Radio Rental - Episode 79

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Welcome to Radio Rental, a mysterious video rental shop with a collection of VHS tapes with TRUE scary stories narrated by the people who experienced them... On today's tapes... >> Steak 'n Shaking > The Aeronaut

You're listening to a Tenderfoot TV podcast. Hate waiting a week for the next episode of Radio Rental? Subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus to get early access to episodes, ad-free listening, and bonus scary stories. Visit tenderfootplus.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. Okay, the L goes inside of the T for Tetris. Then you gotta take the square box and put that down there. And here you got the long dick shaped one and that one goes in between.

And then you insert it and dick shaped one and that one goes in between and you insert it And I love that music bing ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding Hey, welcome. Hold on a second. I know I've got the instruction sheet somewhere. It's just, I was, I put together gummy sharks and Pee-cho rings, and I got my fingers got all sticky, and then the instruction thing got,

okay, here it is, here it is. We found it. Supposed to read from this. I knew, but okay, someone walks in, yada yada, and the shop bell rings, we heard that. Okay, I can do that one later. Okay, cool. Hold on, there's just like a lot of dust

and cat hair in this store. So hold on, let me just take a gush of my blue raspberry slush. Welcome to Radio Rental, a video rental shop with an exclusive collection of the scariest stories you've ever heard. What's up everyone? You don't know me, I'm the new guy. Name's Chirpy Fitzhammer. Little about me, I'm a massage therapist. Please don't say I'm a soos, that's offensive.

I am in training right now, I've got a few more certs I gotta get completed, they do not offer multiple choice so it's very tough. I met Terry a few months ago, I actually worked on him. Guy's covered in knots, he's basically a boy scout. Really gnarly stuff. Yeah anyways, times have been tough, he told me I could come work this gig for a while so

bless up. Oh yeah, I forgot. All these stories they're told by real people so things are about to get real with people that are also real. Kitty cat, little puss, what's up Malachi? Always good to see you, high five? Whoa, careful man, I don't wanna get cat scratch fever. It's a real thing. Speaking of scary real things, let me get this box out. Let's see, and not that one, no, that's an old karate movie. No, uh-uh, that's a skin flick. Ooh, here's the one.

Here we go. Now push the little button thing. Whoa, wow, that's retro. Far out. Okay, feed in the tape. Oh, enjoy the ride, my friends. I'm gonna go skate on some concrete outside. So I was in a band back in the years 97 through like 2000 ish. In this particular band I played bass guitar.

We played a lot of shows to the punk and the hardcore scene. Playing basements in smaller venues were kind of our thing so we had been in some pretty grungy places. Really dirty bars. We were used to the dirt and the grit of it all, and so it really didn't phase us until it did. This would have happened in the late summer of 99. At that time, I was playing in a touring band,

making our way towards Northeast Ohio. The other band that booked this show, booked it as a matinee show. It was a tattoo parlor. We've played record stores. We've played small basements. that was our thing, you know, and so it really didn't faze us at all until we got there. So we went in and saw the venue, loaded our stuff in, and just kind of got the uncomfortable feeling

that it just really wasn't going to be the kind of show that we had hoped for. And so we talked to the other bands that we were on the tour with and we said, Hey, would you mind if we played first tonight? Because we're just getting the vibe that this may not be our type of gig. Melee said, absolutely, you know, feel free. Our songs were always extremely fast, high energy. Our stage presence, we're jumping all over the place.

There's lots of screaming, there's lots of crowd chanting, crowd sing-alongs. We had a lot of that, you know, I mean, we were doing well enough as a band to where we could go into places and people would recognize our songs and they would sing them back to us, which was a lot of excitement for us. We got about two or three songs into our set. All of a sudden, the crowd instantly changed. What was a bunch of kids just having a good time eventually turned into a bunch of skinheads that started to pour down the steps,

instantly trying to hurt other people. Everything started to go downhill. We watched these skinheads come down the steps with different kinds of things in their hands, like for example, those metal trash cans, chairs, baseball bats. And they were literally just throwing them at people, throwing trash cans at kids, and it might even have been their own friends. I don't even know because I don't know these other people that are at the show, but all we knew was that this was not going to be the type of scenario that we wanted to be in. It was just too violent, even for a punk in a hardcore band. That wasn't something that was uncommon when you come to shows,

especially with that type of genre. What made it different was that they were trying to hurt people, and so we weren't cool with that. So we actually ended up stopping our set right after that. We didn't make it a big deal. We just said, oh, our time is up, and we moved on. We're out. We loaded up our gear to the RV,

start driving to the next location. We're thinking and gear to the RV, and started driving to the next location. We're thinking and talking to ourselves like, man, that was really wild. And we just said we were gonna try to get as far as we could out of that place, and we wanted to get to the next show. We got about halfway there, and it was about three in the morning. It was a really warm, humid, and muggy night.

There was a lot of fog that was out. Your typical like spooky type feeling. With a bunch of 20 year olds in an RV that were on tour, we didn't think anything of it. We were also pretty hungry because we hadn't eaten dinner. We found a really small exit that we pulled off on. There was a Cracker Barrel, there was a hotel, and there was a Steak and Shake. The Steak and Shake obviously was open because it was a 24-hour place. We decided that we were just going to park the RV in the Cracker Barrel parking lot. We would be out in the morning before anybody even woke up, so we wouldn't be bothering anybody. We lock up the RV and we all walk right over to the steak and shake.

We all ate, we were all kind of talking about it again still about how crazy of an experience it was. Out of the six of us that were on the RV, four of us decided to go back and we're like, you know what, we're just going to go back, we're going to rest, we're going the RV, four of us decided to go back and we're like, you know what, we're just gonna go back, we're gonna rest, we're gonna take it easy for the rest of the night and call it. So we all go back, we kind of get ourselves settled, we're all kind of finding our ways to be comfortable in this really tight space together. And all of a sudden, the van shakes.

The whole RV just shakes really, really hard. I automatically assumed this was probably just the people getting comfortable, trying to make their space. Then it happens a couple minutes later. This time it shakes twice. I was on the bottom level and two of my bandmates were on the top level and they immediately were like, hey, yo, chill, chill. You're shaking the whole RV. That kind of threw me for a loop because I was like, wait a minute, I thought that was

them that was shaking the RV. Well then the van shook a third time. And this time the van shakes so incredibly hard it felt like the RV was gonna be tipped over. Now everybody in the RV is freaking out. We all think that it's the other two that are playing a joke on us. At this point now I'm getting frustrated

because I'm really stressed from the whole experience that we just went through. And all I want to do is find a little bit of sleep. I was tired, I was frustrated, I was hot. And so I immediately get up and I walk out of the RV. I open up the door and I don't see anything. It's probably those two clowns that are trying to pull a joke on us.

I literally yell, I'm like, knock it off. And as I look out, I look across the street and I can still see the two of them at the steak and shake. I knew something was really wrong. There was one other car that was parked in the parking lot that was clear on the other side of the cracker rail and it was a little hard to see because of the fog. So I said, I'm just going to walk over there and see if there's anybody over there. I was also thinking that it could be one of the other bands that maybe was messing with us that just was trying to play a trick on us or two

maybe these skinheads followed us and now are trying to get back at us for leaving the show early. I ended up walking over to the car. I was with one of my other bandmates and I got about maybe 20 feet and I could tell that this was an old, brown, beat-up car and I could see that the driver's side seat was down. I could see in the back seat it was full of sharp tools and immediately what I thought of was these might be those same skinheads that were at the show. They came with some of these types of things to the show. My friend stopped me and he said, I don't know if you want to go any closer. You know what?

I'm out of here. Let's go get those two guys and somebody obviously doesn't want us here. Let's just go. We decided to go ahead and walk over to this steak and shake. I'm like, this can't be happening. It had to be these two kids that are messing with us. So I asked them, I said, let me see your feet. And our drummer goes, what are you talking about? I said, I want to see your feet.

And so I looked at his feet expecting to see dirt, expecting to be wet, nothing. I'm like, you guys need to come back to the RV. We're leaving this place because there's something going on outside. We get back into the RV and we start driving. We're all exhausted and we're talking about it. We were joking, we're never gonna come back to Ohio ever again. And we get maybe

about five minutes down the road and all of a sudden I see in the back of the RV there's two lights that come flying up behind us. And that was weird because now it's about 3 30 in the morning. As those lights come up closer to us, it was the brown car from the Cracker Barrel parking lot. Next thing I knew they were tailgating us and like tailgating us hard. And so now we're completely freaking out. We have no idea what to do. We're just a bunch of kids that are on the road.

We're now looking for another exit to get off of. We're looking for help. We can't find anything. Eventually we catch up to another truck. As we are driving down the highway, we saw a sign that said Ohio State Patrol next exit. So we thought that's our chance. But the problem was we were in the left lane trying to pass the truck and the truck was

in the right lane. If you've ever driven an RV, you know that they don't have a whole lot of gas to them. So we were trying to go as fast as we could to get around this truck. Luckily we were able to speed up around the truck, cut the truck off so that way the car could not get off with us and immediately exit off onto the exit to get to the Ohio State Patrol. When we pulled in, there was one officer that was on duty and we kind of explained to him,

we're not trying to sound like we're crazy, but somebody obviously does not want to surround your area. And he kind of just shrugged us off. And then we said, would it just be okay with you if we just stayed here for the night? Just park our stuff? And he goes, yeah, it's fine. You guys can just park you. You just got to be out here in the morning sure no problem

I remember finally falling to sleep and it felt like I slept for about 30 minutes before I had a knock on the window and it was the police officer the state trooper and he said hey you guys got to get out of here, but you might want to come and take a look at this before you go. Open the door, we walk around the back of the RV. Around the entire RV, there are handprints from the top of the RV to the bottom of the RV. Hundreds of handprints. As if that wasn't enough, there was handprints

of all different sizes. Child handprints, adult handprints, handprints that were a little bit bigger, handprints that were a little bit smaller. It looked like lots of people had their hands on the RV. People might say, well, you've been on tour, of course there's gonna be handprints back there. No, because we weren't necessarily keeping all of our equipment back there. There was no reason for anyone to be back there. There was a little bit of, I guess you would call it,

trunk space underneath that you could put some luggage and stuff in. But most of our equipment would go either in the RV and we would either sit on it or sleep on it. Or if it was small enough, we would just shove it underneath of the RV. But there was no trunk space. There's nothing to open back there.

The state trooper literally said to us, I don't know who you guys have been messing with, but they don't want you here. You all need to go. We don't really know what to believe. We don't really know what happened. We just think it'd be best if we never go to Ohio ever again. Oh man, that scared the peeps right out of my peeps. I dribbled a little bit. Hey, you know, handprints are freaking scary, man.

You know, my grandma had one of those little plaster casts of my baby hands. It's just like baby hands freak me out. Another fun fact, I used to live in a Astro van and we lived at the top of this canyon. It was cool for a minute and then the rains came. The next thing you know, we're like white water rafting down the canyon and then I woke up and I was all wet and my whole family was missing.

Now let's just be straight here. They weren't really blood related but they were still my family. Not sure. Anyways, enough of that. Oh, um, okay, wait, let me look at the instructions here. So after the story plays, machine will stop. Eject tape. Eject.

Alright, cool. No, look, now it's time for some ads, everyone. I love little ads. It's absolutely fantastic. They're so grounding. Um... Um... Oh, sorry guys, just doing a little meditating. I had to re-regulate after that last tape.

You guys meditate? Send me your DMs and let me know. Anyways, oh Malachi, what's up dude? Good to see you, man. Hey, you know, if you said your name the way it was spelled, you'd be Malachi, like the T, like a chai tea.

Ha ha ha. He did not like that joke, but that's cool. I'm not gonna be everyone's cup of tea. Wait a second, chai tea. I'm not everyone's cup of tea. Ha ha, wow, we're really doing it. Anyways, let's do another tape, shall we? Here we go.

Oh man, this one's gonna freak your brains out of your nuts. Hold on to your butts. Or someone else's butt. Hold on to something. It was around 2003. I was 20 years old, about to turn 21. I was in a band called Cold Read, me and a bunch of friends. We lived in Massachusetts, just trying to make a name for ourselves.

I was in the band with my girlfriend at the time, her name was Tracy. I remember talking and like kind of just dreaming about the future like how cool it would be to be on tour or to be on a record label to play big shows with big bands and you know stuff like that. A few days later heading to her house out of nowhere there was a sign on a school bus that said for sale. I just ran right up to it and sure enough there was a phone number on it. I called it right away as soon as I got home. Within a few days or so I basically just bought my first car which was a bus. The best part about this was it could be registered as a camper.

Basically all the seats had been taken out of it and what wasn't out of it I just gutted the whole thing out. Once I like kind of got a feel for it I remember sitting with the band and being like guys we're going on tour we're doing this. We went to Arizona we played the shows. Our next show was in Vegas. We're doing this. We went to Arizona, we played the shows. Our next show was in Vegas. We had two days to kill. So we decided to check out the Grand Canyon. We got to the Grand Canyon. I remember getting off the bus and looking at this thing for the first time. It didn't look real. Like it looked like Bob Ross painted it or something. We were just walking around and taking it all in and then I just had this brilliant idea of,

hey, let's walk down this entire thing. Let's just go to the river at the bottom. Half the guys in the band were like, dude, fuck that. Yeah, whatever. Come on. It'll be fun. So me and Tracy and two other guys decided to do it. The signs posted all over the place saying, don't walk in one day. Death can occur. It's serious. Like, you don't want to do that. But as stupid, you know, 20 year olds, we were like, yeah, well, let's just do it. We didn't prepare. We had no water. We had no food. It was just, hey, let's just go do this.

We started walking down, joking along the way. All the while just ignoring any warning signs posted. Not only about not doing it in a day but also about wild animals that come out at night littered the whole way down with all these signs we finally got to the bottom by the time we got down there the Sun was starting to set it's when we sat down I started to realize like this might not have been a good idea. We realized now we have to walk back another 12 hours but it's all uphill. We don't have any food, we don't have any water,

and it's getting dark. We just had to go. Like we couldn't sit around any longer. And as soon as we started it's like someone just hit a light switch. It was pitch black down there. The temperature just dropped. As we're walking up I remember we were just hearing all these sounds man. There would be bats flying by our heads. We could hear I don't know what type of animal this is. It might have been a Walking up, I remember we were just hearing all these sounds, man. There would be bats flying by our heads. We could hear, I don't know what type of animal. It might have been a mountain lion for all I know. Just things howling in the distance.

But we just had to keep moving. Here we are, just a bunch of kids at the bottom of Grand Canyon, in the middle of the night with no food, no water, no weapons, no phones, nothing. We were just a bunch of idiots. It was around probably 3 a.m. I'd say we were about halfway up. Out of nowhere, in the pitch black, we walk right into this random dude. in the pitch black we walk right into this random dude. He just appeared out of nowhere and he was just standing there. And he's just hanging down there just all by himself.

He's a shorter guy. He has this old fisherman hat looking thing on. He had these big glasses on and just a big smile on his face. No hiking boots, no jacket. And as soon as we said, hey, how's it going, man? He was just like, hey, how are you? And immediately just started talking about old school airplanes, as if we were friends with them.

He did have a strange accent. I just know it wasn't from anywhere I was from. He wasn't dressed warmly. He just was dressed nice. He looked like someone not of this time frame. He looked like he was from the 30s or like the 40s even. That's what was so weird about it. He just didn't look like a regular guy that would be down there. But we asked him, well like, dude what are you doing down here alone at 3 a.m.? Like he wouldn't recognize the fact that we just asked him why are you down here alone? All he would talk about was planes. Technology of planes. They got all these new planes coming out in the skies.

It's almost like this dude was from the 30s or something. Talking about jet engines, almost as if they were just about to be invented. Like it was this new thing. I can remember kind of looking at Tracy like, what is this guy talking about? And why is he down here? You could tell he was passionate about airplanes. That's all he wanted to talk about. He knew all about it. He knew the ins and outs. He was talking about these new engines that they were putting in planes. How big they were getting and he was talking about

how many people these planes could hold now. I think he was talking about how many people these planes could hold now. I think he was like yeah it's like up to 30 people. It just seems so weird because it's like planes hold hundreds of people don't they? For him to just be down there just completely comfortable. He didn't look cold, he didn't look hungry or thirsty, he wasn't in fear. He didn't even ask us if we needed help or what we were doing. Like why is there a group of teenagers down here at 3am? Do you just want to talk about his airplanes? He was super friendly so we were like, you want to come back up with us? Are you lost?

We're heading up, you wanna walk with us? No, I'm gonna stay right here. And I remember looking at everyone like, uh, and I looked at him, the guy, and I was like, okay, if you want to. We kind of just laughed it off. This guy's nuts. Like, why would you want to stay halfway down the Grand Canyon at 3 a.m. all alone? We headed back up.

As the hours went by, it was almost sunrise and we were so tired, so hungry. I remember being so thirsty. All four of us by the time we got to the top, we were literally, we were crawling on the dirt. We continued the tour. We ended up going to California, lived there for a couple months, headed back to Massachusetts. Years later, I wasn't sure what to do. Music kinda just ended. I had this idea to open my own restaurant.

That's what I wanted to do. In 2013, Tracy passed away. She was my everything, my best friend, first girlfriend, everything, and I was with her for like 12 years. I was trying to find different pictures of her that I could maybe hang up in the back or somehow incorporate her into the logo. As I was going through these old pictures, I came across the ones from the very first tour we ever went on back in the early 2000s

when we went down the Grand Canyon. I started to remember the story of the guy we saw at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It just kind of triggered something in me to be like, I should have looked that up. So I started to. Sure enough, an insane amount of people have died at the Grand Canyon. And a lot of them happen to be pilots.

And I remember thinking, was who we saw at the bottom of the Grand Canyon? Was that one of the pilots? Was that a ghost? What was this guy doing down there all alone? He wouldn't answer our questions He had no explanation All he wanted to do was talk about airplanes So was it a ghost we saw or was it just some crazy guy down there?

Why else would someone be down there and only want to talk about airplanes and not ask for help, not ask us if we needed help? It made no sense. My gut tells me I know what I saw. I know deep down that this was a spirit or this was a ghost reliving this cycle over and over. Ding dong bing bong. I'm freaked out.

Is anyone else, man? That was so insane. How crazy was that pilot ghost, right? You know what I want to ask him? I want to ask him who he thinks is going to win the World Series in five years, because it's interesting to me, the idea of asking a ghost from the past something about the future. Anyway, it's time for a quick ad break.

Hold on to your undies. Holy cow guys, what a bunch of great products available for purchase. I know myself, I am in fact gonna hop online and buy every single one of those items using my stepmother's credit card, cause we don't get along. Ha ha. Meow.

Oh, hey Malachi, what's up dude? Meow. You, hold on. I knew there was something on here when you start meowing like a wild banshee. Let's consult the scroll. Uh, oh, ha, look at that. Let's consult the scroll. Oh, look at that, it's your feeding time. Let me get some of your mush meats together here,

throw them in a bowl with some hot water. You love your minced mush meats when they're hot and ready. And I get it, buddy. I love a good roast beef sandwich with some potato chips and mayonnaise and some mustard, maybe some sriracha I don't know anyways guys enough about food thanks for stopping by I'm chirpy Fitzhammer and this is

Radio Rental I'll see you next time oh my god that's so good dudes oh what's this oh it's a jigsaw puzzle of exotic birds. This is gonna take me hours. Radio Rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenderfoot TV. Showrunner is Meredith Stedman. Lead producer is Eric Quintana. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright.

Our main host is Rainn Wilson as his character Terry Carnation. Written by Meredith Stedman, additional writing by Mark Loughlin, original score by Makeup and Vanity Set with additional score by Jay Ragsdale. Editing by Eric Quintana, Stephen Perez, Meredith Stedman, Tristan Bankston, and Sean Nerny. Sound design mix and master by Stephen Perez and Cooper Skinner. Additional editing by April Ruha and Dayton Cole. Our production manager is Jordan Foxworthy. Our social media manager is Caroline Orojema. Video editing by Dylan Harrington. Cover artwork by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan. Radio rental merchandise by Byron McCoy. To shop radio rental merch, visit shop.tenderfoot.tv. Special thanks to Orin Rosenbaum and the team at UTA,

as well as the Nord Group and the team at Odyssey. If you have a radio rental story that you'd like to share, please email us at yourscaristory at gmail.com or contact us via the form on our website, radiorentalusa.com. Follow us on Instagram at radiorental. On behalf of the Radio Rental store, we'd love it if you'd subscribe, rate and review. As always, thanks for listening.