Radio Rental - Episode 83

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

Welcome to Radio Rental, a mysterious video rental shop with a collection of VHS tapes containing TRUE scary stories, narrated by the people who experienced them... On today's tapes... >> Flight of the Valkyries > RJ

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 Rentle. 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. Hey What's up? Uh, you don't work here, right? Right, right, right. Makes sense because you walked in right after me. I'm just waiting for somebody to come out the back.

What did you rent? Yeah, that's cool. I wasn't gonna tell you anything either, so we can both not talk. Hello Hello Look I got my copy of Die Hard I'm just gonna scan it behind the desk

And head on out This place gives me the creeps man What the hell Yo, there's like a bunch of instructions here Oh shit Okay, this envelope got Jeremy written on it And that's my name dude I'm Jeremy, that's me

Jeremy I'm not going to open it though You know what I'm saying My mama told me not to be nosy But you know what my mama's nosy as hell I'm gonna go ahead and open this I'm gonna open this up Okay alright

Hi You run the store Congratulations signed Terry Who the fuck is Terry There's also like a little Yackback here Oh man You remember Yackbacks

You used to love those things Man this one's got a sticky note on it It says uh play me bro all right hey uh whoever you are oh to whom this may concern

it's a chirpy fitshammer the last caretaker of the shop just a few quick reminders uh we already played the tapes with the red stickers on them so skip those people hate repeats no repeats um oh and trash night is thursdays

definitely learned that the stinky hard way with uh some old long john Silver's leftovers fish and I think that's it oh wait and Malachi hates it when you don't mix his mush meat with hot watts so who knew he loves a good hot mush yo who's Malachi oh shit there's a cat here y'all I've been standing here for like 20 minutes now I I didn't see it the entire time, bro. But I swore I heard somebody in the back, like a person, like a big feet, not little pause. Well, this is kind of freaky as shit.

The note says it's just following the instructions here, but what happens if I don't? You know what I mean? Like this envelope had my freaking name on it. And I still don't know who the fuck Terry is. Is he going to come from me? Is Terry a murderer? I don't know. Well, you know, to be honest, I guess I've seen Die Hard like a lot of times, and I don't really have anything else to do today.

Hence why I'm at a video store getting Die Hard when I could just rent that shit on Amazon. So I guess, um, I guess I, I guess I run the store now. All right, who's store runner? Here it goes. Welcome to Radio Rental. A video rental shop With a collection of true scary stories All told by real people

That's right For real Heroing tales straight from the people Who experienced them I'm in shirt name here And I'll be your host and shopkeeper today Make light banter Not too much because people hate

When this part is too long Okay, okay, I probably shouldn't read that out loud And now I'm supposed to play you One of these VHS tapes From this cardboard box label Secret Collection Just not any of the ones with the red stickers on it. Okay.

Okay, cool. All right? Okay, here we go. Every year, I plan this family trip. My two brothers and I and my two nephews, always do something kind of as a family. Last summer, we were going to do some primitive camping, followed by like a nice cabin with a game house

and stuff like that. I found this place in Kentucky. It's on a privately owned farm. It was great, because we like to take our dogs. We like to let them off leash. We like to swim, privacy. We're kind of a big group, and we just kind of want to be able to hang out and enjoy ourselves.

You get to the farm and the campsite is like almost a full mile back off of the road. When we got there, you kind of roll up to the lake and there's a dock. No running water, no showers, nothing like that. Our campsite was on the far side of the lake, so we drove all the way back there and set up, and it was nice. Our campsite was actually kind of tucked away under a bunch of trees. It had this really nice canopy. So we were in a lot of shade, and we were right on the lake. The first day, we were there, there were still people using the lake.

You know, we saw folks at other campsites, and I knew that people would come and get day passes for this place. Come, hang out, use the lake, and then leave. We're just kind of checking things out, and there were some other campers there. Across the lake, there was a group of teens doing what teens do. They're having a good time. Took it into the late. night. The second day, we're kind of at our picnic table in the shade playing cards. It's pretty quiet at this point, and I hear this buzzing sound. I mean, we're

nowhere near a freeway. There's nothing close. I shouldn't hear anything. And I looked up, there was a drone above us. it wasn't moving. We're under this canopy of trees, so there's just this sliver of space for this drone to be looking at us. There's nobody else to watch. It's just watching us.

It's hanging out. It's not like it was there for a bit. It checked on us, realized that we're boring and playing cards and left. It was there for a while. It was there long enough for me to kind of get annoyed and mad who was watching us we're not exciting there's nothing to see here what is this drone doing here it was eerie seeing it just stay in the same area it made me question like okay are we

doing something wrong am i at the wrong campsite it made me feel uncomfortable my initial instinct was that it was just the owners checking on their campers. And I went back to playing cards with my family. I can still hear the buzz. And I look up and it's still there. Four hands later, it's still there. So I actually messaged the camp owner about it. Hey, is this you?

Like I thought maybe she did that to check on campers, see, if everything's okay, because it's kind of off the road a little bit. Basically, her response was that, no, that wasn't us. That was weird also made me feel kind of uncomfortable, but at the end of the day, it's, you know, not that big of a deal, I guess. It's maybe early afternoon, and my 13-year-old nephew and I, we decided we were going to swim. We were swimming, and it was great.

It was so hot out. Why didn't we do this sooner? My nephew, he really wanted to get one of the paddle boats that was across the lake. He said he was going to swim over there. It's kind of far so I could sort of see what he was doing. I could tell he had to move some things to get the paddle boat that he wanted. Eventually, he paddled all the way back over. He said, did you see that guy and the dog?

I couldn't see anybody with him. He looked completely alone. I didn't see anybody talking to him. Nothing. I said, no. Yeah, it was some guy with a mastiff. It was a big dog. I thought that was really weird.

I just kind of chalked it up to not being able to see that far. The only reason he probably said anything was because it was weird to him. We thought that we were alone at this lake. We didn't see any other cars. There were no other tents. We didn't notice anything until he swam over there and came back and said he saw this guy and his dog. It was getting closer to, like, dinner time now.

While we're kind of talking about making dinner, one of my brothers goes down to the bathrooms. And he takes his dog with him. He comes back. He saw the guy with the mast. This whole time, I have not seen this guy or this dog, yet two people in our group have seen him and have interacted with him in one way or another. As we started to prep for dinner, kind of out of nowhere, this big storm came through. It was a lot of wind. It was a lot of rain.

After the storm, everything was just soaked. Everything was wet and muddy, and it was so hot and humid that nothing was ever going to dry. So we had sort of just, like, accepted that this is going to be miserable. Let's just get through this night. And then tomorrow we have showers and air conditioning. We all went to bed in our muddy campsite. In the middle of the night, I had to get up and use the bathroom. Outside, in the middle of the night, by myself, I just did not feel alone.

I felt so uncomfortable, I hustled back to my tent. And I don't normally do that. So I hustled back to my tent, climbed in with the dogs. I really didn't sleep the rest of the night. It might have been a paranoia that I was being watched. I definitely did not feel alone. The next morning, getting ready to head out, we're going to pack our stuff up, and we're going to go take showers and get some AC.

It's going to be great. We thought we would kind of enjoy just, like, one last morning on the lake. So beautiful early in the morning. You know, the sun's just kind of glistening off of it. It's so quiet. We're just enjoying our coffee, hanging out. Across the lake, we see two large black trucks roll up. A bunch of guys get out, and it looks like there.

They're doing, like, tactical maneuvers, running around the trees. They ran off into, like, this wooded section. I kind of thought that it was just a bunch of guys, like, going to play paintball or something. Then we don't see anything. There's no movement. Out of a loudspeaker on the trucks, the ride of the Valkyries. And that makes us perk up, because we're in the middle of nowhere on a campsite.

These two black trucks roll up, and they're blasting right of the Valkyries. They maybe play like 30 seconds of it, and then it shuts off. And then, again, on the loudspeaker comes a voice that says, drop the bag and get on the ground what is happening trying to figure out what's going on but we still can't really like see that far after we hear this

drop the bag and get on the ground there's some action and then some guys get in the trucks and the trucks leave as we're kind of talking about packing up heading out early, a helicopter comes in. And a helicopter starts circling the lake.

We're far enough from civilization, highways. This is not the traffic guy for the morning commute. And then a second helicopter shows up. And it's circling. It's about this time. We're going to get out of here. now. Pack your shit. We're going now. Things clearly went sideways somewhere. We want to leave as soon as possible. Everything was wet, balled up, thrown in the back of the trucks. We were

out of there. I knew that the helicopters and the drone could see us. Everybody knew what we were doing. We're in all three vehicles. We're starting to kind of leave and pull away from the lake and you have to go up this hill towards the top of the top of the the hill as I'm leading this caravan, six heavily armed men, full combat gear, come over the hill with firearms pointed straight at me. I throw it in park and I throw my hands out the window. They don't immediately approach. They get within shouting distance. And the first guy shouts to me, ma'am, are you being held hostage?

I shout back, no. Then immediately, I was worried because I had two dogs in the back, but the windows were tinted. Maybe they see movement in the back of my truck. I shouted at him. I said, I have two large dogs in the back. He was like we see them. They flanked all three of our vehicles.

and searched us. They kind of check in the cabs of the trucks. The beds are covered. We opened the tailgates of the trucks. I don't know what they thought was going to be in there. They were fully prepared to defend themselves. They all had conversations with each one of us in our vehicles. They eventually cleared us.

Still had no information about what we were. was going on. We started to pull away and then kind of out of nowhere, an unmarked vehicle came up right next to me and said he was going to escort me out. Again, this campsite is way back there, so it's like a mile off of the road. And we get all the way out and we're coming over that last hill. It's just filled with agency vehicles. There's sheriff.

there's stadies, marshals, there were SWAT vehicles, ambulance. The level of attention put towards whatever was going on at that campsite was astounding and surprising. We got up to where all the vehicles were, and they checked our vehicles again. They had to clear us one more time. I still didn't ask a lot of questions. I think I was just shocked and intimidated. by everything that was going on. When we got to leave, my brothers and I checked in,

and we're like, let's just go up to this place and we'll sit down and grab something to eat and just kind of compare notes. We get up to this restaurant up the road and we're all out on the patio with the dogs. One brother is kind of Googling things in the county, like trying to figure out if the local authorities put out a notice or something like that.

that as we're comparing stories, that's when my older brother, he says, one of the officers came up. They showed him three pictures. The first picture was a picture of a woman. Have you seen this woman? No, we haven't seen this woman. Second picture was a picture of a man.

No, we haven't seen this man. The third picture was a picture of the mastiff. And of course, everybody has seen that Mastiff. Everybody except me saw that Mastiff the day before. I guess one of the officers told my brother that when we heard that drop the bag and get on the ground, in that bag, they found guns and pipe bombs. While we were comparing notes, my younger brother was trying to figure out what actually went on there. He found through one of the local posts, the wanted poster for the man in question.

It was his picture. It was his charges. This was a manhunt. We're in Kentucky. He was wanted in North Carolina for some really horrific stuff. He was hiding out states away. in a lonely campsite in the middle of nowhere. And he had this woman and dog with him. They ultimately found him in that campsite, but it was another three days. When the sheriff or the local authorities posted

that wanted poster of him, they of course had the notice to the public there. It basically said that we encourage citizens to lock their homes and vehicles and stay inside. When I read that, that made me think back to that moment in the middle of the night when I was outside my tent, all by myself, absolutely vulnerable. We thought we were the only people there for a full day. You kind of run through the worst-case scenarios in your head.

Yeah, I'm really thankful that we're all fine and got away from that unscathed, but it's kind of terrifying to think about what could have happened for people that were in a desperate situation. God damn! Did you hear that shit? Yo, who needs die hard when you got true stories like that one? Shit, all the helicopters, flight of the Valkyries blasted, all the SWAT team swatting? Damn, that shit was crazy.

Okay, all right It says we're supposed to cut to ads That literally doesn't make any sense to me I don't know what that means But it says here, don't worry, it'll just happen That don't sound like a tee up for anything good So I guess Enjoy the ads

I wonder if I should keep talking Or if eventually it'll just cut me off If Book Club on Monday Gym on Tuesday Date night on Wednesday out on the town on Thursday Quiet night in on Friday

It's good to have a routine And it's good for your eyes too Because with regular comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers You'll know just how healthy they are Visit Spexavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam Eye exams provided by independent optometrists This area was sort of a shark tank for predators Not just the Green River Killer

but others. In Who Took Misty Copsie, I'm investigating the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl who vanished from the Washington State Fair in 1992. How? Why?

She was so sweet and so young. What happened to her? Listen to Who Took Misty Copsie, wherever you get your podcasts. Are we back? Okay. Yeah, we're back from ads How does this even work?

I don't really understand that Oh wait, let's grab Thank you to our wonderful sponsors Okay, let's just do another tape I'm kind of into this I didn't really initially want to be a signed manual label today but I guess it's going to happen This is a good gig right here, man

You know, all right here we go All right, tape number two I was 13 years old, and I was being raised by my grandparents. We lived in a little tourist town in Florida. My grandparents had problems with their two daughters as adults, and they wanted to do everything that they could to make sure that the grandkids didn't turn out the same way. They ended up raising all three of us. So needless to say, they were very strict.

My aunt, she understood what it was like to be raised by them because they had always been strict. They were stricter with us, but she totally understood from coming from the same family. She made sure that I got to do a little bit of the funer things, things that my grandparents definitely wouldn't approve of. I would stay over Saturday nights We would go out and hang out at the local fishing pier

She'd let me hang out with my middle school boyfriend Who would find ways to get wherever I was His dad would drive him or whatever One night we were having fun My aunt She said that she met a guy named RJ They really headed off They exchanged numbers

Well, they ended up going out a little bit more and then I was introduced to him and he was super nice, super charming, handsome, seemed confident, caring. He looked like the total package. About two weeks after this, we were hanging out at the pier the place that me and my aunt liked to go. We were out by the pay phones talking about

what are we going to have for dinner, what are we going to do tonight? out of nowhere just randomly RJ said that he had pain pills I don't know if they were prescribed to him I didn't look at the label because he had that part facing his hand all I could see was the orange bottle well he took him out kind of like shook him around

and then he offered me one I declined I told him I had a high tolerance to paint anyway and didn't really need to take it anything like that. Then with a huge smile on his face, he asked me if he can see for himself. And I thought he was joking.

I went along with it, and I'm like, okay. He takes my arm and he puts it behind my back. He's like, I'm not really going to hurt you, don't worry. Well, he twists it behind my back enough to where I hear a pop. And then a searing pain radiates through my arm. I threw him off me. I yanked my arm away, and I was like, you know, that really hurt.

What is wrong with you? What is your problem? I was really upset. And he laughs, and he's like, oh, I was only playing with you. You said you had a high tolerance. I guess I was stronger than I thought I was. Come on now, I didn't mean to hurt you. Let's not ruin the good time that we're having.

We're supposed to be having a nice night. Don't make a big deal out of it. Well, I pretended. like I was somewhat okay, and then I went into the manager's office in the back of the pier, and I closed the door, and I cried. My aunt comes in and lets me know

that she thinks it's messed up too and that she talked to him about it. How can I fix this? I've already talked to him about it. How can I fix this? At that point, she was kind of afraid that I was wanting to go home. I did.

I wanted to go home. I would rather be with my grandparents watching the Golden Girls in my room or something, then have to be around the people that put me in that situation anymore. She goes back outside, and he asks her what she's up to that night. She tells him she isn't sure if I'm going to stay over because of what happens. He, you know, puts on the charm, super smiling, super big, real charming when he wants to be. And he's like, oh, you know,

no, no, no, I'm so sorry. Hey, you know, go on, go on home with your aunt. You know, go to her house and she can fix you some food. And then he talked to my aunt and he asked her to meet him under a bridge in our town. He said to meet him there at like 2 o'clock in the morning. Well, she felt bad about what happened. So she invited me to come with, you know, said that she would make it fun. We'd make some fun memories and try to make up to say, save the day. To sweeten the deal, she says that my boyfriend at the time can come with us. So I was like, yeah, if he can come with, that's fine, we'll go.

I won't bother you. We'll go and we'll walk off over here and you guys can stay on, do your thing, whatever. So she calls RJ. Good news, I'm going to meet you. My niece said that she'd come with and I'm bringing her boyfriend. So she has somebody to be there with. She's not going to bother us She's going to have a good time

We're going to have a good time Everything is going to be fine The minute he found out There was another person coming He got really upset Like ridiculously upset He gave my aunt A guilt trip talking about how

He just wanted to spend some time with her And be in a relationship Talking about how he didn't sign up To be a babysitter but he's screaming. I could hear him through the phone, and I was like a good five, six feet away from my aunt. Like, he was furious.

She was caught off guard by this reaction, and he was being really mean to her, saying mean stuff, being, you know, manipulative, trying to make her feel bad. They break up that night. He calls her a few more times, and he drives by the house back and forth for about a couple months afterwards.

You'd look out and you'd see him kind of drive by, kind of slow. She didn't want anything to do with him. He stopped driving by. He was soon forgotten. We went about our business as a family. One day, my friend and I missed the bus home. We called our friend Darla to pick us up. She had this beautiful big red truck.

I would ride around in the cab of it, loving the wind, the freedom. And the time that I would have spent on the bus getting home because I was one of the last stops. By the time I got home, my parents wouldn't really know a difference. I wouldn't be gone an alarmingly long amount of time. And every time she would come home and she would walk me to the door. She would greet my parents, they would thank her for, you know, bringing me home, and it wasn't a big deal. I noticed about a month after the last time I hung out with her, she didn't show up to work. She missed five days.

I didn't know if she had quit or what was going on. Then I heard she wasn't at home either, and I just assumed that she ran away. I knew that there were things. going on in her life that she wasn't happy with, which I mean for a teenage girl, you know, that's pretty common. I thought she ran away. Her truck wasn't left behind. She had her truck with her, so I didn't really worried. I figured she'd get a hold of me when she was settled or when she was ready to or when she had calmed down or even when she came back. I missed her, but she was in a whole other league than me. She was driving age. I wished her. I wished her. I

her the best. I hadn't heard anything for about three and a half weeks. We stopped talking about it. A little over two years later, it was nine o'clock at night when my grandparents got a phone call to turn on the news. My friend Darla's body was found in the woods. She'd been strangled to death and then just left there. I don't even know for how long. I was devastated, saddened and horrified at the same time. She was barely two years older than me. The whole town was really upset and saddened by this.

Along with the report on the news, they released a picture of the man who had done it. They found a whole bunch of incriminating evidence, and during questioning, he not only confessed to killing her, but he confessed to killing his father. He was a very, very frail, sweet little old man in a wheelchair. When his father died, he staged it to look like a suicide by hanging. They showed his mugshot on the screen, and they said his name. and everything around me went white. My body went cold. This was a person that I never thought I would even think of again.

And here he was on the TV, just staring back at us. It was Ralph John Faba Jr., RJ. The same RJ that I was, I rode around with with my aunt. The same RJ that twisted my arm behind my back. The same RJ that probably would have killed me and my aunt if we had met him under the bridge that night. It's absolutely terrifying to know that you were that close to a killer

I'm 38 years old and I have an amazing husband and three boys I don't know if I would have had any of that today if we had shown up that night that night that was dark man these tapes are no joke

it's fucking insane man I used to have his creepy neighbor. I used to have vibes just like that. But then he died. So I was like, damn, I guess he wasn't a killer. He just, I don't know what to make of those powers. You know what I'm saying? I stay away from it.

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Hold on. Back to the script here. Well, my dear friend, I don't ever say that. Thanks for joining me again at Radio Rental. I hope you got your daily dose of thrills. Still yearning for more? Come back and see me again next week. Until then, sleep tight and don't let the radio rentals bite.

Damn, you know, we don't hear the word yearning a lot. Yearning. What a great word. I'm not really not saying yearning enough. We don't say it enough in our music either. I never heard a rapper say yearning, you know? I'm yearning. Wait a minute, did this shit just say next week? I'm sorry, am I supposed to be here next week?

Damn, I'm gonna need to take off time. My real job and tell my kids what I'm doing, because right now I'm just gone. Jeremy has kids. Radio Rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenderfoot TV. Showrunner is Meredith Stedman. Lead producer is Eric Kintana. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright.

Our main host is Rain Wilson. as his character, Terry Carnation. Written by Meredith Stedman. Additional writing by Mark Lachlan. Original score by makeup and vanity set with additional score by Jay Ragsdale. Editing by Eric Kintana, Stephen Perez, Meredith Stedman,

Tristan Bankston and Sean Nerney. 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. media manager is Caroline ORA Jemma. 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 Orrin 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 Your Scary Story 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. It's Madeline Barron from In the Dark. spent the past four years investigating a crime. Believe or not, sooner or later, we will kill some of these folks who need to be killed. A crime that for almost 20 years has gone unpunished. I heard M16. They went into the room and they were just taking shots.

I was there on Nour. Me, Anur, we were under the bed. He gets his rifle under the bed and start shooting at us. I remember I opened a Humvee and I just see bodies stacked up. How did they not perceive that these were children? A four-year investigation, hundreds of interviews, thousands of documents, all in an effort to see what the U.S. military has kept from the public for years. You know, I don't know what's to be gained by this investigative journalism. Season three of In the Dark is available now, wherever you get your podcasts.

I don't know.