Radio Rental - Episode 48

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

On today's tapes... >> Excursion Voucher > John's Grandmother

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Subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus to get early access to episodes, ad-free listening, and bonus scary stories. Visit tenorfootplus.com for details. The following podcast includes scary stories with content that could be triggering to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Hello, hello, welcome! Welcome in. Welcome out, baby. Welcome to Radio Rental. We're just gonna get straight to it today, straight to the tapes.

No preamble, I don't have any news for you. It's so unusual, really, how calm it's been. Anyway, here we go. So, tape number one. Oh, what was that? What was that? Was that you? You're not supposed to make any sound.

That's part of the whole conceit. So shut up, all right? I'm putting the tape in. What the? What is going on? Sus Susie is that you hmm tape fell off the shelf over here let's go see what it is gone girl blah I thought I had gotten rid of all of our Ben Affleck movies except Geely Classic. Anyway, that's weird. That is very weird. It was probably just, uh, Susie.

Susie, I know it was you. Or maybe the Void. Maybe Malachi. Or me. It could have been me. I don't know my own strength sometimes. Yeah, so, probably. Probably, definitely, probably just one of those things. Okay, carrying on. Here we go. First tape. My wife and I just finished grad school, just got kind of our first jobs. We had decided to book a trip to Aruba. Relatively affordable, it's quick to get to, good weather, can't go wrong. We stayed at one of those low-rise, all adults, no kids type of things we could enjoy ourselves.

Because we were broke, we were looking for deals and whatnot to do stuff around town. We decided to take a taxi to the main area where there's all the restaurants, the Carlos and Charlies, all the bars and everything, and we saw a semi-famous hotel. We were like, oh, look at that. That's a pretty large hotel. They have a cool pool. Let's go check it out. That's when we saw the sign, manually written on one of those large instructional pads.

You would see it like a presentation. If you sit through a timeshare walkthrough tour you can get vouchers for excursions. Well we don't have money so this is a good opportunity to at least do something besides shop or just eat food all day. So we sat through it it was probably about two hours. Went up through every single level of the hotel, saw the room, saw how beautiful your outlook is onto the ocean and the benefits. The only difference between the rooms we were being shown was the view. An hour or almost two hours later, we're like,

great, no, no, no, no, and then we finally got the voucher. We weren't even given any information to leave with, which was weird. But we assumed that was because we kept saying no to everything. The next morning, we decided to call to see if we could book it. It was a type of thing where they answer the phone with a business name. It was hello. We spoke to a gentleman. We got this voucher for an excursion.

It was for horseback riding, we were told. They had openings for the following day, sometime mid-afternoon. The next team came and arrived, and we were getting ready to kind of go for it. We were told to meet the company outside and we went outside. This decrepit Astrovan pulls up squeaking, buzzing, pretty much every mechanical noise you could hear.

And when we get inside, I look at the actual dashboard and it's like a Christmas tree. Every error that could be seen was seen. It felt like it was going to collapse underneath us. It was really, really broken down. We're kind of driving through the main tourist area. Then we go across the other side, which is typical, the non-tourist area. That's where they have all the ranches and all the farms. Probably took about 30 minutes, 40 minutes each.

And then we start getting down this weird dirt road that led to this house with kind of like a, I wouldn't say a stable, just kind of a large wooden patio covering. Stopped, he said, get out. Took the voucher. Then we were told to wait. Look at the horses.

That's when I asked, where's everyone else? Every excursion I've been at, either you go with another member, or at least when you get there, there's a bunch of people waiting. There was zero people there. No horses. No noise. No feed. No water. Nothing to feed or care for anything. No ropes for them to attach anything to. no noise no feed no water

nothing to feed or care for anything no ropes nothing to attach anything to something tapped into my intuition something was going on I just didn't feel it was a good situation there's no way a company would run an excursion a free excursion with one couple

you'd lose a ton of money doing that the gentleman went around the building we were there for at least a free excursion with one couple. You'd lose a ton of money doing that. The gentleman went around the building. We were there for at least 10 minutes. So I said, let me take a look in here, because this is kind of bizarre that they wouldn't have the horses here. I looked inside the house through the glass window, and there's nothing. No furniture, nothing.

No clocks, nothing on the walls. It looked like someone just moved out. That's strange. What is this then? Why are we here at this? It seems a little inconvenient to park here and then go to a completely different area to get things you need. Just had a feel of like an abandoned house that wasn't discovered that it was abandoned. Nothing was going on there. There was no flowers. There was no statues. There was no flags. Nothing was upkept.

I saw no signs of horseback riding lessons, no marketing. I'm looking at my wife. What do we get ourselves into? My overthinking is maybe I'm watching too many Dateline documentaries. She said, no, I had the same feeling. It felt like we were getting very deep into a bad situation. I'm thinking, how do I get out of this? How do I get out of this? Sick, right? Use it to get out of school, to get out of work, sick. We'll use that.

I said, well, when he comes back, I'll explain it to him. Maybe coming from a guy, since he's a guy, he'll be a little bit more understanding. Because you haven't really talked to him, you could be the one that's sick. I'll say that you're having a migraine. We'll see if we can get out of this as quickly as possible. So he comes back, No horses, mind you. I told him that my wife wasn't feeling well, that we had to go home. No, no, please, please. We could still do this.

Take your time. There's no rush. No, no, no. She's not feeling well. She gets migraines. This isn't going to be a quick thing. No, no, no. It's okay. Lay down. She could lay down over on the bench there and we could wait. There's no rush. She's not feeling good. We're outside. It's not going to get better. She needs medicine. She would need some Excedrin or something like that. It's not going to just get better on its own. She needs water and something to eat. You can't stay. You're not able to continue? No, we can't. 100%. We got to go. And I was getting somewhat irritated, still kind of hoping this was going to end well.

He pulled out his flip phone, started doing what you do when you're making side talk when someone's around you and kind of walk away as you're talking and he starts yelling at someone screaming screaming in another language I heard kind of a back and forth and then it was kind of abrupt click fine let's go very very irritated and upset. So we were like, fine, that's what we want. You hear time organized sex trade and stuff like that. That was my feel. I just did not feel safe. Her and I were very quickly walking back to the van.

He put the key in the ignition and he turned it just so you could see the lights on the back dash appear. I assumed that he tried it and it was completely dead altogether. I didn't hear any cranking or anything like that or it sounded like it was trying to start. He put the key and he turned it. I saw the warning lights and everything reappear and then he said, it's not going to start. No gas. Another thing to keep us here. That was when I looked at my wife and she looked at me and I was like, I got to make a decision because I'm not waiting here. And that's when I said, we're going.

Because if we don't, we're going to put ourselves in a situation where we will not have control after that. This is a better situation wandering than it is staying in this car. Because I don't know what's going on here. It just didn't have that good feel to it. My wife and I, we got out and we started walking down the dirt trail. All I remember him is saying, like, don't leave. And that was it. He didn't chase us.

We're in the middle of nowhere. This is where actual people that live on the island live, so it's not really made for tourists. As we're walking down, we're looking around because we have no way of getting back. I mean, I don't know any taxi companies. We don't have cell phones at this time. I kept looking behind me, like, seeing if he was going to be there, like, running after us or at least showing up in a new car or even that car.

Him, you know, trying to recover us. So we took like a random right. We just kept kind of winding around. We had no idea where we were going. We began to take what seemed like a main road. It was a straight road. We're looking for like a gas station or maybe like a local little, it was a straight road. We were looking for like a gas station or maybe like a local little shop, nothing, just houses.

We see a taxi in the driveway. How do we get to this person that has the taxi cab? Is this really a person that does taxi work or is this another type of problem? I was going to go up to the door, and I saw someone sleeping on a hammock in the front. So I kind of made loud noises so he wouldn't think I was robbing him or something or sneaking up on him, giving him the time to wake up and process what was going on. He kind of looked, half tired,, half what's going on here.

He looks at us. He does like a triple take. What are you doing on this side of the island? Tourists aren't supposed to be over here. I said, if you're not on break, if you're working, can you bring us back to our hotel room? Sure, sure, sure, sure. Let's go, let's go, let's go. Just worked out perfect. We get in the car.

That's when I started to feel safe. This was legit. It had a taxi, had all the taxi materials on it, the lights, the branding, the phone number on the side of the car. It wasn't a random car. It was an actual legit taxi. We finally get back. We were shooken up. We were nervous. We had the adrenaline going. We didn't know what was going to go on. My wife was annoyed about this happening.

She's like, you need to say something. I was thinking to myself, we probably should do our due diligence and at least warn another couple. If anything happens,

I'd feel terrible if we didn't say anything. We went to the excursion desk. There was this young woman. When we were explaining the situation to her, is this our company? Do we do this? Like, give me your ticket information. I'll help you out with this.

The second she saw the voucher that we had received from the other hotel, she kind of shut down. That's not us. We have nothing to do with them. That's why we tell our guests to book through our hotel and not to use any other businesses. We make sure that these are legit companies. That's nothing to do with us.

Huh, is that rude? These are legit companies. That's nothing to do with us. Huh, is that rude or is that she doesn't want to get involved type of thing? Any business would be like, all right, give me the card. I'll pass it on to my boss. Give them an FYI in case other guests are proselytized or asked to go onto these excursions. We could warn them.

It was like, get that thing away from me type of thing. That's what it felt like. This is why you come through us. This is why we do what we do. So this doesn't happen. End of story. No empathy after that. From my experience with readings and watching the news,

it seems to happen a lot that when there is any couples victimization that's not robbery based, that there's some sort of either we want you for money or we want you for sex trade for money. That's a very real problem that's not often understood or talked about is that the sex trade is a billion dollar multi-country process. And there's lots of kind of connections in this large entangled web that you hear about all the time. And that was kind of the assumption. And when we kind of shared the story with her father, who's a retired fireman, he said, that's probably what they were trying to do. You got a blonde, blue-eyed girl that's young, that's in her early 20s, that's a goldmine. Get rid of him, keep her. That was my feel.

I don't see a use for me. Because, I mean, if you look, you can see Venezuela. I mean, it's right there. That could have been one of the goals. Go to South America and that's it. Whew, well, I have to admit, I'm already a bit on the edge. And that one really got to me. So let's take a quick break to hear grateful right now. Don't forget to give yourself some thanks by investing in your well-being. BetterHelp is the largest online therapy provider in the world, connecting you to qualified professionals via phone, video, or message chat. Let the gratitude flow. Visit

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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. And we're back! Titillating stuff. These tapes have been great. I think that we should... Whoa! Oh, speaking of tapes, did you hear that last one fall?

Two tapes in one day. I hope it wasn't Gigli. If I know anything from being a late-night AM radio disc jockey of a show focused on the paranormal and the bizarre, and occasionally weather, is that there are no coincidences in this life. I think we have a ghost on our hands, folks. And I think it's trying to communicate with me

by knocking tapes off the shelf a la Matthew McConaughey in Interstellar, a movie about black holes and corn. No, I'm not trying to jump to conclusions. Malachi, I know about these things. Oh, how exciting. A ghost right here in the store. I hope it's a benevolent one.

Hmm, let's see what this fallen tape is. This one is... The Time Traveler's Wife. Ugh, terrible choice. This ghost has trash taste. Everyone knows the book was better. Well, I'm going to look forward to deciphering this message. I feel like I'm in the Da Vinci Code.

Which is another garbage movie. Why is the book always better? Should I open a bookstore? All right, enough of that. Next tape. When I graduated high school, I had grown up in a suburb of Boston. Really wanted to push myself outside of my comfort zone. I decided that I was going to school in South Carolina. Within the first year, started dating this guy named John.

John was a few years older than me. He was a very brilliant math, science kind of guy. He was really funny and smart, and we became close really quickly. His family definitely made an effort to take me under their wing. They were a really small family. It was just John, his mother, who had raised him and his brother as a single mother, and his grandmother on his mother's side, Sophia, who was a sweet little Italian lady. To have this family sort of welcome me was a really wonderful experience.

His father was just not a great guy and was physically abusive. When that started to escalate, his mother saved up and moved. Sophia helped with the kids. That was their nuclear family. As far as I know, there was pretty much no contact with his Texan family. As far as I know, there was pretty much no contact with his Texan family. I didn't really learn anything about them at all. He didn't want to talk about that. Never something that we chatted about. I had been seeing John for a few months. I was 19. he was 21. You know, we were stupid college kids. Our relationship wasn't amazing. Started to have like a lot of really stupid arguments typical college kids would have. We were bickering all the time. It was just very clearly not working out. One night, dropping him off at his apartment,

we got in another argument. I just remember it feeling a little bit different than the rest of the arguments that we had had. It had kind of brought me to my breaking point. That night, I crawled into bed, and I was super upset, stressed about what was going to happen. That's the night that I had the most vivid dream I've ever had in my entire life. Entire life.

And it's not. My friend had picked me up and she was driving me to a makeup store about 20 minutes outside of our college campus. On the way there my friend told me that she actually wasn't gonna come in to the makeup store. Once I got there my boyfriend's grandmother was going to be inside waiting for me. I had never gone shopping with his grandmother before. I just accepted it and said, okay, that's fine. I hopped out of the car and I went into the little makeup store.

I scanned around, didn't see Sophia anywhere. I just continued shopping and figured, you know, she'll show up at some point. Walked over to one of the lipstick displays. I just picked one up and started drawing on my hand, playing with it, seeing what the color looked like. This woman walked over to me, this tall, impeccably dressed with this teased, super high, bleach blonde hair. She said, oh honey, that is not your color. And I just kind of chuckled. She was probably right.

And I put the lipstick back and kind of turned away from her. Continue shopping. Every time I would pick something else up, she would have something to say. Pick up a mascara, and she would say, oh, that brand, they use terrible ingredients. Don't use that. She didn't look like a salesperson. She wasn't in the store's uniform.

Dressed perfectly. Bright southern colors. Eventually, just was kind of confused why she was still there with me. Kind of getting annoyed because she had something to say about everything that I touched. Eventually, I just turned to her and said, thank you so much, but I actually have to run. I'm looking for my boyfriend's grandmother.

She looked shocked. I had hoped that I didn't offend her in any way. I really was just looking for Sophia. She said, do you not know who I am? So sorry if I've met you, but I don't know you. She said, John has a grandmother on the other side too. Even though he doesn't talk to his dad, he still has a grandmother. I had just a gut feeling that she was telling the truth.

John had gray eyes, and I noticed that she had that too. She started telling me all sorts of stories about John growing up, the first few years of his life that he had spent in Texas. When both John's parents were working, she would watch the kids. They would draw on the driveway with Chuck. I had not heard any stories about his time in Texas at all. She started to talk about how she really regretted the way that her relationship with John had been while they were growing up. Because of her son and the way that he turned out,

aggressive and abusive as he was, his actions prevented her from having a loving relationship with John and with John's little brother. She said that it was her biggest regret in life that she didn't get to spend that time with John while he was growing up. I'm trying to be a problem solver. Kept suggesting, it's 20 minutes down the road we can get him for lunch. I'll call him right now. She just kept saying, no, no, no, it's too late for me.

You should cherish your time with John. John's a good guy. Then she would give me a little bit more advice or tell me another story about their childhood and then it would always come back to, it's too late for me, but it is my biggest regret in life that I didn't spend that time with John while he was growing up because I do love John and I want him to know that. I know things are tough with him.

He's a really good person and he needs you. Try to make it work with him. I'll make sure to tell him that you love him. Maybe if you're around soon, we can all meet up. She just kind of smiled and I woke up. I felt really unsettled. It felt so real. It felt like I had physically been there. I looked at the clock and I realized it was just after 3 a.m. I sent John a weird text. I had the weirdest dream about your grandmother.

Let's talk about it tomorrow. I threw my phone down, rolled over, and went back to sleep. The next morning, I woke up, and I didn't even really think about it. We were having everybody over to have breakfast before a big football game. John was the first person to show up at my apartment. He came in, laid down on my couch, and started, like, scrolling through his phone while we waited for our person to show up at my apartment. He came in, laid down on my couch, and started, like, scrolling through his phone while we waited for our friends to show up.

I started cooking. All of the sudden, I could see over our kitchen island, his head just, like, popped up. He said, Did you have a dream about my grandmother last night? I said, Oh, yeah, but but like, don't worry about it. It wasn't Sophia. It was just some weird dream that I had.

I don't even know who it was. Well, what did she look like? And I described her and her hair and her outfit. He pulled up a Facebook message that he had just received on his phone. It was a Facebook message from his dad. He had been sent an image of his grandmother on his dad's side with a little paragraph that said

she had passed away in her sleep the night before, around 3 a.m. I kind of just gasped and I said, yeah, that's the person that was in my dream. He just kind of looked at me, was frozen. He couldn't process it. I think it really was so far out of what he considered the rules of the universe or whatever. It shocked him to the point where he just was not able to emotionally react to it.

Couldn't really receive it. He had never really even wanted to talk about it, and he explained it away like, oh, maybe you saw a picture on Facebook, but knowing full well there were no pictures for me to have seen. I think that I was just open enough for his grandmother to feel comfortable coming to me with this message. She probably needed to like at least get those things off of her chest

before she could find her peace in the next life. Ho ho ho ho! I bet you didn't see that coming. But you did see this coming. Ads. documentaries, and podcasts. Talk about what's on the charts and find those up-and-coming podcasts that 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. And we're back. So while you were freaking out about that last story, and rightfully so, I've been perched over here waiting for the next message from our special visitor.

Malachi has not taken kindly to the specter, though. He keeps growling at that shelf over there. Shush, Malachi. You'll scare the ghost away. I've been bored for months. I need this. I'm trying to figure out who would be visiting me from the great beyond. Maybe it could be someone that died in this very store. The previous owner did tell me about an incident. Probably should have asked some more questions about that whole murder-suicide-cult thing before signing the papers. Ah well. Hail Satan. Listen! Another message! Another tape! What is it? Malachi, fetch it for me! Malachi, fetch me the tape! Fetch! Go fetch Malachi! Fetch the tape!

God damn it, Malachi! What were all those obedience lessons for anyway? Waste of money. Oh, those were for me, huh? Ha ha ha ha ha. Okay, fine, I'll go get the tape myself. Hmm. Interesting, let me see here.

The Bride of Chucky. Best of the series in my mind. Interesting, interesting. What does it all mean? Gone Girl, the Time Traveler's Wife, The Bride of Chucky. Oh, my goodness. It couldn't be. Do you think... Do you think it could be my late wife, Zelon,

trying to communicate with me across the great beyond? Uh, darling? Darling, if you're there, send me a sign! P.S. I love you. With Gerard Butler? I never thought I'd be so happy to see Gerard Butler. My dear patron, you are witnessing some groundbreaking stuff here. I wholeheartedly believe that there is a 75% chance my late wife, Zalon, is here with us in spirit. No, no, I'm not getting my hopes up again, Malachi. I said 75%, and that is entirely reasonable. Anyway, my dear patron, it's been wonderful to have you with us.

We'll see you next week back here at Radio Rental for more harrowing stories. But for now, I have to ask if you would please leave Zilon and me alone for a while. We haven't seen each other in such a long time. Yes, I know I can't see her, Malachi, but I can feel her. Okay, fine. I can't feel her either. God, can't you let me have anything? I meant in my heart, Malachi. I can feel her in my heart. Don't be crass. I'm not talking about groping.

But maybe with some experimentation and the right gloves, a little imagination, some oregano, if you know what I mean. I mean, if Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore could do it, maybe I'll invest in a pottery wheel. Radio Rental is created by Payne Lindsay Thank you. Written and produced by Meredith Stedman. Additional writing by Mark Lachlan. Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Associate producer is Jaja Muhammad. Editing by Eric Quintana, Mike Rooney, and Meredith Stedman.

Sound design, mix, and master by Cooper Skinner. Additional sound design and mixing by Devin Johnson. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set. Video editing by Dylan Harrington. Cover artwork by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan. Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTI, the Nord Group, Station 16, Beck Media

and Marketing, and the team at Odyssey. 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 and Twitter at Radio Rental.

You can also follow the illustrious 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. 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.