Episode 82

A beautifully designed Squarespace website is the difference between thinking about photography school and selling your portraits online. It's the difference between giving away those cookies you just made for free and running your cookie empire. A beautifully designed Squarespace website is the difference between having a movie reviewing hobby and a movie reviewing career. Squarespace, because no matter what you're into, a website makes it real. Use offer code DIFFERENCE for 50% off select plans. Terms and conditions apply. Hate waiting a week for the next episode of Radio Rental? Subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus to get early access to episodes, ad-free listening, and 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 Radio Rental. At Radio Rental, our videos come to life in your living room. Defy all logic and reasoning and make you question your own reality. This is not your ordinary video rental store. At Radio Rental, we carry one-of-a-kind videos so frightening, so mind-bending, you won't be able to sleep at night. You've gone Radio Rental. I was actually just having my dinner, but sure, come on in. Whatever you want, I guess. Welcome to Radio Rental, a video rental shop with a collection of the scariest stories you've ever heard. And me, the talking cat. That's right, it's me, Malachi. If you weren't here last week, you may not know that a witch cursed me with the power of human speech. Honestly, I was really. I was really fine with being unintelligible. Got away with saying a lot of stuff. A lot of insults. And everyone just thought it was really cute. It was diabolical, actually. So, you have to have a scary story told to you right now. You couldn't wait until it was a bit more convenient for me. Wait, did you bring me a little treat? What's that behind your back? Oh, okay. Is that a pumpkin spice latte? How'd you even get that? They're not even in season right now. Whatever, I don't care. You know that's my greatest weakness. Pour it into my bowl, baby, and I will do whatever you want. Mmm, I love it when it's lukewarm. So good. All right, I'll return the favor. Let's pop in a scary story on tape, shall we? Put this one in the VCR. Look at us, doing our favorite things together. Parallel play. It was 2007. I was in my 20s. I worked at a vet clinic, and there was five of us that were good friends, and we decided we wanted to go camping. I don't know who booked the campsite. I don't know where they found it. It was about a little over an hour away from us. My friends were going to be there before me, and I showed up later. I had my puppy, Eddie, with me. There was a campground sign that looked like it had been hand-painted, like someone had just made it, basically. So it was already feeling a little bit like this wasn't a KOA that we were going to, which is what I had kind of thought we'd be doing. There was less to offer there, not even a bathroom. So I pull in. It's early evening. There's lots of huge trees all over the place, so it just gives the whole town kind of a darker feel. Everyone's excited to see me. They'd already set up the tent, and we all say our hellos, and I've got my little puppy in my arms. And as we're talking and discussing what we're going to have for dinner, this guy walks over. He didn't say anything to me. He just kind of walked up. Older, much older than us. Very tan, very wrinkled. It looked like he hadn't worn sunblock ever. He had one of those neckbeards, like, you just don't shave anymore, and his hair was grown out. His eyes were sunken in. He just had a real creepy sort of look to him. He's wearing a tank top. He looks at my dog in my arms and says, "Oh, you brought me lunch." I mean, I assume it's a joke, but he didn't laugh. There was no follow-up to it. And I kind of smiled, like a forced smile, and he didn't say anything else. Just said that, and then just walked away and left. And my friend leaned in and she says, "That's the guy that owns the campground." "He seems nice, but he just kind of creeps me out." They hadn't had much interaction with him. He didn't ask for their names or their reservation number, even if they had reservations. They were there to camp, and he was fine with that and said, "Okay, well, I'll just bring you firewood." We're hanging out by the campfire, talking, laughing, having a good time. This creepy camp guy comes back, just walks over. In the middle of our conversation, doesn't say anything, just arrives with a giant wooden spear, and there's a human head stabbed onto the top of it. It's clearly a mask, clearly to scare us, but it's July. It's not October. It's super creepy-looking. It's got its mouth open. It's all bloody. There's blood coming out of the stump of the neck where it's stabbed onto the wooden spear. And he just stands there and doesn't say anything, just shows it off, and then just walks away. One of us takes a picture of it. It felt like he wanted to make us uncomfortable and uneasy. And, yeah. We felt very uncomfortable. We did not talk about it. We just laughed it off. There's nobody else there at this campground. It was just us and him. I thought it was very odd because there was a tent. I kept waiting for someone to show up at this tent all night long, and nobody ever came. It looked staged, like someone had set it there to say, "Oh, yeah, people camp here." I'm creeped out. I don't really like it. But everyone else is having fun, so we stay. It's about 8:30, and the sun is getting pretty low. Alyssa wants to go for a walk. Heather, Alyssa, and I take my dog and a lantern, and we leave the campsite. Two of our other friends stay at the campsite. The campground, there's nobody else there. There's no bathrooms around. There's only a porta potty. So we had walked past the porta potty, and there was a wall of grass surrounding the whole campground area. Kind of like if you would imagine a corn maze that you can't see through, and it looks like you can't get through it, but then as we get closer, there's like a small little path where it cuts through the grass. We kind of snake our way through, and it opens up into an old abandoned amusement park. Just overgrown with weeds and vines. There's fences and gates everywhere, like lines for you to get on rides. All of it's overgrown with weeds. I had no idea there was an amusement park here. You would think the guy would have mentioned it. "Oh, don't go over there. That's an old amusement park. Don't go over there. Anything." But no, it was like it just came out of nowhere. We walked through this grass, and it was just there. Alyssa thought it was so awesome. I didn't want to be there instantly. Alyssa starts singing this nursery rhyme. I'm not even sure which one it was, but just real quietly and eerily, and it just felt like a horror movie. Heather walks into an old restroom, and just gets swallowed up by the darkness. And Alyssa keeps going, and she keeps walking into the amusement park. and I just kind of stood there holding my dog in my arms, and I just wanted to get out of there. Alyssa suddenly starts calling my name. Liz, come over here. And I look up at her. She's about 20 feet away. She's holding a lantern out in front of her into a tilt-a-whirl seat. She's hunched over. She's got her other hand over her mouth. And she's like, what is this? What is this? And I could tell she was scared from where I was. And I instantly didn't want to know what was in the seat. Heather comes busting out of the doorway, and she's clearly flustered by whatever was in there. And I was like, let's go. I don't want to be here anymore. We've got to go. Right as I think I had convinced them it was time to leave, I hear something crashing through the bushes. Loud, heavy footsteps. And I look up at this wall of grass, and I get tunnel vision. My blood just pools at my feet. I don't know what's about to come through, but I can tell it's big and loud and wants us to know that it's coming. It's that creepy camp director. He just yells, Hey, you're not supposed to be in here. And I don't know how. We knew we were there. I don't know why he all of a sudden stormed through right when Alyssa had seen what she saw. I was frozen. I could not move. And I was like, are we not supposed to be in here? And he goes, no, come with me. And he starts storming into the amusement park where Alyssa had just been. That's where he's headed. Instead of out, he's going in. And he wants us to follow him. I got so flustered, and I was like, oh, oh, I'm not quite sure. No, we came in this way. And we just all took off running. Ran back to our campground. We rushed back to the campfire to our other friends. What's wrong with you guys? And we sit down quickly. We're shushing each other and talking over each other, just panicking. And Alyssa leans in, and she's like, Alyssa, there was jars. There was lots of jars of something. And I was like, what? She goes, I don't know. Well, Alyssa, what was in the jars? And she's like, I don't know, Liz. And we look up, and the guy is coming out of the amusement park, and he's walking straight for us, slowly headed our direction. And he walks towards our campsite and then just turns right and just keeps going and doesn't move. And doesn't say anything to us. Didn't even look in our direction or acknowledge that we were there or that we were just in an amusement park where he yelled at us and was angry at us for being in there. He just walked away and left. And that's when we heard all of a sudden the chainsaw going off. And you could just hear it echoing off the trees. I was sitting there, and I was like, I don't want to be here anymore. I want to go. I want to go. I need to convince everybody else that they want to leave as well. But Alyssa wants to preach. And I want to prove to Lindsay, who does not want to leave, that I'll show you these jars. I'm going to show you what it was. And takes Lindsay with her, and they just leave with a flashlight. And Heather's like, what do we do? What are we going to do? I don't want to be here. And I was like, whenever they go in there and see what they saw, they're going to want to go home, so let's just pack our shit up and go. We're leaving. And she's like, okay. Like, that was enough for her. So we start just throwing stuff in the car, packing as quickly as we can. And then I hear someone running towards us. And I look up, and I see the silhouette of Lindsay running. And I could tell she has something in her arms. Her arms aren't moving. Whatever it is, it's heavy. She gets to the campground. I can see by the firelight that she has a giant jar in her arms. And she puts it down right next to the campfire, and. She jumps back. She's just like, what the fuck is that? And I shine my flashlights on it, and it's like a two-gallon-sized jar of a darkish liquid with things floating in it. And as you get closer to it, it's white flesh floating in it. You can see there's, like, muscle tissue still attached to the flesh and fatty pieces, and there's hair follicles, and there's follicles of this long, black, flowing hair stuck in the flesh. And it's just swirling around in this dirty juice. And it looks like a scalp. They tell me there's lots of other jars there. Lindsay had taken this one, but there was dozens of jars. Some of them were bigger than this one. And they all had different things in them. One of them looked like it had eye sockets, they said. Another one, maybe tentacles of some sort. And that's when I decided, "Yep, it's time to go." And we keep packing. And I look up, and I see Heather at one end of a cooler coming into the light to put it in the car. And at the other end is this creepy camp director guy. And she's just staring at me, and he's holding the other side, just, like, helping us get out of there. And he looks at me, and he says, "Oh, are you guys leaving so soon?" I made up some lie. Get in the car, lock the doors, just peel out of there. I felt so safe once I'd gotten in the car and locked the doors behind us. We have two cars, I'm with Alyssa, and then the other three are in the other car. We stop at a gas station. We try and tell the attendant how scared we are and what was just going on, and he says, "I don't want to hear about it." My friend Heather says, "You don't understand. "There was jars of body parts in there at this place. "Right down the street from us." And he said, "Look, I told you, I don't want to hear about it. "We've been a resort town for over 100 years. "Some weird shit happens here. "If you don't feel safe, just go sleep in your car "in the parking lot of the Safeway until morning." I just don't understand not taking that seriously. Jars of body parts. And it was like he was used to it. It felt like a scary movie. You're asking for help, and someone just doesn't care. Like, he couldn't be bothered with us. We get back in the car, trying to find somewhere to stay. We don't know if we should go to the Safeway. We don't know what to do. As we're driving, Alyssa says, "Well, at least we still have the jar." And I said, "What?" And she goes, "Oh, yeah, I kept it. "Put it in your trunk." Um, that's disgusting. Jars of body parts in viscous water? I actually just lost my appetite for pumpkin spice latte. And that's pretty insane, because literally my entire life revolves around ingesting stuff. It's kind of my only hobby, looking at squirrels and eating. It's a full day for me. It's a full day for anyone. Anyway, time for ads. 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Using her intellect, her resolve, and a gift for drawing the unseen lines between clues, Mina just may hold the key to bring down the Count, if he hasn't already found his way inside of her mind. Featuring a haunting original score by Ilan Ishkari of Audible's "1984" and spatial Dobie Atmos sound design, Audible's "Dracula" invites you to welcome literature's most shadowy figure into your home. Feel the terror of being hunted. And the thrill of the hunt. Don't miss the year's best new audio thriller, Bram Stoker's "Dracula," Audible's new full cast original adaptation, written by Robin Ahern and directed by Mary Lambert, now on Audible. Listen to the darkness. Go to audible.com/listen-to-dracula. Looking for a horror podcast that isn't 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 may be trading each week. 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. All right, we're back from ads. And that last ad, I have to say, that's a really good idea. Everyone should buy that. I think that's a million dollar product, no doubt. Anyway, next creepy story. Hopefully it's not as disgusting as the last one. When I was seven years old, I had warts on my body. 10 to 12 warts on my knees and elbows, mostly. I'd have like one or two, on my elbow, like three on my knee. There was never like any more or any less. They just showed up one day and were there for, I think like by this time, like a year. We were putting medicine on them and going to the doctor and nothing was getting rid of these things. We take a family trip to France to go visit all my mom's family over there. One of the days we're over there, we go over to, my aunt and uncle's house where they're having a party for us. My aunt's brother-in-law is there and my mom is talking about how he's a healer. He's known as like studying alternative medicines and apparently like was like studying with rainforest shamans and all this like crazy stuff. And he's like known for speaking to illnesses. They would say that he would convince the illnesses to leave the body. I remember, hearing that as a kid and being like, that's so crazy. I'm running around with my cousins playing in the yard and stuff while the adults are all hanging out. I fall down and I bust one of those warts open on my knee. And I'm sitting there crying hurt like hell. And this guy comes over and picks me up. He's carrying me over to my mom. My mom runs over and she goes, "Oh, I wanted to talk to you about this." And he hands me to my mom and he says, "I already took care of it." She's super confused. I didn't realize that that was the healer guy that she had been talking to us about. My mom hadn't talked to him at all about my warts or anything. I don't remember him saying anything or touching them or anything like specifically like that. She just never questioned it again. She just thought it was some weird guy. She's like, "All right, I'm not going to ask him about that." My cousins and his wife rented a house for us in this little fishing village. The house was a super old, small European village house. That night, my dad and our older cousins and my uncle, they all go to my uncle's nightclub for the night. So, you know, they're gone all night. I'm sleeping upstairs on the floor with a little makeshift bed and my cousins are sleeping in the bed next to me. And downstairs, my mom and my brother are sharing a bed in this little room. That night, my mom and my brother are dead asleep and they wake up to something in the room. They both wake up at the exact same time and see something standing at the foot of their bed. They both describe it as this tall entity, this strange thing just standing there like it wanted to be seen. My mom is staring at it for a while, completely freaked out. When my brother starts shaking her and saying, "Mom, mom," she whispers, "Shut up. Shh. Be quiet." The only thing that she can think to do is start asking, "Is it my dad? Tony, is that you? Is it my uncle? Guy, is that you? Jean-Philippe, is that you?" Even ask if it's me. I'm seven years old. Obviously, this thing is way too big to be me. It doesn't say anything and it just sits there looming over them. She's panicking, trying to hold it together for my year. I'm like, "What's going on? What's going on?" I'm like, "What's going on?" I'm like, "What's going on?" I'm like, "What's going on?" I'm like, "What's going on?" I'm like, "What's going on?" I'm like, "What's going on?" Out of nowhere, my mom shoots out of the bed and flings around the corner to the bathroom that was attached to the room and flips the light on. As soon as she flips the light on, the thing disappears completely. She went out into the hallway. She looked around. She peeked out to see if there was somebody walking around, if there was somebody anywhere. No one was there. They were both so freaked out. They have no idea how, but they both fell right back to sleep. Right back to sleep with no problem. The next morning, they wake up to blood all over the house. A trail of drops of blood all over the house. Around the kitchen table, through the living room, around the dining room table, and then up the stairs. There's like a drop or two of blood on every stair. And they follow it up to my room, where I'm sleeping on the floor, where I am covered from head to toe in blood. Every single wart on my elbows and knees had broken open somehow in my sleep. That has never happened before. I have no idea how that would happen. The only thing we could think of is maybe I just was tossing and turning violently in my sleep, and I just sleptwalked around the house. My mom is a super light sleeper, and this house was a creaky old wooden house. She didn't hear anybody walking around at night. She didn't hear me stomping around, bleeding all over the place. She had no idea what happened. I wake up, you know, so confused. I would break one open or something if I was like running around or whatever, but like not just sleeping in bed, and not every single one. That was super bizarre. I was just like embarrassed. A week later, we're back in the States. We're home. I'm doing my bedtime routine, taking my bath, and my mom would come in before I go to bed and put the little wart medication, like the drops, on all my warts. She goes to put the medication on. Next thing I know is she's screaming for my dad, "Tony, Tony, get in here!" So I'm freaked out. I have no idea what's going on. She scares the hell out of me. My dad thought maybe she found me dead in the bathtub or something. So my dad runs in, all freaked out. He says, "What? What? What's going on?" And my mom turns to him and goes, "They're all gone. All of them. Every single one of my warts had vanished without a trace. No scar, nothing. Every single one of them was gone." And they were so confused. These things that I had constantly busted open or had for at least a year, these things that medication, prescriptions wouldn't get rid of, they were completely gone. Every single one. No idea how. It's like this thing that still spooks us to this day. We're still super freaked out by it. I think it's kind of weird that some guy that's known as being a healer says, "I took care of it and nothing else to my mom when he picks me up." There's too many weird coincidences. Not saying this guy like summoned some sort of wart demon, but I truly have no theories. All right. Well, that was just as disgusting as the last one, if not more disgusting. I don't even know what happened. Like a mystical healer sent an anti-wart demon to cure that child's skin condition? That is some truly bizarre shit. Who needs a pee pee? Who needs a pee pee? Who needs a pediatrician when you can just have some paranormal entity take care of that for you in the dead of night? Seems totally fine. Woof. Revolting story. Actually, that latte is starting to hit my stomach kind of wrong. Let's take a break for. Meow! Oh, no. My native tongue. I think the witch's spell is starting to wear off. I'm going to lose my power of speech. I probably should have done something more important while I still had it, like dictate a book on the feline experience or something. I don't know. That's fine. Let's take a break for ads. Do you have a dark curiosity? Heart Starts Pounding, Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries is a weekly podcast hosted by me, Kaylin Moore. Each week, I'll take you on a dark journey through terrifying true urban legends, bizarre true crime cases, chilling tales of backwoods 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. 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 at the heart of the brand new season of Bear Brook, 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 a mystery, 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. Pat, I don't believe you. I kind of revert back to like that Bear Brook thing. Like, what if we were to just come across something? You know, and I wrote down, she said, you know, I found him. Follow Bear Brook on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Well, hey, thanks for joining me again on Radio Rental. If I'm honest, it's been a little lonely here without Terry, but don't tell him I said that. It'll go straight to his head. That man is deluded. He thinks he's a celebrity and not a middle-aged former radio personality with an obsession with aliens. It's exactly like it sounds. Anyway, I. Oh, crap. Yeah, I'm losing my speech. All right, you should probably get out of here before I. Yeah, I'm going to have a hairball, too. You don't want to see this. I apologize. I should have told you I was a little lactose intolerant. I wasn't forthcoming about that. All right. Well, thanks for joining us again at Radio Rental. I'll be here next week, albeit probably unable to communicate. But now you know. It's confirmed. I'm a lot smarter than Terry. And now everyone finally knows it, so I am tremendously satisfied. Take care and. Oh, shit. Here it comes. Radio Rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenderfoot TV. Showrunner is Meredith Stedman. Lead producer is Eric Quintana. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright. Our main host is Rainn Wilson. Guest host is Tig Notaro. Written by Meredith Stedman. Additional writing by Mark Laughlin. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set with additional score by Jay Ragsdale. Editing by Eric Quintana, Stephen Perez, Meredith Stedman, Tristan Bankston, and Sean Nerney. Sound design, mix, and master by Stephen 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. Cover artwork by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan. Radio rental merchandise by Byron McCoy. To shop radio rental merch, visit shop.tenderfoot.tv. Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, as well as the Nord Group and the team at Odyssey. If you have a question, If you have a radio rental story that you'd like to share, please email us at yourscarystory at gmail.com or contact us via the form on our website, RadioRentalUSA.com. Follow us on Instagram at Radio Rental. On behalf of the Radio Rental Store, we'd love it if you'd subscribe, rate, and review. As always, thanks for listening.