Radio Rental - Episode 85

Episode Date: August 8, 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... >> In the Basement

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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. Oh, hello, hello. Um, welcome to Radio Rental.

I know you don't recognize me. I'm not your usual host or whatever. My name's Sandy Van Duser. I'm actually the library and at the local branch down the street. I've known Terry Carnation for a while now. Actually, a lot longer than he probably even realizes. Ha, ha, ha, ha. I used to stay a little.

late at night as a little girl in my 30s listening to Terry's AM radio show, Dark Air. I just thought he had the most mysterious and commanding voice. Anyway, years later, it just so happened that I ended up working at an obscure local library branch down the street from Radio Rental. Anyway, yesterday, I got this voicemail from Terry. Here, listen. Hey, it's me, Terry. Thanks so much for agreeing to watch.

my shop for a while. You did agree. Yes, you did. I feel like you were just thinking, I don't remember agreeing to that. Well, you did. So, it's legally binding now. Sucka. kidding. Um, you were probably just really tired that night, but you gave me your word, and your word is binding. So, laminated instructions can be found on the clipboard on the front desk. That is all. It's getting a little warm in here I might have to take my cardigan off Oh yeah This is Malachi Terry's cat

You know everyone assumes that librarians love cats They think we're just cat lady virgins Who go to bed at 8 p.m. That's actually kind of an offensive trope But yes I have six cats at home And I love that Terry likes cats It's a good sign I bet he's a very sensitive love.

Oh, sorry, I am being too forward, aren't I? Rain in in a little, Sandy. Rain it in. Jeez. Anyway, I know why you're here. I'm supposed to play you one of these tapes from his special collection. I read all the instructions, Terry, left multiple times, and I drew little hearts all over the pages, see?

Anyway. Okay. I've always been really curious about what's in the same. box. I feel like there's a lot of raw power emanating from it. Ooh, wow. Come on, Sandy. Collect yourself. Okay. Oh yeah. And remember, all of these scary stories are told by real people. All right, here's the first tape. Let's do this thing. When I was 17, I started working at a Christian camp. I met this girl named Claire.

She was my age. She actually lived with this friend Rowe. She had moved in with her when she was about 14 because her family situation was just not very good. We were bunkmates. It was kind of your typical movie story. We stayed up all night getting to know each other, telling each other of life stories. We had a lot in common. She actually opened up to me about something that she didn't tell too many people.

She told me that she didn't have a social security number or a birth certificate or anything. She didn't exist legally. And all she said then was, my parents are just crazy. She couldn't really live a normal lifestyle because of that. It made making money really hard for her because we were 18 at this time, and she wanted to earn money, save up for a car, but she couldn't have a real job. So she would always pick up these random little gigs,

gardening or cleaning or babysitting. And so those who were close to her knew about her situation, so they would kind of give her these little jobs to do. to do. Around the time that we were 19, I started college. She decided she wanted to move out and kind of start her own life. And a little teeny town about an hour outside of the city where I lived. She met a family there who needed a nanny.

She started working for them. A few months after getting this new nanny job, she texted me one day saying, saying, you'll never believe what happened. I just got a house. I was confused. You just got an apartment that you can't pay for anyway. How did this happen? She said that the family that she nannied for

actually lived about 40 minutes outside of this teeny, tiny town that she already lived in. It was a long way there and back every day and that the family offered to give her a house that was just a few minutes down the road from them. She went and toured it, she loved it. She called me saying, it's just perfect. It is huge, it is in complete solitude,

there's nothing near it. I mean, it's perfect for me. She called me one day to go start painting. So I drove there, and it was about two hours from my town. She was giving me a tour. I remember Roe was there. Claire ended up telling us that there were two rules for if she stayed in the house. One was to not get rid of anything.

And the second was to not add locks. This was the husband's grandma's house. She died like in the 90s. It was just pretty much a time capsule. She finished giving us this huge tour, and I made a joke about how the only lock in the entire house was a chain lock on the basement door. That was the only lock in the entire house.

Not a bathroom door or anything. She wanted to show us the basement. I remember Claire and Roe walked down the steps. It was this huge open room covered in windows and there was a door downstairs leading to the backyard underneath the deck. As I stepped lower down into the basement, there was a dark room beyond the stairs.

It was so long and dark, I couldn't see the end. And I didn't want to go down there. I said, I promise I'm not being chicken. I don't want to go down there. And they were giving me a hard time. Oh, no, come down. There's all kinds of old jars down here. It's so weird and I just, I couldn't.

I did not want to go down there. I should not go down there. The next time I went over there, I brought my dog to play with her dog. I ended up letting the dogs out one at a time. So I let her dog out first, came back inside. Her dog, she got her as a puppy.

She kind of was growing up as a farm dog. She didn't need a leash. But my dog did. He would run if he wasn't on a leash. So I took him out there, and I just kind of walked around the backyard with him. And all of a sudden, all of these dogs ran up on us. I don't really know where they came from.

They had callers. They were well trained. I mean, I said stop, and they stopped, and they played with my dog. It was just very confusing. I didn't know where they came from. About 20 feet out, there was this very strange-looking dog.

It just sort of looked like if a person was to wear a dog suit. It didn't move. It wasn't with the rest of this pack. It wasn't playing. The dogs weren't going over there. It was perfect. underneath this slight.

It was just weird that it wasn't interacting with anything. And it was just sort of just crouched down. And it didn't look like a normal dog. Its eyes were just looking right at me and they almost looked like human eyes. The eyes were not filled in with an iris like an animal's would be. It looked like someone pretending

to be a dog. Really freaked me out. I ended up going inside and I told Claire, like, there's this weird dog out there. I don't know why this is freaking me out so much, but like where are these dogs from? Where is this dog from?

It was just this really weird situation and she was just saying, oh no, I don't know of any dogs in the area. That's so weird. I don't know of any dogs. That situation really rubbed me the wrong way enough to the point where when I was sleeping, I was sleeping up in her room and she was sleeping downstairs with her dog to kind of keep our dog separate. And I could hear the coyotes in the distance. I just could not stop thinking about those dogs and what that situation was.

I was very scared to be there. The next day I came downstairs in the kitchen and Claire, was cooking breakfast. She was in a really bad mood. She wasn't wanting to talk, really. I was sitting at the kitchen table, and she was at the sink, and she was washing some fruit,

and she wasn't responding. She suddenly turned around and accused me of pranking her. It's just not funny when you try to do things to freak me out when you know that I live here by myself. I don't know what she's talking about. So I'm very confused. What are you talking about?

So if I locked you in the bathroom, would you think that's funny? And I don't know what she was talking about. I just don't know why you go out of your way to do things to freak me out when this is my house. can't go anywhere else. I'm getting agitated, because she's accusing me of doing something. I don't know what, so I'm very heated.

I know that I was asleep in bed all night. Things kind of escalate, and I just kind of raise my voice. What do you mean? And she told me that when she woke up, she got up, went to the bathroom, and was taking a shower, and when she tried to leave, the door was locked. Like, it was jammed. She said that she spent about 30 minutes trying to get out while I was apparently upstairs laughing

thinking it's so funny to pull this prank on her. She said that when she finally kind of busted the door open, there was a chair lodged underneath the doorknob. and she was accusing me of doing that. I'm looking at her, eyes wide. Claire, I did not do that. I immediately am freaked out. It took a long time of me sitting there convincing her saying,

I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what is going on. I could kind of tell the moment that things shifted and she realized I was not in charge of whatever this thing was. She was just standing in the kitchen, not moving. And then she suddenly broke that silence by saying, were you not trying to scare me last night either? No.

I was upstairs. I was with my dog trying to sleep. What are you talking about? And she said, oh, well, I thought. I thought I saw someone standing in the doorway of the living room just watching me sleep. Where did you see? What was this thing doing? Show me. So she took me down this little hallway that led from the kitchen to the living room. In that hallway is the door to the basement.

And I noticed that chain lock was broken. I said, why is this broken? Because it didn't rust off. It was completely solid last time I was there. I wasn't looking for it, but it caught my eye walking past it. I feel like I would have noticed it. And she just looked at it, oh, I don't know. I didn't know that that broke.

I mean, are you sure it was always solid? And I said, yeah, I remember because I messed with it. The first one was over here. The only lock in the entire house that was allowed to be there had been broken. It didn't really matter what you told Claire. She would always put a Band-Aid on things. She just never wanted to address it.

A few days later, she told me that she had one of those old phones that was on the wall, and she said that the cord had been cut. And so in my head, I'm thinking, Either someone is coming in the house, or this is a poltergeist that is doing these things. She called me one morning, and she said, hey, does your dad know how to fix furnaces? And she pretty much told me that she woke up and her furnace was broken. And she went down to try to see if she could fix it, but it was super old.

She didn't know how to do it. And I said, okay, I'll ask him when he gets home from work. She called me later that night She asked me if my dad stopped by And I said, no I haven't even gotten a chance to ask him about that If he could fix that He's not even home from work yet

And she said oh okay It was probably my boss then Because I told him about how it was broken So he probably just fixed it While I was at work and just didn't tell me And I said oh okay So it's fixed? And she said, yeah, but I don't really know how

because he didn't even read my message. It's okay, it's fine. It's fixed, though. It's fixed. A few hours later, she texts me. So it wasn't my boss. Okay, then who do you think it was? I don't know.

He probably hired someone, though. It's probably no big deal. It's okay. It's fine. A few hours later again, I get another message, hey, are you awake? Usually when it's things that urgent, I don't let it go unnoticed, so I immediately said, yes, what's up?

I think I hear someone in the basement, and I don't know what to do. I instantly start freaking out. Because I know if she's acknowledging this, it has to be really bad. She said that she heard banging around, shuffling. She said, I can hear someone walking underneath me right now. What do you mean? Are you there alone? I'm asking if her boyfriend was there.

And she just kept saying, I hear them walking around the right under me. So I try calling her. She immediately declines the call. And she says, I can't call right now. I'm too scared to talk. I'm saying the obvious. Call the police. Go out to your car, wait for them.

She said, I can't call the police because if they come here, I don't have an ID. I won't have anything, and I'll be arrested. She was totally stuck. I convinced her to get her dog get in the car she drove to her boss's house

about 10 minutes down the road and her bosses answered the door she was saying there's someone in the house or someone in the house please go look and he said I don't think so

no that must be the pipes she was saying begging them to just please go look please I don't want to be there by myself, I can't do this. No, I don't think anyone's there. No, you're fine.

So she asked, can I crash here? Can I sleep here? No, it's okay. It's okay. You're okay. It's fine. If it happens again, let us know. She went back to the house, and she slept in her room

and decides a few days later that she would have some friends come and help her install locks. She just said, I just won't let them know that I put locks on because if I'm going to stay here, if I'm going to work for them, I need to at least have locks. It is her friend and her friend's husband. They're going around installing locks. They put them on the front door, back door, they reinstall the basement lock,

they put one on her bedroom door, and then they go to put one downstairs in the basement. So once that's done, all is clear. here. She feels a lot better. She feels a lot safer. When they were all saying goodbye, they heard this banging around, this commotion downstairs. They were just thinking, oh, it's probably the furnace kicking on. This is in the middle of winter. And so they left. And she calls me a few days later. And she said, hey, I just want to let you know, I'm not going to be living at that house anymore.

And in my head, I'm thinking, finally, okay, whatever evil was going on in there, thank goodness she's leaving, the family was weird anyway, thank God. I'm just asking her the basic questions like, oh, so where are you moving? Are you moving back with me? What's going on? And she said, yeah, actually, something really weird happened, and I don't really know how to feel about it, but I want to tell you because you've spent enough nights there that you deserve to know. She said that after they were done installing locks, it wasn't all as well. It wasn't, oh, we'll just

wait and see. What actually happened was when her friend and her husband were leaving, they were backing up, and they saw a man swing the basement door open and flee towards the woods. Someone had been there the whole time. He was breaking the lock to get out of the house, and that's what they heard. the things moving around it wasn't a poltergeist it was a man down there so when I was down letting my dog out and I was pacing

in front of this basement door he was in there and he fixed the furnace and he watched her sleep I'm totally freaking out right now what do you mean what are you talking about yeah I don't really know but, um, it's fine. I'm out of there. She didn't want to address it because it made it real to her.

This was a real being that was down there. A few months later, I'm at her wedding, and we were drinking, and I was asking her friend who was there, who was the one that helped install the locks. I was asking them about what happened. So what did you see? What was going on? Like, I'm so curious, I just want to know. The friend who was there, she said, well, we couldn't really tell if it was a man or an animal. But it ran like a man.

But it had fur almost, I think. Claire had said, oh, you know, it's just this guy and she was playing it off. It's no big deal. It's fine. It was just a guy. Later that night, when it was just me and Claire, she said, you know, I went to my boss's house that night. I grabbed all that I could, and I drove to their house. And I said, there has been a man in the basement. You have refused to check.

What is going on? It was the husband of this family that she worked. worked for that was at the door. And he said, We know who's been in there and he has permission to be in there. And we've told you it's fine. So do you need a job or not? And she walked away, got in the car.

She didn't want to know what was going on. These were people that knew her situation. this is the perfect victim. She didn't exist at all. And so if anything happened, really nothing could be done about it. And it just felt like they were feeding off of this young girl who was in desperate need of help. And they pretty much admitted, yeah, but what can you do about it? Oh, wow, that's terrible.

A man secretly locked in the basement below you? The whole time you're sleeping? Maybe he's even watching you? That sounds awful. Okay, well, let's go to ads. Okay, we're back from ads. Now let's play your next tape. I was working in the Cincinnati area as a photographer.

One of the main things I did was real estate photography. I was contracted with a couple companies, and I also had my own clients that were real estate agents that would call me and ask me to go to commercial or residence or properties to shoot drone photography, interior photography, videography, and things like that. One day I got a call to shoot a house. She said that the owner of the house had died and it was part of a estate sale. So the daughter of the homeowner was going to meet me at the house to let me in so I could shoot the property.

When I showed up, I found somebody who wasn't the daughter. It was a man that was standing on the porch. And when I walked up to him, I assumed that maybe there was miscommunication. and this is who I was supposed to meet. And I asked him, hey, are you who I'm supposed to meet? And the man said, yes, and opened the door to the house and let me inside. I immediately set my bag down and started pulling out my gear.

It was a rush job, so I had to get it done within two hours. So I was really just focused on setting up my gear, shooting as fast as I could, and then getting home so I could edit everything and upload it. As I started to take photos inside the house and set up my gear, this man started walking closer, and closer and closer to me to like a socially uncomfortable closeness. Every time I needed to back up my camera a little bit,

I would almost bump into him because he was right behind me. He wasn't particularly interested in the photos that I was taking because I never caught him looking at my camera or asking about how I was taking the photos. He was hovering close to me physically. Most of the time when somebody's hovering over what you're doing, they're looking at what you're doing. They're not looking at you the entire time. And when I say hovering, I don't mean, you know, a foot or two behind me.

I mean, there were times where I turned around with my camera and he was a couple inches away from me where I could smell his breath and I could smell whatever body wash that he had on him. I had to keep telling him to get back because I didn't want to see him in the reflection of glass or mirrors or anything. And he kept ignoring me. So he would step back a little bit. And then he would eventually start following me room to room and get closer and closer. or just being really socially uncomfortable. I chalked it up to, this guy must just be socially awkward.

It is what it is. I'll shoot this house and I'll finish up real quick. Eventually, I finished shooting the house and I told him, hey, I'm going to go outside and I'm going to take photos of the outside of the house and then I'll be out of your hair. And he said, you forgot about the basement. I didn't even realize that there was a basement. I thought the basement door that eventually showed me.

I thought it was a closet. I wasn't even told there was a basement. So I asked him, is the basement finished? Because if it's an unfinished basement, I don't usually take photos of just an empty basement. And he said, it's unfinished, but I think it's important that you take photos of the basement. He was very adamant about it. I really think you need to shoot the basement. So we kind of went back and forth a little bit, but I caved in and I said, you know, it's not a big deal.

I'll go down, take one photo, it'll take 30 seconds. He showed me where the basement was. And as I started to walk down the basement stairs, he followed me one step behind where I was, almost touching me. I could feel the breath of him on the back of my neck. I stopped about halfway going down the stairs and I turned around and looked at him

and he's standing face to face with me. And I said, I'm not gonna shoot this basement. I'm not going down here. And as soon as I said, that this cheery, kind disposition that he had completely flipped. And he started to get really angry. I could see his fist was balled up. He was kind of shaking a little bit.

His face was turning a little red. But he had one hand hiding behind his back. And I wasn't sure what was in his hand, but I felt like this is probably a bad situation to be in. I don't need to shoot this basement, and I'm not going to let this guy tell me what to do. I told him, no, I'm not going to shoot it, and I went to go walk back up the stairs. He wouldn't move.

All he did was press his back up against the wall with his hand behind his back. So I had to scoot right past him to get upstairs. I moved past him quickly, went upstairs, grabbed the rest of my gear, took everything back outside, shot the outside of the house, and he actually didn't follow me outside. He just stayed inside. As I was packing up everything on my motorcycle to leave, I realized that my lens cap was missing. Now, the lens cap for this lens is not a normal lens cap. It's not a flat lens cap.

It's one that looks like a thermos. It's really big, really thick. I knocked on the door. He answers the door. And I said, hey, I think I might have left my lens cap in here somewhere. And he said, come on and take a look around, see if you can find it. Now, one thing to note about this house was it's pretty empty. Because it was an estate sale, they already had almost everything out of the house, so there were a couple tables, a couple chairs, but it wasn't a lived-in house.

So there wasn't decorations all over the walls and places to leave a lens cap that was the size of a thermos that I wouldn't be able to find. I looked in every bedroom, looked in the bathrooms, the living room, the dining room, nowhere, not on any counters, any tables anywhere. I walked back up to the man and I said, did you happen to see it? This is what it looks like, a little thermos, it's about this big, it's black and everything. He looked at me in my eyes, and he said, I think you left it in the basement. It was like a smirk on his face, almost like he knows that I didn't leave it in there. But he's trying to challenge me to see if I would take the bait and be like,

you know what, I might have dropped it down the stairs. Right when he said that, the hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I just had alarm bells ringing in my ears. I'm not going down in that basement. I know I didn't put in that basement. I don't know if you put it in that basement. Maybe you did it because you're angry. I didn't go down there.

So you just threw it down there so that I would have to go down there. Maybe you have something planned for me. I don't know, but I'm out of here. So I said, okay, one second. Went back outside. Through everything in my backpack. I didn't even put everything together all the way. As he's watching me, I pretended to find it.

And I said, oh, it's right here. Here it is. And he looked at me and goes, Oh, really? And he had this fake smile on his face, almost like he knew I was lying to him that he knew it wasn't actually my backpack. I was like, yeah, I got it.

I'm good. And just drove off. I don't want to be there anymore. So I get home, and I'm editing the photos and uploading it to this server for the real estate agent. And then I get a call. And the real estate agent was kind of irritated, and they said, where are you?

The person's waiting at the house, and you're still not there. You were supposed to be there at 11. and it was about 1130 and i told the real estate agent i'm already done i already took photos of the house i'm uploading them as we speak and she said how the daughter's waiting for you at the house and she said you're not there daughter no i met the the guy that was at the house he said he was a friend of a friend of the daughter of the person who lived there and she said i don't know who that is and then just hung up and that was it

That was the end of our conversation. We never talked about it again. I never found out who was in the house. I never found out if he was actually a friend of a friend. Never saw that person again, never saw the real estate agent again, and I never got an answer as to who actually let me in that house. I don't know if he had keys. I don't know if he was just some person that was standing on the porch,

trying to break into an empty house, and then saw me there and took the opportunity to go into an empty house. I don't know if he had anything behind his back. Maybe it was my lens cap. Maybe it was a knife or syringe or something like that. When I uploaded the photos, those were the exact photos needed. I never got a call back saying that anything was incorrect. As far as I know, everything was good to go. I got paid for the job too, so that has to be the correct house.

Was he a neighbor that was nosy and maybe wanting to steal something from the house and he got caught on the porch, so you just kind of went along with everything? or an actual stranger who went into an empty house with me without me knowing who they were. The part that bothers me the most is not that I had an uncomfortable experience is that I don't know. I don't have the answers to any of that. Oh my God, that man really wanted him to go down there.

You know, I would have done things a little differently. if I were him. Like, let's just say hypothetically that I had a basement and hypothetically I tried to persuade maybe,

oh, I don't know, Terry to go down there. Hypothetically, of course. I'd use a lot stronger bait than a lens cap. Who cares about that? What if that's actually where Terry was right now

in my basement, locked up, wearing athletic shorts? Wouldn't that be wild? Ha! Okay, let's go to ads before I get too carried away again. Fandual Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning, which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do.

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I hope you enjoyed today's stories, and I hope I did a good job. Please tell Terry I did a good job. Actually, maybe you should tell him I did a bad job. Then he'd have to discipline me. Okay. Well, thank you very much. That's for listening. I'm good.

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. Guest host is Rachel Dratch. Written by Meredith Stedman. writing by Mark Lachlan.

Original score by makeup and vanity set with additional score by J. Ragsdale. Editing by Eric Kintana, Stephen Perez, Meredith Stedman, Tristan Bankston and Sean Nernie. Sound design, mix, and master by Stephen Perez and Cooper Skinner.

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