The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - Night Drive Ep 13 - Real Life Paranormal Tales

Episode Date: March 22, 2025

Tune into Night Drive Paranormal tonight to hear 5 brand new real life paranormal stories to keep you up all night narrated by @thetapelibrary   Sign up to Patreon for early access and shout outs - www.patreon.com/thetaplibrary Subscribe now for more terrifying tales of the paranormal. If you have a story to share then you can email me at [e-mail] CHAPTERS  00:00 Night Drive Paranormal 01:05 House on Village Green 08:32 Black Dog 14:01 Back to the Forest 18:38 The Yellow Girl 26:02 The Crosses 46:57 Wrapping Up Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Well, well, well, the midnight hour is upon us again. Thank you one and all for tuning in to another episode of Night Drive Paranormal. Tonight we're going to be visiting a haunted house, hearing about an encounter with a rather unfriendy dog, heading to a forest that some of you made me familiar with, before wrapping up with two fascinated encounters from the same listener. It's another very international theme to tonight's episode too, from America to South Africa. Romania to England, everywhere it seems, has a ghost story. All stories are presented in the words of the experiencer. It is their views on these topics that you'll hear, not mine.

So, it's time to relax. Get comfortable in your seat, we've got another long drive ahead. So we may as well share some creepy tales, right? Let's jump straight into our first case. I was born and raised in the southern United States, an area referred to as the low country, a coastal southern state that actually sits hundreds of miles below sea level, hence the nickname. My home state exists in a theological paradox. The city I live in is the second most haunted city in the United States, although I couldn't tell you how they measured ghosts per capita. Our haunted status makes sense when you consider the history this part of the country is seen.

The American Revolutionary War, the Civil War, countless skirmages with the indigenous native population, and an untold amount of souls enslaved and dragged from Africa to work until they died, considered more like livestock than human. We also happened to be cinched tightly by the Bible Belt, so called because we belong to a religion where religious beliefs are a cornerstone of our culture and are deeply embedded in the people here. Like everyone else, every activity I was exposed to for the first two decades of my life involved the church. Nursery, school, social activities, even my first kiss.

We had sneaked away from the Wednesday teen worship service and hid in a darkened Sunday school room a few doors down. All of that to say that I knew what the afterlife was. It was a short hallway with two doors at the end. You were judged for the sins you committed on earth, and were sent into either one door or the other, with no room for deviating. That is, until I moved into the house on Village Green. I am the middle of three sisters, and when I was about 14, my mum, younger sister, and I all moved into the Village Green house. From day one, that house never felt empty. Like none of us were ever welcomed there, and the real owner was.

was going to show up at any minute and kick us out. I always felt watched. Even when I was alone, there was a constant feeling that someone was just out of sight, like someone was in another room of the house. It all happened so slowly. I almost did not notice the changes in myself, how I didn't like getting undressed in my room, even with the windows covered and the door locked.

I actually avoided showering because even getting undressed in the bathroom was too much. or how I started unconsciously scanning rooms for possible threats whenever I walked in, was always aware of every environment I was in, and could never fully relax even when watching TV or reading. I would be compelled to get up and check the front and back doors multiple times at night to ensure they were locked. Eventually, my sister and I even started seeing movement, always out of the corner of our eyes,

balls of light or shadows that would follow us, from room to room, like someone who was sneaking around behind us and trying not to be seen. The constant stress and anxiety started causing physical symptoms that I still struggle with to this day. My heart would race constantly. I started experiencing terrible headaches, heartburn, prolonged fatigue and nightly insomnia. It was during an episode of insomnia when I finally realized that I did have a very real reason. to be afraid of the dark. My mum always kept the whole bathroom light on and it would spill into my room via the gap in the doorframe around the door.

And when I had trouble sleeping, I would trace it with my eyes around and around and around until I fell asleep. One night, as usual, I was laying in my bed tracing the soft yellow light with my eyes half open. When all of a sudden I realised that I couldn't see the light anymore. And before I could even begin to rationalise it,

I became aware of a new, far more frightening sensation. Someone was standing next to my bedside, inches from my face. Once I realized what I was looking at, two very distinctive thoughts hit me at once. The first one being that this wasn't a shadow. Whatever was now in front of me had mass and substance, And two, whoever it was stood between me and my door, between me and the safety of the hall light, between me and my mum, I was trapped.

And it was that second realisation that filled me a kind of fear that I have never experienced before or after. My heart pounded and my extremities went cold. I don't know how long I was laying there, my joints aching from the adrenaline coursing through me. but I knew I couldn't stay there. It took even longer for me to finally convince my body to move, and slowly, so slowly, I started to turn my head to look up at the figure looming over me. But the second I started to move,

a sound like a hand brushing across my face whooshed past my ear, and my nerve broke. Throwing my head under the cover I laid still and cried silently until I finally fell asleep, praying and reciting every Bible verse I could think of. We lived in that house for about another year before we finally left. We all have more experiences while living there,

and I have never been happier to have to pick up and move in my life. I still struggle with the aftermath of my time in that house, and I think part of me will always look over my shoulder and keep extra lights on. I have since deconstructed my faith, leaving the Baptist Church and work daily to untangle my personality from the Bible stories I was raised on. I also no longer believe the afterlife is as straightforward as I used to. I guess the hallway isn't so short.

It's long and winding. And in that long hallway after death, there are dark alcoves, where those who may not be ready to face their eternal judgment, can hide themselves in. Maybe Village Green is just such a place. If you want your encounter shared on a forthcoming episode of Night Drive Paranormal, you can drop me an email at the tape library at Protonmail.com. I try to keep my readings as close to how they are sent to me as possible.

These are your stories, so I prefer to read them in your words. So just bear that in mind and try to tell it how you want it. to be remembered. If you've already sent me a story and haven't heard back from me, I apologize. It takes me a long time to get through all these stories, and I don't respond until it's time for me to use one, so rest assured I will likely contact you one day when you least expect it. On to case two now. We've spent a lot of time in the north of England recently on the main channel, so it seems fitting a story would sneak in here too. This experience occurred in 2004 when I was 8 years old in North England, in a small town.

At the time I had a friend the same age who I was visiting after school. From her house we went on a walk up the country lane. She lived in a very old house by the estuary. And next to the house was an old pub that had been boarded up and abandoned. It was quite sad as the spot had once been a lively centre of the community. My parents even met each other in the pub when it was open. Me and my friend were walking back towards the house, passing the car park of the old pub.

We were both excited to see a dog standing in the car park. Both being animal lovers, we approached to say hello to the dog, which was incredibly big and very dark black. The dog's owner appeared to be standing far away, looking out to the river and the dog was off the lead looking towards us as we got closer

however the animal seemed very off they were so still the tail were out straight like when a dog spot something interesting no noise of breaths no movement whatsoever it was like looking at a still image

a photograph but three-dimensional as if time had just been pulled The dog was probably the size of a Great Dane, so very big and tall, with huge paws that reminded me of a lion. Its appearance most closely resembled an English ball mastiff. The smooth velvet-like fur was so black that no light seemed to reflect off it, like those videos of the special paint Vantablack that absorbs light. There was just enough light that I could still see some of its features.

If that wasn't weird enough, it had orange-red eyes that emitted a soft glow. There was no pupil, but we were close enough to see the eyeballs illuminated from the back of the head. I even saw a vein in the eye. We were probably only a metre away from it. We stood there for only a few seconds, enough that I could remember all these details, where my friends stepped back slightly. the dog started to dissipate into nothing. The way it faded away looks like when you turn up the exposure on a photograph,

so high that all the details wash away. It began at the dog's feet, then the body, and finally the two red eyes lingered in the air for some time, and then just nothing at all. Me and my friends stood in shock for a while and then looked around to confirm the dog hadn't, run away, even though we both didn't see that. It was just so weird to comprehend. The person we saw

stood by the river, who I assumed was the dog walker, was nowhere to be seen either. We had planned to go on the riverbank that evening, but now we excitedly went inside the friend's home to tell her mum about the experience. Strangely, throughout the whole incident, we were never scared. It should have been frightening but we didn't feel any sense of danger or bad vibes at all. Once we told my friend's mum she surprisingly believed us and said she had seen what she called the ghost dog in the pub when it was open and seen the apparition stood in their garden. She then explained that the whole area in her opinion was very haunted

and the whole family and locals had lots of strange experiences I even later had another spooky experience in that friend's house. But that is another long story. And that time, it was very frightening, so much so that I don't really like to speak about it in great detail. After that thing happened, I never went back to my friend's house, and we eventually drifted apart. As an adult, I've done some research into the history of the area,

and legends of the Black Shuck, a ghostly dog of folklore. The dog is mostly told as a bad omen and a bringer of harm in these stories. However, I did find some accounts that suggest otherwise. This dog wasn't bad. I would have reached out and touch it if it had been there long enough. I like to think, like in some legends, the dog is a protective spirit. Perhaps it was distracting us from going to the riverbank, where the tides are quick.

to turn, as well as having deadly sinking mud. I'm happy to have experienced this magical encounter, even if a rational explanation can be given. Case number three now, and I had to include this one. Last year I covered the tales around a forest in Romania called Huya Bachu on the tape library. Numerous people commented their experiences of visiting the forest, but one sent it in to share with you all. Hello. I saw the video you did on Hoyabatu and I thought I'd share my stories with you. During the pandemic, my friends and I used to camp there since it was quite remote and we didn't want any trouble. I have to say that at the time, we never ventured deep into the forest, just stayed near the entrance to keep it safe. Three years later, some of us wanted to go back to relive old memories.

We parked our cars about 100 metres from the forest right across from it. For the most part, it was a peaceful night, but around 2 a.m., we heard a scream, like never before. It didn't sound like a fox, I was used to the foxes in that area, and they don't sound like that. The scream lasted about five seconds, but it was so loud that we all froze. Then all the dogs in the area started barking like crazy. A few moments later, the scream came again. But this time it was more distant. It had a very high-pitched tone, almost like someone in pain.

To this day, I still don't know what could have made such a loud, unsettling sound that disturbed all the dogs in the area. This happened in an area towards the back part of the forest. We got scared and decided to go home right after. I really didn't want to find out what was there. For maybe half a year I didn't have the courage to go back, but for the sake of mystery, and to be honest, the adrenaline, my friends and I decided to return.

I don't remember exactly what time we arrived, but it was before midnight. It was quiet. Nothing happened. Then the group decided, let's go into the forest. We followed what looked like a forest path for about 15 minutes before deciding to venture off the trail into a valley. We took a break and sat down on some chopped trees.

The weather was perfect, no wind, no movement, nothing. We sat there talking for about 10 minutes, just enjoying ourselves. Then we heard a cracking noise. Suddenly a huge branch fell. Keep in mind there was no wind, nothing. The tree was tall, maybe 20 metres and the branch fell. branches were solid. When we looked up, we could see exactly where it had broken off. The part of the branch that remained intact kept swinging, up and down, like someone was moving it.

At that moment, we decided to leave, and we got scared. After we made it back to our cars, we stood around talking about what had happened and what could have caused it. Then, in the distance. I heard something, like a woman's voice singing a slow, mellow song. I couldn't make out the lyrics, but one thing I know for sure, it came from the forest. Somewhere far away. In Romanian folklore, there are witches called Leli. They are women who perform dark rituals, and from what I've heard from elders, they lure men to them. Honestly, hearing that voice. Somewhere deep in the forest fit the description perfectly, especially since it's well known that rituals are performed in Hoibatu. This happened about a year ago. We still visit

Hoyer from time to time, but after that night, we haven't really encountered anything else. My name is Roel, I'm 21 and I grew up in Kluge. I will always find that place intriguing, and for the sake of mystery, I'll continue to visit from time to time. If you are enjoying these stories, then please do be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on any future releases. We're only going to one more submission tonight, but that's because this is a long one. This is actually two different experiences from the same person. I do always find it interesting when someone can point to experiencing strange events like this at different points in their life.

So get yourself comfortable and let's get into a good old go story. I don't know how I can keep calling myself a staunch skeptic, but I am. I can't help it. It's in my very DNA, this ability to rationalise. Ridiculous, seeing as how I've had not one, but multiple brushes with a paranormal.

Tonight, I'll tell you about two. I'll tell you the tamer one first. also the shortest, so I'd rather we got it out the way before the big, truly horrific one. I guess the moral of this first story is that ghostly encounters are often so rooted in the mundane that you don't even know they're happening until it's pointed out to you. Or maybe that's just me. I'm South African, and for a short while between the years of 2009 and early 2011, I attended an all-girls private school. Despite life's there being hell for me. Nothing prepared me for what I ran into during my piano practice one morning.

I'd had a free period and decided to spend it on my exam work in one of the music rooms. Our music program required eight hours of documented practical work a day, and I was yet to master my baroque piece. I entered the room with my favourite piano, shutting the door behind me and throwing home the deadbolt to indicate the room was occupied to anyone else needing a space. Helps not to be interrupted, you understand. This became moot, however, when I looked up to find I had a co-occupant, a girl about my age wearing a plain yellow dress. Almost all schools in South Africa require uniforms.

Her dress was a striking difference to my violet floral one. She was sat in the wind seal, her hair down, which was also against the dress code, and she was staring out the window. Gingerly, I approached her to ask her whether or not. I could perhaps use the piano in this room, or if she was planning to use it. You see, my school's music program was the best in our town, and many kids from other schools came to do their music with us. However, my question, my presence, went on acknowledged.

She made no move at all. I may as well have been talking to the wall. At this stage, I assumed she was wearing earbuds and I couldn't see them, Through her cascade of flagrant red hair, I sat down to practice. Finally, the bell rang, signalling my next class, and I got up to leave. This, at least, seemed to grab my silent companion's notice, and she moved as if she, too, had some place to be. Again, I'd try to engage with her, to thank her for letting me borrow her space. She may have been facing me now

but her eyes did not come up to meet mine Now I've never been a proponent for eye contact Finding it far too distracting and invasive But I genuinely believed she just couldn't hear me So I manoeuvred to catch her gaze I had barely a moment to take in her intense green eyes And smattering a freckles Before she

Appearing quite startled vanished into thin air. I liked a report that I took it in stride, as a self-proclaimed horror connoisseur, but every hair on my body stood straight up, and my blood turned to ice in my veins. I got out of that room so fast, I practically ran through my music teacher, who was coming in to take a different student. Once upstairs and seated in my French period, my usually ignored presence was noted when one of the other girls asked me why I looked sick.

Losing my mind, I guess, I decided I had to confide in someone. I told the girl everything, sparing no detail or observation. To my great confusion, she frowned. You haven't seen her before? The girl asked earnestly. I'm aware you all think I'm weird as shit, but even I don't go about making friends with the dead, I retorted. First of all, she responded, we don't think it. You are weird as shit, and you scare most people.

Second of all, you just saw The Yellow Lady. The who? I responded. This is when I learned of our school's ghost story. Apparently it had been a lady's finishing school at its inception. A mother and her two children, a teenage girl and her much younger brother, had come to live on campus in exchange for keeping the school. clean and tidy. Now there was always this one staircase us kids were never allowed to use, called the big staircase, because I expect grand seemed a tad cliche to them or whatever.

The staircase had been installed during the mother and her child's tenure. One day the teenage daughter in her yellow maid's dress had been sweeping near there. She tripped, tumbled right down the stairs and broken her neck. dying on impact. My mistaking her for a student from a neighbouring school had been because said school also had yellow dresses of the same cut and style as our school dresses. And the yellow lady, as she was known, wore a maid's dress

that bore a striking resemblance to that other school's uniform. After all of this had been made plain to me, I'd realised I had seen this girl before, all over school amongst my fellow student. As I said, though, having students from neighbouring high schools on our campus was far from uncommon, we offered subjects the other schools didn't, but were allowed to come take at ours. I guess I just thought she was one of them. All this to say, it was maybe a week or so after the encounter that I was on my way back

down to the music block for a lesson, before reaching the relevant staircase that would lead me straight there. However, I could hear the sounds of sweeping and humming, a pretty voice and a rhythmic whoosh on the worn and warm wooden flooring. It's necessary to point out that this was right by the big staircase, which is not the one I would be taking. As I approached, I expected to see one of the school's cleaners, but even when I was surrounded by the sounds, I saw no one. Taking the chance and internally calling myself insane, I out-reaching.

loud said, Thank you for letting me borrow your music room the other day. The humming and sweeping stopped instantly, the corridor becoming silent as a grave. Then, in barely a whisper, I swore I heard a delicate little voice say. Yes, miss.

Needless to say, I nearly fell down the stairs in my haste to get away. Many other stories surround the yellow lady haunting, and I would be happy to share some at a later date if you would like. For now, let's move on to the big one. In 2019, I took my first official job as a high school English teacher. An easy Google search will reveal where, as it's known as the most haunted city in South Africa.

I was 24 at the time and excited to get out and be a real adult for the first time in my life. A few context clues before we get started on the story. The most affordable accommodation I could find was a suite in the women's dormitory of a school for children with severe special needs. This was not the school I taught at. The school I taught at was a small, severely fundamentalist Christian public school that frequently had to rely on the law to manage the disciplinary infractions of its students. It quite quickly became clear to me that no one there was at all interested in helping me or even listening to what I had to say.

This included my unwitting roommate. Despite the following account, I remain a healthy skeptic to this day, more likely to look for a logical explanation to odd occurrences, then immediately jumping to the supernatural. This story simply cannot be explained by anything logical that I found. The first thing I noticed was the heat. Now this city is in one of the hottest places, in the country. But somehow it was always five to ten degrees hotter in my suite at all times.

This made sleep and existence in this room practically impossible. But as a young teacher with a barely livable salary, I had no other choice. More exhausting still, however, was one of the other tenants, an older woman who, for reasons I may never understand, faulted her duty to convert me. At this point I had finally begun to shake off officially the yoke of Calvinistic Christianity under which I'd been raised. Out from under my blindly believing family, I was finally free to make up my own mind, and all my introspection led me to one clear conclusion. I cannot subscribe to something as illogical, flawed and dangerous as organised religion. That stuff's more addictive than crack and just as hard to get clean from. My point being this woman seemed to

smell this on me and would begin actively waiting for me in places she knew I'd be to spread the good word. It took me being cruel beyond my means to get her to back off finally, but I'm getting ahead of myself. After the heat, it was my front door. You see, this school and its facilities were severely underfunded. This means that maintenance on the building was practically non-existent. You needed something replaced or fixed? Forget about it. You simply no longer have access to that thing. One such maintenance issue was the latching on the doors. They simply wouldn't. The only way of keeping the door shut was to lock them. So I fell into the habit of doing this quite quickly. Not a little in part because God's most devoted

at zero compunction about banging my door open to come and visit and through her nonsense the unbearable heat in my room and my constant exhaustion and dehydration I needed to get at least

some work done for my students this all became moot though when my door would still sometimes just swing open I would make a point of locking it and leaving my key in the lock to make sure it couldn't be unlocked from the other side,

and it would simply still open by itself. Unlocked and without the handle turning. Never when I tugged on it or checked the integrity of the lock, but by itself, at odd intervals, especially at night. When it really began to get insane for me was when things started going wrong at school as well. I had an incident in my classroom involving one student

trying to beat another with a brick. Trust and dismay at the fact that this is quite commonplace in most schools here, and I unthinkingly stepped between them to attempt to de-escalate the situation. Not only did I get one of my legs bashed up pretty badly, but the principal gave me a disciplinary for stepping in, instead of calling the school disciplinarian. I'll just let the kids beat each other to bloody pulps with masonry in future, shall I? While I run around looking for some joke of an afford,

that's barely ever where he's easily locatable. I, aye, I, captain. That same day, I noticed the first cross, well, a crucifix, drawn upside down on the wall above my bed. This is where I should make a few admissions, dear listeners. The main reason for my scepticism isn't because I'm some big proponent for logical thinking above all else, or because I have some deep understanding of the machinations of the world.

I used to be a severely sick person. Before my ADHD and autism were diagnosed, my panic disorder frequently got the better of me and made me highly irrational. It got bad enough that I developed psychosis and hallucinations were not beyond the scope of my brain's attempts to alleviate the incessant onslaught of anxiety I had to deal with every second of every day.

For this reason, it was much easier for me to believe in my own insanity than anything tangibly odd or outside the ordinary. I couldn't even bring myself to completely rule out, my door randomly opening, being a dysfunction of my thoughtfulness, despite triple checking it every time I locked it. So when the first upside-down crucifix appeared, I was more than comfortable, chalking it up to a stressed-induced psychosis,

and leaving it at that. I just wish that's where it stopped, but, alas. On another day, after the third crucifix had appeared, this one painstakingly scratched into the anti-glare film on my sweet solitary window. My school received a call in which I was accused of being an incorrigible devil-worshipper, with an utter disdain for God and all he stood for. Logic, right?

I don't believe in Christianity. so I must worship the devil. Like Mr. Lucifer isn't the Christian villain. Why would I believe in the villain if the entire story doesn't strike my fancy? Anyway, it was my neighbour, Miss Head of the Jesus fandom, rebutting after I told her I was crazy enough without needing to add hearing another voice in my head to the mix. God can take a long walk off a short peer.

Like I mentioned earlier, cruelty beyond my means. I've never had anything against religion as a concept. my family are all staunch believers and find great comfort in going to church and reading their Bibles I support them 100% and will gladly go to church with them when they ask I just don't believe it myself but by this point I'd really gotten sick of this woman on top of everything else

I was in fact starting to entertain the notion that all the weird stuff happening to me was her She seemed a type. She was highly irrational on a good day and actively sat waiting for me for hours outside my suite, just to give me another sermon on why her faith was the one universal truth. I was considering filing a restraining order. That is, until my stuff started disappearing and reappearing in different places, instantly. First, it was the water bottles.

Like I said, I lived in a constant state of. dehydration from being so hot and sweaty all the time. So I often drunk up to three litres of water a day just to keep up with all the fluid I was losing. But I put a bottle down beside my bed before immediately reaching for it again and finding nothing, only to look up and see it sitting four metres away on my little table. I was once lesson prepping and a binder full of model lesson plans and work sheets and such, slid off my lap and onto the floor. where I would hear it clatter to the linolium, only for me to have looked down at it not a second later, to find the entire thing gone. Even the loose sheets of paper piled on top of it that I was using for reference would have vanished into thin air.

Glancing up to check my surroundings, I found it sitting, closed, and with all the papers returned to their correct plastic sleeves on my nightstand, things only escalated. there was the incident of the fire. Along with a new job comes taking over some of the financial responsibilities your parents took on you when you were a child. One of these was my phone. At this point I couldn't afford a new phone. Instead, I was living between two old broken ones that I'd kept alive on a month-by-month basis.

One of the things I had to watch out for was one of these phones was overheating. So since my room was all, already a sauna. I could only charge my phone there a little bit to give it enough juice for the alarm to wake me the following morning. Then I would take it with me to continue charging it at school, where it was much cooler. One night I woke up to severe pain in my right hand. My eyes flew open, and I sat up with a start, taking in the foul-smelling blaze raging up on my rug area, which had begun to burn my hand. I'd forgotten to unplug my phone, and it burnt out so badly it caught fire.

Freaking out, I took one of my precious bottles of clean water. You cannot drink tap water in most of this country, and most people either pay for filtered water refills at grocery stores, or have water filters installed in their homes, and I attempted to douse the flames. But when I turned around, the fire was gone. The smell still filled the room, but I realised then it smelled sulphurous, not really like burning plastic or battery discharge. Plus the phone was still burnt out, with visible scorch marks and bubbles where the casing had begun to warp from the heat.

But, as it lay there in the centre of my area rug, it was the only thing damaged. My rug didn't have a mark on it. After this, sleeping in that room became impossible. I was exhausted at work. My teaching was suffering. My department head hated me, and it became clear that I wasn't going to be able to stay at the school much longer. Calling my parents proved fruitless.

They only told me to tough it out and ask for help from management, which they wouldn't hear wasn't help me out in the slightest. So trust me when I tell you, that in my vulnerable state, I had completely given over to my mental illness. I believed I was crazy, useless, beyond help, and I was spiraling towards a very dark place indeed. And that, friends, was when the scratching started. It was never quiet or gentle,

it sounded like there was an animal in my closet, desperately trying to get out. Now something a lot of people don't talk about is, how the coolness under pressure aspect of ADHD, especially untreated ADHD, can hinder just as much as it can help. When I first started hearing the scratching, I was too depleted to move to check it out. Walking from my bed to my front door winded me. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep. I felt completely isolated and alone. I had no sanctuary anywhere. My family lived 800 kilometres away. So instead of linking this with all the other weirdness that I was battling to keep putting down to my slowly dwindling sanity, I rationalised.

Maybe the gross old building had rats. When I would open my closet door at times, recalling the scratching, I would even find definite scratch marks in the wood, but always in the part of the closet for hanging clothes, a little higher than my eye level of 1.64 metres. or 5'4 for our American listeners. But never high enough to be level with the crossbar. Then one night after coming home from a work event, the scratching was already going on while I let myself into my suite. Without thinking, I yanked open the door,

for going turning on my lights and plunged my hand into the void of darkness inside. Some kind of shadowy thing came out to meet me, though. Like a massive black finger. with a claw for a nail, and scratched my arm. Despite almost never scarring, I still had that scar to this day, even though my burn scars from the fire have since faded. As it was, I yelped and pulled my arm back, slamming the door shut. I slept with my sweet door open that night, letting the light from the corridor spill inside.

The scratching did not cease once. Finally, the day came when I tended my resignation from that school. It honestly had nothing to do with the haunting. Thinking back on it now, that was actually the tamest part of my life at that time. My brother offered to come load up my furniture the next day, and I was going home. I felt so relieved, I can't even describe it, even now. Unfortunately, at this point, I have to share one more. tip bit about this dormitory I temporarily called home. It did not have working showers or baths.

All the showers poured brown sludge instead of water. In fact the building frequently did not even have water. Another common occurrence in this third world hellhole. I was showering at the gym and feeling disgusted the rest of the time. As this was my last night here however, I had already cancelled my gym membership and I needed a wash pretty badly. Packing up in that sweltering cesspool of a room had left me filthy and we had received a notification text from the matron that day that one of our baths was fully functional. So I put together on my bathings, got undressed, wrapped myself in a towel and set off down the passage to the bathroom. Excited to freshen up, go to sleep and leave this place as soon as possible.

So naturally, as luck and ADHD would have it, I forgot to bring with me a plastic picture, for which to wet my hair for shampoo. My dumb ass will never beat the white girl in a horror movie allegations when I, in my infinite wisdom, leaned back and slowly submerged my entire body underwater. It was instantaneous. The twin spots of pressure on my chest came on almost predictably. opening my eyes I could clearly see that there was no one there

I was completely alone and yet something was pressing down on me keeping me underwater I'd taken quite a big breath before going under though so instead of losing my mind and frashing that old calm in a pinch ADHD quirk kicked in I decided to see if I could wait it out and I could

the pressure went away a moment later When I sat up to grab my shampoo and finish my bath, however, I found both my toiletries bag and my towel were gone. Vanished. Nowhere to be seen. At this point, I cut my losses. I got out, shook off as much water as I could, and made a bare-ass break for it to my room. My brother found the missing items the next day when we lifted and carried out my couch from my room. A couch, mind you that I hadn't lifted up and searched under myself the previous night

when I'd scoured my room in a last-ditch effort to try and find my lost things. It was as I handed over my keys to the matron, and she asked how my stay had been, that I first felt free enough to discuss my ordeal. Something in a tone gave me pause, and some small part of me still held out hope that I wasn't destined for a grippy sock vacay in a piece. pillow room. Did the previous occupant of that room report anything strange? I asked her as my brother honked his horn impatiently for us to go. It was fair we had quite a journey ahead of us. I wouldn't know, the matron answered, not unkindly. It was before my time. I frowned. How long have you

been here? Fifteen years, she answered, with a hint of pride. But then her expression changed as though her switch had been flipped. Let me ask you this, though. Did the crosses show up? Suddenly, despite it being 42 degrees Celsius, again about 108 Fahrenheit out, I felt ice cold. Crosses?

She nodded slowly, pensively. When I was new, the previous tenant of your room had just left, the matron before me had been sharing me around and we found the door to your room ajar now the old woman was formidable as they come which she'd need to be in our line of work but even she wouldn't set foot inside that place she said there was something dark in there

something inhuman from where we stood we watched as a crudely drawn upside down crucifix slowly faded from the one wall. It was then that I recalled not seeing as many of the crosses over the last few days, as though whatever presence I had been sharing my space with had known I was leaving. Over the course of my three-month stay,

there had been about eight crosses in various places throughout the room. Some looked like they had been drawn with fatty, dirty fingers on the wall, while others, like the one on my window and on my closet door. had been scratched into each surface. Now I wouldn't know how to explain any of that to my brother, so I've been quite worried about him coming to help me move. But as the matron told her story, I realised I didn't recall seeing the crucifix on my closet door, or the one above my room's light switch at any point drew my brother and I's comings and goings from the room for the move. I hadn't answered her about the crosses, couldn't bring myself even to mention any of my ordeal now

that I was so close to freedom, but I did mention how it'd probably be a good idea not to let people live in that suite anymore. She'd only nodded sagely before wishing me luck for the future. As we put the city in the rearview mirror, it was like coming out of a long illness. I could suddenly breathe again, and the world had colour and life.

I still don't know what that thing was, a demon, an elaborate, persistent hallucination? The supernatural or just a severe bout of mental illness? You be the judge. All I do know, though, is I've never experienced anything like that before, and nothing nearly as otherworldly since. Thank you for this accepting community you've created.

I hope these stories at the very least entertain, if they cannot be believed. I guess I know they happened And that's good enough for me It's time for me to leave you all for another night I'm afraid my friends I hope this hasn't been too creepy And you are all nice and relaxed now I just wanted to take a moment to talk about this show as a whole

Night Drive Paranormal was always intended to be a bonus To my main show, the tape library Early on when creating the tape library I would regularly share stories people had sent me or I found online, but that was never really what I imagined the show would be. It was always intended to be more the deep-dive documentary-style episodes you are now all familiar with. But I know a percentage of the audience loves these listener stories, and to be honest, I love getting to sit down and just read some creepy stories for you all.

So I'm really pleased Night Drive became a thing. I do like to think of this show as our own little digital campfire, where we can share stories. I also actually really love that this is a smaller audience than the main show. It just makes it feel a lot more intimate, I guess. I know the releases of Night Drive Paranormal are a little sporadic. I would love to say this will change, but I'm not sure it will. The tape library is my day job now and takes up a lot of my focus, whereas Night Drive I really just do for fun.

Recently, I've been working on some really difficult and long projects for the tape library, so Night Drive has unfortunately suffered a little bit. But I have no intention of stopping NightDrive paranormal. Hopefully this can be something that continues for a long, long time. I just ask that you can all be a bit patient with it. If I'm not uploading a new episode, it's likely because I'm knee-deep in a story about an invisible talking giraffe that is haunting a mansion or whatever craziness I stumble into next.

Thank you to you all for tuning into tonight's episode. And a special thank you to all my YouTube and Patreon members who support what I do. Our tape library archivist, Umako, Grimm, Sandy Lus, Creestock 11731, Mira, Judith Hacker, Gabrielle, Eric Salas, Destiny M, Ashlar's Books, Dagan O'Dorleg, Dirtnap 69, Ladybet Noir, Adeline, Peter McCann, Jolly, The Crimson Diem, Harrison Stil, Juno, Georgia Harvey, Dominic DiAnglist, Dean Jay Dayley, Jay, Joe, Callicott, Dara, Girore, Midiasabine, Montana Martin, Packer, Serious Wack, The Detective, Emmy, Sandoval and Tucker RVB. The lead archivist Vaniel, Brian Baker, old soul like mine, Lord William, Tracy Terrello, Xavier Angle, Tyler Michael, Ridiculous, 1000th Ghost, London Grace, Melissa Harrison, Creepy Candy, Plague Doctor Is In, Amy Stubblefield,

Alex O'Neill and Alex Goldberg, and our extremely generous Grand Overseers, Morning Rain 2619, Katie, Agent 355, Leah Carmella, and Bad Diddle. Thank you all so much. signed up to one of the higher tiers on Patreon and I haven't included you in the shoutouts. Please feel free to drop me a message on there to tell me off. Sometimes it's difficult to track down all the names through the notifications. I'll be back next week with a brand new entry into the tape library and I will see you all soon for another night drive together. Get home safe.