Episode 67

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 bonus scary stories. Visit TenderfootPlus.com for details. Take a break from the same old boring blockbusters 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 our kind videos, so frightening, so mind-bending, you won't be able to sleep at night. You've gone, Radio Rental. It transcends time and space. It's a sound, like a radio, but it isn't a radio. There's actually no radios involved at all whatsoever. You come for the thrills. You stay for the memories. A man's soothing voice swells and seeps into your ear bones and says, "It's time for ads." This terrifies you. You like, you comment, you follow and subscribe. It's Radio Rental. Hello, welcome in to Radio Rental. We're a video rental shop with a collection of the scariest true horror stories you've ever heard in your life. And I am your host shopkeeper extraordinaire and former AM radio personality Terry Carnation. I am so excited to have you here with us during this very special time of year. That's the spooky season. That's right, it's finally October. It's no longer weird or off-putting to a black cloak and a mask around town. It's no longer inappropriate to offer candy to children. Suddenly, all of my regular hobbies and interests are accepted, culturally accepted and embraced. Finally, after a lifetime of judgment. And speaking of hobbies and interests, you'll be interested to know I've started collecting antique furniture. That's right, I love and teaking. It's so cool and hip and you can find the neatest old things that are creaky and obscure and at great prices too. For example, I found this, a bright piano, at a nearby estate sale. Just this week, check it out. Pure rosewood in real ivory. And oh look, someone has carved their initials in it. It reads, "Help me?" Those are the initials. Okay, these are a little tuning. A lot of dusting, possibly fumigation, mold inspection. But look how cool! And guess what, it was totally free. Can you believe it? I was just walking past this decrepit estate that seemed to be falling down all around itself. And the piano was sitting outside with a little sign that said, "Free? Please take. Please. Please take. We beg of you." So that's a clear sign from the universe. Anyway, I am now able to tickle the old ivories whenever Terry pleases. But alas, I'm not sure what. Oh, that was weird. I didn't even touch the piano in any way. I'm sure you're here for some horror stories from my secret collection of tapes. So let's do it. Ooh, how about this, doozy? Mmm, you're gonna love this. Hey! What? What? Anyway, roll tape. I have a house I bought a year ago. I run it as an Airbnb. It's an investment property to me. It's a good property. You know, it cash flows decently well. It's nothing crazy. Really, it's just in an Airbnb investment property for me. It has a normal friend yard, normal backyard. You know, it's fully fenced in. I have two sheds in my backyard. One of them is completely broken. I have a lock on it. And then the other one we use is our laundry room. What's in there is a laundry machine, a dryer and a water heater. That's pretty much it. It was a Friday, normal work stuff, calling some sellers or calling some realitors, trying to get some deals done through my real estate business. Two, three p.m. I get a notification of somebody in my front yard. And I go on the camera, click on it to see like, okay, like, you know, what's going on? It's a guy opening my front fence. And then he wanders my backyard. He had a white t-shirt, black shorts and a backpack and then he had glasses. I turn on the camera and I see him in the backyard. I'm like, bro, you gotta be kidding me. I don't have time for this. He was wandering around in circles in my backyard. Like, he was confused. Like, he was hiding from somebody. And then he went in the shed. I'm watching this. What is a guy doing? How the shed is angled, you can't see inside it. I don't know if he was taking a nap in the shed. I don't know if it was something that like, you know, I wouldn't want to know about. I've never seen this guy prior, so it wasn't like a consistent thing. I just thought it was something messing around my property. I don't know what he's doing inside there. I don't know why he even went in there. I need to get this guy out. I have a ring camera in my backyard. I turn on the microphone and I'm talking to him. Yo, what are you doing? Why are you in my shed? Are you looking for something? I see you. Get out of my shed. I'm going to call the police if you don't leave. He's not leaving. And that's why I called the police. Hey, I just watched this guy go into my backyard and go into my shed. I'm not local, unfortunately. I just want to get this guy out of my shed. Could you please send an officer over to my house? I'm just going to keep watching this guy, making sure he's not doing anything crazy, or trying to break into my house. I get a notification on my phone that either is moving in my front yard. Four or five officers. During this, I'm still watching the backyard camera. They gather around the shed. And then two guys have their guns. Two guys go in there. They looked around for a minute. And they came out. They didn't find anything. They walked to my back door. That's when I turn on my mic again. Hey guys, is there nobody in there? And they're like, no. I've literally been watching this the whole time. He can't leave. Nobody left that shed. He has to still be in there. They go in again. He wasn't in there. Police at that point were like, okay, we're wasting time here. It looked like I was insane because I was watching him do pretty much nothing. I had no idea what to think. Hey, yo, I'm so sorry for wasting your time. I swear, this guy never left. I don't know what's going on. I really appreciate you guys coming out. And then they left. I rewatched the camera. Did this guy leave? Did somebody even walk in there? Am I just making this up in my head? I start rewatching the footage, making sure I didn't miss anything, making sure that he didn't leave the front yard while watching the back yard and the camera missed it, and he never left. The ring doorbell, I rewatched that, he never left. I rewatched the back yard camera, he never left. I rewatched the front yard camera, he never left. I had to have missed something because there's no way that this happened. and I didn't pick it up and this guy just disappeared. I didn't even know what to think, and that's when I was talking to some friends and family showing them what happened and they were like, "Wow, that is. that's weird." The next day, I get a notification on my camera again and it says it's picking up emotion in the backyard. What's going on? So I click on it. I see there's a guy in my backyard and then I go to my front yard and I see him in my front yard. He goes out in my fence and then wanders off the screen. Man, what's up with two days in a row with people wandering at my house? What's going on? So I want to see how this guy gets in my backyard because I didn't get a notification that he was in my front yard. How did he get to my backyard without me knowing that he was in my front yard? I go to my front yard cameras, nobody ever came, I go to my backyard camera and the motion picks up this guy leaving the shed. So recording started right when he stepped out of the shed. There's no motion prior to him wandering in the backyard, coming from another area, coming from my front yard, coming from my neighbor's yard. The first motion was the first step out of the shed. The second person looked surprisingly similar to the first person with the same glasses. They looked very similar face structure wise, but one was probably about 30 years older. I was mind blown. What just happened? What is this? What's going on here? How is this possible? Is this the same guy? Is this a different guy? You know, why do they look the same? I called my contractor. I sent them the pictures of the people seeing if he knew these people which he didn't. My first guest was that my camera messed up, but my camera, like it did mess up. I would be able to admit it if it did, and it didn't. It didn't mess up twice in a row. Me looking through the footage, hundreds of times, and seeing that my camera didn't mess up, it has to be something super natural. Just putting one and one together, I'm like, this guy goes into my shed younger, never leaves my shed. Cops go in there twice. I watch the camera that I never see him leave. Then the next day, an old guy leaves my shed. I never see him walk into my friend yard, I never see him walk into my backyard, and then he wanders off. The two guys look the same. Just one is way older. What if it's a time traveler? That was the theory I was putting together. As I started clipping them and putting them together, seeing the resemblance, that's when I started thinking, what if it is? Otherwise, I don't know what it could have been. I exposed everything. I screen-tried their faces and put it all online, and a lot of people, internet being how the internet is, started doing face searches and looking into the two guys. While we were doing that, somebody discovers that the old guy resembles a man named Stephen A. Miller. This guy, Stephen A. Miller, was a Harvard graduate. Stephen A. Miller looks pretty much identical to the old guy. When I saw this theory, I'm like, "Oh, we figured it out." We found it. This is who it is. Who was this guy? This guy, Stephen Miller, was obsessed with time travel. He used to post on blogs about time travel. He used to have websites based on nuclear energy and theories and time travel. He had interviews of time travel, and he looks the same as my guy, but this guy died in 2018. I've never heard of this guy prior to this incident. There's no way I would have ever heard about this guy. You know, he died six years ago? I believe it was a time traveler. I don't know what else it could be. I wish to make it tell me otherwise. Although it seems far-fetched and like crazy idea, I saw what I saw, and unless I get evidence that proves it otherwise, that's what I saw. What other explanation is there? Wozo, Stephen A. Miller. Hmm, you know, it might be the same Steve Miller from the Steve Miller band. Do you ever think of that? I would look into that. Could be your culprit. I mean, think about this. Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future of my shed, something like that. Seems like something that a time traveler might say. I mean, he's basically confessing in that song. Hmm, I've connected the dots once again, but any who, you have to watch a property for free loading time travelers. I mean, what is with that? The man thinks he can just like Bill and Ted in your backyard shed. He thinks he can use your shed as some kind of tardis and not compensate you for it. I mean, it doesn't seem right. Oh, well, unfortunately it's time for ads, and you can't time travel through them, but of course you can skip ahead like 30 seconds at a time. That negates that. You actually kind of can time travel through these ads, but please don't because they're our sponsors. Listen. And we're back from our ads. Welcome back. Oh, that story was especially chilling, and I have to say a bit my, did you do that? I didn't do that. Who did that? Malachi, did you do that? Back there somewhere. Well, hard. Okay, maybe it's just in my head. Maybe I just have the news with me today embedded in my skull, and I'm imagining the beginning of my next great piano opus. You see, I actually did used to play in a, oh, okay, okay. That's enough. Seriously. Who's doing that? Who is Malachi? Are you fucking with me? Have you tied strings to the keys of this piano? All right. Okay, you're way over there in another part of the room. Well, anyway, no time like the present to play the next horror story. Dear customer, what do you say? How does that sound to you, my dearest, dearest patient? Okay, um, that's weird. Never mind. Great. Okay, here we go. Roll tape. This is Fall of 2004. I was going to college, but I didn't want to live at home. I wanted freedom and independence, even though home was 10 minutes across town. And so I moved in with my nana. I had the entire second floor to myself. It was an addition, so it was pretty small. It was two bedrooms, like the smallest hallway and then a bathroom. We had Venetian blinds on the windows. Nana loved them. She would not change them. The bedroom that I stayed in overlooked the covered patio. It was about a five-foot drop to the patio. From there, you could walk either to the front of the house or the back of the house and kind of climb down. The second bedroom over, it had one window, but it was just a straight 20-foot drop. There's no way to get up into that bedroom, that window didn't open. My bedroom upstairs was the only bedroom that had a sliding door window, like that you could open and close. It was just a random night. Nothing special is going on. And I heard a knock at the window. I'm on the second floor. There's five foot drop and somebody's knocking at the window. It didn't feel friendly. It's dark outside. My bedroom light is on. The Venetian Blies are close but they're not closed enough so whoever's out there can see and I cannot see out. My entire body went cold. I just stood there frozen. I couldn't move. I always thought I be so brave in like a scary situation. I was not brave. I completely froze and then I kind of snapped out of it because then I'm like Nana's downstairs. I knew I had to walk by this window to get my cell phone that was on the charger which was also next to the landline so even if I wanted to call anybody I'm gonna have to walk by this window to get the phone. I finally mustered the courage. I run by the window as quick as I possibly can. Grab my cell phone and then I go into the bedroom next door. Barricade myself in. Never heard of me to call the police because there's tapping on my window. I just felt so silly if I were to call them and say that and I was young and 18 and I didn't want to make a fuss but I'd wanted to call my best friend Jay at the time. He was working security at a rave in Oakland and so I knew if I called him he's not going to be able to get to me in time. His normal five-temmit drive across town to me this is now like a 45-60-minute drive. I ended up calling the boy I was seeing at that time who told me wow that sex you must be scared. And then he hung up. I called Jay and I said I know that you are in Oakland right now that you're not near me. Do you have any friends that are in the area that can come and help and just sit with me because I'm scared and he said I'm on my way and like 25 minutes later he was at my house. He came upstairs he went out onto the roof he was a lot taller than I was he can make that drop easily and he could see though that there was footprints all over the roof. They were big like boot footprints. Nobody had been on that roof in year since before my papa had died. There was no reason to be up there there wasn't like maintenance or anything you weren't hanging Christmas lights up there. There was no reason for there to be footprints on that roof. Maniana was downstairs sleeping she's hard of hearing I didn't want to wake her up I didn't want to scare her. I managed to calm myself down and then I slept in the second bedroom that night. The next night I slept at my girlfriend's house came home that day was hanging out with my nana everything's fine and normal and then she happens to mention hey were you expecting anybody to come over last night and I said no why and she said somebody was banging on the front door in the windows and they woke me up in the middle of the night and so that made me really angry I wasn't scared anymore and I was angry. Nana was older she was in her 70s she's very hard of hearing so for that to have woken her up that must have been incredibly loud all of that banging. I called a couple friends I had in high school that were known to be pranksters and just asked them like hey was this you haha you pulled a good one on me that was funny like let's not do this anymore and they all swore up and down it was not them. I asked around can you go check with this person can you check with that person just kind of put the word out that like something was going on nobody claimed that it was them doing this we talked to my dad and my mom about it and even they were kind of like what do they gonna do they're gonna come dust for fingerprints they were not thinking that we needed to call the police or involve any type of law enforcement to escalate it so I had no answers nothing happened that night at my window everything was fine it was like okay well maybe it's over maybe it's just a fluke thing maybe for some reason they've got our houses confused they think our house is somebody else's house I don't know the next night night for I had left my cell phone at that boys house I was saying I got home one upstairs grab the landline call them it was like hey I left my phone can you drop it off Niana's asleep downstairs so just you know don't call the house just maybe honk or knock lightly at the door I'll come down and get it a few minutes later I hear rocks being thrown at my window so I assume okay it's him I go downstairs I open the door nobody's there it's still light out at this point too so it's not like I missed anybody there's nobody in the front yard I kind of check the street his car's not there the phone's not like in the mailbox or anything close the door backup stairs the second I walked back into my room there is pounding on my window like a full fist somebody as hard and loud as they can the window is shaking it is so hard at the top of the stairs was a small hall closet and we had a souvenir bat from an Oakland A's game and I grabbed it I ran downstairs flung open the door nobody's there they just disappeared into thin air those rocks in the driveway they make a sound I'd be able to hear them running up and down the street I would hear a car peeling off if they were to have gone through the backyard to leave they would have had to hop like nine foot fence it didn't make sense I got back up stairs and I'm trying to calm down and then there's knocking on the front window it was a different type of knocking and a different feel to it it's the boy I'm seeing he's with my phone he's got a couple of his friends and they're all standing in the window waving like hi we're here here's your phone and I asked I'm like hey while you were driving over do you happen to see anybody running through the neighborhood anybody past your car and they look weird to you anybody you know maybe driving a little too fast to get out of the neighborhood and they did not see anybody either they're a bunch of dudes they didn't care they thought I'm being silly you're hearing things you know you're patriotic they didn't think anything of it they just left I slept at the bat that night and probably for about a week or so after but it never happened again I don't know who it was I don't know why that's just a very sinister thing to do to somebody like why would you do that no one wanted to spend the night anymore I didn't have a lot of takers they wanted to stay at their house which is fair Jesus people if you want a woman's attention just woo her in a normal and approachable way don't have to be so weird about it do what I did when I was courting my last girlfriend Rita before the loss of my late wife zeelon I would leave her little love notes under the pen name Leonard and after a few years of lying to her about this I finally one night followed her into a dark alley and introduced myself as the author of said love poetry she she feigned fear and overwhelmed but she she loved it we we had a good time so maybe just try something like that next time for more love advice by me Terry Carnation write me at my website I have so much love advice to give perhaps this requires its own show its own podcast who knows speaking of podcasts we have ads to pay the bills sit tight and listen to this please very much thank you and we're back from the ads that you were just listening to and purchasing. Now, wasn't that last story, did you? Okay. I, I don't, I really, I don't, I don't like that this is happening. I feel like I'm interpreting that free sign a little differently. Now, maybe the please take was a little more desperate than I thought. Maybe it's less of a sign from the universe and more like a call for help. I mean, I don't really want to say it, but I, I feel like this piano is haunted. My God, that's unnerving. I should never have brought it in here. Oh, why didn't I learn that lesson with that old amulet back from 2004? I should have left and taking to the hipsters and the hoarders and the etsyers. I know I shouldn't have left. Okay, you know what? This is just rude. Why you keep interrupting me? If you're gonna be a haunted piano, just wait till there's a pause. Have a little class. Read the room. Okay, now you're just being an asshole. I'm not going to sit up. Okay, that's it. You're out, you're out in the trash. First thing tomorrow. Oh, funny. Hilarious, Mr. Piano. Well, maybe one night I'll just snip your strings with some pruning shears who'll be laughing then, huh? That's good, that's good. That was pretty good. That was pretty funny. Radio Rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenderfoot TV. Lead producer is Eric Kintana. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright. Hosted by Rain Wilson as his character, Terry Carnation. Written and produced by Meredith Stedman, additional writing by Mark Lacklin. Supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Associate producer is Joja Muhammad, editing by Eric Kintana, Mike Rooney, Stephen Perez, and Meredith Stedman. Sound designed by Cooper Skinner, with additional sound design by Stephen Perez and April Ruha. Makes it master by Cooper Skinner, with additional mixing by Stephen Perez and Devin Johnson. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set, with additional score by J. Ragstale. Video editing by Dylan Harrington. Cover artwork by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan. Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, the Nord Group, Station 16, Beck Media and Marketing, and the team at Odyssey. If you have a Radio Rental story that you'd like to share, please email us at your scary story at gmail.com or contact us via the form on our website radio rental USA dot com. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @RadioRental. You can also follow the illustrious Terry Carnation on social media. Just search @TerryCarnation. On behalf of the Radio Rental store, we'd love it if you'd subscribe, rate, and review. Thanks for listening.