Radio Rental - The Essay >>

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

A young teacher gives a student a second chance at a writing assignment. What she gets back gives her quite the scare. >> Grassman

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Listener discretion is advised. Hello? Hello? Yes, hello, come in, come in. Oh, have you come to answer the ad? Oh, oh no, hello. It's you. Welcome, my dear loyal patron. I'm guessing I know why you're here,

and it's not because of my latest Craigslist post. The help wanted one, not the other one. Well, we won't talk about the other one. Let's just say I had a long night and was feeling very vulnerable and lonely. Anyway, I'm looking for a shopkeeper's protege, kind of an apprenticeship position. Okay, okay, so let's cut to the chase. I'm looking for a cashier slash janitor, but that's all semantics. We can punch up the title to whatever, you know. I know how much the Gen Z hipsters love their job titles.

How about associate producer? Chief marketing executive. I don't care. It's been so hard to find qualified candidates. Seems like nobody actually wants to work these days. You have to surround yourself with people who want to work. Kim Kardashian.

Anyway, listen to some of these candidates. Hey, Terry. My name is Daniel. I saw your ad and I want to apply to be the shopkeeper's assistant. I think I'd be great for it. All right. A little bit about me. Well, my favorite movie is Morbius.

Hard pass. No. Next. Hi, Mr. Carnation. I'm a huge, huge fan. I think I'd make a great candidate. I have a degree in film. No. Film degrees are about as useful as they sound. Ooh, look at the use of phallic imagery in Citizen Kane. Ugh. Misunseen lenses. Ugh. Give me a job.

No, thank you. Plus, I'd rather someone that brought another area of expertise to the store. Like a marine biologist or a masseuse. Well, between us what marine biologist or a masseuse. Well, between us, what I actually need is a plumber. An employee bathroom is the stuff of nightmares. Hello, Mr. Crimes.

They're invictus cavies from Dr. Rexbury's Orchard. He's wanted to let me know that that star-shaped cop... Uh, okay, moving on. It's cosmetic. By the way, don't get any ideas. There's no story there. Honest. Hey, Terry. My name is Payne Lindsey.

I'm a podcaster, and I would love to be considered... Ugh. Hmm. Well, I... I don't really have a specific reason for rejecting that one. I just don't like the way he sounds. Ugh. Can't listen to that all day.

Could you imagine? Ugh. Huh. So anyway, as you can see, it's slim pickings around here. It's very stressful. It's stressing me out. And on top of all that, now there's this void growing in the corner of my shop. Yeah, wow, there it is. Sometimes it just does that. I can't really make heads nor tails of it. One day my wall and my floor makes a right angle, and the next there's a splotchy void growing there. At first I thought it was just a little spot of black mold.

I thought, no big deal. I got out the Windex and a paper towel, but when I knelt down to clean it, it sucked the paper towel right up. It's probably in another dimension right now. Maybe one where people are the size of germs. Well, if they have glass in that dimension, I just made it a little cleaner.

You're welcome. Oh. Yeah. I'll call someone to come patch that up. It should be fixed in no time. Um. Okay, um... In the interim, let's try one of these tapes.

Here we go. I'd say almost 30 years ago. This would have been in the mid-80s. I was in my mid-20s. I was a young college teacher. I had just finished my schooling and I was hired to teach a part-time class. There were night classes and they were at a branch of a big university. And this branch was kind of in a rural area. It was really isolated. It was lots of woods around it. Kind of a dark isolated spot. Early on in my teaching career I was really positive and cool and there wasn't a lot of

age difference between me and my students at that time. I was excited to teach. I was an English teacher. We always say that teaching composition is like going to the dentist. Everybody's got to go to you, but they don't want to go to you. They just have to go to you because it's a freshman. It's a required course. So those are the classes that they get part-time faculty to teach, and I was one of those. I've got a class of maybe like 15 students. It's a night class. You know, it goes maybe 7.30, 9.30, something like that.

We're probably about three weeks into the semester. Up until that time, we've been reading, talking about stuff, going over examples of writing. And it was coming up on the first major assignment. Now, the class was kind of typical, except there was this really unusual guy who sat in the back in the corner. He was maybe like five or six years older than everybody else. Never said a word, never participated, never raised his hand.

It was fine, there wasn't any disruption or anything, but it was a little odd. Our first assignment for this class was to write what we were calling a process analysis paper. It was like a how-to paper, like how to make a pizza, how to paint a house, how to walk your dog, so that students could show that they knew how to write in sequence and write for a particular audience.

I assigned this essay. Maybe a week, week and a half later, everybody turned in their essays. I went through them all, and I graded them all, and I came across one that this guy had written. I was really confused at first because it was a paper about, like, a battle in World War II. I didn't know what what this was that

I was looking at. It took me a few minutes to realize it was probably a paper that he wrote for history class and he thought he would try to turn in to get credit in my class. I didn't know what was going on but I thought well, well, you know, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt, even though, you know, maybe he doesn't deserve it. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I'm going to say that he can do it over again. I handed back all the papers, and I asked him to wait after class. He hung out, and I approached him, and I said, I don't know, I don't know what this is, but it's not the assignment and I'm going to

pretend that you misunderstood what I was asking for. So I'm going to give you another week to write the paper that you need to write in order to pass this assignment and then we'll just call it even. I'll pretend that this didn't happen. I was super accommodating, super nice, also just really young. Not a heavy hitter teacher or anything at that point. You know, I was just trying to be a cool, good, accommodating person. So about a week goes by, he still comes to class, doesn't participate.

We try to do group activities, he won't participate in groups. And I'm like, okay, whatever, that's fine. After class one day, he drops his paper on my desk and leaves. So I gather it up with my other paperwork and I go home and I'm sorting through my stuff, putting things together for the next time I'm going to teach, and I come across this essay of his. I look at the title, and the title is How to Get Out of English Class. So I started to read it. The first paragraph began, Step one, figure out your teacher's schedule.

Watch the way she walks, watch what she's carrying, follow her down a particular hallway. Each of these kind of steps, they were in paragraph form, so there were details. I was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable. of steps. They were in paragraph form so there were details. I was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable. The second step was figure out where she parks. I was parking in a really isolated spot. It was this faculty lot. Very dark. This was a really small campus, so maybe there were only

a handful of teachers in the whole building by that time. I was still curious about where this was going, and getting very nervous. The third step, find out which car is hers. Fourth step, what time does she get to her car? The fifth step, cut her brake lines. After that step, I was kind of paralyzed, thinking, oh wow, okay, what is this that

I'm reading here? What is this I'm reading? I think it went on to describe what would happen on the highway as I was driving, or as this theoretical teacher was driving. The car will go 55. It's going 60 on the highway. She'll begin to lose control. It'll veer off the highway.

It'll crash into a tree, a wall. And that's how you get out of English class. It was a really well-written paper. And this guy wasn't a good writer, because I'd seen his writing in class. You know how a student writes after three weeks of looking at in-class writing, languages that he'll use, or grammatical errors that he'll have. This wasn't his writing. What I understood is that there was somebody else involved in this. It wasn't just him sitting down and writing a paper. It was him and somebody else.

What did he say to this person? What were they doing when they wrote this? I mean, my mind was just going. You're not just walking by one person on a dark road. You're walking by two guys on a dark road. It wasn't just him that was talking about this stuff. I was very scared. I don't know what I had shared with the class. But I'm usually open in class,

so I may have said where I lived, that I lived alone. And he was creepy looking. And I was afraid I was going to see him. I was trying to figure out what to do next and I decided I would call his bluff. So I graded his paper. I made a couple little marks here and there. And I remember I gave him an A minus because it was really well written. But I put in the comments, this is a really well written paper,

but I'm not especially objective because I know it's written about me. I decided to give him back the paper during class instead of at the end of class. I set it on his desk, face down, continued to teach, made sure I didn't look at him, but I could see that he had picked it up and glanced at it. I just remained focused and pretended that nothing had passed at all between us. There were things I could have done. You know, I could have talked to the dean.

I could have talked to a chair. I could have talked to somebody. I was nervous to go out to my car. By the time class was over, it was very dark. There were very few people left on campus. I walked out to my car, and it was pretty much surrounded by woods and a big pond. I looked all around me.

I held my keys in my hand, thinking that maybe that could offer some protection. I didn't see anybody. I was scared for a long time after that. He never showed up in my class again. There was always, for me, the possibility that he was going to show up again. There was always for me the possibility that he was going to show up again. So that fear and that anxiety remained. When I would go to my car after I was still afraid. Maybe a few weeks later, I was pulling up to a gas station.

I saw him. He was pumping gas for the car in front of me. I kind of freaked out. I backed up and I sped out. And I raced out of there. I guess I didn't realize until that point how really scared I had been. 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 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. Get ready for Las Vegas-style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas-drift excitement MGM is famous for when you play classics like MGM Grand Millions or popular games like Blackjack, Baccarat, and Roulette. Download the BetMGM casino app today.

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with iGaming Ontario. Okay, well, so yes, that was kind of nerve wracking. But if you thought that was concerning, get a load of this. Malachi, no! Get away from there! Don't you dare flirt with danger. This isn't time to be a tough guy. You're not Tom Cruise. Malachi loves Top Gun. The original. Who do we have here?

Ah, the repairman. To deal with this mysterious void that's possibly from another dimension nonsense. Alrighty, well, um, welcome, come on in. Let's pop in another one while he fills up our hole. Um, probably could have put that a little more delicately. This took place in 2010. I grew up on the Ohio River in West Virginia. I had a lot of friends right across the river in Ohio.

We pretty much spent almost the entire summer hanging out, especially since I was getting ready to go to college. We'd been talking about it for a long time, about how we wanted to go camping in the woods. One day we were all hanging out. One of us just suggested, hey, we should spend the night in the woods tonight. I had one friend, Zane, that lived next to a pond, next to a very large patch of woods.

We decided we were going to go camping right along the edge of the woods. There was me, Zane, and two other friends. So we packed up all the stuff, hot dogs, stuff for s'mores, some walking sticks. We set up our little fire ring where we were going to build a fire and then decided to go for a hike. We come back and then build the fire.

We're all sitting in our foldable lawn chairs, had our backs to the pond, and we were facing the woods, probably about 20 feet to the pond and then maybe 30 feet to the woods in front of us. Most of the night was quiet. We stayed up really late. Sometime between 2 and 3 a.m., I could hear twigs snapping. While I was trying to process that, a stick had come out of the woods

and landed close to where we were all sitting. Grabbed our walking sticks. We all just go quiet. Maybe 10 to 20 minutes go by. While we were standing, the second one comes flying out of the woods, and this one actually hits our fire. Spinning like someone had threw it. I saw it coming out of the woods,

so I knew it didn't just fall from a tree. Cinders and stuff flying up, so we all jumped back. A couple more minutes of nervous laughter kind of occurs to us that Zane's brother was probably messing with us. It would have been a lot of effort for him to get up in the woods without us seeing him, but it would not have been unusual for him.

It wasn't something that was outside the realm of possibility at all. Still standing around the fire, standing around the chairs, waiting for like what his next move is gonna be. And nothing happens. We sit back down and I'm thinking maybe he heard us or onto him, so maybe he just gave up.

And we heard some more noises, footsteps in the woods. We ignored it. We're not gonna entertain it. He's pranking us, we're just going to ignore it. Another stick comes flying out of the woods. This time, it came from behind a very large tree. This one landed in the fire as well. Zane's brother was a quarterback.

It probably would have been easy for him to hit the fire with a stick. And we figure he's just going to keep messing with us. And so Zane and I have these flashlights. We're kind of whispering to ourselves, like, let's go catch him. We'll turn it around on him. We'll try and scare him or catch him. We start to walk towards this tree, and this tree's probably 30 feet from where we were sitting.

Zane's plan is, you go around one side of the tree, and I'll go around the other. We'll trap him. I go left and Zane goes right. I was focusing on the tree and looking at Zane waiting for the cue to turn the flashlight on and jump out. As we're approaching the tree I saw movement

towards the bottom of the tree. I figured that Zane's brother had seen Zane coming from that side of the tree, and so was shimmying around towards me without knowing that I was there. I turned the light on. I angled the beam down. Towards the bottom of the trunk. Sticking out from behind the tree was a leg. It was a very large red leg.

Dark red color. Kind of like a burnt orange. Dark red color. Kind of like a burnt orange. It was muscular. Like patchy fur all the way down. I could see the muscle definition. And I could see the tendon and the back of the knee. So it wasn't just obscured, just covered in fur. But there was fur, it was hairy. Patches of long, stringy fur all up and down it. I think I was trying to rationalize

in my head what I was looking at. I'm looking at this leg. Then it turns and steps behind the tree. And right as it does, Zane yells. Then I realize what I saw was not normal. Not Zane's brother.

So then I yell, we turn and run back. As we were running, I remember hearing the sound of something crashing through the woods, like running through the woods. It had to have been running the opposite direction because it was going through the woods. It had to have been running the opposite direction because it was going through the woods. It sounded very large. The guys are asking us, what happened?

What happened? What's going on? I wasn't the only one that saw it. Like Zane was over there with me. I can't believe that we just saw that leg. Zane looked at me and he was like, leg? I saw an arm.

It was a large red arm. When it moved, it spread its fingers. And I could see that it was a hand that was gripped on the side of the tree. Its fingers were thick and red. He saw it push off the tree and that's when he yelled. I'm freaked out, I'm dumbfounded. Even up to this point, it was hard for me to believe and process what I had seen.

When he described it the same way, that it was large and red, and not just that, but that he saw the arm, the hand, grip and push off the tree, at the same time that I saw the leg turn and go behind the tree, we actually did see something. I wasn't just seeing things because I was scared or I wasn't just seeing things because it was dark. It was a very adrenaline-fueled, scary five minutes because we now don't know what it was. And it's out there. For us to get back to the house, we have to go past where we just saw this thing. We did not want to go past where we saw that thing to get back to the house. We stayed up for most of the rest of the night. We eventually went into the tent and just talked about what it could have been, what we thought it was.

And as soon as the sun was up, we ran back to the house. We didn't pack any of the stuff up. We left everything out there. Once we were inside the safety of his bedroom, we all crashed. And we all fell asleep. In Southeast Ohio, they talk about the grass man. Ohio's version of Bigfoot Growing up right on the Ohio River

and with my friends living in southeast Ohio like the grass man was something we had heard a lot about We were very skeptical and so I think we were kind of hesitant to say, oh yeah, it was a Bigfoot. We didn't see its face. We got an idea of how big it was. If it's not Bigfoot, I don't know that the alternative is any better.

It might be scarier. If it was a person out there messing with us, they would have had to go into great lengths to do that. If it wasn't a person, I genuinely have no idea what it could have been. Something happened that we couldn't really explain. We didn't go in the woods anymore after that. We had friends that were like,

no, we should go, we should go. Me and Zane were like, no. Like, if you want to go camp over there, that's fine. I'm not going. Crime Writers On is the podcast We'll be right back. club discussing what makes good storytelling and teaching how to become a critical listener or not and stick around for the crime writers thumbs up thumbs down reviews it's the original true crime review podcast crime writers on wherever you get your podcasts like probably right here oh yeah well you know what maybe have you even considered that maybe the problem isn't the hole? Maybe it's the size of the wood.

Wow. Terry again with the phrasing. Hmm. Alas, the repairman says the void is growing and there is nothing he can cover it up with. No worries. I'm sure I'll think of a solution. Um, ooh, how was that tape? Thrilling, right? Oh, I liked that one. I loved putting that one in.

I never want to pull it out. There I go again. It really is just... Anyway. Oh, looks like Malachi liked that one as well. He doesn't want me to pull it out either. Malachi, you've got a case of the zoomies. Oh, slow down, Malachi.

Slow down, not so fast. Oh, no, no, no, no, you're getting too close to the hoid. Malachi, you're at Mach 10. I'm going to need you down to Mach 2. No, no, no, Malachi! Oh, good, yes, okay. You zoom around over on the other side of the room. That's fine, Malachi.

Well, maybe this growing void in the corner isn't so bad, you know? Maybe it's kind of a friendly void. Or like a shy void. Nobody puts void in a corner. Okay, oh, whoa, okay. Just not like dirty dancing references. Noted. Well, folks, there's always something truly exciting happening at Radio Rental.

You're going to want to come again and again. And I want you to. Feel free to enter me anytime. I mean, well, you know what I mean. Dear listener, please don't cancel me. Radio Rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenderfoot TV. Lead producer is Eric Quintana. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright. Hosted by Rainn Wilson as his character, Terry Carnation. Written and produced by Meredith Stedman. Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan.

Associate producer is Jaja Muhammad. Editing by Eric Quintana, Mike Rooney, Sean Nerney, and Sydney Evans. Additional writing by Mark Laughlin. Sound design, mix, and master by Cooper Skinner. Additional sound design and mixing by Devin Johnson. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set. Video editing by Dylan Harrington. Cover artwork by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan.

Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, the Nord Group, Station 16, Beck Media and Marketing, and the team at Cadence 13. 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.