Episode 72

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. Welcome. Welcome in. Welcome all. Welcome to Radio Rental. Video rental store with a collection of tapes with true scary stories told by real people. Mama. Oh, and also. FYI, apropos of nothing. We have a doll here now. I don't know where it came from. It just appeared here in the morning when I got in. Malachi probably dragged it in from the parking lot or something. I don't know. He's always bringing in weird dirty things from the dumpster. One time, he brought in a finger, a human finger. Now that I think of it, I probably should have called that one in. Oh well. Okay. Anywho, all in all, a doll isn't that bad. I mean, nothing bad has ever happened when a strange doll just shows up at your doorstep, right? I'm sure this doll, as horrifying as it is, is just, it's fine. Mama. Oh, you hear that mama? It wants its mommy so cute, so twee. A face only a doll over could love. Anyway, I've got a doll of a tape to play for you today. Let's see what scary story will have in store for you today. Here we go. I hope you got all dolled up for this one. This takes place in the summer of 2008. I was 14 years old. My parents were recently divorced. And my father had just moved out, leaving my mom and three younger siblings. We lived in a house. It was built in the 1800s in the thick of the Appalachian Mountains. And we had a driveway. It was half a mile long, mostly unpaved. No one would ever come down unless they had a purpose to drive down and know that that house was there. At that point, my mom had a lot of correspondence with an old owner. His name was Bob. We knew a lot about the family. We've seen a lot of pictures. And it was a very sweet penpal connection. When we had moved into the house, it was abandoned. It was on the market for many years not being able to be sold. Our realtor was the one who disclosed that there was a murder in the house years ago. And she had also listed some references of people who had lived in that house prior. And that's how my mom found Bob's address and number. She had talked with him at length. They had shared photos in the house. He had talked about how he moved down to Florida with all of the rest of his children, except for the youngest. It was a small town. Everyone knew this woman was murdered in this house. I remember being on the school bus and kids talking about it. Oh, you live in the murder house. And I'm like, what happened? What do you know? This man hit his wife with a frying pan and she fell down the steps. And I'm like, oh wow, this is kind of creepy. I go home and I ask my mom. And I hear by getting hit with a frying pan. She had looked at me like, how did you hear this? And I tell her the kids on the school bus. And she's always been very honest with me. And she's like, that's not what happened. There was a murder. I guess the realtor had disclosed to her that a woman was shot to death by men and ski masks. In our back laundry room, 25 years before, they were never caught. It turned out that that woman was the wife of her pen pal, Bob. I was freaked out. First off, I wouldn't do laundry. She could not get me to go in that room once I found out that that's where it had occurred. A couple months later, I'm making dinner with my mom in the kitchen. She's making shrimp Alfredo. My dog Daisy was a very protective black lab. We hear outside, she's going nuts, barking, running up towards the driveway like someone's pulling down. Nobody comes down that driveway unless they're supposed to be there. We see this white pickup truck. Come down. My mom goes out and I see her exchange some words with a man, an unfamiliar man. I see her smiling and shaking hands and it's someone that she's familiar with. I see her lead him to the house. So they come through the doorway. My mom introduces this mystery man as Tim, the son of Bob and Mary, who was murdered. He seems nice enough, nice smile, warm. He remarks on how nice the house looks, how he's happy, we kept the charm, but also renovated it a little bit. And he asks if he could do a little walk through. My mom's like, of course. He said he was in the area in between jobs and he just decided one day to see if anyone was living in the house. My mom leads him through. We're walking around. My siblings are playing upstairs, so it's just my mom and myself. And we get back to the library room. And Tim's looking around and he goes, "I used to dance with my mother in this very room, in this very spot." And he starts dancing around like air dancing. No one's there, but he's twirling around talking about how much he loves his mother and misses her. And he stops. And he points to the retaining wall. We had this big retaining wall that you could see from that room. And it had Ivy growing all over it. And he points to Ivy and he goes, "You see that Ivy?" Yeah. Do you know what Ivy means? No. And he goes, "It means adultery." We're like, "Okay." It's just getting weirder by the minute. He's looking around. He's talking very theatrically, like his voice got higher. He's dancing with no one twirling around in the room. It just seemed weird. It seemed like he was not present. He was in his own world, like living in the past. He was ruminating on his mother and how much he loved her and all the time they would spend together. That's when he's like, "Did you know she was murdered?" "Did you know she was shot to death in the back room?" And we're like, "Yeah, we're aware." And he goes, "You want to see where we kept the guns?" At that moment, I knew my mom was freaked out because she just starts playing along with him, and that's not something she would ever do. I just knew we had to tread very lightly. I knew the gravity of what he was saying. Why else would you bring up your mother getting shot and then immediately recall where the guns were kept? That just tells me you knew where they were kept. You knew how to access them. The whole family moved to Florida, except for Tim, went off to live with an aunt. All of these puzzle pieces were coming together, all at once. I know he's the killer, he's the one. He's relived this moment and romanticized her death over and over again, and he's come back to relive it once more. He rushes out of that room, like a child on Christmas, like really excited, walks through the dining room to the stairs, runs up him, and at the top of the steps were these four drawers, and he opens them up, and he's like, "This is where we kept the guns." We're just playing along with it. I'm thinking this is a confession. You don't want to tip off that you know that this person is bad, because then you don't want them to hurt you as like a witness. We were protecting ourselves by just playing dumb. He comes down from the steps, and he starts talking about how great the kitchen smells. And my mom is like, "Yep, I'm making dinner, and you know what? Look at that. It's almost dinner time now. I should probably get to feeding the kids." With no shame, he is just like, "I'd love a plate." We're still kind of in this very play-along mood, and my mom's like, "Sure, make some a plate." My mom calls the kids down, we're all sitting around the table. My siblings have no idea what's going on. This guy kind of goes back to how he was when he first came in the house, kind of regulated, seemingly normal, small talking with the kids about school, how they like it. It's like the longest dinner of my life. Everyone finishes. He is on his third plate of pasta, and my mom starts checking her watch, and she's like, "It's time for bed. We gotta get your kids washed up." She starts saying to Tim, "It was so nice meeting you, but it's really time you should go." And he leans back, and he's rubbing his belly, like he's getting even more comfortable in his chair. I don't think I can drive. I'm too full and too tired. I have a really long drive ahead of me. I don't think it's safe for me to be on the road. My mom has a solution right away. I'll make you a cup of coffee. She brings him a cup. I notice that it's in my brother's favorite mug. The blue and white striped mug has a chip in the side. He drinks down that coffee very quickly. He leans back again. Oh, I hope this kicks in. I don't think he wanted to leave. My mom is like, "I'll get you another cup." And then I really have to see you out. You can bring this with you. Keep the mug. It was so lovely meeting you. You know, we'll keep in touch. We'll exchange numbers. And he's like, "Sure, we're watching him from the patio." He waves goodbye at the door and he takes the mug and he gets into the car and I watch his headlights pull out. He's gone. My mom, she deadboards the doors, goes around every window, every door locking it. She has me locking it. Normally we lock the dogs, either bring them inside or we had like a shed for them. I remember we had Daisy out all night just listening for her if there was a bark, anything. We were pretty freaked out. I don't think my mom slept. I don't think I really slept. I was afraid he might come back. I was afraid he had come into the house. He knew that it was just my mom and us kids in the middle of the woods. Like neighbors can't hear anything. They're far off. If anything were to happen, who's there? Saying I know is the morning. Normal morning, always kind of hectic, getting four kids ready for school. We have our backpacks on, shoes on, ready to leave the house. My mom unlocks the door. I watch her unlock the deadbolt, which is something she has never done and it's just kind of this reminder again of what had happened the night before. She opens the door and she gas. She stops in the door frame. She doesn't say anything, but I can see where she's looking on our patio table is my brother's mug. The blue and white stripe mug with the chip and the lip. We didn't say a word. She just grabbed it and threw it in the garbage. Got us in the car and sent us off to school. He had to have come back that night and he had to have come back without his truck. He had to sneak through the woods in the middle of the night. I don't know how I got past the dog and he had to have purposely left it right there. We get back home, the elephant in the room. What about this mug? My mom, she's like, well, I went to the police station today. I had told them everything that happened and they'll be sending out a cruiser to sit at the end of the driveway every night. And I'm like, oh, wow, how did you get them to do that? It's a small town. We don't have a surplus of cops. That just seems like a lot of work. She had told them everything that happened. They had pulled the case again. The details were that the youngest son, Tim, was alone in the house when he saw a van pulled down the driveway and two men in ski masks got out, went into the back room while his mother was doing laundry and shot her to death and ran out. One thing they had noted is that it was a close case, which is really odd as there was never any murderer or perpetrator ever on trial or noted in this murder. They said the only time they ever see that is if the murderer was a minor. In the age and circumstances and history of Tim, the police believed it's very, very plausible that he was the one who did it all those years ago. He was the one who murdered his mother. No one was ever caught. There were no other witnesses. was closed without any murder accounted for. I'm so like captivated by this day and this moment because I did think we were so close to some type of tragedy, like what had happened 25 years ago. I Google him every year, just seeing updates if he's alive. I wonder if he's ever gone back to that house. Do the people who live there now have they seen him? Oh that was good, I mean horrifying, but good, so good, you know what I mean, I especially like the, um, mama, stupid doll with your dead glassy doll eyes anyway, so silence you, adds time, adds, whoa, whoa, what the, did you hear that? Did the doll just say, did it, did it say, Terry, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, dolls don't learn, silly, Terry dolls don't learn, all right, all right, as promised on to ads, oh dear God, this does not portend well. All right story time again, how about we pop in another tape? Here we go, okay, yes that's right dolly, good dolly, it's a tape, that's right, oh great all I need is yet another autonomous haunted doodad around here, I already have a newly acquired haunted piano that interrupts me when I'm speak, thank you haunted piano, thank you for demonstrating you ask, hmm, actually kind of convenient for censorship, oh dear lord, this was the summer of 2011, I was a college student and I had recently transferred from one college to another, closer to my hometown, I had to find a place to live, so I was looking for rooms to rent in homes or apartments around the college, my mom, she had more free time than me and so she was looking online for rooms for me to rent while I was working, she was googling places in that particular area and Craigslist ads started popping up, she just saw an ad for a really cheap room for rent, three to four hundred dollars a month, everything included, so she thought hey this is a great deal, she contacted the landlord, ends up speaking to him on the phone, it was this middle aged guy, I was not present for their phone conversation, I was at work but she told me about it after, and I did ask her a lot of questions because as soon as she tells me that this is a mail landlord that lives there, I didn't like that, I mean I was 19 years old, I had never lived with a man before other than my stepdad and my brother, so I wasn't too excited about that, but what she told me was that it was a house, close to the college I was going to be attending, he rented out the upstairs bedrooms to people and had been doing it for quite a while, my mom convinced me at least give it a chance, let's go take a look at the place, he seems really nice, you won't ever really see him and you'll be roaming with other women in the area that you'll be in the house, he had told my mom, he had a finished basement, his tenants rarely ever saw him, he even mentioned he had his own separate entrance as well to where he lived downstairs, we would rarely ever see him, he had everything that he needed down in that basement, the room that I would stay in would also be upstairs with the other women, he said there were two other women living with him at the time, he had rented for a long time to various people, but lately he had been renting specifically to women, either female college students or young professionals, and the reason was because he had less problems with female tenants, male tenants he'd had before, there'd be vandalism issues, issues with noise, partying, things like that, so he preferred to rent to women. I wasn't too excited about it, but first day of school was approaching, I had to find somewhere to live, ASAP. He invited us to come take a look, so we drove up there, we get to the subdivision, nicer houses, they had the tiny little yards, they were very close together, but it wasn't townhouses. One thing I noticed about the outside of the house, his yard, he had weeds growing up tall everywhere, like to your knees, that's how high, some of these weeds were, his bushes could have been trimmed a little better, but other than that it looked like a normal house. I don't remember seeing a car other than ours, when we parked on the street. We went to the door, knocked on the door, he answered, just your typical middle-aged guy, he was very welcoming, brings us in, hey how are you, just very charismatic, normal kind of furnishings, look like somebody had been doing something in the kitchen, like cooking recently, it wasn't dirty, no strange smells or anything like that, there wasn't a lot of clutter, but you could tell, someone is staying there. My mom is the kind of person, once you get her talking, she doesn't stop, and he was the same kind of person, so they're just going back and forth, just chatting away, talking about a bunch of stuff, including her impending vacation, that I was not going to be a part of, because I had to work. And he didn't really say much to me at all other than, hey how are you? I don't even think he asked me my name, he didn't really even look at me, he focused on my mom, the entire conversation. He asked both of us if I'd like to see my room. When he had talked to my mom on the phone before we arrived, he had specifically stated that my room would be upstairs on the top floor with the other women. We're standing in the living room, and he starts walking towards the front door. To the left of the front door is a staircase going upstairs, and to the right of the front door is another door that's closed, so I'm thinking we're about to head to the left and go up the stairs, but instead he opens the door to his right and walks through it. Me and my mom follow, we end up going downstairs, huh, what, wait what's going on? Me and my mom are still talking, he's still very charismatic the entire time, this man didn't take a breath. We get to the bottom of the stairs and he opens a door to his left, and that's when he finally looks at me again and says this will be your room. He flicks on the light and I walk through it and it's this very small room, probably ten foot by ten foot, maybe smaller than that. There's no closet, there's no windows, there's just a single overhead light. It looked like a room you would imagine in your worst nightmares of someone kidnapping you and putting you in, and there is no way to escape. It was just a dungeon. That is what that room looked like, painted pretty sky blue. I was terrified, I knew something was wrong. I step back out of the room. still talking a mile a minute to my mother has her completely engaged in conversation. Then I look over to my right and I see a closed door and then he says this is the bathroom and then he points to another doorway on the other side of the bathroom door and he says that's my bedroom and I don't have a door on my bedroom. I hope you don't mind and then just launch his back into whatever he was talking about before with my mom. He had taken the door off the hinges. You could see that and his bedroom was just dark. I couldn't see anything in there. I was instantly scared. He lied. He had lied on the phone to my mom about where the room was located that I would be staying in. He told her over and over I would be upstairs with other women and I would never see this man and instead I'm going to be living downstairs with him sharing a bathroom and then he has his own bedroom with no door on it because he wants it that way. Something was not right but I didn't want to react because we are still down in a basement with a man we don't know. My mom is not paying attention because she's just listening to this man who is just so charismatic just wanting to keep her attention on whatever it is he is saying. I said oh yeah it looks nice and just start walking up and they're following me just chit-chatting about whatever it is they were talking about. We get back into the living room and I'm thinking we're about to leave but instead he says hey do you want to follow me upstairs I can show you the other rooms for maybe your future roommates and my mom says oh yeah let's go see I just kept the same energy acting like nothing was wrong and just being quiet and observant because I didn't know what he would do to us if I confronted him on anything I followed them upstairs and as soon as he gets to the landing at the top of these stairs he launches into this crazy story about one of his tenants being alcoholic and having physical altercations with her boyfriend and her exes and he's moving his arms around and gesturing and so my mom is completely zoned into his story I took that time to look around just to make sure I wasn't crazy and paranoid I just really wanted to figure out what is going on there were three bedrooms up there and the doors were wide open which was immediately strange to me because tenants I wouldn't think they would just leave their bedroom doors open while they're not there I go into the first bedroom it looks like a very normal room perfectly made bed and there was nothing else there were no personal belongings for anyone it looked like a guest bedroom I thought that was a little off so I go into the bathroom for that first bedroom there is nothing in there except a single bar of soap I even stuck my head into the shower and there is nothing in there there was nothing in this bedroom to indicate that a woman lives there or be anyone lives there I walk into the second bedroom it was furnished the exact same way even had a matching bed spread I don't know why two tenants would want to have the same bed spread and everything matching and it wasn't feminine in any way there was nothing in that bathroom except for another bar of soap that is really odd for someone that has two current tenants that are women no shampoo no conditioner not even a razor not even a toothbrush nothing it was just empty both of the bedrooms had those sliding closet doors with mirrors on them in the second room that closet was open partially I stuck my head in there a little bit and I can see men's clothing hanging in the back of that closet he saw me look in that closet so he stops telling his crazy story to my mom and just casually remarks to me oh yeah you know sometimes I store my clothes in my tenants closet they don't mind and then immediately starts talking again about this crazy story to my mom and I knew that something is wrong here no one's going to pay this man to put his clothes in their closet furthermore clearly no one else lived there but this man if he even actually lived there I don't know because I couldn't even see anything in his bedroom downstairs it was pitch black I've seen enough I know that this man he's either setting something up to harm people I couldn't think of any other explanation for any of this evidence and behavior I don't say anything because we still have to get out of there he's still talking to my mom so I kind of casually start walking back down the stairs to the living room and they're just following me while they're still talking when we get back down there he finally starts talking to me again and says hey your mom mentioned when you got here that she's going on vacation next week with your dad to the beach but you aren't would you like to come up here next week and have dinner with me in the other roommates see if we vibe and get along and maybe you want to rent the room I already knew there's no way I'm ever crossing this threshold again but I just said yeah sure see you then we said our goodbyes and walked out got in the car and I immediately told my mom there's no way I am living here that's when I just let it all out of what actually was going on there and it wasn't anything good mom did you notice that no one else lives there but him and she's like what what are you talking about there was nothing in that house that belonged to a woman let alone another human being there was nothing in those rooms it was like guest rooms there wasn't even a toothbrush I even looked in the showers mom there was nothing in there except for his clothes in the closet which he mentioned when he saw me looking and I'm like mom he lied to you he told you I would be staying upstairs with the other women and I would rarely ever see him but he wants me to stay down in a bedroom that looks like a dungeon and share a bathroom with him and he's taking his bedroom door off the hinges that doesn't seem off to you she didn't want to believe that we escaped something that could have been terrible she's just in denial thinking that you know she's the one that found this ad she's the one that talked to this man on the phone she's the one that had all this conversation with him in person and didn't even pay attention to where I'm supposed to be living so she just didn't want to believe it after we finally got home I talked to my stepdad and told him hey you've got to help me tell her that this is not okay and I told him everything that happened everything I saw and he agreed with me he told my mom like no she's not living there you need to listen to her he said there's no way that she is ever crossing that threshold in any capacity not for dinner not to live there stay away from that man once we convinced her she's like well if you really think something's wrong you know we should report this ad to the website we get back on to Craigslist to go look for the ad and it was gone it hadn't even been an hour and a half since we left that man's house by the time we realized that he had taken the post down which didn't make sense if he's trying to make money why would you take it down after someone came and visited that never promised you they would live there in the first place this man did not get a sense of my personality at all and I don't think he wanted to he was so focused on my mom I think he was doing that because he was trying to distract the person that should have been recognizing these red flags in his home. My mom was the gatekeeper. She was the one that he would have to convince. He had to focus on her. He barely looked at me the entire time doing everything he could in conversation to keep her from looking around. The timing of it, when he would get really charismatic, was always the times when we were around areas in that house that looked suspicious. I've had a police officer even tell me from this story that it does sound like it was a trafficking situation. I really wish I could remember his name, where the exact location was, I would have reported him to the police. Either he is just a really strange, terrible landlord or he is someone out here trying to harm people. I am convinced. He was a criminal, he was dangerous. Stop living in apartments, to really avoid creeps, you need to go off the grid. Build a yurt in the wild, that's my advice. And my other advice, buy more stuff from these ads and we'll be back after the break. After I break this doll's head in with a ball-peen hammer. Okay, well my dear friend, how did you like that one? Okay, I wasn't talking to you, Dolly. I was talking to the customer, can you let someone else talk for a change? Okay, that's enough for now, Dolly. It's two stories per episode, that's the deal everyone knows that. You get what you pay for, it's free, it's an entirely free podcast. Hey, whoa, slow your old doll. Okay, well, you know what, it seems my new doll here is insatiable for scary stories. So maybe you should get out of here before things get freaky. Go to our Reddit page and complain. Chill doll, chill, we'll have more stories next week, you'll have to wait like everybody else. Okay, that's it, I've had enough of this, I can't find my ball-peen hammer so out the window you go. 20 dollars says that thing is back in here tomorrow. Take your pie hole, Annabelle. Radio rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenorfoot TV. Lead producer is Eric Kintana. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright, hosted by Rainlulson as his character Terry Carnation, written and produced by Meredith Stedman, additional writing by Mark Loughlin, supervising producer is Tracey Kaplan, associate producer is Joja Muhammad, editing by Eric Kintana, Mike Rooney, Stephen Perez and Meredith Stedman, sound design 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 Devon Johnson, original score by Makeup and Vanity Set, with additional score by J. Ragstale, video editing by Dylan Herrington, cover artwork by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan, special thanks to Orren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, the Nord Group, station 16, back 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, radiorentalusa.com. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @radiorental. You can also follow the illustrious Terry Carnation on social media. Just search at Terry Carnation. On behalf of the radio rental store, we'd love it if you'd subscribe, rate and review. Thanks for listening.