I should just go to bed and put on a movie. I'm just spooking myself out. I just ignored it and I just assumed it was it was just a decoration or a tree or something at the window. I don't know if it was the next night or a few nights

later I heard the scratching again. Okay it has to be something there's something outside. You try and talk yourself down, I guess. You're being a little crazy. There's nothing there. But I also never had the nerves to look out my window and see what might have been there. It's way easier just to ignore something rather than face it. It was noticeable over a certain period of time and just got worse. The sound increased consistently. I felt unsafe. One night I heard it and it was loud. I just remember freezing.

There's like a gut feeling you can't explain, but you just know there's something wrong. There's definitely something there. It was like something was trying to say like, I'm here. I'm at the window. It's hard to put into words, but you just, you feel as if you're imagining something. And you're just constantly talking yourself down, but you feel that there's just something watching. The assumption that something's watching you, the feeling that there's something there on top of the noise of hearing something there, it's a lot. It does make you feel like you are making things up. That scratching was just so much more than it had been any other night.

It was not just in my imagination. Your stomach drops out. Absolute terror. It felt like an intruder in a way. It wasn't like there was a ghost out my window. It was, there was a person. There was someone there. What if I just crawl?

They can't see me if I'm that low to the ground. I felt like I had to get help. This was not a good situation to be in. I can crawl to my parents' room. I needed to get into the other room, and I needed to get help. I remember scooting off the chair, getting onto my knees, and then just crawling. I just moved quickly to their bed. And then I was just like, there's someone at my window.

My stepdad's immediate response. He just leaned over his bed and he had like a little lock box where the gun was. Open it, grab the gun, loaded it, went out the front door. You just hear a gunshot. He didn't end up seeing anyone because it was nighttime. Shot his gun right out the door and I never had scratching again after that. I never heard anything again. After that, I finished up my classes and whenever we reached Thanksgiving break, we had my whole family over at my house and my cousin and I, we were best friends.

She was right there with me when I received a phone call from our friend's mom. She had walked by the art display for the end of semester projects. She called me to tell me that she really liked this drawing of me that was up on display. What are you talking about? I don't have a drawing. She just said, oh, there's just a drawing of you here doing your makeup. It was a drawing, like a pencil drawing. It was a drawing of my face and me putting on lipstick. There was someone at my window watching me do my makeup and drawing it. Someone had been there all along and it wasn't just me imagining someone had been there the whole time. I just felt really uncomfortable and just not safe at my house.

I saw the face. That was my face. Were they scratching? Was it the drawing I heard? I don't know. I don't know what was going on exactly, but I do know someone was there watching me do my makeup each night. Who knows, were they drawing me there?

Were they drawing me at home after? That's part of the issue of not knowing exactly what that sound was. Were they scratching on my window screen or were they drawing me on a piece of paper? I feel like I knew a few people who drew. What if it was one of them? And do you discuss this?

Do you bring this up? Do you ask them? I went through a lot of emotional stuff after where I definitely felt really violated. It was an addition to a lot of stuff going on in my life and just like a general change in my life, but I just knew I had to move. If you feel something's wrong, don't constantly talk yourself down. There is no way of knowing if it could have escalated differently, if it could have been a dangerous situation in the end.

I shouldn't have waited to the point where someone could have wanted my attention so badly they would have tried to get in. Don't wait until the last minute and trust 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. 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, and the team at Cadence 13. If you have a Radio Rental story that you'd like to share,

please email us at yourscarystory at gmail.com or contact us via the form on our website, radiorentalusa.com. Follow on our website, RadioRentalUSA.com. Follow us on Instagram, at Radio Rental, and on Twitter, at Radio Rental USA. You can also follow the beloved Terry Carnation on social media. Just search at Terry Carnation.

On behalf of the Radio Rental store, we'd love it if you'd subscribe, rate, and review. And don't forget to share our show with a friend of the genre. Thanks for listening. 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 Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening right now. Then join me if you dare.