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 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 our kind videos and so frightening, so mind-bending, you won't be able to sleep at night. You've gone. Radio Rental. Wait a second, so. Oh man, I just finished up my jigsaw puzzle, it took me about 6.75 hours of all my exotic birds, and I got my claws, I got a cockatoo, I got a parakeet, some finches, I got a quaker parrot, but I'm missing a piece, where the heck is that thing? I don't know, huh man, you know what calms me down? A slurp of my slush. Whoa, that is a flavor explosion in my mouth. I did a suicide at the slushy machine, I got every flavor they had. Mango, cherry cola, chocolate freeze, pineapple, banana, cherry cola, and then brown water. I thought it was a flavor, but it was genuinely just brown water. Anyways, welcome back to Radio Rental. Video rental shop with an exclusive collection of the scary stories you've ever heard. All told by real people. If you don't know me, that's cool 'cause I'm the new guy, but it's Cherpy Fitzhammer, and I'm gonna be your host for today. I'm also Terry's former massage therapist slash acquaintance. Oh, hey Malachai. I gave him that nickname, that's Malachai, he's a kiddy cat. Anyways, just wanna give a shout out to my buddy Terry. Thank you man, this is a really sick gig. I just been like, playing my old game boy. I chew on my gummies, I slurp on my slush. I keep my time, I got you alive. I'm just playing with my jigsaw puzzles, and then your life is good. Whoa, whoa, I do not like that. The lights have been flickering like crazy lately, man. I hope I don't have that thing where I pass out when lights flicker. What's that called? Anyways, don't really know what's up. It's pretty freaky, I hope I'm not supposed to pay the electrical bill or something. Look at the instructions, no, no, no. Well, even if I had to, I'd put it on my stepmom's credit card, 'cause we don't get along. Anyway, I'm sure you're here to explore our exclusive collection of true horror tapes. Ha, you freak, you nasty freak, you nasty-minded freak. Last week, we popped in a couple tapes involving some touring bands with bad luck. That's three D's on that bad. Let's see what we have in store for you this week. I bet it's cool. And get it in store, 'cause I'm in a store. Whoa, I'm kind of getting the hang of this thing. Rad. Enjoy. And try not to sweat too much, 'cause this is so scary. And then you got sweaty pits, but then you gotta go somewhere important, like over to your dad's house, but your stepmom's there, and then she calls you out for having sweaty pits. And you're like, "Come on, Sandy, lay off me. I'm just trying to do my thing." And she's such a dick. My son had just turned one. We decided, "Hey, let's go take a trip to Monterey." So we took a trip to Monterey with me, my wife and the baby. It was a good little trip, and it was a cool little three days away from everything, from work, and all the stress. When we got back, we noticed the baby started coughing. And then the cough got really bad. Our baby was really sick. I'm bodily for work one morning. She tells me, "Hey, the baby needs medicine. I forgot to pick some up at work. Can you go grab some?" So I go, "Yeah, of course. There's a wall green right across the street. So I figured I'm going to drive over there real quick, come back, drop it off." It's about 11, 11, 30. It's a busy street. It's a main street. There's a red light right there, and you know, I see traffic all backed up. Plenty of cars in the parking lot, but nothing too crazy. And I get out of the car, and already I forgot the medicine that my wife told me to buy. So I call her on the phone and I go, "Hey, what was the medicine again?" And she goes, "Oh, yeah, it was this brand that the pediatrician said was okay. Just remember this one." I'm like, "Okay, cool." And I got her in my ear. I hear the baby crying. I'm walking towards the front and I see a woman. And she's struggling putting her baby into the back seat of the car. And I look over and I feel for her because I'm like, "Oh, man, I'm in that same situation." I know exactly what that's like. My wife is still talking to my ear, and I make a right into the wall greens. The doors open up. I saw a checker at the front, waiting for customers, and I hear distant talking over the aisles. I hear people towards the back. I hear regular conversations that you would hear in a pharmacy. As I walk in, I hear three beeps in my ear that the call failed. Made conversation with my wife. The call drops. And then the door shut behind me and I look up. Everything changed. The checker behind the register was not there anymore. The music that was playing stopped. The normal warm lighting of the wall greens gone. Any ambient noise that I heard from customers completely silent. The cars outside, and any noise I originally heard when I first walked in, completely gone. And I was just alone. Alone in the store, alone in the situation, alone, just alone. It felt like I was not supposed to be there in that moment. It wasn't a subtle change. It wasn't anything that gradually faded out. It was like a completely different place. The noise from any talking from the customers had gone completely silent. The lighting, which was normally just a yellow lighting, was now blue. The whole store just felt dead. I look over to the aisles, I don't see anybody. And I look at my phone, and my phone is off. I look out the doors, and all the cars that were just there are gone. The woman that was just putting her baby in the car is not there anymore. So I stop and I just kind of assess the situation like, what's going on? I kind of look down a couple of aisles, I don't see anybody. Hello? Twice, and I remember when I said that, I'm like, dude, this feels like I'm in a horror movie. No response from anybody. I look up at the mirrors that Walgreens has up on top, and I don't see anybody in the aisles. I peek my head around the corner, don't see a single person. I grab my phone, because I'm like, I should film this. So in case my wife asks me, or if no one believes me, and of course, it won't turn on. The screen is black. I'm playing with the button, nothing's happening. It was really weird, and I'm just thinking to myself like, what, what is this? I go down the aisle and I make a sharp left, and just like that, the lights turned their normal yellowish color. There's people in the aisles I can see again. There's music playing on the speakers. I hear one man talking on the phone. I hear pharmacists, and I look up at the front, and I see a checker there, mid-transaction with somebody. That same checker that was there originally, ringing up someone mid-transaction. There was life again in the store. The life that was missing for the past 30 seconds was there again. And I kind of just stop, and I just sat there for a second, and I was like, what just happened? What just happened right now? I look over, you know, at the people in line, I'm like, are they all not talking? just quiet, but one of the guys was on the phone, I would have heard him.
I look over behind me, there's people in the other aisles now. I just feel confused and I feel alone in this moment because clearly none of the customers around had the same experience. I didn't know what to do, so check my phone and my phone's working again. I have three missed calls from my wife. I go, okay, I'm going to call her in a second. I go, I get the medicine, and I get wrong up at the front. The man at the register asked me, "Can I help you with anything else today?" I just kind of stare at him and I was like, "No, I guess not." As I'm just standing there like thinking, "There's got to be a logical explanation for this." I leave, drive the car back to my house. I'll drop the medicine off my wife and the baby, she goes, "You okay?" I go, "Yeah, I'm going to call you and we'll talk later." I get to work and I call her a little later on. And I say, "Hey, what happened today?" She goes, "Yeah, you look kind of shaking when you came home." I go, "Hey, do you think maybe the car's got a green light?" And then that's why there was no cars there. But why were all the cars in the parking lot gone? And why was the car parked on the street gone? Maybe the woman got her baby into the car just right when I turned around and drove away. Maybe everyone in the aisles was just one aisle over and for some reason no one was talking. My wife goes, "Well, maybe you were stressed out." I go, "Yeah, maybe." And she goes, "How long were you in this weird place or how long did you feel like this?" And I say it was about 30 seconds. Maybe I had some sort of episode. She goes, "Yeah, but the call dropped. They called you about three times." But every time I said that your phone was out of service. She goes, "It didn't even ring until the last time." I go, "Now long was that four? She was about 30 seconds." Okay, well, I would think I was completely crazy maybe, but having my wife on the phone with me and her time stamp with that call dropping perfectly lined up. With this weird experience that I have. And I wouldn't accidentally turn off my phone. I wouldn't do anything like that. It was just weird I didn't know what to do, what to think. I didn't know who to tell besides my wife and my friends. And the ol' agreed it was weird and tried my stuff a little crazy thinking about what happened. What rational explanation do I have for this? Maybe I had some sort of anxiety or panic induced episode. You know, for this brief 30 seconds in time. I am a very rational person. And my wife would call me a skeptic when it comes to most things. I had asked my brother, I go, "What do you think?" and he goes, "Do you know what liminal spaces are?" You went into a liminal space. From what he described, it was like when you slip into this alternate universe or timeline. He said it's usually things like an airport or rooms that are empty or things that are nostalgic from your childhood. Or places that are mundane to you that you're not supposed to spend an extended amount of time in. Except when you're in this place, something feels wrong and off. And there's almost a feeling like you're not supposed to be there. And I thought, "Well, that's interesting." It's also far-fetched, but I also can't think of a rational explanation for everything. Maybe for one or two things I could maybe. All the things combined, it's a little difficult for me to try to be rational about it. I don't know what happened that day and I don't think I'll ever find out. Damn, that was trippy, man. Did anyone else's eyeballs just pop out of their skull because that was so frickin trippy? It reminded me that one time I went to the pharmacy to get my ED/ADD meds. And the pharmacist is like, "Hey sir, what's your birthday?" And I was like, "I don't know." And then I went to reach in my pocket and grabbed my ID and I realized that wasn't even wearing any pants. And then I was like, "Is this a dream?" And he's like, "No, no, it's not a dream." There it goes, lights again, man, what is up with that? I may or may not have taken my medicinal gummies like a half an hour ago. So I'm not in the mood for any flickering trickery, right? Alright, you know what, let's reground ourselves, take a little grounding break, maybe do some meditation. Let's listen to some ads and we'll be right back. 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. Looking for a horror podcast that isn't murdered 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, you guys are back so fast. Okay, moment of truth. Did you guys fast forward through the ads? Be honest. I knew it. No, I don't care. That's cool with me. Although buy their stuff because it helps fund my Venmo. You know what time it is. It's tape time. Here's the sequel to the first tape that has nothing to do with the first tape. Here it goes. I grew up in a small town. Populations like 900. Obviously not. A lot of exciting things happened growing up. By the time I was, I think 17, I had pretty much explored every square inch of that town. I really did. As clichés, it sounds like the back of my hand. I was, I think, 16, 17 and every day trying to figure out something to do. I was with a friend of mine. We reached out to another friend and was just asking them what they were up to. They were like, "Yeah, come over. We're going to watch some movies later tonight." And we were like, "Great." There were pretty much two ways to get to our friend's house. There was a long way through the town, but it ended up leading down a kind of precarious sketchy. A precarious sketchy path alongside of a road. And there was another path that was almost like a shortcut that we had taken 101 times. So obviously we chose to do that. We started like we always would. It was just a couple of minutes right up from my parents' house where I grew up. The place we would always start was a very small kind of chain-link fence. On the opposite side of the road was a little driveway that ran to kind of like a farmhouse that we're pretty familiar with. We'd been there a couple times. We started walking towards our friend's house. And the shortcut was really kind of just through a golf course and a little bit of forest. But again, we had walked it 101 times. It didn't take more than 15 minutes, 20 minutes tops. It was just a straight line from road aid where it would be. I started just seeing all those familiar landmarks. It was the sand trap on Hole 15. A couple of minutes later, there was just like a utility shed. And we were like, "Great. We'll be there in no time." As we kept walking, you know, we started at 5.30 or 6. We're fully expecting to be there, you know, sunsetting around 6.30. But the more we walked, we noticed something was going down and was coming up. And we were like, "Okay, no big deal. Maybe we walked later than we thought." When we were supposed to get there, fully expecting to see that other road, we still hadn't. We saw kind of a thicket of trees right on the other side of those trees. There's going to be the road that's right across the street from our friend's house. And at this point, it was dark.
We got to this thicket of trees, and as soon as we did, we started seeing these blinking red lights, multiple of them almost like lightning bugs, and they were flashing up in the trees above us. They were almost fluorescent, like a Christmas tree bulb almost. They were coming almost like through the trees. We had tripped a flood light that people had outside their house. As we got closer, we started noticing that there was more of them appearing. It was accompanied by the strangest alarm, but it sounded more like a siren. This siren was so unlike anything I'd ever heard before, not like an alarm, not like an ambulance, like a shriek, high pitched, and so loud, almost like a frequency, like when you have a tinnitus, like a ringing in your ears, but coming from someplace outside of you, it was all around us, it was consuming. Still looking up at the trees, the lights were almost surrounding us, that just immediately sat in a panic. We didn't know what it was, but we knew that it wasn't anything normal. It was completely unlike anything we had ever seen or heard before in that small town. With that, it was fighter flight or freeze, and we flew, we ran out of there as fast as we could, and it was hard to think about anything other than those lights, and that sound. We ran and ran and ran. Still looking up above us in the tree line, still seeing those red lights flashing. We see a road ahead of us, and we're like, okay, great, we're here. As we approached that road, we were standing, looking at that small chain-linked fence that we started walking on. We looked behind us, we looked in front of us again, looking back at that chain-linked fence. And what just happened? We were walking just a straight line. It was all start to finish, golf course, utility shed, everything that we had noticed in the past, up until that line of trees. At no point did we ever make a U-turn and start walking back? Even more significantly, we never crossed any other road. Any other path, it was all just golf course and forest. We kept trying to rationalize, and the more we did, the more it didn't make sense. Who has red flashing light, alarm system outside their house? But at no point did either of us get lost. It was again a walk we had done hundreds of times. Crazier theories started to go through our head like maybe we walked through some sort of portal, but the weirdest part, I think, was after we calmed down, talked a little bit, we noticed that it was nine o'clock at night. We had effectively lost three hours. It really was a walk that was from point A to point B, a straight line, that really should have only taken 15, 20 minutes at tops, a walk that we had done so many times before and even since then, done that walk. Somehow we ended up back looking at that chain link fence without ever turning around, without ever walking back, without ever crossing any other roads. That forest, that golf course, that straight line, and yet, somehow, we were back where we started, like we had walked entirely around the circumference of the world, and the look on our faces said everything that we were both thinking. We were walking back home, because at that point we were just completely wiped out, exhausted with fear, panic, and anxiety, and the more we talked, the more things didn't make sense, the more things didn't add up. It would be one thing if I was by myself, and this happened. I experienced it with somebody else, which was just confirmation that something strange had happened. Him and I, both, especially the following weeks, retraced our steps dozens of times. Going back to that fence, started walking in that same direction. We walked in the morning, we walked in the afternoon, we tried walking at night, but it was always road A to road B. It was never back to road A. It was totally normal. We even tried walking the opposite direction. We tried finding that patch of trees, and sure there were forest and woods and trees and stuff, but we didn't see any floodlights, or sirens, or alarms, or red lights. We never saw anything like that again. The thing that me and my friend both keep coming back to is that we were abducted. I think it explains the lights, the sounds, and the loss of time. Losing time is a big factor in abduction. Maybe these things abducted us and got confused about the location where they got us and they picked us up and dropped us off at the wrong place. That's like the thing that makes the most sense to both of us. Something else really explains what happened that night. The more I listen to other abduction stories, the more that it makes sense, the more I have in common with these stories. I wish it weren't true, I wish it didn't make sense, but that's what I keep coming back to. That's the thing that makes the most sense in my mind. And I truly believe that that night we were abducted and put back in the wrong place. Well, I am missing tons of brain cells after that one because it blew my mind. I don't know, man. You guys think aliens are real? I think it's a pretty strong theory. I think I was graced by the green gods myself. When I was 17, I was hanging out in the Michael's Crafts parking lot next to the Dempster, and this street light started to flicker right, and then bang boom, I get sucked straight into the air. And not the good kind of suck either. Oh man, next thing you know, I'm having these weird flashes of being on a cold table and these things are surrounding me, I can't really remember anything after that, except that I was so sore, it felt like I was doing like the Jean-Claude Van Dam splits for hours on end. Whoa, no, not cool, man. These lights, dude, it's like, it's too much, especially I have to tell in you my Michael's Crafts story, too close for comfort, dude. I don't think that's enough for me, let's reground ourselves, okay, and take a little break for ads. Oh. 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, a 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 rude challenge, he said, "I found him." Follow Bearbrook on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, guess what, guys? I found it. I found my puzzle piece. It was down in the bottom of my box of goobers. And although it was covered in chocolate, it was the tip of the tale of a cuck-a-two. Anyways, thanks so much for joining me today. I really like to get in the meet you. And you guys seem like great people. Good vibes. I hope you liked today's stories and that you didn't ruin too many pairs of undies. And I'm sure it'd be Fitzhammer, and this has been a trip down Radio Rental Road. Well, I'm heading out to my next gig, which isn't really a gig. I'm just going to use my stepmom's credit card to fund my Venmo for a few weeks. I don't know who's going to be here with you next week, but best of luck to you all. Hey, Malachai, I'm going to miss you, little man. Give me a fist bump. Dang, dude. You got me good. And cat scratch, a female, waning, and now. Oh, man, I'm going to have to get some shots. Radio Rental is created by Pain Lindsay and brought to you by Tenorfoot TV. Showrunner is Meredith Stedman. Lead producer is Eric Quintana. Executive producers are Pain Lindsay and Donald Albright. Our main host is Rain Wilson. Guest host is Tony Cavalero, written by Meredith Stedman, writing by Mark Locklin, original score by Makeup and Vanity Set, with additional score by J. Ragsdale, editing by Eric Quintana, Steven Perez, Meredith Stedman, Tristan Bankston, and Sean Nerney. Sound design makes and master by Steven Perez and Cooper Skinner, additional editing by April Ruha and Dayton Cole. Our production manager is Jordan Foxworthy. Our social media manager is Caroline Orajema, video editing by Dylan Harrington. A 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 Orren 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.
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