Episode 109

Hate waiting a week for the next episode of Radio Rental? Subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus to get early access to episodes, add free listening, and even some bonus scary stories. Visit tenderfootplus.com for details. The following podcast includes scary stories with content that could be triggering to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Take a break from the same old boring blockmasters and experience a new kind of movie night with Radio Rental. At Radio Rental, our videos come to life in your living room. Defy all logic and reasoning and make you question your own reality. This is not your ordinary video rental store. At Radio Rental, we carry one of a kind videos, so frightening, so mind-bending, you won't be able to sleep at night. You've gone. Radio Rental. Hey, I'm Vince. Welcome to Radio Rental. A video rental store that specializes in horror. True horror. We've got an exclusive collection of the scariest tapes. Full of the most horrifying horror stories you've ever heard horror had to sneak an extra one in there. All told by real people. Vetted. We also have a new slot machine in a video poker game. Yeah, found these at the local marketplace. Anyway, boss wanted me to find a way to increase our cash flow, so now, in addition to scary stories, you can also get lucky. I'm actually pretty good at it. This slot machine. You want to see. Check this out. Whoa. Horse. Horse. Horse. Mango. Damn. Damn. That's okay. I'll get back. I'll get my mojo back. In the meantime, I'm going to put in the tape for you. This is 2024. Me, my wife and a group of friends were in Vegas for EDC, the Rafe Music Festival. Where they're first time in Vegas, we're all super excited. We're staying on the strip. We're staying at the Luxor. If you've never really stayed at the Luxor before, it's pretty spacious. The blooms are kind of like spread out. So because it was already a busy week, some of us were staying on like the 20th floor while other of us were like on the 8th floor, like we were scattered. Now, the way like the Luxor works, the elevators only go to like a select number of floors. We had to scan in to our elevators. That was the only way that people could like move through floors. It was like our first night there. It's like 3am. We're all exhausted. We had like been walking down the strip. You know, just doing Vegas stuff. My friends like, hey, like I'm downstairs come get us and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go. I'm like, I was pretty tired. I'm still aware of my surroundings. Go downstairs. I meet them where the casino is. I meet up with my friends. I'm like, all right, let's go back to my room. As we're walking towards the elevators, we see that there's like this older gentleman just like standing there. I realize I'm like, oh, like he's one of the workers. He's holding a little broom and a little dustpan. But he's just kind of like just standing there. I was like, all right, whatever. So I go, I click on the the elevator button. We're just talking. The old man's just kind of like standing there. My friends get on the elevator. I like signal to the gentleman. I'm like, oh, are you going to get in? And he's like, yeah, yeah. He gets in with us. First weird thing I noticed is I go, I put in the key card and I press the floor number. Usually people will be like, oh, can you press this number for me? Like, he just stays quiet. So we go the doors closed, which is having a conversation. And my friend, he looks at me and he's like, man, I am exhausted. This gets like a little chuckle out of the old man. He's like, oh, you think you're exhausted. I've been here for a long time. And we were like, oh, yeah, like you've been working a couple of shifts back to back. And he's like, yeah, you can, you can say something like that. We were like, yeah, man, that sucks. Are you off tomorrow? He's like, no, I work tomorrow and the next day and the next day and so on and so on. And we are like, geez, like, sorry, I'm sorry to hear that. We don't stop at our floor. We stop at the floor above us. At the time, we don't notice anything weird about it. But like I explained earlier, like, certain elevators only go to certain floors. So there was no reason for the elevator to stop at that floor above us. But at the time, I didn't really think much of it. Looking back at it is when I realized, like, damn, that was weird. We don't get off. The gentleman doesn't get off either. Like, he's still on in there. We all like, look at each other. We're like, what the hell? Like, this isn't our floor. Like, that's weird. So we get back in. I put the key card again. I put the correct floor number. It goes down one floor. We get off. I know for a fact, this gentleman gets off behind us. Because I can see him from my peripherals get off. I'm walking in front of my two friends. I just turned back to talk shit to them. And that's when I realized there's no one behind them. He's not there. There is no way that he could have like, jumped back into the elevator. And there's also nowhere else to go. When you like get off the elevators, the only thing in that lobby are other elevators. There's no like maintenance room. There's no like little storage area. It's just crystal glass that you can see down and then the four elevators. And if he would have gotten on another elevator, like, we would have heard it. The key cards, they make a noise when you put it on the pad. So we would have heard it. I felt him get off and I saw him through my peripherals and my friends who were walking in front of him fell him get off. And we heard the elevator door close. I'm frozen and my friends could tell that there's something wrong just by looking at me and they're like, what is it? And I just point behind them and they turn around and they realize the gentleman's not there anymore. And they look at each other, they look at me. And they're like, yo, where'd he go? You guys saw him get off, right? And they're like, we felt him get behind us. Guys, let's just go back to my room. Please, let's just go back. We go back. My wife's there, like, two other friends of ours are there and we explain to them like, what just happened. And they're like, man, are you guys messing with us? And I was like, no, I promise you like this just happened. I think we just saw a ghost. It was really creepy the way he was talking. And like, just the fact that my friends said, like, man, I'm like, really tired. And he kind of like was scoffing at us. I'm like, you think you're tired. Like, buddy, I've been like on an eternity shift right now. Everyone just kept asking us to see if like our stories would stay the same. They're like, man, are you sure that you saw him get off the elevator or like, are you sure that someone was in there with you? And we're like, yes, like, we were describing was like an older gentleman. He had glasses on white hair, like, his balding and the front. We all described them the same way. I'm like, there's no way we all just shared like a fake memory. My friends started doing research on the Luxor. If you haven't go and look at the history of the Luxor, it is definitely one of the most haunted places in Vegas on the strip. There's just like this really weird energy there. I believe there's like a female spirit that likes to mess around with, especially when it's like, gentlemen in the rooms by themselves, they'll feel like a female presence or sometimes when they're sleeping, like, something will like cuddle up on them. People also talk about because like, when they're staying like in like the higher floors, like, they'll look down, and they'll have like that feeling of like, bro, you should just jump. A lot of people say that it draws like a certain negative energy that you could feel at times there. Because I don't know, it's something like really creepy about that hotel. If it would have just been me by myself, there would have been like room for doubt. I would have been like, you know what? Like, I was tired. Like, we had been drinking like, would have found any excuse but it's the fact that I shared that experience with two other people and they saw the same thing I saw and they felt the same thing I felt heard the same thing I heard it adds more to it I'm a hundred percent sure there's no other explanation unless this guy was the fastest man alive and just like maneuvered his way into the elevator that Ghost ride was one for the bugs for sure Oh, uh, freaky old dude's been probably cleaning that hotel since the early days thank you says some dark energy man I wouldn't know okay we're back let's play another tape I was in between jobs I travel a lot for work I would spend six months working straight and then come home for a few months waiting for a project I was a telecommunications climber for T-Mobile so I used to climb cell phone towers and just travel all over the country when I'd come back home I'd usually try to find fun stuff to do like whether you know with friends or by myself my childhood friends we always had a like a snowboarding trip in 2023 we decided to go to Lake Tahoe to uh you know go snowboarding and we had an Airbnb and I was driving from Phoenix to Lake Tahoe and usually I do it by myself I was in North Phoenix just getting out of town kind of going towards Wickenburg and there is a dude standing on the side of the road and he was hitchhiking and I was kind of like uh like you know he looks clean he might need help so I just pulled over and asked him what he was up to and he was like oh nothing just hitchhiking I'm trying to make it to Laughlin so I was like well I can drive you there I'll be driving past there at least close and he was like okay and he's really his name's Kenny so we started driving and we were just talking and turns out that he was a professional hitchhiker he's been hitchhiking for the last 20 years like all over the world I actually just talked to him he got back to the US from Peru so I asked him I was like well you know like it's gonna be a big house he seemed like a cool dude instead of going to Laughlin you want to come to Lake Tahoe and you know kick it in the snow and he's like yeah sure let's do it we end up going to Lake Tahoe there was a bunch of weather like crazy weather we end up getting stuck there for next week because there was just you know 20 feet of snow and everybody on the mountain couldn't leave so we just kind of hung out there and basically we were there for two weeks and on the drive back he wanted me to drop him off basically in Laughlin again because that was where his plan was just kind of gamble and get some more cash before he headed to New York to fly out to Ireland to do some sort of yoga retreat or something like that it's kind of hippie we were on our way back though he had these rewards that was so tired I've been driving for like 12 hours maybe and dealing with the snow and everything else like that it was just really exhausting so I asked him I was like man I was like I can't drive anymore we're gonna have to stop somewhere he's like well let's stop in Vegas at the Flamingo I have this like rewards thing where we can get a free room and a little bit of money to spend on food and you know if we gamble a little bit that's kind of as what it is but I was like okay so we end up going with Flamingo I thought I was putting me in it skipping all the lines because he was part of that rewards membership or whatever and they gave him a hundred and fifty dollars worth of food that we had to spend that night and then they gave us a room in this older part of the Flamingo which I didn't know at the time hadn't been remodeled yet most of it has but there I guess there's one floor that hasn't yet we got food you know now it's super tired and so we both were we walk up the stairs and it's like on the fourth floor down this like really kind of old old hallway like you could tell it's like old carpet and the paint looked like it looked like crap like it was all kind of falling off in some spots so we're like well at least it's a free bed you know it's whatever they put us in this corner room I didn't realize it but it was a room where the window was from the floor all the way to the ceiling it just seemed like it was like an older non-updated room I think it was probably around 12.31 o'clock we both are like okay we can fall asleep now so I hear him fall asleep first and he started snoring so I was just like okay you know I'm gonna try and fall asleep too so I started falling asleep and I don't know how long it took maybe 30 minutes and the next thing I know it felt like someone grabbed the back of my head and shoved it down into the pillow because I was sleeping on my stomach it was like scary because I thought this dude that I thought was really cool Kenny was playing some joke on me and I was just like I was super mad about it because I thought he was like trying to suffocate me it was terrifying it literally felt like like someone was above me trying to kill me like like holding my and I'm I'm 220 pounds and I'm a really good shape and I truly feel like if someone was trying to hold my head down I'd be able to kind of like get out of that move at least a little bit there was nothing like it almost felt like my body was frozen and my head it was just being shoved straight down into the pillow and it was to the point two where I was started like kind of gagging a little bit like I couldn't breathe and it was right around the time when I started really panicking and after about two or three seconds on my head being held down to the pillow it like felt like it just went away and I got up I started yawning at Kenny because I was convinced that it was him I looked at him he was totally asleep turned over wrapped up in the blankets snoring totally out I sat there and I watched him for a second is this guy messing with me is he actually trying to hurt me or what's going on and I was like what in the world and it just freaked me out because I've never had anybody do that to me before or anything I'm kind of sitting there in my bed and I'm listening to him snoring I'm kind of thinking to myself like what in the world was that well right around this time I looked at the clock and it was like two fifty five almost three o'clock in the morning and trying to go back to bed I started noticing that the temperature in the room got really hot I got up and I messed with the AC unit and it was all the way pinned down and but it was still like hot like I was sweating and so I lay back in bed and I'm sitting there and where the whole window was there was just like this shadowy tall figure in the corner of the room and it was scary I was terrified I was frozen I was just stuck in bed it looked like a like a man that was probably six foot six six foot seven like a really tall guy broad shoulders and almost looked like it was like wearing like some sort of trench coat or suit I'm sitting there with the covers kind of pulled up to my chin like what in the world is that and but at the same time I'm still sweating because the room got really hot so I just sat there and I stared at it and then as I'm staring at it I was just waiting for it to go away and either I put my head down or I blinked or whatever and it was just gone I was just kind of like okay I'm just going to sit here and right around that time I remember looking at the clock too because I'm like okay how long have I been sitting here for is right around like three 15 320 the closet lights turned on and they started flickering and then they turned off what was weird though is that when I first walked into the room there's no switch to even turn on the closet lights and then the bathroom fan turned on which is another weird thing because there is no switch to turn the fan on because I took a shower and I knew that that wasn't working but it turned on and then the air conditioner flipped on a different way and then it got really cold so when from being really hot it's like super cold and so I'm under the covers watching these lights flicker right around the time that these lights stopped flickering the figure in the corner just kind of disappeared Kenny this whole time is snoring so I know that he's not even picking up on any of this stuff after I kind of felt like it was gone I got up and I went over to flip on the lights just to try and see what the heck's going on in this creepy room it was only the light for the bathroom and only the main living room light that would even turn on for the rest of the night I basically just kind of stood there up until about four o'clock that's when they because the air kept getting hot and cold and hot and cold and then finally it just got cold and it went away and then it was like this creepy figure it didn't show back up the light flickered maybe once or twice more between you know me waiting from 315 320 until four and then it all just like went away I was so tired I ended up just falling asleep. So the next morning I wake up, Kenny is still sleeping. I get up immediately get dressed. I didn't even want to take a shower or go to the bathroom or anything. I was basically put on my shoes just ready to leave. Right around the time that I was kind of like, okay Kenny, let's get out of here. Let's get on the road. He was waking up and that's when I started walking around the room, looking at stuff like, okay, what's the deal with the fan? You know, trying to rationalize basically what was going on the night before, which was like, okay, why are the lights flickering? Was there like a weird shadow over here in the corner that I didn't notice before? And what was really weird is over in that corner, there was a weird stain on the wall. Just like a bunch of weird splatters all over the wall. I didn't know what it was. And then that's when I noticed under the closet 'cause I walked over there and this is all while Kenny's getting up and we're kind of getting our bags together. That's when I noticed that there's the light in the closet and I was like, oh, there's a light in here. Okay, so there's a little bit of sense, but then the chord was chopped. And I was like, what the heck, like how the, okay, that makes no sense. And then I went into the bathroom again and that's when I started playing with the light, trying to see if I could get the fan to flip on, was never able to get the fan to flip on. That's kind of when I told Kenny, I was like, what do you remember from last night? When we got into the room, you went to bed and then went and he was like, nothing, I just went to bed. And that's when I told him like, dude, something held my head down last night. And he was just kind of looking at me like, what the heck? Like I was just speechless. I was like, was that you, like were you playing a joke on me? Like what, because I was very upfront about it. And he was like, no, dude, he's like, what, why would you even ask me that? And I was like, well, I just had a really weird experience in this hotel room and I explained everything that happened and you just kind of quiet for a while. I don't know if he thought I was crazy or I was making it up. And then later on, 'cause we hung out for another day or two before he flew out to New York. He asked me, he was like, you were weird with me after that. He's like, what, what was with that? Now, my dude, I thought you were holding my head down. I was like, honestly, I was very angry. I was convinced, I try to rationalize it, but I was convinced that you woke up, you're playing in some weird joke on me and you're holding my head down. But when I got up, you were still sleeping. Now, dude, he's like, I did not do that. I just said, he's like, I can't explain it. He's like, I was sleeping and I was like, I kind of realized that too. And when I woke up and he was still snoring, but I just had to kind of clear the air at least for my, for my sake. I haven't been to Vegas since. I lived in hotel rooms for a long time. Like, that's just part of the job. I had to start living back in hotel rooms again in 2024 when I moved to Wyoming to work out there at a few of the coal mines that they hired me to go out there and work on stuff. And they put me up at a hotel and it was, that was the first time that I lived long-term in a hotel or even stayed in a hotel since that happened. I had a hard time dealing with hotel rooms for a while because I was always waking up and thinking like, and it was always right as soon as it felt like I was like starting to fall asleep. I would start, I'd just like wake up and just start looking around like what's going on. And it even like changed the way that I like, like have the curtains drawn and stuff in hotel rooms because I don't want to be able to see out or their light shining in. They're just freaked me out. I've never had someone hold my face down into a pillow like that before. I didn't even think that was like a thing when you, you know, see old-time, old-time gangster movies where someone's like holding someone's face down. That's what it reminds me of, though, is like someone like legitimately holding a pillow down and trying to suffocate you. One thing, though, that really like still lingers too is just like how strong the hand felt. And that was one thing that kind of made me rationalize it too with Kenny as Kenny is like a little dude. He's got like little hands. Like it literally felt like these hands like wrapped around my head, wrapped around my head and pushed my face down into the pillow and just held it there and then it was just like gone. Like not even like letting go or letting me up, it was just like this like strong hand just disappeared. What, wait, man. This guy just picked up a total laughing stranger off the side of the road and then slept in the same hotel room with him because he had at points. It's very trusting. I mean, yeah, something weird happened in the room, but I mean, was it an entity or was it Kenny? I just can't rule out Kenny. He seems like a weirdo just like me, a guy I know. Anyway, noted that hitchhiking is alive and well. I'm always trying to find ways to make new friends. So maybe I'll give these thumbs a try. This story teller could have been pretty unlucky, but you know who's going to be lucky? Here we go. Horse. Horse. Horse. Italian flag, damn. Well, let's dig another ad break. I don't know who's going to be lucky. Back in 1998, I was the manager of an independent cell phone and a paper store in Flint, Michigan. I grew up in Flint. You know, at the time it was known as the murder capital of the country. So, sad stories were pretty common. Knowing people that had violent things out of them was not that rare. And so, from my perspective, I felt like I was, I don't know, chated or, you know, it took a bit to rattle me. Also, because I worked at a paper and cell phone store, there were a lot of strange characters. This was an era where, you know, the people who had cell phones without a contract and papers, month to month, were drug dealers and other people like that. I'd been followed home before by people who had been shopping at the store. I'd had people run in and steal things from the store. So, it certainly was a slightly dangerous but not super scary place to work. I was pretty used to it at that point. A young woman came in to get both a paper and a cell phone. Is she seemed about the same age I was? At the time, that was a really time-consuming transaction, which sounds a little silly, but, you know, I had to call like the home office and get the number and there was all these steps you had to take. And then you also had to manually program the paper and the cell phone. Right off, something felt a little off about her. I couldn't even quite place what it was. She seemed a little strange and I frankly just thought she was high. Like, I thought while she's must stop on something, I don't know. So, I had her filled the paperwork. She picked out her phone or a paper. I don't really remember all the details of that part. But, I had to input all of her data into our, you know, fancy, like, Windows 98 operating system by hand. So, she was kind of kept talking while I was doing that. I remember being a little bit distracted, like, okay. But again, you know, sometimes people are kind of Yammer when they're high. From that point, she started explaining to me why she needed this. Because cell phones at the time were a little bit unusual. They were kind of new to have a brain to have a cell phone that you took unless you had money and you could be on a contract. She was explaining to me that she had to drive back and forth from Flint, Michigan to Ann Arbor, which is a good hour drive. And I thought, "Oh, that's actually not a long drive." Because I'd commuted to school and I understood that. Then she said the reason she was doing that was because her husband was in the hospital. I thought, "Oh, that's so sad." What a tragedy to be, like, this young woman who also's husband is ill. And my first thought was, like, what could it be? Does he have cancer? Or is there something going on? Then she said it was because he had shot himself while cleaning his gun. And that was when my sympathy turned to alarm. The second she said that, I don't know why, but you know that feeling you have where the hair goes up on the back of your neck? Something in my brain just screamed, "She's lying." But I didn't know exactly about what. I thought, "Oh, my God, did she shoot him?" Because, obviously, I don't know. In Flint, that sort of thing, I guess, that you'd think the worst. So I immediately wondered, like, did she shoot him or? Like, I felt like she was lying about some aspect of it, but I didn't understand what. And I honestly felt a little bit of panic when she was talking. I wasn't sure how to respond, and it was young too, so I probably didn't handle it very elegantly. But I remember telling her that I was, you know, sorry to hear that. And the thing that I thought was really strange in the moment was that she didn't seem super upset about her husband. She seemed more stressed about the drive. It did stick out to me that it was a little weird that she didn't seem more worried about her husband in that situation, but again, I don't understand the context of what she was going through, so I just kind of accepted it for what it was. I do remember her being in the store for a really long amount of time as I was, you know, waiting for their number to be sent back to me from the home office so that I could program all of her things. And I remember offering to let her leave because it made me alone comfortable, and she opted to stay. And she was definitely making a small talk. Her voice was kind of a little thing, and I remember that part that she seemed like I said a little out of it. Finally, when the transaction was over, she left, and I felt genuinely relieved when she left. And then I felt sort of foolish because I'm like, I do deal with like strange people all day long, you know, this isn't exactly a place frequented by, you know, the most reputable folks in town. So I didn't think that much about it. A couple weeks later, I was listening to the radio because it was the 90s. The DJ said something like, "Breaking news alert." Melissa Suchins such has been arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada for murder. And I remember literally whipping around and looking at the radio as if they were talking to me and thinking, "That's her name." Like, I can't believe this. I was like, I could have misheard. I kind of discounted it. A couple weeks later, because time moved much lower back then. I was opening the bills, and it's manualized. You'd slice open the bill and you'd pull out the little receipt and check or cash, whatever it was, and then I had to input it into our system. I opened it and there was no money. It was just the bill returned with a note. And it said, "Melissa is in jail in Las Vegas, Nevada on a charge of open murder." Please said nothing else regarding this. Thank you. I just stared at it. I was like, "Oh my gosh, that's her." I mean, I heard it correctly on the radio. I met her face to face, and this would all happen within a couple of weeks. And I just remember being stunned, and my assumption at the time was that somehow I was right, she had lied, and that maybe she had killed her husband, and maybe he had died, and that was it. But, you know, there was no way to check. I don't know who I would have called, and the police and nosy and straight-ass questions. I kept that little piece of paper because it was so strange, and I'm a little bit of a paper hoarder. So I kept that and kind of stuck it in a folder and didn't think about it again. I mean, I obviously told people, friends at the time. And then years pass, and I moved several times, and obviously I've got like stacks of papers at this point in my life, and I happened to open a folder, and that fell out years later. And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I completely forgot about this. What a crazy thing to have happened that this woman that I'd waited on, you know, probably killed her husband." By then, you know, you could google up everything, so I just did a little research gone online and figured out that it turns out that indeed, she had been, I guess, lying, but it's hard to say about what still. What I found online was that she had actually driven to Las Vegas pretty shortly after I had sold her herself on a pager with her child until I do not recall her mentioning a child at all, which seemed very strange. What had happened is she took her child with her drove across the country. No one had heard from her in a week, and the first people had found of her was that she was banging on the door of her hotel neighbor's room, asking for help because her son, her toddler had died, and it turns out that she had actually killed her toddler and attempted to kill herself. She was then arrested and put in jail. She must have had some regrets or something if she ran to next room. That's what she was in jail for. She'd never been arrested for what had happened with her husband, and I have no idea if she had anything to do with it. In fact, when I did research it, not that long ago, again, to try to find out more of what happened, it turns out that her former husband actually died at the age of 66 in 2025, and he had, at least according to the tributes to him, had actually been a bodybuilder before he had somehow had an accident with this gun. A couple people alluded to a terrible tragedy in his life that he survived, and I have to assume the tragedy was the horrible murder of his son. She is not mentioned in his tributes and/or obituary at all. That's the story of how I sold the cell phone in a pager to a murderer. Radio Rental is created by Pain Lindsay and brought to you by Tenorfoot TV. Showrunner is Meredith Steppen. Lead producers are Eric Kintana and Stephen Perez. Executive producers are Pain Lindsay and Donald Albright. This episode is hosted by Tony Cavalero, writing by Meredith Steppen. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set, with additional score by J. Ragstale. Sound design mix and master by Stephen Perez and Cooper Skinner. Editing by Eric Kintana, Sean Nerney, Stephen Perez, Meredith Steppen and Cooper Skinner. Our production manager is Jordan Foxworthy. Cover artwork by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan. Radio Rental Merchandise by Byron McCoy. To shop Radio Rental Merch, visit shop.tenorfoot.tv. Special thanks to Orn Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, as well as the Nord Group and the team at Odyssey. If you have a Radio Rental story that you'd like to share, please email us at [email protected] or contact us via the form on our website RadioRentalUSA.com. Follow us on Instagram at RadioRental. On behalf of the Radio Rental store, we'd love it if you'd subscribe, rate and review. As always, thanks for listening.