Radio Rental - Episode 12

Episode Date: July 16, 2020

On today’s tapes… >> The Aura > Her Name Was Alice

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Thanks, guys, and enjoy the show. Hello, welcome. Welcome once again to Radio Rental. Careful there, you may notice that I have some stacks of headshots around the store. It's portrait signing day. Let me see here. Follow your dreams like a benevolent stalker. Listen to your heart like an ambitious cardiologist. And shoot for the stars like Elon Musk after his first cup of coffee.

And most of all, be sure to be open to all possibilities. With love, Terry Carnation. This is all part of my book tour for The Darkest of Air, The Trials and Tribulations of Late Night's Most Luxurious Vocal Chords. Me, Terry Carnation. It's my official memoir. The Darkest of Air is an eclectic mix of original prose

and actually, there's no original prose. The whole thing is Air is an eclectic mix of original prose and... actually, there's no original prose. The whole thing is transcripts of my sessions with my therapist, Dr. Norman Kesden. Critics are calling it raw. Actually, what one of them actually said was a little too raw, which is good. And another said it boldly disregarded conventions like spelling and grammar, which is exactly what I was going for. Why let spelling and grammar hold you back? I need to express myself. Now, on to the tape. Hold on to your helmets.

This one's a bumpy ride. Bring, bring. ride. When I was nine, nine or ten, I got in a really bad sledding accident with my uncle. I was sledding in Delaware and the sled at the base of the hill spun around, and there was a metal pole. I hit my head really bad. I got knocked out. I had this pretty traumatic head injury,

and nothing ever really came of it until puberty. 16, 17, I started having, like, little seizures. Where I got damaged in my lobe, I can have some epilepsy issues. These seizures basically came about from my brain developing and getting bigger. Apparently started triggering these seizures. What you have before you have a seizure is called an aura, and it ranges for different people. Sometimes as an aura, I'd have really long prolonged deja vu. The sensation of an aura can be

really negative because it can make you realize the propensity for you to have a seizure is really great because you're having this happen. It's almost like a panic attack. I used to go on bike rides a lot. My dad's a big avid cyclist. We were like very outdoorsy family. I used to go biking in the state park where there's these small one-lane roads through the woods. It was the fall. My plan was to just go on this one road, get to the T-stop, and then basically double back down another road that led back to my house. I remember getting on my bike that day

and just having, like, little twitches. I hadn't slept a lot. I knew I'd been out with friends. And I was like, oh, that's, you know, whatever. Just because I, like, probably didn't sleep a lot last night, I kind of out with friends. And I was like, oh, that's, you know, whatever. Just because I probably didn't sleep a lot last night, I kind of shook it off. I had a little twitch when I left my house. Whatever.

If I exercise, it'll make me feel better. My town is super quiet, especially in the fall. It's near the Jersey Shore. After the summer, after Labor Day, everyone leaves. There's all this myth around the Pinelands. It was Native American land. It's a real quiet day. I literally don't even remember passing a single car.

I turn down, I bike probably a mile into the park. All of a sudden, like, as I'm biking, I feel a physical sensation of a hand on my left shoulder, just, like, gripping me. I couldn't turn to see the hand. It was just the feeling. And I was like, what the? The last thing I remember was this voice in my left ear.

The sound of the voice was just this ethereal voice. I heard it in my left ear, but it like consumed my whole being. This woman saying, You're gonna have a seizure. It's going to be okay. And that was the last thing that I remembered. It's going to be okay.

I woke up and my first thought was just like, am I bike riding? Where am I? I'm in a pile of leaves that's probably like six feet by three feet. Across the street is my bike leaning on a tree. I took out my little singular wireless phone I had at the time when I was in high school. Been like a really long time since I left my house, and I'm laying in a pile of leaves.

My bike was leaning on a tree, and I was okay. I'm on this road, there is no one around, my bike's on the tree, I didn't pass anybody else, and I didn't remember passing anybody else. At some point, I consciously or unconsciously or something put the bike on the tree on the side of the road and then walked me over to this pile of leaves that I laid in. This is sort of the weird thing about auras.

There's sort of this gap of time that happens from the moment you first have that aura to once you've had the seizure. There's this window you don't have any really conscious awareness of or memory of. It really does wipe your memory. I didn't remember leaning my bike against the street. I didn't remember getting off my bike. I didn't remember biking that bike against the street, I didn't remember getting off my bike, I didn't remember biking that quarter mile down the road. It's sort of like putting time together backwards after a seizure. And I have to think, okay, I left my house and what happened

when I left my house and walk back through it. And then I get to the thing like, oh man, I remember hearing a voice and feeling a hand on my shoulder. Auras are the warning signs, the protome symptom of a seizure. But also, an aura can refer to that transcendent energy given off by a living thing or an object. For this young man, that aura felt one and the same. It took on a human voice, a human touch.

People are going to think I'm crazy. This is a misunderstood neurological issue that, like, people are going to have some sort of negative view of me and my mental health. And, like, it's like A or B. If it wasn't a religious or paranormal experience or protective being guiding me, if it wasn't that. It's sort of still an amazing insight into what the human mind would potentially do

for self-preservation. And this sort of, like, ability to not have any conscious awareness, it's almost like an entirely, like, unconsciously driven protective thing that could have happened. To me, it's either one of those. When I sort of look back on that day, I grew up in those woods and like, I don't know, I feel really connected to them. Part of me wants to think that it was some being in those woods looking out for me. Chilling.

Absolutely chilling. Well, I hate to make an abrupt pivot, but I do need to fund my book tour, so let's hear some endorsements from our beloved advertisers and their myriad of wonderful products and services. Now, no skipping ahead. That's right. Keep your finger off that 30-second button.

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Crime Writers On, wherever you get your podcasts. Like probably right here. Thank you so much for listening to our advertisers. Just know that your patronage pays for the wonderful establishment that is Radio Rental and allows me to launch my literature into the ethos. But enough of this wretched housekeeping. On to the next tape. Oh, this one is sure to finally be away from home. Didn't really know anybody, was never really good at making friends.

But I did happen to know a person who was also from back home in Houston who went to one of my sister's schools. So I hung out with them for a while. And we ended up going regularly to this improv show. We'd just go there every Friday, have a good time. But there was one week where she couldn't make it. She was going back to Houston for the weekend. So again, I didn't know anybody, didn't really have any other friends. So I turned to the internet, Facebook specifically. I made a post to see if I could find somebody to go with, to hang out with as a friend, just like

somebody to go with, anybody, I don't know. I didn't want to go by myself, which I ended up doing because nobody responded. Tried that, didn't hear anything, went to the show, had a good time by myself. Classic. It wasn't until a few days later that I realized someone actually had responded. Facebook does this weird thing where it's like, here are the messages from your friends that show up and if you get some from a stranger it goes into this secret box and it's you know and it was this girl saying yeah she'd be down to go and I was just kicking myself like god damn it like had a shot but I messaged her back and was like hey sorry just saw this blah blah blah blah blah

you know if you'd be down to go, you know, next time, this weekend. She had reached out to me and we set up the next time that we could go to this show. We were there and the show started. She was texting me that she was on her way. She walked into that auditorium. Wow, she's just like, cutest thing you ever did see. Big scarf and oversized beanie and this oversized jacket. It was like this stereotype alternative girl just walked in.

I had two simultaneous thoughts. Wow, she's cool. And the second was, oh shit, she's cool. I'm sitting here with my socially awkward ass, trying to figure out how I'm going to handle this situation, how I'm going to go from here. Is she going to like me? She just kind of slides in, and we both make eye contact,

share smiles, and we figure this know make eye contact share smiles and we figure this is who we're here for right she had very wavy dirty blonde hair blue eyes her voice was soft but her words were flippant. She was very witty. And she wasn't loud, but you could tell she had opinions, convictions. Right off the bat, it feels like it's off to a good start. Fortunately it's a show, so we didn't have to talk that much, right? And much to my relief, it seemed like we clicked pretty quick. That night, I invited her to a party. I was in this theater club that was throwing like a get-together, some of the new members,

and I was like, hey, come to this thing with me. Theater kids are all a little weird, a little awkward, but they know how to party. It was in a co-op, really crowded, really dingy. Plenty of activities for young, horny teenagers. We danced, I got drunk. You know, shared some things about ourselves that we probably forgot the next morning.

So it was a good time. I asked her to coffee or something, something really noncommittal, something that would be just the two of us. And we did that. I had had relationships in high school. They were very high school, very, in retrospect, artificial.

This felt like the first time that I was like really starting to get to know somebody. I started going to her apartment, she started coming up to my dorm. You know, I felt like I was dating somebody who was my friend. I mean, back then I had a lot of self-esteem issues. Here's a person who is interested. I mean, that felt rare at the time. When you're coming from a place where you aren't sure of yourself and this relationship feels like something that you just really lucked out in getting in the

first place. If there are red flags, you completely miss them. The first real blow to that was this guy who messaged me on Facebook. What he sent me was just a deluge of angry, jealous messages like, you don't know her like I do, I would be better for her, I'm her friend, I'll be here when you're gone. His name was Jacob.

His profile picture was this skinny guy with thick black-rimmed glasses. I wasn't sure what to do about that. I didn't even know the guy. I didn't know where he came in. I had never met him before. Alice had never talked about him. So I go to her and ask, who is this dude? Oh, him. Don't listen to him. Don't worry about him. Ignore him. I don't hang out with him anymore.

There's this shitty jealous dude that she knows she doesn't necessarily want to associate with anymore, but I was confused about why this person felt the need to do that, why this person felt they could do that. But eventually I decided I was done, blocked the guy. And I thought it'd be the end of whatever that was, but it wasn't. Summer came and went. Alice was majoring in international relations. She was going to Morocco. Never really got a chance to like sit down, reconnect.

She was already gone. She was halfway across the world, so time zones were out of whack. I mean, it was hard to contact her at all. I started to get more messages. First, there was Hannah. She sent a bunch of messages about Jacob, echoing a lot of what he said. This girl was advocating for him why he should be in a relationship with Alice and not me. She sent me a picture, a grainy black and white picture. This girl sitting on this guy's lap and they're making out. You can't see either of their faces, but Hannah swears to me that it's Alice and Jacob. I mean, I didn't know how to respond.

I mean, there wasn't a whole lot of time to think about that specifically because I was starting to get messages from other people too. There was Nick, profile picture of a guy pretty much silhouetted on a skateboard in front of a sunset. He tried to come in as some kind of voice of reason. Hey, I know Jacob and Hannah are putting you through some shit. They're kind of a duo of absolute garbage.

I will do my best to deal with it. I started to get more messages from more accounts. Leah claimed to be a childhood friend of Alice. And there was Micah. He, like Nick, apologized for a lot of what was going on. I mean, it felt like there was a conspiracy. All these people that I had never met before, never seen before,

don't know what their faces look like. It's just whack-a-mole, digital whack-a-mole. I wasn't sure what to do with it. I'm basically losing my mind at this point. Alice had another friend who I had actually met before. I contacted her asking to meet. And I asked her, do you know them? Have you met them before? And she said, no.

She didn't know who any of these people were. I started getting texts to my phone. She says her name is Mary. She's saying things like, why haven't you called me? Did you mean what you said to me? I'll come to you. I'll find you. Really horrifying stuff. I didn't know what I could do to make things stop. When I brought this up to Alice,

she was confused about it. She didn't know whoever this Mary was and that she had actually been getting texts. I felt helpless. I did not know what to do with that. I started to get texts from Mary that would say that she saw me. Somewhere on campus. I came to your theater show.

She would talk about things that I actually did, places that I actually was that day. I felt like I was being stalked. I didn't really know who it was. I didn't know what they looked like. I was concerned for my safety. These texts were becoming obsessive and intrusive. And the worst part was, the threat was faceless.

I mean, the messages could be from anybody, right? I got a message from Nick, who said that he had found Mary. They had had an encounter. She had brought a gun. At this point, there was at least the suggestion of real physical violence. And at that point, I was done. I called Alice, said, I'm sorry. This is too much.

I'm done. I mean, she just kind of took it on the chin and, I mean, acted like it was no big deal. Like, oh, well, you can't handle it. Fine. After that, everything just stopped. I didn't hear from any of these people. I wasn't getting texts. It was just gone. I guess I can never really know for sure who these people were, but I know one person it could have been.

And that's Alice. A couple years later, I out of the blue got a text from Alice. She had texted me just one word. Talk? I did not respond to that. Boo! Oh, I got you. I made you jump. I had a feeling you'd be on edge after that last story. Well, I've been told time and time again, mostly from my therapist, Dr. Norman Kesden, that it's good to get out of your comfort zone. You can learn about that and much, much more in my memoir,

The Darkest of Air, A Carnation Grows on Mars. Hmm, perhaps I'll read you an excerpt. Now, where to begin? Maybe it's the chapter when my mother hired this silly young man from the neighborhood with a guitar to babysit me, who turned out to be a young Charlie Manson. True story. Oh, not enough time to be a young Charlie Manson. True story. Oh, not enough time. Seems the clock is running out,

perhaps during our next meeting. Please pick up a copy of my book at your nearest bookseller and be sure to avoid any used copies at all costs. I don't get paid for those. As always, I send you much love and appreciation, my fellow friends of the night, my brethren of the bizarre, my allies of the alarming, my compadres in the macabres, something like that. I don't know. Anyway, tune in next week for another thrill on Radio Rental.

Radio Rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenderfoot TV in Atlanta. Executive Producers Payne Lindsey 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. Meredith Stedman with additional writing by Mark Laughlin. Sound design by Cooper Skinner. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Seth. Additional production by Christina 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 tiny doors, ATL special links 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 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.