The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S4E05

Episode Date: July 27, 2014

It's episode 5 of Season 4. We have six tales for you in this episode featuring stories about terrifying technology, tormentors of time, and fatal femmes. The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first three tales.  "Snapchat" written by Donald Bristow and read by Peter Lewis. Music by Brandon Boone. (Story starts at 00:06:00) "The Curious World of Alice Becker" written by Chance Patrick and read by Corinne Sanders. Music by Brandon Boone. (Story starts at 00:23:20) "The Copycat Neighbors" written by J. A. Martz and read by David Cummings & Tisha Boone. (Story starts at 00:38:20) "I Keep Beautiful Things" written by Amelia Ferreru and read by Jenni Higginbotham. (Story starts at 00:51:00) "A Lack of Evidence" written by Kevin Thomas and read by Peter Lewis & David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:12:25) "Perfect Mother" written by L Chan and read by Jessica McEvoy. (Story starts at 01:33:40) Click here to enter the contest for "The Forever Show" audiobook Click here to learn more about The Claverhouse Email book Click here to learn more about "The Forever Show" audiobook Click here to learn more about the Chance Patrick Click here to learn more about L Chan Click here to learn more about Amelia Ferreru Click here to learn more about Kevin Thomas Podcast produced by: David Cummings Music & Sound Design by: David Cummings, unless otherwise noted The NoSleep Podcast uses the PSE Hybrid Library exclusively for its sound design. This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons License 2014. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi folks. Before we begin this episode, I want to take a moment to share some news. The Horror Audio Fiction podcast, Tales to Terrify, has been one of the stalwarts in terms of its longevity and its high-quality productions. Its host, its voice, and indeed its very soul, was a man named Lawrence Santoro. I found out just hours ago that Larry passed away after a short battle with a man. that most insidious form of horror known as cancer. Larry had a voice that epitomized horror, yet his was the most literary of souls, gentle, erudite, and devilishly playful. Each week he welcomed his listeners into his nook and called us his children of the night. Your children will dearly miss you, Larry. I dedicate this.

episode to his memory. It's time to give into your fear because tonight there will be no sleep for the no sleep podcast. I looked behind and around me. There was no one who seemed suspicious just a bunch of college students in their own little world. Kids had only caught a glimpse of its shadow through a metal drainage covering as the creature sculpted by underneath the street. I honestly just want to mind my own business. It's getting kind of weird. Wouldn't you agree? I stand on the peak step school in the bathroom and try to imagine if I had a different face.

Something was changing in my child. I could see it, even if Robert could not. The word how was scrawled in the margins between paragraphs, everywhere, like a chorus. It's episode five of season four. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, David Cummings. We have six tales for you in this episode,

featuring stories about terrifying technology, tormentors of time, and fatal femmes. I'm always glad when I can share good news about members of the No Sleep podcast family. I want to bring to our listeners' attention two new books that will be of interest to you, including a contest where you can win a copy

of a new audiobook. The first book that's available is Volume 1 of the Complete Claverhouse Email series. We featured a number of the Claverhouse tales on the podcast, including such favorites as Snow, The Sleep Clinic, and A Face in the Crowd. Each of these tales explores an extreme of human experiences, and so touch upon dark and often disturbing subjects. I'm a I'm a big fan of these mysterious Claverhouse email stories, and I would encourage you to visit the link found in the show notes, so you can find out how to purchase a copy of the e-book. It's a set-your-own-price kind of offer,

with a suggested price of only $2. Personally, I think it's worth far more than $2, so treat yourself to some excellent Claverhouse stories. The second book I'd like to bring to your attention is called The Forever Show. from author Marcus Demanda. One of our very own narrators, Jessica McAvoy has narrated the audiobook of this novel, which is an excellent blend of horror and action geared towards the young adult crowd.

It's a very entertaining book made even better thanks to Jessica's superb narration. Once again, visit the show notes to learn more about the book. But wait, there's much, much more. To celebrate the launch of the Forever Show on audiobook, we're giving away 25 promo codes for downloading the audio book for free. All you have to do to enter is visit our contests page at contests.the-no-slapepodcast.com. There you'll find out more about the book and get the contest question. Simply email your answer to the address provided and you're entered to win one of the 25 codes.

A big thanks to Marcus and Jessica for their great work and for providing the contest prizes. And finally, just before we begin, I want to welcome a new narrator to the show. Tisha Boone brings her voice acting skills to the show and joins the No Sleep family. As a matter of fact, she's part of our family in more ways than one. Tisha is the lovely wife of my musical collaborator, Brandon Boone. We're glad that the Boons are sharing their considerable talents with us. So, let us wait no further. It's time to start the show.

In our first tale, we encounter one of the latest popular apps. Designed for quick and fun photo sharing between friends, we soon discover that it doesn't take long for new technology to be used for sinister purposes. As author Donald Bristow explains, When a young man makes a mysterious friend via the app, the encounters become far less friendly very quickly. Narrator Peter Lewis reads the tale for us about the disturbing side of Snapchat. It's been a few months since my life has gone back to normal. Currently, I do not feel safe anywhere.

I used to dorm at my college, but I had to go back home during the second semester due to strange occurrences happening there. I do not plan on dorming anytime soon. It may not be the smartest thing to share this since it's still under investigation, but maybe it will make people more cautious of social networking. It sure has made me wary of trusting strangers online again. November of last year was when the messages first appeared. Ever heard of Snapchat?

For those of you who don't know what Snapchat is, it's an app that lets you send picture messages to your friends, but they only last for a couple of seconds. Once those seconds are up, the picture disappears forever, meaning you can never see them again. You can only send pictures you take at the moment, and they can only be seen for the few seconds you timed them. You can also draw and write text on the pictures. You can even send videos. I never really knew about Snapchat until I was introduced to it by my friends. They practically encouraged me to download it, and being the weak-willed person I am, I gave in to peer pressure. It seemed kind of fun at first.

I was taking pictures and sending them like crazy. Most of the time I just took pictures of myself, making the goofiest faces and putting random letters for texts. I also went out of my way to take pictures of the first. funniest things. I remember taking a picture of this dude's butt crack while he bent down to tie his shoes. Yeah, it was sick, but downright hilarious. There were a lot of people who added me as a friend on Snapchat. Most of them came from Facebook or the contact list on my phone. This also included some people I didn't know too well, but they still sent me pictures either way, and it was actually pretty nice. I guess Snapchat made it easier to break the other.

with people I randomly added or haven't seen in a while. One day in November, someone called We Are One forever added me on Snapchat. At the moment, I didn't think too much of it. I figured it was just another one of my Facebook friends. Instantly, the first message this person sent me was a paper with sharpied handwriting on it and a heart drawn underneath it. It read, Hey, cutie, how are you?

Once four seconds had passed, the message disappeared. I was flattered by the fact that whoever this person was referred to me as a cutie. I'm guessing it was probably a girl flirting with me a little bit. I sent her bag a picture of me with my eyebrow raised and a smirk on my face. After that, I added the text, I'm doing good. You think I'm a cutie? And then sent it to her for five seconds. A few minutes later I got another picture from her.

The picture was of a teddy bear carrying a red heart with a white backdrop. The text read, You are on my top five. Right away, I wanted to know who this person was. For the next couple of days that we messaged each other, she never sent me pictures of herself. For some reason, she wouldn't even tell me her name. I kept pushing her to send me a picture,

but she always made excuses or sent stupidly drawn stick figures instead. With that, I believed that she was either really ugly or really shy, and I was hoping for the latter. I decided to let it go, thinking that she must really be into me if she's that secretive with revealing her face and even her name. One day, while I was in the library, I checked Snapchat real quick while I was taking a break from typing a paper for one of my courses. Sure enough, there was a message from We Are One forever.

As soon as my finger tapped it open, I almost jumped out of my seat. She sent me a picture of a person the first time she'd ever done so. But that's not what got me all bothered about this picture. I knew that the picture of this person definitely wasn't her. In fact, it was a guy sitting on a couch, white shirt, blue sweatpants, looking straight into a laptop. bookshelves in the background. The text read, I see you.

I looked behind and around me. There was no one who seemed suspicious, just a bunch of college students in their own little worlds. Still, I didn't want to read too much into it. After all, why cite myself out from something that seemed like harmless flirting? I sent her a picture of me

with this confused look on my face and typed out, I don't see you. Why didn't you say hi? The next picture she sent me was of a poster of my college mascot with the text. I was so nervous, you're just too cute. From how I saw it, it seemed like I had a secret admirer who possibly went to the same college. I sent her a message asking, so you go to this college too?

She never answered my question, even though she opened my message. Things just got weird after that small incident. A couple of times she sent pictures of me walking in lecture halls, eating in the cafe, making lines for food, and even talking to my friends. I don't remember all the texts, but there were some that stood out to me like, I see you everywhere. It's so funny how close I am to you. One day you'll know who I am.

I started to think my friends might have been playing a different. joke on me. I asked my best friend Andrew one day if he was the one sending me all those weird snapchats. He told me he had no idea what I was talking about, and I explained to him the whole thing that this person called We Are One Forever had been sending snapschats of me. Andrew said that was pretty creepy, and that I must have had some obsessive stalker who obviously had no life. I was secretly hoping he was the one behind all of it, but I knew he was telling the truth. We are one forever doesn't have the same handwriting Andrew has. Besides, a dude can't lie his way out of a paper bag.

Talking to Andrew, I asked all my other friends about it, but they also told me the same answer. Either it really wasn't them, or they were playing an elaborate mind-fuck on me. One of them had to come clean, but no one ever did. and the snapchats were getting a little too eerie. My secret admirer started sending pictures of only me and nothing else. She rarely added texts on them anymore. It was like she was playing Where's Waldo with me? And oddly enough, I was Waldo.

It became her mission to send a picture of me at least once a day. I began to pay more attention to my surroundings, but the only people I see every day were my friends. I never saw the same face everywhere I went. I figured my friends had to be the ones messing with me. Eventually I stopped sending messages to We Are One forever, thinking it was best to ignore and pretend like it didn't bother me if it were them. I didn't mention the messages anymore, and I even stopped opening them.

They just kept piling on whenever I went on Snapchat. at. The fall semester was almost over at that time. December came, followed by colder days and nights loaded with college assignments, projects, and final exams. Even though all of this sounded intimidating, I was a little relieved, to be honest. It gave me the excuse to focus all my attention on something more important than those messages. And yet, whenever I looked at my phone for the time or a new text message, I always saw a notification from Snapchat. We Are One Forever sent you a message. After a week of ignoring them, I finally let curiosity get the best of me.

Once I started opening one, I saw a picture of me, but when I blinked, it was already gone. I opened another message. Me again, but it disappeared as fast as the last one. As I opened those messages one by one, I could feel more. my heart sink deeper and deeper. They were all pictures of me all over campus. I couldn't even fathom as to how this person was able to follow me from one place to another. She even took pictures of me during lectures and when I came out of bathrooms. That day I decided to stay in my dorm room since I was starting to become paranoid. My roommate, John Michael, wasn't there for most

the time. Some of my friends were texting me to join them for lunch, but I was in no mood to come out and show myself to my secret admirer. She seemed to know where I was every single time. To avoid my chances of being another Snapchat message, I only came out that day to buy myself a sandwich. When I looked at my phone a few times, I was pleasantly surprised at the lack of Snapchat notifications from her. I was able to be able to be. breathe normally again, even though part of me was worried about going out. After all, I couldn't just stay trapped in my dorm room every day. I had classes to be in, friends to hang out with, and parties I wanted to go to before the semester ended. That night, I couldn't really sleep.

I actually felt more alive that moment than I did the whole day. It was impossible for me to go to sleep when I had a million thoughts racing through my mind. Unsurprisingly, all those thoughts were related to those damned Snapchat messages. Finally, I fell asleep after what felt like hours looking at the darkness. The next morning, I woke up tired and not in the greatest of moods. I checked my phone to see the time. It was 12 in the afternoon. Out of habit, I also checked Snapchat for any new messages I could have received.

The more recent messages were from We Are One Forever. Her messages took up all of my Snapchat. It had to be almost 50 she sent me. Seeing her username alone made my body tremble with morbid curiosity. Before I opened the messages, I noticed something was off about them right away. She sent me videos in the more recent Snapchats, which is something that never happened before. Also, the time she sent me those messages was about six hours ago. It made me extremely hesitant to open any of them, but something inside me was demanding me to do it.

She had to be taking pictures of something else that night. I was in bed the whole time. However, once I opened her first message, I could not believe, with my own eyes, and even thought for a second that I was going insane. I wanted to scream. Immediately I regretted my decision of ever opening that message. Just thinking about it still gives me chills. At first, I couldn't make out what the picture was. It seemed dark, but she must have enabled the flash option

because there was a bright light illuminating the subject of the picture. Even though the pictures lasted only a second, I was able to make out what was in the second and third picture. And by the 20th picture, my eyes confirmed it was someone lying on a bed. It made my heart beat unnervingly fast. Those were the most horrifying seconds of my life. As I kept opening these messages, they were the same picture of someone sleeping. The more recent messages became closer and closer views of the person.

The closer they were, the more they confirmed my fears about the person in the picture. And the videos, fucking videos. There were five videos, and they showed uncomfortable close-ups of a person. face in the glowing flashlight, accompanied by the typical noisy silence audio in the background being face, immediately dialed my college's police department, told them someone broke into my room last night that I was being stalked by someone I didn't know who was also sending me pictures of myself. I tried to explain as much as I could, but they couldn't even understand what I was saying because I sounded like a complete mess. They came over to check up on my dorm room, observing

any forced entry that could have taken place and even questioned my roommate for an hour. I showed them my Snapchat to prove the multiple messages the person was sending me. Unfortunately, they couldn't retrieve them and see the actual pictures. I told my parents about it a week later. They wanted to pick me up as soon as possible, even though finals were coming up. After I was finished, though, I went back home and the messages had stopped for a while. I didn't see anything from We Are One forever for the second semester of college. The police are still trying to find them,

and are currently trying to contact the makers of Snapchat to retrieve those terrifying pictures. At that time, my life was going back to normal, and yeah, I was still using Snapchat just for the innocent fun of it. The last days of the semester, though, became a different story altogether. It was a typical Friday, and I was home alone, watching TV and chowing down on snacks. I just completed the last of my finals, so I was treating myself after all that stress from college, and especially from that slightly traumatizing situation, once my phone began to vibrate. This whole wave of dizziness took over me as I read what was on the screen.

We are one forever, sent you a man. I was conflicted about what to do, and maybe I shouldn't have opened the message. Maybe I should have just deleted Snapchat from my phone and saved myself the trouble. Because when I did open that message, I was clearly met with the image of my house. In broad daylight, not just my whole house, but specifically the view of the kitchen window. The picture only lasted for five seconds, and it was kind of hard to see due to its grainy quality. Yet it was enough to detect myself sitting by the table, eating my cereal in the morning, looking outside the window at what I particularly remembered.

I'm sure we can all recall our grade school days and the characters we shared a classroom with when we were young. But in this tale from author Chance Patrick, a woman recounts the story of one of her classmates, a rather odd young girl with limited social interaction. When she did speak, her words shared a connection to a mysterious set of circumstances not easily discovered. Narrator Corinne Sanders reads for us the tale about this odd little girl. So let's listen as we delve into. the curious world of Alice Becker. Alice Becker was odd.

No one in my fourth grade class called her that to her face because that would have been cruel. And for fourth graders, we were surprisingly respectful and tolerant of people with problems. Because Alice had real problems. And to this day, I'm not sure what all of them were. I'm not sure I ever want to find out. I prefer to leave the past in the past. I prefer not to remember anything at all about Alice and what I found in that drainage pipe on that cool spring evening.

I want to blame Alice for my years of nightmares and fear of small confined spaces, but I don't. That'd be wrong. I blame myself. I blame my tolerance, if you can call it that, because in retrospect, maybe me and my friends weren't really tolerant of Alice. At least to the kids in my class, Alice was more of a fascination, a morbid curiosity, if you will.

Because the more you got to know Alice, the more curious you became about her and the secrets she told you with that sly grin in those all-too-knowing blue eyes. It didn't start out with secrets, though. It began with pity. Alice always wore the same Daffy Duck T-shirt to school every day. She smelled like stale urine, and her mother was a heavy drug user. And Alice's mother did awful things to acquire those drugs. At least that's what my mom told me. She never told me what those awful things were,

but even as a fourth grader, I could guess. And I was saddened and disgusted. But what made Alice odd was that she rarely talked. She'd just sort of mumble, groan, and snort. And when she did, she sounded like a warthog. Alice was only in our class for about an hour every day, inclusion is what the school called it otherwise she was whisked away to the room with the other students with special needs

but no one ever teased her raised eyebrows at alice's moaning and snorting during classroom activities that would have been cruel and god knows alice's life was hard enough as it was without a classroom of kids mercilessly tormenting her instead we tried to include her in our projects and make her a true member of the class and the few times we made out actual coherent words coming out of Alice's mouth, it'd be weird, nonsensical things. Jungle Jim, combat tracker. Ring, ring, 55, ring.

Choosing fee, private thing. I remember them distinctly. We'd always nod and smile, but they made no sense to us. This went on for months. Then, on a Tuesday in the middle of April, Alice said, Trevor, Daddy, Bend, Red. Trevor was a kid in my class. Alice looked right out in when she said it,

and it was the first time she had ever addressed any of us by name. I recall a line of drool dripping off the side of Alice's mouth and running down her chin as she spoke, but I mainly remember her eyes. Alice's eyes were piercing Trevor. like she knew something that he did it. At the moment, it didn't make sense to us. It was just another of Alice's ramblings.

But later that week, Trevor's dad got into a car accident. He was drunk, ran a red light, and wrapped his car around a street light after Trevor's mom caught him in bed with another woman. At the River Bend Motel, Daddy, Bend, Red. It could have easily been chalked up to a crazy coincidence, Heck, Alice didn't even use the full words.

And I must have been the most level-headed of the bunch because I thought it was a coincidence. But to the other kids in class, it was premonition. Alice knew things. She could see into the future, and she knew our secrets. Alice was officially the mysterious classroom freak, and everyone desperately waited for the next set of coherent words to come dribbling out of her mouth. And a few weeks later, they came. We were working on posters for our social studies assignment when Alice began moaning and snorting.

Her snorts became shorter and words came spitting out. Shadow. Miss Oglehem. Gutter horror. Everyone in the classroom dropped their markers and looked around the room. Jaws dropped. Alice had just confirmed one of the longest standing rumors at our elementary school. the one about the creature that lurked in the sewers in front of old Miss Ogiloham's house.

The shadow creature is what the kids called it, because no one had ever actually seen it. Kids had only caught a glimpse of its shadow through a metal drainage covering as the creature sculpted by underneath the street. But Miss Ogilham knew what it was, according to the legend, of course. She was 70, maybe 80 years old, and she'd been keeping the creature alive for decades. Miss Ogoham didn't go outside much, but when she did it was to dump a bucket of meat and thick red liquid off of her balcony into the gutter, which ran directly into the drainage sewer. Or so the stories went. Again, I didn't believe any of it. While other kids were cursed with imagination, I was cursed with reason.

I'd never seen Miss Ogoham dunk monster food into a gutter, but kids in my class swore up and down that she was cursed. did. I was more creeped out by Miss Ogilham the person than any far-fetched stories about her feeding sewer creatures. I'd only ever seen her once, and it was at the grocery store. I was with my mom, and I remember Miss Ogilham standing at the end of every aisle, just staring at me in my mom as we shopped. She had saggy skin and unkempt blue hair, and I was so creeped out that I pretended to be sick so we could get out of there as quickly as possible. I still didn't believe in the shadow creature, but to the rest of the class, we had confirmation. If Alice said it, then it had to be true.

It inspired my friends to investigate the rumors further. I tried to stop them, and looking back on it now, it wasn't simply to prove that the legends weren't true. I wasn't trying to prove that I was right and my friends were wrong. I think I was sticking up for Alice. I didn't want other kids to viewers. as a freak. She had real problems, not premonitions. It wasn't fair for kids to treat her like some circus sideshow. So when four of us from class snuck out after dark and met at the iron gates in front of Miss O'Boham's house, I was the one that volunteered to go exploring. It was my sense of

reason that gave me courage. I knew there was no shadow creature, and I could dispel the rumors once and for all. And so I chose to go crawling through a drainage pipe. The metal covering was too heavy to lift, so I had to enter at a different spot. Miss Ogoham's house was a block from a river, and that's where the drainage pipe emptied. We made our way to the shores of the river, the beam of my friend's flashlight jostling wildly in the night. I grabbed it from him and steadied it in my right hand. The plan was for me to wiggle inside. the pipe, crawled to the front of Miss Ogoham's house, and report my findings through the metal covering. Honestly, it sounded simple and straightforward. I squirmed inside of the pipe, and I felt the

water seeped through the fronts of my pants. The drain was tight, no more than four feet deep and three feet across. I army crawled ahead, my hands softly splashing down in the small puddles of standing water. The sounds of the outside were soon gone, and I was a little. I was listening to my own breath as I grunted, pushing forward and seeing only blackness and the thin beam of the flashlight ahead of me. I must have been halfway there when I began to regret my decision. My thoughts that had originally been fixated on reason and justice had quickly morphed into fear.

I stopped in the darkness, listening, positive that I'd heard something creeping towards me. No, it's behind me, I thought. I turned my head and called out, thinking it was one of my friends playing a trick on me. I heard nothing. My friends weren't that sneaky. They would have giggled and given themselves away. So I charged forward, trying to double my speed to get to Miss Ogilham's house and see the safety of my friend's faces. I suddenly believed in the shadow creature, and I believed that something lurked down here and I would be its nightly feeding.

I pictured a hideous beast with yellow eyes and saliva glistening off of its razor-sharp fangs, and I desperately wanted to get out of this suffocating pipe that was sure to be my narrow coffin. I heard shuffling behind me, and it was moving fast. It was getting closer and closer, and then something clamped down on my ankle. I screamed and kicked furiously, but my leg would not move. and then I realized my foot was wedged in between two pieces of metal. My breathing slowed and I smiled. My mind was playing tricks on me and I was angry that I had allowed it to win.

This isn't about shadow creatures, I thought. Those aren't real. Just remember why you're inside of this pipe. Alice doesn't deserve to be thought of as a freak. I closed my eyes and I focused on the silence. savoring it. And then I heard the muffled voices of my friends. They were close.

I crawled to the metal covering and looked up, seeing my friend's worried faces through four elongated holes. I told them that I'd found nothing. There was no mysterious shadow creature. No violent scratches in the sides of the pipe or ghastly and grisly growling from an unseen creature. Their faces melted with disappointment. And then I looked to my right, to the drain that came from Miss Ogilham's house.

I was directly at the intersection of that drain and the cramped pipe that I currently called home. Miss Ogilham's pipe was much skinnier, no wider than a soft ball. And inside of that pipe, I saw something glistening. I reached my arm inside and felt something soft and fleshy. I clamped onto it and pulled it out. I shined the flashlight on it. And I stared at it, just stared. I was holding a severed, petite human hand with a diamond ring on its middle finger.

The decomposing skin squished in my fingers. I screamed. Miss Ogilham was arrested shortly afterwards. She had committed murder, and I had found the partial remains of her victim. I had never intended on doing that, but it happened. and it all happened in the name of sanity and reason. I trudged through mud and water to prove that someone in my class was not a freak, and in the end I uncovered the biggest freak in our whole town.

I guess you can call that irony. I was a hero for finding that hand and for exposing the murder of a local young woman. I can always hang my hat on that, but it isn't much. Most days I'd prefer to have never crawled through that pipe. Mainly on days when I kill for a good night's sleep or for a ride on a tight elevator that doesn't end in me suffering a panic attack. But in the end, I was right. Alice Becker didn't have premonitions. She wasn't clairvoyant.

She had real problems, worse problems than the ones I have now. Alice came from a broken home with a drug-riddled prostitute mother. She had direct knowledge of a horrible and frightening underground world. and Alice was simply misunderstood, quite literally sometimes. She never said, Shadow, Miss Ogilham, gut her horror. What Alice said was Shadow, Miss Ogilham, gut her whore. Shadow was the name of the prostitute that was killed, and she was gutted by Miss Ogilham.

Alice knew. She knew all along Kind of like how she knew about the specific tastes of Trevor's father As we found out later on He always had his liaisons in the River Bend Motel And he liked his women to be of a certain type Redheads If you've ever seen a for sale sign go up in front of the house next door

You know how it can lead to a mixture of excitement and trepidation What will your new neighbors be like? Will you become friends with them, or will they be unfriendly? Well, as author J.A. Marks, writes, When one family welcomes a new couple to the neighborhood, they soon realize they have a rather unsettling connection to them. Narrator Tisha Boone and I will read the tale for you about why this couple soon became known as

the copycat neighbors. My parents used to live in a small subdivision about 45 minutes outside of Seattle. According to them, it was a relatively normal middle-class development with decent neighbors. Of course, there were occasional scream-filled arguments from the newlyweds across the street, but nothing one would consider out of the ordinary. Tonight, they explained to me why they moved across the country to the country to the outskirts of New York. You see, my dad was really good friends with the family right next door, but the breadwinner was offered a posh new job in upstate New York.

Damn it, Richard. So, you're leaving us? Who's going to host the Fourth of July barbecue now? He was rather upset, but my mom said he got over it pretty quickly. Three weekends later, the Snyder's house was put up for sale, and they were long gone. My mom didn't really get along with the wife, so she was really excited to see who would move in next door to them. But that excitement was short-lived. There was something off-putting about them.

That was my mom's reaction the first time she saw the new neighbors. They were constantly smart. I mean, 24-7, the smiles never left their faces, and they were whiter than bed sheets. Like they never went outside or something. My dad chimed in. Yeah, and your mother wasn't being overly judgmental either. They just looked, I don't know, different. That's the only way I can describe it to you.

They didn't just write them off, though. My parents aren't like that. After they were situated in their new home, my mom baked them cookies, and they both went over to introduce themselves. The new neighbors answered the door, shoulder to shoulder, the thin-lipped smiles still plastered on their pale faces. My dad said they looked exhausted, but the grins still stayed. Hey, how are you? We live right next door. We thought we would introduce us. ourselves and welcome you to the neighborhood. Thank you. Please come inside, sir, and ma'am. We like you, and you are welcome here always. My parents stayed for about an hour, and during that time barely

any words were exchanged. They both tried asking questions about their careers, previous locations, etc. But the only things they said were very short and vague. The questions were never reciprocated and they sat on their couch, shoulder to shoulder the entire time, even when my parents left their house. We sort of waited for them to walk with us to the front door, but they just sat there. Okay, that's really, really strange. Listen to us. This is just scratching the surface of who these people really were.

The weeks that followed were surreal and terrifying. We decided we are just going to tell you everything, but you have to promise us that you won't be scared or anything. I should have just walked out of the room at that point. Things started to become odd the third day after they moved in. Before all of their boxes were even unpacked, the husband began painting their house exactly like my parents. Theirs was a light cream color with a thin blue stripe around the perimeter,

and by the end of the day, so was the house next door. Apparently my parents didn't bring it up right away. The next day my dad was out mowing the lawn, and so was the neighbor. He was wearing the same hat and using the same brand and model of mower. That upset me, so I sort of confronted him about it. I wasn't aggressive or anything, but I insinuated how there was no way that was just a coincidence, especially since he had painted his house like mine the day before. He just looked at me with that ominous smile and didn't say a word. It was weirding both of us out, so we watched them in

intently for a few weeks. It just got more and more insane as the days went by. A week after the house painting incident, the neighbors next door decided to purchase a new vehicle. And, you guessed it, it was the same car as my parents. A 1987 BMW 3-series convertible in red. That was the straw that broke the camel's back. so to speak.

The next day, my dad invited himself over to ask them some questions. I just tagged along for the ride. I was just curious as to what they had to say about all of this. When they got there, the neighbors opened the door shoulder to shoulder just like last time. Their smiles were wider than ever. Welcome back, sir and ma'am. Yeah, okay. Can we talk for a second? I just need to ask you guys some things. Yes, please come in.

They stepped inside and sat down with them. We were just wondering why you're like copying us. I honestly just want to mind my own business, but it's getting kind of weird. Wouldn't you agree? They paused for a minute, looked at each other and responded, We like our neighbors. We like you. My dad noticed something was upsetting my mom at this point. Her face went flush and she grabbed his leg.

Are you? She whispered to him under her breath. James, we need to get out of here. We need to leave right now. Sorry, guys, we need to go. My wife isn't feeling very well. They left in a hurry. My dad was flustered with my mom, asking her what the fuck was going on and why she got so upset all of a sudden. They got home and she slammed the door.

Jesus Christ, James, Jesus Christ. What the hell is the matter? Can you please just tell me? My mom was almost in tears at this point. James, I looked into their bedroom. They had the door wide open. James, they have the same fucking bedroom as us. The comforter on their bed was the same pattern as ours. They have the same curtains on their windows,

and they have the same nightstands that we do. How the fuck would they know that? They've never been into our house before. What the fuck? Are you being serious? right now. James, have they been inside our house? I asked them why they didn't just go back there and actually confront them or call the

police, but they told me they were just kind of in the denial stage. They didn't want to believe this was actually happening, but they knew it was. They knew exactly what was happening. Neither of them got much sleep that night. Right before they went to bed, my dad set up an old VHS camcorder on a table in the corner of their room, facing their bedroom door. I just had to know, he said. My dad pulled out an old cardboard box full of tapes and popped one into our old VHS player. Watch this.

He fast-forwarded the tape till about an hour in. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. The video showed the copycat neighbors standing at the edge of my parents' bed, shoulder to shoulder. Their smiles were gone. Instead, they had a murderous look on their faces, wrinkled and contorted. They stood there, just watching my parents through the night until the grainy video cut out three hours. I nearly had a heart attack when I watched the tape the next morning. I was scared and then extremely angry.

I grabbed my baseball bat and sprinted over to their house. No one was answering, so I beat their door down. Jesus, what did you do to them? They were gone. All of their stuff was neatly boxed up in the living room. The BMW was still there, but they were gone and never came back. We filed a police report that day. After we showed them the video, they worked extremely hard to find these people, whoever

the hell they were, but there were no leads. The information they used to buy the house and the car was stolen from another couple from Arkansas, there was nothing else on them. We got the hell out of that neighborhood and moved over here for peace of mind. I'm not even sure what to think right now. I'm so sorry. I was truly at a loss for words. I asked them why they waited so long to tell me this story. Remember our old neighbor, Richard Snyder, we were talking about? Your dad still keeps in touch with him a He called last night and told us he has some new neighbors The third day they were there they painted their house just like his

Your episode has come to an end Thank you for spending time with us at the No Sleep podcast If you would like to learn how you can hear the full-length version of this episode Featuring many more stories please visit the no sleeppodcast.com and click on the season pass link. Purchasing a season pass will help support everyone who contributes to the podcast, and in return you'll get 25 full-length episodes and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 1999.

This is David Cummings. Thank you for listening, and join us again for the next episode. of the no sleep podcast.