Episode 112

HATE WAITING A WEEK FOR THE NEXT EPISODE OF RADIO RENTLE? Subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus today for binge listening. You'll also get ad-free episodes 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 blockbusters and experience a new kind of movie night with a 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 our kind videos, so frightening, so mind-bending, you won't be able to sleep at night. You've gone, Radio Rental. Oh, oh, shit, customer. Hey, hey, customer. Miss your customer. Welcome to Radio Rental. I'm Vince. Yep, yeah, it's been a while. Rad summer. Did a lot of normal summertime activities, like boats play little ukulele. I don't know. Things like that. How about you? Oh, Titan. I'm not gonna lie, I'm a tiny bit rusty. Uh, uh, kind of don't remember how to work the register. I think I press, uh, something I don't really remember how to do anything, honestly. And I guess it's just me or now. Ah, never mind. Check that. Me and this guy. This fluffy little guy who did bite me earlier. Effectively, of course, so cute. Anyways, I'm up to the challenge of running Radio Rental. Like my parole officer always told me, you're capable of anything, Vince, even voluntary manslaughter. I guess what? I'm lucky, because I found this old store manual way in the back covered in dust. I was investigating a rank smell and I found this hiding in the wall. I guess whoever put it in there just wanted it to be real safe. But it's like my parole officer used to say. If I catch you with it, that means it's yours. So, I guess his book is all mine now. Pretty nice little cheat sheet. Check this shit out. Damn, this thing is thick. And so retro must be from like the early 1900s. I'm guessing probably 19, 1869. Probably the 1980s, not the 1900s. Let me read you a little bit. Here we go. Pete, one, welcome to Radio Rental. If you find yourself in possession of this manual, then congratulations. Your life is about to change forever. Hurry on, okay? Dearest employee, the first thing you should know about Radio Rental is that this is not an ordinary video rental store. Yeah, I think we got that one covered. This simple store front contains many extraordinary inner qualities and a collection of the scariest stories you've ever heard. All real, but these stories don't come without a price. Pretty run-of-the-mill corporate jargon here. Let's see, uh, anything about the register. That's what I really need help with the register. Oh well, I'll find it. In the meantime, why don't we play you one of these scary stories? Oh, you know, it's so bizarre. When I reopened the store at Freshbox, the tapes was just sitting in the middle of the floor. Like, someone had been here. I don't know, man. Is breaking and entering your crime if you leave a little gift? It sounds like a pretty good loophole, honestly. Anyway, you know what? Here we go. It was around 2002, 2003. My best friend of myself, we met working one of our first jobs. We were just north of 21, and we like to go and do things together, you know, as 21-year-olds do. She called me one day and said that her grandparents were having an anniversary party in Ridgecrest. And we live in Bakersville, which is a two-hour-ish drive. So we decided to go out to the anniversary party. We left Bakersville during the day, went out to this party. It was like a banquet hall situation. Afterwards, we went to her cousin's house, which was on the south side of Ridgecrest, and it was kind of in the desert. We hung out with them for a while, and then we left about, I would say, nine o'clock at night. I was driving, because she had been drinking that day. We were getting on the freeway. I was driving her Tahoe. And I remember that feeling, you know, when you're going onto an on-ramp onto the freeway, how it has like the connection piece on the asphalt, how you go over that ridge. We could feel that when we were going on. As soon as we started to go onto the on-ramp, we blinked. We were no longer on the freeway. We were in a desert on a dirt road. She was driving, and I was in the passenger seat. It was like pitch black, and there was a fence on the left-hand side of the vehicle, so it was on the driver's side. And she was just flying down this road, going like 40 or 50 miles an hour. She was just like in a days. She wasn't saying anything. She was just staring straight ahead. So I yelled at her. You know how you see people get snapped out of it? That's what happened with her. And she looked at me and we both started to like freak out in that moment. Just both of us asking each other so many questions. Where are we? How did we get here? What's going on? We were in a bad situation. We're still going down the road. As we're going down this road, the headlights are lighting up the dirt road, and the rocks and like the occasional bush. And suddenly I see two four by six posts being lit up ahead of us. And as the light moved up, as we got closer, I started to see a big square, maybe 20 by 30, white, like billboard structure attached to these posts. And it had words on it. And I remember saying them out loud in the car. Warning, active land minefield do not enter. We are pulling into an active land minefield. We flipped, we lost it. We started screaming at the top of our lungs. We're yelling at each other. I'm telling her to stop the car. Turn around, like don't drive into this. Please, like we're going to die out here in the desert. I have no idea what's going on. Any second, like we could literally die being on this road. What are we even doing here? How are we in this situation right now? Immediately, she slams on the brakes. I'm screaming at her to get us out of there. And we flip around and head the opposite direction. We both just kind of looked at each other, freaked out, because we didn't know where we were or how we ended up there. The last thing we both remember was getting onto the freeway. We are flying now down this dirt road. Where will we? How do we get here? We don't have GPS. We don't have any of that stuff. So we're freaking out. And I can see still a head just dirt road forever. There's no lights, there's no structures that we can see. All we know is we're in the desert and we're on this fence line and this is the road. So we are staying on this road. We're screaming at each other trying to figure out how we ended up in this situation. Obviously, this is the way that we came. There's a one lane road. So we are going back the way that we came as far as we know to get out of this city. as fast as we can. That's when we realized we were not alone in this desert. We start to see lights pop up. They weren't there and suddenly they were like they just turned on. Just bright white lights coming at us from like several directions, all of them converging on us at once. And I started to scream like this is it. We are done. We're dead. And it took a second for our brains to process that these were headlights. The lights on the top of the vehicles turned on. And they were red and blue flashing lights. And we realized this is the police. This is the police coming to stop us. So immediately she slams the brakes. All these cars converge from different directions. There's one ahead of us. There's two to the side of us. There's one behind us. And all of these guys get out but they're not wearing like regular police uniforms. They're wearing camouflage. This is the military police. They got out of their vehicles pretty quickly. A lot of doors were left open. They came over to our doors and immediately opened the doors of the Tahoe. They asked us what we were doing here. They asked us to get out of the vehicles. We stepped out. They sat me down and had me lean my back against the chain lane fence that we had been driving next to. And I remember it being so cold. And I was so confused because it was summertime in Ridgecrest. So it was warm when we had left this cousin's house. And now it was just freezing outside. They were questioning us separately. How did you get here? Did somebody bring you on base? What gate did you come through? How did you get into this area? We have no answers for them. We have no clue what's going on. And that's when they went from being just kind of like these people are in the wrong place the wrong time to being like actually upset. They were mad that we were not giving them the information that they were asking. Those guys were upset. You know, we just didn't have the answers they wanted. I remember they searched us. They searched our pockets. They searched our purses. They even made me take off my boots. And I had to sit there while they ran our names. They took our IDs. They ran us through every system they could. They were on a radio for quite a long time. We didn't realize that we were actually on a military base until they started to ask how did we get through the gates. Which guard station did you come through? We hadn't passed a single one that we could remember. I was speaking to one of the officers and he asked like what we were doing there so late. I couldn't understand like, okay, yeah, 10, 30, 11. That's probably really late, you know, but I asked him what time it was. And I think he told me it was around 1.30 in the morning at that point. We lost time. We lost several hours. And we don't know what happened with that time. We tried to explain to them like, look, we were here for a party. We went to go have dinner at this anniversary. We went to our cousin's house. We got on the freeway. We told them everything. They absolutely thought we were full of shit. We left a house. We were getting on a freeway. And we just ended up on this military base. We have no idea how this happened. So they're running our information. They run our names through every system that they can get a hold of. And I specifically remember them telling us like we had to run your names through an essay, interpool. We ended up being there on that desert road for about four hours before they came to us and they let her out of the back of the car. And they told us, you're going to follow us out. You're going to follow this officer. And they're going to guide you out. We followed them for about 10 or so minutes before we got to pavement. And we followed them for another five or 10 minutes until we got through I think two gates to get out of where we were. And that was really when it kind of sunk in for us like we were deep in a military base. We're not just like at an edge or in a reserve. We're deep inside of a secure location. That's when we were kind of just in shock. And I remember we both were just sitting there kind of silently watching these guys work under like illuminated guard gates letting us out. And when we got to the last gate, we're like, okay guys, but we still don't know where we are. How do we get back to Baker'sville? Like we still don't have a clue where we are. Here's the freeway, go down this way, get on the freeway, you're out. And so that's what we did. When we pulled out of the gate, we left, we talked about it in the car for a bit. We were like, that was absolutely the craziest thing that we either of us have our experience. I still haven't experienced anything as crazy as that. And we drove home. We're both just like in shock by what just happened. We're still so confused. We have no idea how we ended up where we were. And I remember when we got on the freeway, we started to drive through Ridgecrest. And we're like, how are we driving through Ridgecrest again? Like we were south of the city and now somehow we're north of the city having to go on this freeway through the entire city to get out of it again to go back where we started. When we got back into Baker'sville, the sun was coming up. And we went to sleep that night and the next day we talked about it. And it was just so weird like that this happened. And we have together talked about it a few times over the years. She really doesn't like to talk about it at all because it freaks her out so much. To this day, I still feel like it was probably like some kind of a military experiment, some kind of military testing that was going on. We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I've heard other theories. Everything from aliens to portals to everything else. But I really just feel like maybe some kind of weapons testing or something. And the next day, we told her cousin about it first. And she was just so dismissive. She was like, this sounds crazy. You guys don't know what you're talking about. Like I guarantee it didn't happen. She thought we were lying. And it was so weird to us because we assumed we would tell people and they'd be like, "Wow, as shocked as we were, people did not believe us." People didn't believe that this was a story that actually happened. And so we started to question ourselves but the only thing that made us so steadfast and this is what actually happened is we both remember it. It's not like one of us fell asleep in the car and the other one was driving and then the one that was asleep came up with a story or anything like that. We both remember. I was the driver. Then she was the driver. We both remember the field. We both remember the landmine sign. We both remember the police. So like the shared experience that we had is what really solidified that into our memories of like this is reality. This is not just like some hallucination that one person had and one off time. This is something that happened to both of us and we're still friends to this day. After doing some research of the area, I have always been of the opinion that this is some kind of like a military experimental thing gone wrong. We just kind of got to walk away that night. I sometimes feel like retelling the story is not in my best interest. After a lot of thinking about it, I filed a Freedom of Information request with the Navy recently to get all the details from their end of what happened. Submitting that was nerve-wracking. I don't want to poke a bear. I don't want to rehash this. If there's something there that they don't want us to talk about or to like get into, you know, I've lived a relatively peaceful life up to this point. And so that kind of makes me feel like anxious still to this day. I did receive an email back to the military saying that they are pulling records and that something in the law with if they do under two hours of work and it's under 100 pages, there's no fee. From what they know, it will be under 100 pages, which tells me there is a record of something. Are they going to come to my house now? I don't even live in the area anymore and I'm still worried that somebody is going to show up out here and knock on my door to ask me about it. it. I don't even know if the military police knew what had happened to us to know if they should let us leave that night. It doesn't make sense that we moved locations from South of Ridgecrest to North of Ridgecrest. It doesn't make sense to me that we ended up on a military base or specifically that we were heading in the direction of a land mine filled. It doesn't make sense to me that the military knew that we were there when they sent these guys out. They had to have gotten some kind of alert that we were there. It doesn't make sense to me that we were so far in the military base. It doesn't make sense to me that they didn't pull their weapons on us. It doesn't make sense to me that they let us go after all of that instead of even a citation, not even a trespass. It never made sense to me the missing time. It never made sense to me that we switched seats. This is such a weird story that like we told people originally and they just told us like you guys are crazy. Like don't tell anybody this information. Dang, dude. I do not mess around with military bases. Don't go near those places government secrets. Yeah, I'm good on that. I don't want to know. Alright, let's take a quick break. A reporter receives a shocking tip about something that happened inside a woman's prison. He starts asking questions and what she think covers is far bigger than one disturbing event. A deeply entrenched system, the people it protects, and the women who risk everything to challenge it from the inside. Snap studios and KQED present. We are Jane Doe, a three-part investigative series listen on snap judgment wherever you get your podcasts. Do you have a dark curiosity? Heart starts pounding. Horrors, hauntings, and mysteries is a weekly podcast hosted by me, Caitlin Moore. Each week I'll take you on a dark journey through terrifying true urban legends, bizarre true crime cases, chilling tales of backwards horror, and more. So if you're looking to join a passionate community of the Darkly Curious, check out Heart Starts pounding on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay curious. Hot Kature, high-fashion Paris Milan, that walk, baby. Yes, you heard the rumours right, the Terry Carnation collection is in the Radio Rental merch store right now. Just go to shop.tenderfoot.tv to get your hands on this season's hottest styles. Fit check, slay, glow up fire, drip. I don't know what any of that means, but it's written here. Hey y'all, I'm back in the manual. Fliped ahead little, it was getting really a bit of a slog, so listen to this part. Working at Radio Rental is a service above all else. The knowledge and power you will possess is not for the faint of heart. Thank you for sacrificing your life to this door. What? Your sacrifice will not be in vain. Wait, what the frick, uh, sacrificing my life? Uh, you know, I'm not sure. All about that, okay. Well, maybe it's just like the way you said things back in the 80s, like bitchin' or da bomb. Yeah, man, the 80s were crazy. Anyways, let's play you another tape. Have a bitchin' time. Hope it's da bomb. Oh. In 2015, 2016, I was 15 going on 16 years old. I lived in Woodruff, South Carolina with my ex's family. Because I wasn't yet 16, I was right on the line. I would help his mom to odd jobs like cleaning houses. We were just tag along with her and help her out. One day, we went with her to clean a house. It was like a try-level type house on a lake. We went in there and started cleaning and we noticed like a foul smell. And we looked around everywhere, like in the attic, under scenes. And we could not find the cause of this smell. It really bothered us because we were supposed to be cleaning the house so we needed to know the cause of the smell. We kept cleaning and so we started cleaning carpets and walls and windows. We finished the first floors and we went down to like the bottom floor. And in this bottom floor, it was like a finished basement with mosaic-type tiles on the floor. These tiles seemed like they were like hand put down, not like they were laid down or anything. Like they were very particular in need and looked expensive. In the center of this floor with all these nice tiles, there was a square missing from the tiles. And there was a drain in the floor. We had gone to clean houses with her before, but for some reason like that had really stuck out to me. It completely creeped us out. We wanted to know why we were smelling weird smells and why there was tile missing in the floor. It was kind of a conversation between all of us, but we all just didn't necessarily want to ask too many questions. We wanted to get paid for what we had done. We were waiting for the guy to come and pay her. She came and pulled up in like this gold tan truck. Any paid or any stood there and had a conversation with her. Something about him didn't seem right, but I had also not had many interactions with this man. I just kind of took it as, you know, him paying her for her work and we left. Within a couple weeks, I had turned 16 and I got a job at the McDonald's. While I was working, this man walked into McDonald's and I recognized him as my ex's mom's boss. The man who had just paid her to clean the house. He was with an older gentleman. When they came in, they had commented on how pretty mine and my co-workers eyes are and they were kind of like trying to have friendly banter, it seems, but we were uncomfortable. The older gentleman kept trying to come behind the counter to hug us and we were moving further back so that he couldn't. It was just really uncomfortable situation. In our manager, I guess, saw us stepping back further so she walked up there and he backed off. I could see my ex's mom's boss standing there kind of like observing our behavior and our reaction to how this man was being around us. It was just really uncomfortable and creepy. Not too long after that, I was working. My manager had walked past me. She was kind of in a rush and I didn't really think anything of it at the time. As soon as she had started rushing towards the back office, it's when I remember sharing the sirens. I just kind of looked up because it is a small town and usually when we hear sirens, we're trying to figure out who we're. I saw them go down one at one beside the McDonald's and I was just like, hmm, that's a lot of sirens for this little town, for like if it was just a car accident or something, it just seemed a little extreme. And we had started also hearing like a helicopter. My manager had said something about somebody had been found on one at one and like a box trailer in a field a few miles up the road. I was told like whose property it was and everything and I even now just talking about it, I'm getting like goosebumps. It was Todd Cole. It was the man that we had been cleaning houses for. One of my coworkers had put on the news channel and we were kind of watching where they were walking into the property. We were all just like, oh my gosh, like this is insane. Like he was just here, like he went to McDonald's almost every day. We were all just like horrified. But we saw the police going on to a property and trying to rescue this girl that had been in this home shipping container for a while. After we had seen the news of what was going on over there, there was a journalist that came in. She ordered food and she started talking to us. I remember her telling us that he had kidnapped a woman and that they had found a woman up there but she was alive. Apparently he had been doing this for a long time to different people in different ways and different like states, not just South Carolina. I was shown his pattern of criminal behavior up until he got to South Carolina and he had become a real estate investor and he had used that as an advantage to start filling people and kidnapping them. Todd Coleup had been hiring the woman I lived with to clean houses and go to properties to clean and take care of stuff and he had been doing that with lots of other people. At some point I found out that some of those people were the people he had killed and kidnapped. It was scary. It was honestly scary to think that I had interactions with this man and he had ended up being a serial killer and he had kidnapped this woman and kept her in a trailer. When I talked to my ex-boyfriends mom that night, we talked about a trilobal house and the funny smell and how the tile was missing. Before him it's like, "Yeah, we were like, 'Oh, I could have been a dead raccoon or a dead rat or anything like that.' But after the fact, having the missing tile around like a drain and a basement, we were just kind of like, 'What are the odds of him being a serial killer and having this happening? It was just too coincidental to not put it together in my head like that.' But that was only one of the houses I had helped her clean. She had told me that there were more houses that seemed a little odd that she had cleaned herself. He probably had her cleaning up crime scenes for, you know, what she thought was a good amount of money for just cleaning houses. We also found out he would purchase stuff on Amazon and he would leave like crazy reviews, like he would purchase knives and he would leave reviews talking about how the knife had worked. For the behaviors he had and the things he acted out over all those years, it just kind of seemed strange and impossible that there wasn't even more that we didn't know about. He was walking around our town every day, interacting with people, acting like he wanted to help out. It's almost like he was watching everybody around him to see what he could get away with and you know, it turns out and that's exactly what he was doing. There are people out here that can do stuff like that and get away with it for a very long time before being caught. It's scary to think about like what he might have done if he hadn't gotten caught. Whoa, that's heavy. Let's take a quick break for some ads. Did you know that if your spouse goes missing but you don't tell anyone? That's not necessarily a crime. That surprising fact is that the heart of the brand new season of Bearbrook, the award-winning True Crime podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. I'm your host, Jason Moon. In season three of Private Matter, we investigate another New Hampshire mystery, a beloved Christmas tree farmer with dementia vanishes from his small town. His wife never reports him missing. Can he still be found? If you knew Jay as well as I do, he's private, he doesn't want everybody to know his business. I don't believe you. I kind of revered back to that Bearbrook saying, "What if we were to just come across something?" In a road down she said, "I found him." Follow Bearbrook on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Looking for a horror podcast that is in murder to get through? Then check out another Effing Horror Podcast. Our show where paranormal and true crime stories collide with unfiltered commentary. I'm Monique Sanchez, and I'm Amy Trayden. Each week Monique and I share one paranormal story and one true crime case, from unexplained phenomena to true tales of murder and mayhem. We find the stories you haven't heard before and research them obsessively to bring them to life. Follow or watch another Effing Horror Podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Whoa, hey, yo. This is Wild. The manual gave me directions to where I could find a VHS tape hidden in the store. Training video. Now that you're done with that second story, I should think we should pop this puppy in. Hello, and welcome to Radio Rental. If you found this tape, then you must be our newest employee. You've no doubt been selected by the universe for your unique aptitude in this sort of environment. You know what they say. If the vest fits, wear it. Now, welcome to your training. Nine to five? I don't think so. Radio Rental is an all-consuming endeavor that will change your brain chemistry forever. To put it plainly, now that you've made it this far, there is no clocking out. Okay, yep, that's enough of that. I think we might go put this back in its little nice snug corner in the wall. Anyway, I don't know about you, but I'm good on Radio Rental for today, so, uh, it's good at all. Scram. Okay. It's like my parole officer used to tell me, "Don't let me see you back here again." Or we're adding six months. I'm just playing. I'll see you next week, buddy, bud. Radio Rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenderfoot TV. Showrunner is Stephen Perez. Lead producer is Eric King-Tana. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright, hosted by Tony Cavallero as Vince, writing by Meredith Stedman and Stephen Perez. Editing by Eric King-Tana, Mike Rooney, Sean Nernie, and Cooper Skinner. Our production manager is Jordan Foxworthy, cover artwork by Trevor Eilert and Rob Sheridan. Radio Rental Merchandise by Byron McCoy. To shop Radio Rental Merch, visit shop.tenderfoot.tv. Special thanks to Orren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA as well as the Nord Group. If you have a Radio Rental story that you'd like to share, email us at your scary story at gmail.com or contact us via the form on our website, radiorentalusa.com. Follow us on Instagram @radiorental. On behalf of the Radio Rental store, we'd love it if you'd subscribe, rate, and review. As always, thanks for listening and for being a loyal Radio Rental customer. [Music]