The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - Night Drive Paranormal Episode 22

Episode Date: April 30, 2026

Welcome to Night Drive Paranormal. Tonight, I have a whole host of brand new paranormal encounters to share with you. These are real stories, submitted by listeners from different countries and cultures, each describing encounters that defy easy explanation. From quiet hauntings to unsettling late-night experiences, this episode is designed for slow listening, something to play on a night drive, in the dark, or as you drift off to sleep. As always, this is not sensationalised horror. There are no jump scares, no loud interruptions, just the stories told as they were experienced. Drive safe. Keep the volume low. And if something feels close… don’t turn around. 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] Additional footage and audio from Evanto, Artgrid, Epidemic Sounds, Singularity, Midjourney and Pexels. Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio and the youtube audio library. All other footage used under fair use. CHAPTERS 00:00 Night Drive Paranormal 01:07 Show Yourself 21:04 The Dark House 28:49 Followed By The Sky 36:21 The Hatchet Lady 39:52 A Glitch In the Night 49:03 Wrapping Up SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions. spectrevisionradio.com linktr.ee/spectrevisionsocial Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Ryan Sprague. When I was 12 years old, my father and I stared up into the night skies, and we saw something extraordinary staring back. And whatever it was sent me on a search to find answers to the UFO phenomenon and beyond. And that search continues somewhere in the skies. Coming to you from Spector Vision Radio, the Somewhere in the Sky's podcast features conversation, interviews and roundtable discussions with scientists, scholars, historians, pop culture figures,

and prominent UFO researchers. We also hear directly from you, the listeners, about your personal UFO sightings and encounters. Lastly, we bring you fascinating and engaging case histories. Each week is something different and truly unique. Somewhere in the skies doesn't seek to just entertain. We seek the truth. We bring new questions and theories to the table. We bring new voices to the discussion.

And we attempt to possibly find some answers to those mysteries that lay somewhere in the skies. New episodes are every Monday through Spector Vision Radio on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome to Night Drive Paranormal. Thank you for tuning in tonight. I'm curious about where you all are. Out there in the dark. Sat at home? Driving in your car.

At work late. Either way I'm going to be here to keep you company for the next hour. I've got a whole host of paranormal and unexplained cases to discuss with you tonight. All of these stories have been sent into the studio by all of you listeners out there. As close as possible, these stories are read in the words of the experiences. Whatever you choose to believe, these people all claim at least that their experiences really happened. So get yourself comfortable and let's get into our first story tonight. As many of us say, this happened.

But I don't write and tell the event to turn any sceptics. Instead, I'm speaking to others who have had an encounter. an encounter. Some of the details I've heard in other paranormal accounts are recurring themes. I hope that some day mainstream science will become more involved, as I am by nature scientifically minded. And that's likely why I've spent a great deal of time trying to make my mind believe it was anything but what I know it was. Every step, every escalated incident, you try to tell yourself it's impossible. No one wants their paradigm to shift so dramatically. This occurred to me in 2008. I knew the minute it came and the minute it was gone. Nothing before, nothing after. A six-month

journey through the surreal. This is what happened to me. I woke up in the dark with a fear deep inside of me, a primal fear and dread. My mind was a The mind was registering that someone had come in through the dog door in my room that led to the backyard. The door was made for large dogs but you would still have to be a slight build to crawl through it. I hadn't seen anything, but I was so convinced by the sinking feeling in my chest that someone was in the room, that I developed a plan for what to do if they tried to get past my bed to the door, Or if they came over to me. I couldn't let the intruder into the main body of the house, as my son's room was down the hall.

If they tried that door, I would take them from behind. But then the feelings decided. Was it only a dream? Yes, that must be it. And I started to calm down. As soon as I felt that it wasn't happening. I saw a smallish hunched figure slowly pass in front of my bed. It was darker than the black of my room.

Inky black. The way it moved wasn't natural. It was slinking. Kind of like it was dragging one foot. The primal fear returned surged through my being in a way I've never known before. terror and dread. Whatever it was, my subconscious was way ahead of me, screaming for me to do something. However, my brain was really struggling to process what was happening. I remember glancing out the window to the street, noting the passing car lights and thinking,

No, not a dream. I'm awake, as my mind searched for a rational explanation. But the The thing didn't seem to be there anymore. My eyes strained in the dark room to find it. Nothing. My door never opened. My mind is racing but my body stops tensing and I try to breathe. Then I feel it. I feel it close to me to my right.

I slowly glance up to the chest next to the bed and there it is. Squatting atop my clothes chest, perched almost, but looking straight ahead, not at me. Its body position reminded me of a downhill skier, that inky black form was seared into my memory for life, gargoyle-esque in the way it was perched, very small, at most four-foot and skinny. No features, just black as pitch, darker even. As my eyes land on the shape, I see the black form slowly turn its head and look down at me. That was too much, and I panicked. I dove towards the left side of the nightstand and snapped the light on.

And nothing. It was gone. sign of anything and my heart rate finally slowed. All I could think was what the fuck was that? I had to convince myself I had seen shadows cast by passing headlights to make myself go back to sleep. But at my core I knew it hadn't been. A recurring theme to these six months was me lying to myself to make this fit into my idea

of reality. I had cultivated for 38 years as an atheist and sceptic and struggling to do so. The next odd thing that happened was me waking up to my mother, yelling, Shane, from the other room. But it wasn't her now, and she was 60. This was a younger version of her voice. I had the thought that I didn't know she could still sound like that, so I arose and went into the living room and made ready to ask her how she made her voice sound like it did when I was a young

child. The house was empty. I quickly got on the phone and called her, thinking she must have been in a hurry. She told me she had not been at my house, and my blood ran cold. I know I heard it as I woke up. I kept it to myself as I was still trying to make sense of it. The exact order of some of these events I cannot recall, but I will list them as I remember them. Another happening, possibly the first thing after the slinking shadow in the night episode, was the brush incident. This happened in broad daylight, one of the few times when there was another witness. I'm sitting at my PC, and my son is laying on the bed watching TV. My daughter left her brush on my nightstand and I remember thinking that I needed to remind her to pick up after herself. So as I stared at the screen, I saw something

launched towards my head. I turned in time to see the brush hit the wall and my son stared in shock and confusion. I said, did you see that? He nodded slowly. Now, here is a part of a paranormal encounter you don't hear discussed. The aftermath. It's super hard to continue with your day when your entire world view expands into spaces you thought were only fantasy and reality is much more than we had come to believe. So my son and I sit staring at nothing for over an hour, mostly quiet but muttering what could have made that happened and shaking our heads, unable to find any news.

known force that could launch a brush from a nightstand on an upward trajectory with good velocity at my head. It took days not to think of it and for the hair on the back of my neck to rise. Even the telling of this induces a shadow of that sickening feeling of fear and dread. One evening I was ready to go to sleep, my trusty little companion Rocco, my chihuahua, curled up at the end of the bed. A moment after I turned the lights out, A growl that sounded more like a wolf than a chihuahua emanated from under my bed. I quickly flipped my light back on, and Rocco was still fast asleep. But I tried very hard to make my mind believe it had to have been my dog, somehow.

But deep down I knew better. It was low, guttural, terrifying. I made myself look under the bed. here I am 6'3 250 pounds and I'm shaking to look under my bed So things kept feeling Off Like I was being watched

Like if I turned fast enough Someone would be there I'm starting to come to terms with it And I found myself saying over and over Please don't let me see anything Any form like that first night because I knew it might be too much my psyche to handle and I needed to stay grounded.

I have a life, a good job and I can't have some kind of nervous breakdown that was already losing hours and hours asleep. For instance I found myself waking up at night to murmuring. Like a group of people were in a room down the hall and everyone was talking but I could never make out any of the words.

One night as I'm trying to decide whether my older neighbour could have his TV up loud enough for me to hear. I concluded that a TV would have rises and falls and blank spots. It would be sporadic. This was constant and at the same decibel level, just too low to make any words out. I slowly realised the sound was coming from within my walls. I placed my ear up to the wall and strained to hear any of the walls. to hear any of the words. I held my breath to try and make out what was being said. Then I heard a hiss,

then crack. It sounded like a baseball bat hit my dresser. I jumped out of my skin. My first instinct was run, but then I thought, I'm a full-grown man and this is my damn bedroom. So I steadied myself and turned the lights on. Then I saw it. It was a wooden puzzle of the United States that my niece had left out. It must have slid across the floor, thus the hissing sound, and cracked into my dress so it falls. The puzzle pieces had all popped out and were everywhere. This was when I could no longer deny that something abnormal was happening.

I thought back to when my grandfather lived in the house and he died in the room. I now stayed. But surely my own grandfather wouldn't be trying to scare the living hell out of me. Another time I was trying to fall asleep, and as I was dozing off I felt two fingers, pushed the back of my shoulder, as if to say, hey, wake up. It wasn't rough or malevolent, but it was rather obvious. I told myself it must have been that falling sensation you can have when slipping into sleep. But as soon as I calmed and closed my eyes, tap.

It happened again. But still playful and non-threatening. So I just said, please let me sleep. I have work tomorrow. And all was calm. This was the start of me trying to communicate with this thing. As I'm thinking at this point, as long as it doesn't show me an apparition, I can deal with it.

My true fear was it showing itself, because I wasn't sure that would be good for my mental health. So the entity continues to get boulder and more aggressive. One evening I was home alone, the sun starting to drop, but it was still a warm, bright, sunshiny day. The neighbours were grilling out. I start to hear my floorboard creak as someone slowly walks down the hall, past the kitchen and up to my door. I say come in, although I hadn't expected company.

Nothing. No knock. Silent. Then I heard soft, slow footsteps, walking away from the door. Now that's odd, so I get up and look. Nothing. I searched every room, closet and under the beds. Now I'm wondering if someone came in, realised someone was here and left.

We had never locked our door. because we live in a largely crime-free area. I thought I probably needed to start locking it. So I sit back down and continue reading. A few minutes later, footsteps. So I fly out of my chair into the body of the house and still cannot find a source. I come back into the room, shut the door and lock it.

And then I said, So I hear you walking around. Can you open the door? I pause and listen. Nothing. I mumbled to myself, that's what I thought, and returned to my desk chair. As soon as my fingers hit the keyboard, I hear a click, click. I turn to look back at the door and the door flies open with shocking velocity.

I grabbed my phone and ran out of the back door onto the deck. I remember the neighbours were having a fairly small family barbecue next door but it barely registered as I looked into my room. It looked like a wind tunnel, papers and my belongings being flung around wildly. And I see a small black shape that I took for a cat with the zoomies, going around and around the room, far too fast and sustained to be an animal. This to my mind is way too far. frankly I'm exhausted with the fear. So I yell into my room, look, you can stay but you must stop scaring me. And the wind died immediately. And I remember watching a paper flutter to the ground

and seeing that my room was a complete mess. I decided that it show a force was too much for me to handle alone. I called my cousin and said, Jay, I need you to come stay with me for a while at my house, I'll explain when you get here. Perplexed and sounding a little put out, Jay says it'll be over after dinner. So I sit in my front yard and wait. Jay pulls up about an hour later, gets out of the car and asks what's going on. I tell him there is something in my house, that we should just play cards or something and I'll tell him about it.

I'm getting funny looks and blank stairs as I tell him what's happening and it's clear he doesn't believe a word of it. I can't blame him. I sound like a lunatic. We sit down and deal out the cars and within minutes to footsteps are back. I ask him if he can hear it and he nods and I whisper let's go. I jump up emboldened by his presence and we run into the main body of the house scanning the rooms along the way. See? There's nobody here. and he gives me a puzzled look as it dawns on him that this is happening. Jay eventually left, telling me to keep him updated on Ghost Stuff. I'm not ashamed to say that I then called my mother

and asked her to come over and spend the night so I might get to sleep because there would be no chance of that while alone and terrified. Not sure what my mum could do, but it mattered that I didn't have to face things alone. The most bizarre encounter happened late one summer night when I was sweeping the hardwood floors in my living room. Almost all the lights are on because at this point I'm legitimately scared of the dark. Between the living room in the kitchen, there is a four by three pass-through. I felt it first. Footfalls so fast they had to be in full sprint.

My head spun around. I felt the vibration, the steps and the floorboards. I was totally convinced someone was going to run past me. My mind had about half a second to analyse. I spin around to face the intruder and then I see it. It was a smallish figure, five foot, thin. It wasn't dark, there was colour. But what really caught my eye, the hair.

super long brown hair flowing straight back off the head like it was in a wind tunnel i couldn't process this in real time i didn't even move still frozen by the time it should have run past a doorway it was gone i snapped back and took off towards the bedrooms where there was no exit from the house except through the windows nothing no one's there And now my brain is startling to catch up. And after all this time I finally think. Was that? And with a twist in my gut I review the image I saw in my mind. And aside from hair flowing like it's underwater,

I realise it had no face. I tried to look at the face for what had to be a blink, but it was blurred out. skin colour was blurred to the point of zero definition. I then considered the hair. There is no way if you were an Olympic runner at top speed that your hair could stream off your head.

At most it would bounce off your shoulders and back. That wasn't a physical person. Then, when I finally accepted what I had seen was a ghost. I actually had a rush of relief that it wasn't scary, like at all. It never did anything creepy, and I ended up just kind of excited that it happened.

But I wasn't traumatised. I was totally calm. No bad energy emanated from it. Somehow I knew, like absolutely positive, that whatever it was had gone. Was that its way of saying goodbye? A kind of like, see, you can see me, and it won't scare you. After all, it never seemed to be super angry or aggressive.

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Please contact connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. If you have a strange story to share, then you can drop me an email at the tape library at Protonmail.com. Please include as much information as you can and whatever name you would like to be credited as. It takes me quite a long time to get to them.

I try to include as many submissions as I can into the show. Let's move on to our next story. This happened to me several years ago during the pandemic. It was January 2022, which may not sound like the pandemic to you, but I was living in Japan at the time. And believe me, the country was still very much in lockdown. I had travelled home to see my family at Christmas and was supposed to start a new job in Tokyo that January, so I flew back to Japan, where I was forced to quarantine in an Airbnb

for two weeks at my own expense. At that time, the Japanese government had an app that had to be installed on everyone's travelling phone to track their location during quarantine. We would receive automated calls several times a day, forcing us to turn on our cameras to prove we were still in the building. We had designated as our quarantine location. So while I could leave my phone at home and sneak out to get groceries, I really couldn't leave that Airbnb for extended periods during that two-week quarantine interval. I'm telling you all this because at the time I didn't have an apartment. I was just moving to Tokyo from another city, also in Japan,

and had to search for a place to live without leaving that Airbnb. I really had no option but to find a place to rent without visiting in person, which I wasn't very happy about. Anyone who listens to stories about haunted houses knows this is how they always start. But I didn't have a choice. I ended up finding a cheap one-room apartment aimed at students that said it was a 15-minute walk from the train stop I would be using.

The day I was supposed to move in, things were weird from the first moment. I was met at the station by a business-like young Japanese man from the housing company who would take me to the apartment, hand over the keys, etc. The walk to the apartment was not 15 minutes, it was more like 20, in the bitter cold of a Japanese winter. When we got to the house, my heart sank. Outside it looked like a shambles. A wooden house with paint chipping off.

and flower pots full of dead, grey and brown stalks in the windows. As soon as I entered the house, I immediately wanted to leave. I am not a particularly sensitive person, and I don't usually feel the energy of places, but this house had an unmistakably bad vibe. Not only that, but it was incredibly dirty. I could see that at first glance, but I didn't realize the full extent of it until later. I could see that the floor hadn't been vacuumed, and the furniture was old, stained and dusty. It smelled musty in there.

Later that day, as I cleaned, I found the kitchen cupboards full of cockroach droppings. The housing man was unapologetic when I questioned him about the state of things and just handed me the forms to sign. I had already paid in advance, so I had no choice but to live there for at least a few months, even though I wanted nothing to do with this place. The housing man had even brought me some trash bags and cleaning supplies, which sounds like a kind gesture for a new tenant, but looking back, he knew the place was a mess. I tried to make the best of it and started cleaning as soon as possible. I bought air fresheners. even incensed, to try to rid the house of its musty smell and bad vibes.

The smell improved, but the oppressive, downright depressing aura of the house, did not. I remember I even yelled out something like, This is my house now. If anything else is here, you are not welcome, and you should leave. Because I was so creeped out by this place. Several strange things did happen to me in that house. The first happened exactly a week after I moved in, when the house three doors down from my apartment, caught fire, and burned down completely. I was returning from the grocery store that night when I got to my street and found it completely blocked off by police and firemen.

I was very relieved to see the burning house was not my own and had never seen a burning building up close before. I couldn't believe such a thing could happen, exactly a week after I moved in. The second thing that happened could be completely coincidental, or it could be an extension of my bad luck at the time. Who knows? Due to an issue with my visa that the company I was supposed to work for did not notice. I was unable to start my job when I was supposed to, and was forced to stay at home for almost three months while I waited for my visa to be processed.

During this time I completely ran out of money and my parents had to lend me some cash due to my extreme lack of funds I couldn't go out, didn't have a social life, and was forced to spend most of my time in that dreary apartment. The visa process dragged on and on. I was supposed to wait only a month, but I ended up waiting almost free. The last thing that happened to me was the worst, and it happened shortly before I started working. I went to sleep one night and had the most vivid, horrible dream. I'm not sure if it was a dream or some kind of weird sleep paralysis.

I dreamed there was something evil, like a demon on top of me, in my bed, pressing down on me and suffocating me. While it was suffocating me, it started pressing down to my chest and I felt like I was being pushed down towards the centre of the earth. I couldn't speak, and I eventually forced my eyes open in real life and freed myself from the dream chokehold. I was gasping for breath and my chest hurt like someone had dropped a dumbbell on me. I know people will think this is just a dream.

But the thing is, I never have nightmares. Not since I was a kid. I don't have nightmares. I don't ever suffer from sleep paralysis or hallucinations. I'm a very peaceful sleeper. The worst thing I have is an occasional anxiety dream. I have never had a dream like this before or, since. I felt like I had to fight the dark being to wake up. As soon as I had a couple of

months paycheck in my bank account, I got out of that house as quickly as possible and never look back. And I've been a peaceful sleeper ever since. The time I lived in that house was a pretty dark period in my life. I don't have a reason to believe there was any sort of entity in that house. But I also can't forget how wrong and bad that place felt. My best guess is that there was just an accumulation of negative energy there. This story is actually made up of a handful of weird occurrences that happened to someone who submitted a story in the last episode. I decided to split it into two because this part was quite different. So it's time for some strange times in the night sky.

Probably when I was around 16 years old, I was standing in my neighbour's backyard, talking to him about something. It was a cloudless day and in the middle of talking, I suddenly had an extremely strong urge to look up into the sky. I stopped mid-sentence and I looked up. I saw a 747 flying fairly low overhead, which was not uncommon for my area. suddenly a bright flash of white light that almost felt blinding to me happened probably 50 feet behind the plane as soon as the light disappeared there was now a large completely smooth silver metallic all

the size of a very large pickup truck behind the plane I watched as the orb effortlessly flew up to the wings of the 747 and just cruised alongside it for a minute or two before flying back to its original position behind the plane and just vanishing into thin air. I was completely baffled. I looked back down at my friend and asked him if he had just seen that. He looked at me confused. Just seen what?

I just kind of dropped the topic quickly but it feels weird that my friend just watched me for a few minutes. looked up at the sky and didn't question why I was doing it. It just felt extremely unlike him. But since he didn't witness it himself, I never asked him about it further. About a year after the first encounter, one of my friends was having a party at his house at night, while his parents were away for a couple of days. His house was in a small suburb,

just a three-bedroom, two-floor house with a furnished basement, that led out onto a patio with a large underground pool. The pool immediately backed up to a large forest that ran on for quite a while. My best friend and I got to the house and said hello to all of our friends. Our first point of business was to go out onto the patio and smoke some cannabis, while the rest of our friends were inside chatting in one of the front rooms.

My friends and I would go out onto the patio, sit on the lawn chairs and start packing a pocket. pipe. Neither of us had been drinking or doing any drugs before this for several days, so we were stone cold sober at this moment. I should also mention that all the bugs, frogs and animals in the forest and around the pool were chirping and making other noises. We're being loud as hell, but right as we're about to light the pipe, suddenly the entire backyard, including the forest, is bathed in this bright blue light. blue light shining from something above. We didn't directly see anything above us because

there was overhang over the patio. We were both too scared to get up and look directly at it. I've seen lots and lots of helicopters, including police copters, around the cities and towns where I live. I have never seen a light like this. It basically turned the entire backyard and forest, as bright as daytime. Just in a completely soothing shade of blue. None of the surrounding area or other houses in the area bathed in this light. It was just right around where we were. Also as soon as the light came down, all the bugs, frogs and animals went completely silent.

It was dead silent. And I know it wasn't a helicopter because there was no sound of a helicopter whatsoever. or even a plane. My friend and I looked at each other like, are you seeing this shit? Is this really happening? We look back at the blue light, completely enveloping the entire house and forest. And it just stays like that for about five minutes. Before we see the blue light, without any sound, smoothly, fly away at a great speed above the forest.

I don't think anything could have moved that smoothly and that quickly without making any sort of sound. And it moved in a way that I can't fully give justice to, how weird and artificial it was. Like as if it was just robotically and smoothly, without any resistance, just sliding away through the air. It sounds dumb, but it's hard to explain just how weird it looked. Afterwards my friends and I immediately went into the house and tried to explain what happened to our friends inside who didn't see anything and thought we were just making shit up or pulling a fast one on them. My good friend and I kept the story to ourselves after that, not wanting to be ridiculed by our other friends. During my early colleges I hung out at a friend's apartment.

We were going to make it an interesting night with three of my friends deciding to take heavy doses of magic mushroom. while the other two and I babysat them, maybe had a beer or two. We had a fun night and the three or mushrooms began to come down from their hire. Everybody decided that it would be nice to go for a walk around the city and clear our heads, so all six of us got up to leave the apartment and go walking around the quieter parts of the city. We'd probably been walking for about 15 or 20 minutes, when one of my friends who had been coming down from the mushrooms pointed to the sky and yelled,

Holy shit, is that a fucking UFO? We immediately started making fun of him because we all thought he's obviously still tripping a bit. But one by one we looked up to where he was pointing. And about 200 feet in the air, there was a large orange flaming ball of fire about the size of a pickup truck or bigger, sitting there.

At first we fought to. it was some sort of flare or something, though it would be odd for something like that to be set over a city, and also just a single one of them, I guess. We stared at it for probably a good ten minutes, just trying to figure out what we were looking at, an orange ball with flames coming off it, as if it were a ball doused with gasoline and set on fire, sitting in the air, suddenly out of nowhere in the blink of an eye faster than anything I've seen move in my life the flaming balls shoots up into the air

and I assume up into space like a bullet all of us were shocked but none of us knew what to make of it we still ask each other about it from time to time but overall we have tried to forget it I hope you're still here with me just a couple of stories left now Let's get into the next one. I have many stories of my own that I'll share with you at some point.

But this story is one known around the Denver metro area in Colorado. You may or may not have heard of Red Rock's amphitheater in Morrison, Colorado. It's an amazing venue that formed naturally. I've seen multiple concerts there. And it is by far one of the coolest venues I've ever been to. It is also famous for the Hatchet Lank. A ghost who has haunted the area for some time. There are many different versions of the story.

Who she was, when she lived. But this is the story I was told growing up. She was a homesteader in the area, and one day a group of Native Americans came along and kidnapped her baby. As they rode away, they yelled, Cry baby cry. The woman went mad after the loss of her child. loss of her child, but there was no mention of how she passed away. However, if you sit in

the 12th seat of the 12th row on December the 12th at midnight and chant cry baby cry, she will appear and attack you. I have never tried this, but if someone reading this is brave enough to try, I recommend parking in the lower parking lots, running up 60 plus rows to the upper lots is not a fun thing to do, even when you aren't fleeing from a homicidal ghost. My friend's older brother Mark claims to have seen the Hatchet Lady one night. He claimed not to have started drinking yet, but there was never a mention of whether he had been doing drugs, so take this with a grain of salt. Mark and his buddies decided to grab some beers and hang out on the stage at Red Rocks.

they cracked open their first beer, they heard a manacle laugh, coming from the direction of one of the sets of stairs. When they looked, they saw a grey figure, slowly moving down the stairs towards them. But when they shot a flashlight at it, it disappeared. Assuming it was someone trying to scare them off for their beer, they decided to ignore it. as they went for a sip, the laughter started again, and the grey figure was moving closer. Mark continued to reassure his buddies that it was nothing. But when it happened a third time,

and the figure was nearing the stage, they said screw it, and took off. One last story tonight, and of course I couldn't not include this one when I saw it was about a haunted car. But this one is interesting because it's so unlike many of the stories I feature. It feels grounded, like the actual events that take place aren't that strange. But it's the details, the little odd moments that tell you that what you have just witnessed is something else, something other. Like reality has corrupted just for a moment. Let's get into it.

A bit of backstory before I get into yet another strange moment in the East Texas Piney Woods. This event takes place in the middle of the night on a dark road, and I'd like to clarify why I found myself in a bit of a cliche moment. I'm a local drag performer in the East Texas area, and drag shows are almost always held late at night. Rural Texas certainly isn't known for its nightlife. let alone its queer community, and so many drag queens and kings in my area find themselves taking gigs around the East Texas, DFW and Shreveport area.

On this particular night I was driving back from a show in Texacana. The Texicana shows are my longest drives from home, and they have me driving the latest at night since the shows typically start at 11pm. So, I found myself driving home. at around 2.30 or 3 in the morning. Having been doing drag for years, I'm very used to driving late into the night. It's simply part of the job. However, this drive would prove to be one of my most difficult.

Earlier in the week, my car started making strange noises, and I told my partner I would take it in the following week once I had time and money. I just needed it to take me to Texacana, and back on Saturday night. Of course, in a way I've grown very numb to, the universe heard me, and my check engine light came on, almost as soon as I left the bar that night. My car's engine light warning gave me pause,

but at 3 a.m, after exhausting myself, reforming in a loud bar, all I wanted was to be at home in bed, so I took a deep breath and calmed myself. before hitting the road. I had driven about 30 minutes. The drive home takes about two and a half hours, when my car stuttered and made some of the most awful noises the driver can hear.

I pulled off to the side and turned my car off, waited a moment and turned it back on. My car was running, but it refused to go over 40 miles per hour. I called my partner and told him what was going on. and I'd be a bit later than usual getting home. It was at this point that things started to feel... Eerie.

Most of the drive would take me through the woods, but the moon was fortunately just about full, so there was a decent amount of light on the road. I was, however, the only person present to that hour. I was able to get a better look at the trees and fields, what with my car carrying me at almost a small, the snails pace down the road. It was a warm cloudless night and I caught a few glimpses of fox and possums scouring around near the road's edge. My main thought despite the eerie

ambience was to pray to whoever was listening to let me get home safely and without further protest from my little Hyundai. On this particular road there is a landmark that I always take note of, because it's around the halfway mark of my journey. This landmark is a standing marquee in the middle of the woods. It's the kind that has a flashing arrow that's meant to point in the direction of whatever it's advertising. This sign, however, points directly into the foliage, where there appears to be absolutely nothing.

What's more, it's always on. The bright bulbs at the top are always flashing, no matter what. time of day. There is also no information or lettering in the marquee part of this wayward sign. So I've always found it to be a bit creepy. It's a bright flashing sign that provides no context and seems powered by nothing. There could be a power cord concealed in the grass, but even then it would have to lead to something. It's quirky and ominous. I finally turned down a bend and was met with the sight of the marquee in the distance,

its arrow brightly flashing in the darkness as always. From my angle, the marquee was on the right side of the road, and maybe a quarter mile from where I was. My eyes drifted and took notice of the other pair of lights that were also greeting me on the left side of the road. These lights were much dimmer in comparison. My initial thought was that perhaps it was the reflection of an animal's eyes. But as I got closer, the two lights drifted apart, making them too widely spaced to be a pair of eyes.

It also became apparent that these lights were flashing on and off, only they didn't seem to flash in a concrete interval. They'd give two quick flashes and then a few slow ones. It was almost like a weak Morse code. As my car slowly but surely pressed forward, they began to look like headlights. I could make out the black silhouette of a vehicle. I thought maybe this was someone who was pulled over with the hazards on. But why would their headlights flash at random? And why were they so dim?

They looked more like two dying stage lights than they did a modern headlight. I began to get close enough to get a better sense of the car. It was still very dark outside, even with the light the moon provided. The shape looked like it could be a Volkswagen, but I couldn't make out any details, let alone a license plate. As I passed it, I tried to look into the driver's side to see if anyone was there, or if the seats had been pushed back, but I didn't see anything that suggested it wasn't completely. completely empty. At this point, I also noticed that the car wasn't shining at all. Even in the dark most cars reflect sunlight off their metal exterior, but this seemed to be a

completely matte black set against the grey trees and the grey green grass. I could see through the windows at the illuminated trees on the other side of the car, but the car itself was pitch black. I finally began to pass the car by, but when I looked back I was met with the final oddity. The rear lights were dark. I couldn't see any real lights at all. It was just a solid, pitch black vehicle. Every car I've ever seen or been in has a hazard warning that flashes both the headlights

and the tail lights. How are the headlights giving weak sporadic flashes, while the tail lights were completely completely dead. Seeing cars pulled over, especially abandoned, wasn't an unusual sight, especially on long stretches of rural back roads, where help is likely not nearby. I've never seen anything like this though. Most abandoned cars are turned off and if they are still running, there is always someone standing nearby or in the car. On top of that, even when it's a moon and it's pitch black in the woods. My headlights cause some kind of reflection, often metallic finish of another car. I know matte finishes are a thing, but even

Ney will still give away some colour against their surroundings. This was a random vehicle, on a random stretch of road, beside an already creepy sign that seemed to be there just to confound a wayward late-nighter, that just so happens to be having major carpool. problems that particular night. Like I said earlier, the fault of a ghost car hadn't even occurred to me until someone else labelled it that way, but it very accurately describes what the car was like, how it felt to look at it. I wish there was some way to verify its presence, but shortly after that night I was

without a car for a few weeks, and it's not like an abandoned car that needed to be towed would show up on the local news. I would love to hear if anyone else has had similar experiences with phantom cards or other inanimate objects. You never really get to choose how or when the strange and unusual manifests itself. But I suppose a dark road on a moonlit night is a good start. It's time for me to leave you all alone again, I'm afraid, my friends. You've got a long journey to take and I can't hold your hand all the way. I'll leave you to the darkness now.

But I'll be back with more stories next month. Until then, thank you for tuning in. This has been Night Drive Paranormal. Stay safe out there. This episode was made possible by my supporters on Patreon. First up our tape library archivists, Sarisa Wells, Alice, Julian M. Lampferous Blood, Summer Chambers, Jennifer,

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2619, Agent 355 and Queen of Flaglands. Thank you so much to all of them, all my junior archivists and my members on YouTube. Each and every one of you plays a huge part in keeping the show going. If you want to join the archivists, links can be found in the description. Thank you. Now receiving frequency transmission. What scares me is getting stuck really, really, really at night in an unfamiliar town at some intersection that has an inexplicable red light. That shouldn't even be red because there's no one around for miles. It's three in the morning and yet there I am. The engine idling and the seconds are ticking and looking to the left and looking to the right

in the shadows. At that moment I'm always convinced that I've been set up by the forces of darkness and this is the moment when something is going to come out of the dark at my car. And that thing is going to be, I don't know, let's just say the Wendigo, sure.