Radio Rental - Episode 67

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

On today's tapes... >> The Shed > Someone at the Window

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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. It transcends time and space. It's a sound. Like a radio.

But it isn't a radio. There's actually no radios involved at all whatsoever. You come for the thrills, you stay for the memories. A man's soothing voice swells and seeps into your ear bones and says, it's time for ads. This terrifies you. You like, you comment, you follow and subscribe. It's Radio Rental. Hello. Welcome in to Radio Rental. We're a video rental shop with a collection of the scariest true horror stories you've ever heard in your life. And I am your host, shopkeeper extraordinaire, and former AM radio personality, Terry Carnation. I am so excited to have you here with us during this very special time of year.

It's the spooky season. That's right, it's finally October, and it's no longer weird or off-putting to wear a black cloak and a mask around town. It's no longer inappropriate to offer candy to children. Suddenly, all of my regular hobbies and interests are accepted, culturally accepted and embraced. Finally, after a lifetime of judgment. And speaking of hobbies and interests, you'll be interested to know I've started collecting antique furniture. That's right. I love antiquing. It's so cool and hip,

and you can find the neatest old things that are creaky and obscure, and at great prices, too. For example, I found this upright piano at a nearby estate sale just this week. Check it out. Pure rosewood and real ivory. And oh look, someone has carved their initials in it. Um, it reads, Help Me? Those aren't initials. Okay, needs a little tuning. And a lot of dusting. Possibly fumigation. Mold inspection. But look how cool! And guess what?

It was totally free, can you believe it? I was just walking past this decrepit estate that seemed to be falling down all around itself and the piano was sitting outside with a little sign that said, please take please please take we beg of you so that's that's a clear sign from the universe anyway i am now able to tickle the old ivories whenever terry pleases. But alas, I'm not sure what... Huh. That was weird.

I didn't even touch the... Anyway, I'm sure you're here for some horror stories from my secret collection of tapes. So let's do it. Ooh, how about this doozy? You're gonna love this.

Hey! What it... Anyway, roll tape. I have a house I bought a year ago. I run it as an Airbnb. It's an investment property to me. It's a good property. It cash flows decently well. It's nothing crazy. Really, it's just an Airbnb investment property for me. It has a normal front yard, normal backyard. It's fully fenced in. I have two sheds in my backyard. One of them is completely broken.

I have a lock on it. And then the other one we use as our laundry room. What's in there is a laundry machine, a dryer, and a water heater. That's pretty much it. It was a Friday. Normal work stuff. Calling some sellers or calling some realtors, trying to get some deals done through my real estate business.

2, 3 p.m., I get a notification of somebody in my front yard. And I go on the camera, click on it to see, like, okay, like, you know, what's going on. It's a guy opening my front fence. And then he wanders to my backyard. He had a white t-shirt, black shorts, and a backpack. And then he had glasses. I turn on the camera and I see him in the backyard. I'm like, bro, you got to be kidding me.

I don't have time for this. He was wandering around in circles in my backyard. Like, he was confused. Like, he was hiding from somebody. And then he went in the shed. I'm watching this. What is this guy doing? How the shed is angled, you can't see inside it.

I don't know if he was taking a nap in the shed. I don't know if it was something that, like, you know, I wouldn't want to know about. I've never seen this guy prior, so it wasn't, like, a consistent thing. I just thought it was somebody messing around my property. I don't know what he's doing inside there. I don't know why he even went in there. I need to get this guy out. I have a Ring camera in my backyard. I turn on the microphone, and I'm talking to him.

Yo, what are you doing? Why are you in my shed? Are you looking for something? I see you, get out of my shed. I'm going to call the police if you don't leave. He's not leaving. And that's why I called the police. Hey, I just watched this guy go into my backyard and go into my shed. I'm not local, unfortunately. I just want to get this guy out of my shed.

Could you please send an officer over to my house? I'm just going to keep watching this guy, making sure he's not doing anything crazy or trying to break into my house. I get a notification on my phone that there's movement in my front yard. Four or five officers. During this, I'm still watching the backyard camera. They gather around the shed. And then two guys have their guns. Two guys go in there.

They looked around for a minute and they came out. They didn't find anything. They walked to my back door. That's when I turn on my mic again. Hey guys, is there nobody in there? And they're like, no. I've literally been watching this the whole time. He didn't leave. Nobody left that shed. He has to still be in there.

They go in again. He wasn't in there. Police at that point were like, okay, we're wasting time here. It looked like I was insane because I was watching him do pretty much nothing. I had no idea what to think. And I'm like, hey, I'm so sorry for wasting your time.

I swear, like, this guy never left. Like, I don't know what's going on. I really appreciate you guys coming out and then they left I re-watched the camera I'm like am I seeing things did this guy leave did somebody even walk in there like am I just making this up in my head I start re-watching the footage making sure I didn't miss anything making sure that he didn't leave the front yard you know making this up in my head. I start rewatching the footage, making sure I didn't miss anything, making sure that he didn't leave the front yard, you know, while I was watching the backyard

and the camera missed it. And he never left. The ring doorbell, I rewatched that, he never left. I rewatched the backyard camera, he never left. I rewatched the front yard camera, he never left. I rewatched the backyard camera, he never left. I rewatched the front yard camera, he never left. I had to have missed something, because there's no way that this happened and I didn't pick it up and this guy just disappeared.

I didn't even know what to think. And that's when I was talking to some friends and family, showing them what happened, and they were like, wow, that is is that's weird the next day i get notification on my camera again and it says it's picking up motion in the backyard what's going on so i click on it I see there's a guy in my backyard. And then I go to my front yard and I see him in my front yard. He goes out my fence

and then wanders off the screen. Man, what's up with two days in a row with people wandering around my house? What's going on? So I want to see, you know, how did this guy get to my backyard? Because I didn't get notification that he was in my front yard. How did he get to my backyard without me knowing that he was in my front yard? I go to my front-yard cameras. Nobody ever came. I go to my backyard camera,

and the motion picks up this guy leaving the shed. The recording started right when he stepped out of the shed. There's no motion prior to him wandering the backyard, coming from another area, coming from my front yard, coming from my neighbor's yard. The first motion was the first step out of the shed. The second person looked surprisingly similar to the first person with the same glasses.

They looked very similar face structure wise, but one was probably about 30 years older. I was mind blown. What just happened? What is this? What's going on here? How is this possible? Is this the same guy? Is this a different guy? You know, why do they look the same? I called my contractor. I sent him the pictures of the people seeing if he knew these people, which he didn't. My first guess was that my camera messed up. But my camera, like, it didn't mess up. I would be able to admit it if it did, and it didn't. It didn't mess up twice in a row.

Me looking through the footage hundreds of times and seeing that my camera didn't mess up, it has to be something supernatural. Just putting one and one together, I'm like, this guy goes into my shed younger, never leaves my shed. Cops go in there twice. I watch the cameras. I never see him leave. Then the next day, an old guy leaves my shed. I never see him walk into my front yard. I never see him walk into my backyard. And then he wanders off. And the two guys look the same. Just one is way older. What if it's a time traveler? That was kind of like the theory I was putting together.

As I started kind of clipping them and putting them together, seeing the resemblance, that's when I started thinking, what if it is? Otherwise, I don't know what it could have been. I exposed everything. I screenshotted their faces and put it all online. And a lot of people, internet being how the internet is, started doing face searches and, you know, looking into the two guys. While we were doing that, somebody discovers that the old guy resembles a man named Stephen A. Miller. This guy, Stephen A. Miller, was a Harvard graduate. Stephen A. Miller looks pretty much identical to the old guy. When I saw this theory, I'm like, oh, we figured it out. We found it. This is who it is.

Who is this guy? This guy, Stephen Miller, was obsessed with time travel. He used to post on blogs about time travel. He used to have websites based on nuclear energy and theories and time travel. He had interviews about time travel. He used to have websites based on like nuclear energy and like theories and time travel. He had interviews about time travel. And he looks the same as my guy. But this guy died in 2018.

I've never heard of this guy prior to this incident. There's no way I would have ever heard about this guy. You know, he died six years ago. I believe it was a time traveler. I don't know what else it could be. I wish somebody could tell me otherwise. Although it seems far-fetched and a crazy idea, I saw what I saw. And unless I get evidence that proves it otherwise, that's what I saw. And unless I get evidence that proves it otherwise,

that's what I saw. What other explanation is there? Woza, Stephen A. Miller. Hmm. whoa-za stephen a miller hmm you know it might be the same steve miller from the steve miller band do you ever think of that i would look into that could be your culprit i mean think about this time keeps on slipping, slipping into the future of my shed. Something like that. Seems like something that a time traveler might say. I mean, he's basically confessing in that song. Hmm.

I've connected the dots once again. But, anywho, you have to watch your property for freeloading time travelers. I mean, what is with that? The man thinks he can just, like, bill and Ted in your backyard shed? He thinks he can use your shed as the, as some kind of TARDIS and not compensate you for it? I mean, it doesn't seem right. Oh, well, unfortunately, it's time for ads, and you can't time travel through them. But, of course, you can skip ahead, like

30 seconds at a time. That negates that. You actually kind of can time travel through these ads, but please don't, because they're our sponsors. Listen. 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. Midnight snacks? Skip. My neighbor's nightly saxophone practices?

Uh, nope. You're on your own there. Could've skipped it. Could have skipped it. Should have skipped it. Skip to the good part and get groceries, meals, and more delivered right to your door on Skip. 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 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.

And we're back from our ads. Welcome back. Oh, that story was especially chilling. And I have to say that my... Did you do that? I didn't do that. Who did that? Malachi, did you do that?

Back there somewhere? Hmm, odd. Okay, maybe it's just in my head. Maybe I just have the muse with me today embedded in my skull, and I'm imagining the beginning of my next great piano opus. You see, I actually did used to play in a... Oh. Okay, okay. That's enough. Seriously.

Who's doing that? Who is... Malachi, are you fucking with me? Have you tied strings to the keys of this piano? All right. Okay. You're way over there in another part of the room. Well, anyway, no time like the present to play the next horror story. Dear customer, what do you say?

How does that sound to you, my dearest, dearest patron? Okay, that's weird. Nevermind, great, okay, here's weird. Never mind. Great. Okay, here we go. Roll tape. This is fall of 2004. I was going to college, but I didn't want to live at home. I wanted freedom and independence, even though home was ten minutes across town, and so I

moved in with my nana. I had the entire second floor to myself. It was an addition, so it was pretty small. It was two bedrooms, like the smallest hallway, and then a bathroom. We had Venetian blinds on the windows. Nana loved them. She would not change them. The bedroom that I stayed in

overlooked the covered patio. It was about a five-foot drop to the patio. From there, you could walk either to the front of the house or the back of the house and kind of climb down. The second bedroom over, it had one window, but it was just a straight 20-foot drop. There was no way to get up into that bedroom. That window

didn't open. My bedroom upstairs was the only bedroom that had a sliding door window, like, that you could open and close. It was just a random night nothing special is going on and I heard a knock at the window I'm on the second floor there's that five foot drop and somebody's knocking at the window it didn't feel friendly it's dark outside My bedroom light is on. The Venetian blights are closed, but they're not closed enough. So whoever's out there can see in, I cannot see out. My entire body went cold. I just stood there frozen. I couldn't move.

I always thought I'd be so brave in a scary situation. I was not brave. I completely froze. And then I kind of snapped out of it, because then I'm like, Nana's downstairs. I knew I had to walk by this window to get my cell phone that was on the charger, which was also next to the landline.

So even if I wanted to call anybody, I'm going to have to walk by this window to get the phone. I finally muster up the courage. I run by the window as quick as I possibly can, grab my cell phone, and then I go into the bedroom next door, barricade myself in. Never heard me to call the police because there was tapping on my window. Like, I just felt so silly if I were to call them and say that. And I was young and 18, and I didn't want to make a fuss. But I'd wanted to call my best friend Jay at the time. He was working security at a rave in Oakland. And so I knew

if I called him, he's not gonna be able to get to me in time. His normal five, 10 minute drive across town to me, this is now like a 45, 60 minute drive. I ended up calling the boy I was seeing at that time who told me, wow, that sucks. You must be scared. And then he hung up. I called Jay and I said, I know that you are in Oakland right now, that you're not near me. Do you have any friends that are in the area that can come and help and just sit with me? Because I'm scared. And he said, I'm on my way. And like 25 minutes later, he was at my house.

He came upstairs. He went out onto the roof. He was a lot taller than I was. He could make that drop easily. And he could see, though, that there was footprints all over the roof. They were big, like, boot footprints. Nobody had been on that roof in years since before my papa had died. There's no reason to be up there. There wasn't, like, maintenance or anything.

You weren't hanging Christmas lights up there. There was no reason for there to be footprints on that roof. My nana was downstairs sleeping. She's hard of hearing. I didn't want to wake her up. I didn't want to scare her. I managed to calm myself down, and then I slept in the second bedroom that night. The next night, I slept at my girlfriend's house, came home that day, was hanging out with my Nana. Everything's

fine and normal. And then she happens to mention hey were you expecting anybody to come over last night and I said no why and she said somebody was banging on the front door in the windows and they woke me up in the middle of the night and so that made me really

angry I wasn't scared anymore and I was angry Nana was older she was in her 70s That made me really angry. I wasn't scared anymore, and I was angry. Nana was older. She was in her 70s. She's very hard of hearing. So for that to have woken her up, that must have been incredibly loud, all of that banging.

I called a couple friends that I had in high school that were known to be pranksters and just asked them, like, hey, was this this you? Haha, you pulled a good one on me. That was funny. Like, let's not do this anymore. And they all swore up and down. It was not them. I asked around, can you go check with this person? Can you check with that person? Just kind of put the word out that, like, something was going on. Nobody claimed that it was them doing this. We had talked to my dad and my mom about it, and even they were kind of like, what are they going to do? Are they going to come dust for fingerprints? They were not thinking that we needed to call the police

or involve any type of law enforcement to escalate it. So I had no answers. Nothing happened that night at my window. Everything was fine. I was like, okay, well, maybe it's over. Maybe it's just a fluke thing. Maybe for some reason they've got our houses confused. They think our house is somebody else's house.

I don't know. The next night, night four, I had left my cell phone at that boy's house who I was seeing. I got home, went upstairs, grabbed the landline, called him and was like, hey, I left my phone. Can you drop it off? Nana's asleep downstairs, so just, you know, don't call the house. Just maybe honk or knock lightly at the door.

I'll come down and get it. A few minutes later, I hear rocks being thrown at my window. So I assume, okay, it's him. I go downstairs. I open the door. Nobody's him. I go downstairs. I open the door. Nobody's there. It's still light out at this point too. So it's not like I missed anybody. There's nobody in the front yard. I kind the door back upstairs. The second I walked back into my room there is

pounding on my window. Like a full fist. Somebody as hard and loud as they can. The window is shaking. It is so hard. At the top of the stairs was a small hall closet and we had a souvenir bat from an Oakland A's game. And I grabbed it. I ran downstairs, flung open the door. Nobody's there. They just disappeared into thin air

those rocks in the driveway they make a sound I'd be able to hear them running up and down the street I would hear a car peeling off if they were to have gone through the backyard to leave they would have had to hop like a nine foot fence it didn't make sense. I got back upstairs, and I'm trying to calm down.

And there's knocking on the front window. It was a different type of knocking. It had a different feel to it. It's the boy I'm seeing. He's with my phone. He's got a couple of his friends. And they're all standing in the window waving. Like, hi, we're here.

Here's your phone. And I asked, I'm like, hey, while you were driving over, do you happen to see anybody running through the neighborhood? Anybody pass your car? Anybody look weird to you? Anybody, you know,

maybe driving a little too fast to get out of the neighborhood and they did not see anybody either. There were a bunch of dudes. They didn't care. They thought, I'm being silly. You're hearing things. You're being dramatic.

They didn't think anything of it. They just left. I slept with the bat that night and probably for about a week or so after. But it never happened again. I don't know who it was. I don't know

why. That's just a very sinister thing to do to somebody. Like, why would you do that? No one wanted to spend the night anymore. I didn't have a lot of takers. They wanted to stay at their house. Which is fair.

Jesus, people, if you want a woman's attention, just woo her in a normal and approachable way. You don't have to be so weird about it. Do what I did. When I was courting my last girlfriend, Rita, before the loss of my late wife, Zeylon, I would leave her little love notes under the pen name Leonard. And after a few years of lying to her about this, I finally, one night, followed her into a dark alley and introduced myself as the author of said love poetry. She feigned fear and overwhelm,

but she loved it. We had a good time. So maybe just try something like that next time. For more love advice by me, Terry Carnation, write me at my website. I have so much love advice to give. Perhaps this requires its own show, its own podcast. Who knows? Speaking of podcasts, we have ads to pay the bills.

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Now, wasn't that last story just... Okay, I... I don't... I really... I don't... I don't like that this is happening. I feel like I'm interpreting that free sign a little differently now. Maybe the please take was a little more desperate than I thought. Maybe it's less of a sign from the universe and more like a call for help. I mean, I don't really want to say it, but I feel like this piano is haunted. Oh! My God, that's unnerving. I should never have brought it in here.

Oh, why didn't I learn that lesson with that old amulet back from 2004? I should have left antiquing to the hipsters and the hoarders and the etziers. I knew I shouldn't have... Okay, you know what? This is just rude. Why do you keep interrupting me? If you're going to be the haunted piano, just wait till there's a pause.

Have a little class. Read the room. Okay, now you're just being an asshole. I'm not going to sit... Okay, that's it. You're out. You're out in the trash first thing tomorrow. Oh, funny. Hilarious, Mr. Piano.

Well, maybe one night I'll just snip your strings with some pruning shears. Who'll be laughing then, huh? That's good. That's good. That was pretty good. That was pretty funny. are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright. Hosted by Rainn Wilson as his character, Terry Carnation. Written and produced by Meredith Steadman. 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 Steadman. Sound design by Cooper Skinner. With additional sound design by Stephen Perez and April Ruha. Mix and master 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.