Radio Rental - Episode 59

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

On today's tapes... >> Do-Si-Do > Lone Phone Booth

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visit tenorfootplus.com for details. The following podcast includes scary stories with content that could be triggering to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Take a break from the same old boring blockbusters and experience a new kind of movie night with Radio Rental. At Radio Rental, our videos come to life in your living room, defy all logic and reasoning, and make you question your own reality.

This is not your ordinary video rental store. At Radio Rental, we carry one-of-a-kind videos so frightening, so mind-bending you won't be able to sleep at night. You've gone Radio Rental. So listen carefully, Malachi, because that's when the cat realized that the laser pointer wasn't coming from his owner's hand at all.

It was coming from the... Oh, oh! What was that? Did you hear that? Hello? Who's there? Announce yourself! Fine, I'll go first. I'm Terry Carnation.

Please don't hurt me. Take the cat. It's a bluff, Malachi. Oh, God. Okay, good, good. It's just you. Oh, you scared... You scared Malachi. Shut it, Malachi. How did you find us out here?

We're usually in the radio rental shop, but tonight we decided to take a few steps out into nature just to tell some spooky stories, campfire style. I was just in the middle of a really good one. Yes, it was good, Malachi. You were terrified. I saw that you wet yourself on that log. Yes, you did.

I know that smell anywhere. Anyhoo, I suppose that you want me to play you a tape from my special collection of true horror stories. I can do that. You see, I've actually wheeled the TV and VCR out here so we could watch a couple of the tapes under the stars out in the wilderness. Well, yes, I know you can see the neon radio rental sign from here, but no, no, we're not. We're not right next door. We're at least 300 feet. Okay, fine. We're like 50 feet away from the store, but I didn't have a longer extension cord, okay?

So just cram it. I'm trying to give you more outside time like you wanted, you ungrateful grimalkin. That's an archaic word for cat. I bet you didn't even know that. Look it up. All right, let's do it. Let's play a tape from my collection of scary stories.

I actually have one picked out already. Okay, here we go. This happened well over a decade ago. I was a sophomore attending a liberal arts college in Suffolk County, New York. By sophomore year, I had already formed a clique with some of my theater studies friends. We all shared a love of horror movies and scary stories and ghost hunting and the like. And we felt that it was a good time to do some ghost hunting of ourselves, very amateur stuff and not even, you know, particularly serious.

It was October and we felt that rather than sit around watching horror movies, let's go out into the woods and just scare the hell out of each other. Why not? We did some research and we found that there was actually a road not too far from us that was famous for supernatural occurrences, ghostly sightings, different urban legends. And it was not just a road, but an entire network of roads and turns. And one could easily get lost in there. And we figured that that was perfect. So we decided to get some flashlights, take our cars out. We felt that it would be best just to go out and not even use the GPS, just go out and get lost.

The seven of us split into two different cars and headed out into the October night. You turn off the main road, which is very busy. It's flooded with strip malls and restaurants and the like. And you're almost immediately greeted by this very dark road. And what's really unnerving about it is that there's very few houses. There's not much light. And if you're not careful and if you don't have a GPS, you could easily get lost. That was precisely our goal, was to go in there, get lost, and make something of our October. This is the entire point, was to go in there without any sort of plan and have fun.

We drove for about 20 or 30 minutes into this network, just picking random directions, all with the intention of finding a field or a trail or something for us to walk down with our flashlights. Our cars made this turn and that turn, and then we arrived at some sort of a dead end. And it wasn't really a dead end so much as there was a massive just log in the middle of the road. We figured that this was a good start.

So we got out and we decided to investigate this. And we knew that we could go around the log, This was a good start. So we got out and we decided to investigate this. And we knew that we could go around the log, but around the log there was two separate divergent trails. We flipped a coin and decided to go to the right. As we continued to walk, the trail just got narrower and narrower. We had to walk single file to avoid hitting each other or having the branches swipe us.

I ended up in the back. I'm not someone who is necessarily superstitious. I'm not a huge believer in ghosts or creatures and whatnot, but I did feel from the time that we got in there that there was something following us, that we were being watched. I could hear twigs snapping that weren't coming from the direction that we were walking in, but it was just outside this thick brush of leaves to our right and our left. I wrote it off, just said to myself that you're being ridiculous, this is nothing.

It's just the sound of the woods and there's seven of us walking. Someone made a sound that appeared to be coming from something else. After what seemed like about a half hour, we finally reached this large, large, open, grassy area. It wasn't a golf course, but it had that kind of hilly scope to it. It was huge. While manicured, there was one or two wooden tables nearby, so it could have been a park. There was very little semblance of any sort of entertainment happening there. There was also, on the other side of this field field some sort of a house-like structure. We don't know what it was, but it resembled a house.

So we walked over to it with our flashlights. It was completely boarded up and abandoned. Through the board, we could see a couch that was covered in tarp. We could see some tables. Everything looked really dusty as if it hadn't been disturbed in a long time. I don't know what exactly this was. Everything about it told me

that no one had been in this place for a long time, potentially years. And because the doors were all boarded up and all the windows, we just decided to leave it alone and not try to enter. Because it was a beautiful night, we all kind of stopped. We decided to just go back towards the opening that we came in and just sit down for a bit, plan our next step.

We had no agenda. We weren't sure if we wanted to go further into the woods, leave and go somewhere else, go back to our dorms. We didn no agenda. We weren't sure if we wanted to go further into the woods, leave and go somewhere else, go back to our dorms. We didn't know. While we were sitting around, planning our next step, I looked and I saw that my friend Matt was still standing.

And I stood up and asked him if he was all right. He had this just haunted expression on his face, eyes wide open. His jaw was down. Without saying anything, he pointed directly ahead of us, the opposite of where we had come in. And I looked, and what I saw,

I still can't make sense of. There was a human-like figure. It could have been seven or eight feet tall. I could tell that this thing, in proportion to the branches around it, was significantly taller than any of us. And it was lanky, pale, gray to the point of almost translucent. We couldn't tell if it was naked or fully clothed. It did have some sort of a shimmer to it.

It was moving in a rather inhuman way. Just given the size and the height of what this person was, all that we could see was limbs, essentially. It seemed to be dancing. It was grabbing a tree, skipping around it, grabbing another tree, skipping around that. And it was in some sort of aborted, kind of a do-si-do kind of dance.

It was really twisted, and it was something uncanny. None of it seemed to make sense, and none of it quite added up. The longer that we looked, the less sense that any of it made. It seemed to be having a fantastic time. Six of us saw this thing immediately as soon as my friend pointed it out. My friend Jeff wasn't seeing it. And I just leaned into him. I said, Jeff.

And I pointed right at it and said, do you not see that? It's right there. You can't see that? And I could see him kind of peering into it. And then I saw the moment where he also saw it. He gasped and grabbed my arm and he said, what the fuck is that? And I said, I don't know.

And now we were all on the same page. We all saw this thing, watching it with fascination. We were saying things like, you know, is that thing dancing? What is it doing? Just commenting on the fact that it was skipping around and behaving oddly. And at that moment, it seems to know that we were watching it. Out of nowhere, whatever this thing was, stopped swinging around. It stopped dancing, faced us, stared at us, and started charging directly at us at full speed. My heart dropped.

This thing was extremely fast. Faster than I was comfortable with. This thing was sprinting. And I had no interest in sticking around any longer to see what it wanted or who it was. I started running. Several of us started running. I was running on pure instinct. The only one who didn't start running again was Jeff.

He was the last person to see it, and he was the last person to see it running. So he was screaming at us, what are you guys doing? Where are you going? And we said, Jeff, run. It wasn't until I was well into the trail, back where we came from, running full speed myself,

that I heard him scream, holy shit. And I turned to see his flashlight following us into the trail. And I'm just hoping that my friends, who I kept looking back at to make sure they saw it too, were also doing the same thing, and that their survival instincts kicked in. It took us about 25, 30 minutes to get to this field, and it took us perhaps five minutes to get back because we were running, not interested at all in slowing down.

We threw all of our things into both cars, and we peeled out of there not having any idea where we were heading. We didn't have a GPS, just trying to retrace her steps. All of a sudden, what was once a really fun and immersive experience was absolutely terrifying because we didn't know who this person was. If they were with other people, all that we knew was that they were ready to charge at a group of seven able-bodied college students without a second thought. My friend Chris, who was driving, just said, what the fuck do we do?

I said, just drive. I don't care where we go, just drive. What was terrifying is that we had no idea where we were going. We were not cognizant of stop signs. If there were any sharp turns, all that we knew was that we had to get out of there without any sort of thought about how fast we were going or how recklessly we were driving. All that we were interested in was finding a main street again.

We didn't know if we were still being pursued. All that we knew was that we had to get out of there as fast as we could and get home. We were on a sharp turn, and we had to stop very, very suddenly because there was a black dog right in the middle of the road staring at us. It didn't seem at all perturbed or alarmed that it almost got hit, but it just stood there for a little bit,

stared at the car, before slowly walking off. Me and Chris looked at each other. The other people in the car just took a breath because we almost hit a living creature, and without even addressing it we kept going. We found a coffee shop right outside this network of roads and we stopped.

Many of us were still panicking, particularly the two drivers. We were all just checking with each other, making sure that we were okay, making sure that we're all breathing, we're safe. Whatever that was wasn't expected, but we're away from it now. Then we started to piece together what exactly we were looking at because, yes, we're all together watching this thing, but it wasn't more than 10, 15 seconds before it started running to us.

To this day, a lot of us are married, a lot of us have had children, gone to other colleges. We've all had very different roads in life following that college experience. But every now and then, one of us will check in through text or a phone call and just say, you know, that night in the woods, that actually happened, right? And we all agree that it wasn't some sort of a shared delusion or a prank. Like, there was something in the woods that night that was coming for us. Afterwards, I was doing some more research on this part of town,

and there is a legend for this particular road of a black dog-like creature who was, in essence, an omen of death, who will be in the middle of the road and halt cars that are making sharp turns and will stare at it before disappearing. Now this dog didn't disappear. It wasn't a dog like creature. It was just a black dog without a collar, perhaps a stray. But the fact that it lined up so closely with what I was reading was extremely alarming.

When I read it, I couldn't believe it. I sent that part to my friends and just saying, I can't believe this. I don't know if this is the dog that we saw, but the fact that it lined up so perfectly with what we experienced was just the cherry on top of this horrifying evening. Uh, hard pass on whatever that was. But there's something I won't pass up. Uh, hard pass on whatever that was. Ugh. But there's something I won't pass up. And that's a s'more.

Malachi, would you please pass the marshmallows? Now, oh, ugh, don't use your garbage mouth. It's now contaminated my mallow. Same mouth that licks your weird little starfish anus. Ugh. Here, give me that bag. Let's just, can we please just do an ad, please? Shut it.

You've always wanted to be part of something bigger than yourself. You live for experience and lead by example. You want the most out of life and realize what you're looking for is already in you. This is for you. The Canadian Armed Forces, A message from the Government of Canada. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be

alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Oh, it's getting spooky out here. A little chilly, too. The wind has picked up a little.

For this next True Scary Story, we're actually going to be tuning in to my old trusty radio here. The next story comes to us via the airwaves from our sister show, Rattled and Shook. You might want to enjoy it at the times when my shop is closed for business. Okay, anyway, let's see here. Almost. Almost. Okay, anyway, let's see here... Almost... Almost... Ah, here we go... This would have been, I think, in the late 80s.

I was driving from Colorado about an hour north of Denver, and I was driving back to New Orleans. I had bought a little sports car for my sister. It was a Datsun 280ZX. She was going to sell it and I decided I wanted it so I bought it from her and I was driving it home to New Orleans. It was a little red sports car. It was fast and it had very good steering but I wish I still had it to be true. It took me close to 27 hours I think to drive from where I was in northern Colorado down to New Orleans. I just stopped to eat, but I didn't stop and use a hotel or anything.

I probably should have, but I didn't. I had to be back at work, and since I knew I was driving fairly long, I was probably listening to music and drinking Coca-Colas. I think I had a couple of six-packs of Coca-Cola's sitting on the seat next to me so I could make it home in time. So I was in the western edge of Texas in a fairly barren part of the trip. I had music on pretty much the whole time. You know, it helped keep your attention. The only thing I had was the radio that came in the car and it didn't have even a tape deck in it and there weren't any CDs then. So

it was whatever I could get over the radio and right where I was there in western Texas I was able to get some AM radio. It was probably talk radio. There really wasn't much there at all, just the road I was driving on. I guess it was called an interstate at the time. It's not like it was a big interstate the way you think of interstates now. It may have been the biggest road that was in that particular area, but there really wasn't much traffic at all.

It was fairly deserted where I happened to be. I had gone through, I guess Amarillo, I had gone through Amarillo, but I couldn't tell you exactly town-wise where I was because there really wasn't anything there. There was literally nothing there. I was in the middle of nowhere. You know, from a distance I could see that there was a light on. It was on the right side of the road and the closer I got, the more I could tell, well, you know, that's a phone booth. Right on the other side of this little road that I was at, there was a stop sign. That was it.

Stop sign and the phone booth. Well, I remember seeing it from a distance and thinking, oh, it's unusual to see that there, but in those days there were no cell phones or anything, so I guess it's probably a good time to call my wife. And I remember where that phone booth was was sort of unusual because you had a scan on the radio where you could hit scan and it would stop at the next station.

And I remember hitting scan and it would just go round and round and round and never stop because there was no station that you could get. It hadn't gotten dark yet, but it was in the process of getting dark. So I would say it was, you it was sort of twilight-y. And one of the reasons that I remember that was because the light was on in the phone booth, and that's why I saw it. And so it was a little strange driving down the road, and all of a sudden you saw this plexiglass phone booth sitting there with the light on and nothing else around it. But again, it allowed me to pull over and use it, which I thought was nice, until I felt like I was in the twilight zone. Only thing around was this one road which was going perpendicular to the road I was

on and was going off into the distance through these trees. So as I pulled up, I looked down the road to see, you know, where is it going? Cause I thought maybe this is somebody's driveway or it's going to a ranch or, you know, maybe headed towards a town or something. Well, it didn't seem to be headed towards anything. Just sort of, sort of got dim and distant.

And then you couldn't see anything at the other end of it. But again, I thought, well, you know, this is nice. I'll go ahead and make a call while I can. It was an old rectangular type of phone booth that you could go in and close the doors. And when you close the doors, the light came on and you could see through it because there's plexiglass on the outside. Once I got in the phone booth, actually before I got in the phone booth, I hadn't seen a car for a while. Going in any direction, the other direction or my direction. So again, I kind of felt by myself. Well, I was standing in the phone booth and I was talking to my wife.

And I just happened to be looking down the road that was there. As I was looking down the road, thinking, well, there must be something down there. I mean, where's the road that was there. As I was looking down the road, thinking, well, there must be something down there. I mean, where's the road going? I happened to be glancing through the trees, and that's when I saw a shape move from one tree to another tree. To me, it seemed like a person. I mean, it wasn't just like a cow or anything like that. It was a stand-up shape. I mean, I could see just like a cow or anything like that. It was a stand-up shape.

I mean, I could see a body and a head, and you could see arms. Yeah, I know, it was definitely a person. Definitely a person, no question about that. Then I started thinking, well, you know, who would be hanging around in this nowhere forest, in this nowhere area? And that's when I started looking more closely. And that's when I noticed there were several shapes.

They were on both sides of the road. And they were slowly working their way toward me as they were moving from tree to tree. It wasn't like there were three people walking up the road talking to each other. They weren't on the road at all. All I could really see was sort of shadowy figures, of which there were several. So they'd move from one tree to the other tree, and then there would be a pause before they moved again. They were definitely hiding behind the trees. And so what was the deal with that?

And you remember, it was getting darker the whole time. And there were no street lights, and there were no house lights. There were no lights. So the only light that was around was the phone booth light. And I was in that. So I felt like I was definitely sticking out like a sort of thumb. So if it had been completely dark, I would have been in the phone booth with this little dweeby light on over my head,

and they could have been walking towards me, and I wouldn't have seen them until they were a couple of feet from the phone booth, maybe. And if I hadn't noticed that, that would have been, I think, potentially very bad. But I couldn't see that anything was being done. It's not like they were sawing wood or, you know, putting up signs or nobody was shooting guns that I could hear. And again, I was in the phone booth,

so me talking was probably the only noise around other than the fan at the top of the phone booth. Because in those days, when you shut the doors on the phone booth, there would be a fan that would go on to kind of aerate it a little bit because people used to go into phone booths to smoke cigarettes and stuff like that. They usually had a fan in them and that made it hard to hear anything on the outside. I couldn't hear them at

all. They were moving towards me and I didn't think of any good reason why that would be a good thing to happen. Once I got close enough, I decided it was time to hang up and get in the car and get the heck out of there. I thought that I'd gotten close enough. I was still on the phone with my wife, and I told her that I was going to be hanging up. I was going to be leaving, and I thought I could see some people coming towards me up this little road. Though I don't think she perceived how eerie it really was. The closest one was probably one swimming pool length. And 10 to 15 yards from the phone booth was sort of cut grass.

So they would have run out of trees when they got that close. And I didn't think I should be hanging around when they ran out of trees. I got in the car and fortunately my car started. I hadn't broken down or had plenty of gas. I mean I guess it could have been worse. I mean if you had a flat tire or run out of fuel, it would have been very creepy. Because what were you going to do? I mean, there weren't many people driving by, if any.

And it was unusual just to see the phone booth there. That's one reason why I pulled over. Strange place to have a phone booth by itself. Did it feel like a trap? Well, it did a little bit in a way, because, you know, what was the reason for a phone booth to be there? You know, there wasn't a gas station there. It wasn't in a restaurant or a hotel or anything. There used to be phone booths all over the place, but not in the middle of nowhere because, you know, they would be trying

to make some money. I drove away and sort of used my mirrors just to see if there was any motion as I was leaving. But it wasn't like anybody came running out of the woods at me or anything like that. So I don't know, maybe they were waiting for the next person to pull over and use the phone. I felt like I was being watched and I was being approached, not necessarily with good intent. I felt like I was being set up to be somehow robbed or attacked in some fashion. I thought it was definitely time to leave. Otherwise, I thought I might be in the newspaper. It's just time to go.

Again, sort of felt like you're in Twilight Zone. That's what it felt like. Definitely eerie. I know usually I'm a big fan of ephemera and such, but thank God payphones are a thing of the past. They were so stuffy and cramped, and there's just something so creepy and germy about them. Wait, what was that? Hello?

Probably nothing. I'm just so on edge now. Let's take a break for some ads. Ah, okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. It's okay. It's gonna be okay. I am so dreading groceries this week. Why? You can skip it. Oh, what? Just like that? Just like that.

How about dinner with my third cousin? Skip it. Prince Fluffy's favorite treats? Skippable. Oh, what? Just like that? Just like that. How about dinner with my third cousin? Skip it. Prince Fluffy's favorite treats? Skippable. Midnight snacks? Skip. My neighbor's nightly saxophone practices? Uh, nope.

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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. Well, that one had me shaking in my boots. You see, I wore boots because we're in the great outdoors. Yes, we are, Malachi. You can barely see the parking lot from here.

Look at him. He's all worked up. Be careful, Malachi. You're by an open flame. Malachi, stop it. You're not flame retardant. Don't get so... No, retardant. I said retardant.

Ent. So don't get so close. Malachi, calm yourself. No, watch out. Look out your tail. Your tail, Malachi. Oh! Hey! Find yourself a puddle and douse your tail, Malachi.

But don't go too far, Malachi. Malachi? Malachi, do you want me to urinate on your tail? Come back. Here, you can use my canteen. There's hardly any vodka in it. Malachi? Malachi?

Malachi? Oh, well, okay. I guess I lost my idiot cat. Of course this would happen. I'm so sorry to cut this rendezvous short, but... Well, I think I have to go report a missing feline companion. I'm gonna hang up a poster. Have you seen this cat?

Wanted. Cat. Charred tail. Starfish anus. Answers to the name of Malachi. Or Little Satan. Pumpkin spice breath. No testicles.

He was neutered. It's not a birth defect. But don't bring it up. He's very sensitive about his lack of a scrotum. Ah! Radio Rental is created by Thank you. Carnation. Written and produced by Meredith Stedman. Additional writing by Mark Laughlin. Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Associate producer is Jaja Muhammad. Editing by Eric Quintana, Mike Rooney, Stephen Perez, and Meredith Stedman. Sound design by Cooper Skinner, with additional sound design by Stephen Perez and April Ruha. Mix and master by Cooper Skinner,

with additional mixing by Stephen Perez and Devin Johnson. Original Score by Makeup and Vanity Set with additional score by Jay Ragsdale. 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.