Episode 97

He lurks in shadow. He slips into dreams. He casts no reflection. Audible presents Bram Stoker's Dracula, a new full-cast audio thriller starring Ella Purnell of Fallout as Mina Harker, Jonathan Bailey of Wicked as Dracula, and an A-list cast including Maggie Gyllenhaal of The Dark Knight as Van Helsing, Amy Lou Wood of The White Lotus as Lucy, David Johnson of Industry as Dr. C-Word, and many more. The new full-cast thriller locks Mina Harker in a battle of minds with the Count. When Mina's fiancé, Jonathan Harker, Louis Partridge of Enola Holmes, vanishes in Transylvania, Mina pieces together letters, diary entries, and chilling testimony to hunt the predator stalking those she loves, only to discover Dracula's already hunting her. Joined by the enigmatic Van Helsing, Mina and a small fearless band race against time to stop this ancient terror. 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 Dolby 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 slash listen to Dracula. 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 even some bonus scary stories. Visit tenderfootplus.com for details. The following podcast includes scary stories with content that could be triggering to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised. Take a break from the same old boring blockbusters and experience a new kind of movie night with 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. Hello there. Oh, hi. Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you, frighten you. Spook you. Welcome to Radio Rental, a video rental shop with lots of really normal movies and also an exclusive collection of horror stories told by real people. Not that you're looking for that, but if you are, I'm Vince, the new junior associate clerk. Well, technically I'm on my trial period, but I kind of hope this one works out. It's been hard for me to find a job that's the right fit. Anyway, welcome. Can I help you? Oh, wait. Are you actually here for this special collection? Wow. Perfect. I mean, okay, let's dive right in. Where's that box? Where's the box? Ricky Leach. He showed it. Oh, here we go. I haven't actually gotten to see any of these yet. Oh, jeez, this is a real mess in here. Good thing I like messes. I'm a bit of one myself. Guess I'm gonna have to sort all this out later. But first, let's pop in this one. It's got some old bubblegum stuck to it. I grew up in a very small rural town. My friends and I, we didn't really drink, we didn't party. We were in high school, early college. We didn't really hang in with that crowd, but we did like to do a lot of trespassing. So we would find really kind of, you know, abandoned schools or construction sites. Really just tried to freak ourselves out. We were big into the paranormal. We wanted to find something exciting, really. One night, my friend and I, we found a construction site for a bridge that was constructed over some railroad tracks that ran through our town. We parked our car a few blocks away because we probably weren't supposed to be down there. We walked towards the construction site, went through some brush towards the pillars that supported the road, so we were underneath the bridge at that point. Then at the far end of the railroad tracks, there was a railroad platform with kind of a yellow streetlight that was there just for any trains that were coming in. It was mostly freight trains. So my friend and I, went down to explore the site, and we didn't really know what we were looking for, just anything interesting, I guess. So we looked at the pillars, and, you know, it had typical transgressive teenager stuff, you know, the anarchy symbol, a pentagram, and all kinds of profanity. Nothing particularly interesting or artistic. While we were standing by one of the pillars, we stopped, and we stopped in front of a graffiti devil. Somebody had done a rather crude devil face and spray-painted 666 underneath it. It was otherwise completely silent. While we were standing and looking at the devil graffiti, we just heard really, really loud, clear radio static. We didn't really know what was going on. We didn't know what was going on. We didn't know where it was coming from. We had heard a number of cars drive overhead on the bridge. It definitely was not that sound. The static seemed to come suddenly and out of nowhere. It was kind of hard to place where the sound was coming from. We looked at each other, but we did not say anything. Exchanged a glance as if to say, well, that's a little bit weird. We waited maybe another three or four seconds. And the laughter occurred. Through the radio static, we heard a really deep, breathy laugh. I compare it to, like, Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget. Very, very funny. It was very hard to tell exactly where the sound was coming from. It was almost like the sound of the laughter was coming from all around us. Very distinct, deep, throaty laughter. Without exchanging any words, my friend and I just kind of looked at each other and both decided, without any additional detail, it was time to go. Rather than cut through the brush that, we had entered the site through, we walked back towards the railroad tracks. We got on the tracks, and it was just a clearer path, and we were walking along that. And I don't know why, to this day, we both decided to turn around in the same moment. Behind us, beyond the reach of the rail platform spotlight, a person materialized. He's walking alongside the railroad tracks. It was a man, seemed very tall, really didn't have any discernible facial features. There's no real reason for someone at 10, 11 o'clock at night to be coming from that direction. He looked to be wearing a gray prison jumpsuit. Beyond that, that light, there really isn't anything. There's no houses. There's no real anything. It's just the tracks go on into the country. My friend and I stared at the man as he entered into the light, and as soon as he saw us, or seemed to see us, he stopped. And without breaking his gaze with us, he took this huge sidestep onto the railroad tracks and broke through. He took this huge sidestep onto the railroad tracks and broke into a dead sprint right for us. He took this huge sidestep onto the railroad tracks and broke through. I did the same. We ran just as fast as we could along the tracks and back to our car. It's the most scared I've ever been in my life having that person run at me. So many strange questions going through your head. Where is this guy coming from? Why is he dressed like he's coming out of prison? Why is he so interested in chasing us? It was just complete fight or flight and we just booked it. No need for words. We were both feeling the exact same thing. It was just get out of there as soon as you can. As soon as we get into the car, my friend just floors it out of there and we didn't say anything for the 10-minute ride back to my house. We were just completely silent and my heart's pounding, blood's pumping in my ears. Even still, once we got out of there, we were just completely silent. My heart's pounding, we're back in the car. It just doesn't feel safe. We did not talk about the situation for about two weeks. And finally, my friend and I spoke on the phone and it was kind of a, yeah, we've really got to talk about this. And we were able to kind of corroborate all of the details here in Radio Static, here in the laughter and seeing this man charge at us. And it kind of feels like we're in a situation where we're in a situation where we're in a situation where we're in a situation where we're in a situation that feels like until someone else confirms it, you feel like you might have imagined things, you might be going crazy or something, but having someone else agree on every single aspect of what happened kind of made me feel better and made me feel worse at the same time. I'm not crazy, but yeah, that actually was somebody chasing after us. There is a chance that when we heard the laughter underneath that bridge that it was coming from the person who chased after us. It was very difficult to determine the direction of the sound or where the source of it was. Given that we heard that sound when we heard the Radio Static, it seems more plausible maybe that whatever was playing the static also was playing laughter, but that just seems like such an odd thing for someone to have a recording that they would play at 11 at night in a relatively abandoned part of this town. Oh, that was incredible. The way he ran at those kids full force out of nowhere kind of gave me like Michael Myers vibes. What a cool dude. I mean, also, he does really bad what he did. Terrible stuff. Shouldn't scare people like that. It's mean. Not cool. Some people might find it cool, but not me. Let's take a break for some ads, and then we'll be right back. Man, needed those ads to cool off a little bit. I hope you guys used those advertisements to also chill out a little bit after being so piping hot mad with that last guy, and I just can't stand creepers. Don't like them at all. Do not research them, or look at long YouTube videos all about them. That's not me. I already actually put in the next tape. Hope that's cool. Here we go. So in spring of 2015, I was a sophomore in college. I went to Appalachian State, which is a small school in the mountains in North Carolina. It has tons of trails, beautiful scenery, rivers, streams, everything you can imagine along the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was a hot spot for hikers and those who just love being in nature. Three close friends of mine and I went to grab dinner. It was a weeknight. We had no plans afterwards. So after we ate, we just sat there thinking of ideas of things we could do. At this point, the sun hadn't set yet, so we still had some daylight ahead of us. It was probably around six or seven o'clock. Usually when you had free time, you would end up on the Blue Ridge Parkway going for a drive or maybe hanging out at a scenic overlook. I remembered a spot that I'd actually visited the year prior with another group of friends, and I suggested it to this group as a place that maybe we should check out. This place was unique. It wasn't something you would find on a map. It's not something you would find at the visitor center or anything that anyone would recommend. It's on the Blue Ridge Parkway. There's a section of road that's held up by pillars that wraps around the mountain. Kind of looks like a bridge. And the bridge is being held up by pillars, has what appears to be a tunnel underneath with a gate to that tunnel entrance. That gate had corroded off, and you could shimmy your way up into the tunnel. It was a little bit of a tight squeeze, but you could do it. So I pitched it to them to see if they'd be interested in going, and yeah, they were all in. One of the guys, Matt, just had this terrible feeling, and he didn't want to go in. So me and Nick and Andrew, we make our way in the same way that I'd done the year before, via the corroded gate entrance. We one-by-one shimmy our way in and start exploring the different sections of tunnel. We went in, and we explored. We thought it was fun. There was a lot of graffiti all over the place, and it was just cool exploring the inside of a tunnel. As cars would pass by, you would hear them driving over you. It's really loud. You hear the donker. When they hit the bridge itself, the car, it makes a really loud sound, which echoes into the tunnel. But that was the only sound we heard. We didn't hear anything else inside the tunnel. Pentagrams everywhere, upside-down crosses. I know a lot of it was not there the year before, so that indicates that this tunnel has seen someone in the last year. One of the first things I saw in that first section was a circle of candles, like a collection of candles. It looked like maybe someone had done some sort of seance. We walked past it. It was scary, but with me and two other guys, I was just trying to keep it cool, and I didn't want to be like I was the most scared one there. So we keep going, just one-by-one, section at a time, so that the whole tunnel is about a half mile. We just keep going, section at a time, just to explore. Just exploring, just looking at things on the walls, just being kids, exploring until we get to maybe about halfway through. We made it about halfway through the bridge before I came to a halt. Just above the crawlspace, into the next section of tunnel ahead of us, was a graffiti tag in all caps that read, HE'S IN THERE, with some arrows pointing to the crawlspace. He's in there. All one-by-one made it kind of clear that we were all kind of spooked out, but no one wanted to be the one to say, hey, let's turn around. We laughed it off and just proceeded into that crawlspace. I mean, everyone was probably concerned, like, what could that possibly be? But at this point, we had already been halfway through the bridge. We weren't going to let that be the reason why we stopped. So we kept going. I was the first one in. I crouched walk through that crawlspace. With the other two behind me. And then before I was able to fully stand up into the next section, that's when I saw some sort of movement ahead of me at the end of the next section. I saw just movement. It was kind of hard to make it out since I had the flashlight on my phone, which can only see a few feet in front of you. At that point, I had reached for Nick, who was third in line, still making his way through that crawlspace. And he had, like, a legitimate flashlight with batteries. So I reached back and told him to hand it to me. And with this flashlight, I pointed in the direction of the movement. It was maybe two to three feet tall, dark gray color, with hind legs like a deer, but shorter arms up front. Green glowing eyes. It just didn't have any defined edges, which was the scariest part. Usually when you look at something, you can make out its border on the background, whatever. It is. This did not have that. It was fuzzy. It just blended in. In the five seconds I was aiming my flashlight at it, it jumped diagonally across the tunnel, wall to wall, faster than any animal I've ever seen move without making a single noise. I would describe it if you were to take a bouncy ball and throw it down a narrow corridor, how fast that ball would bounce from corner to corner, just in no direction. like no organized direction. It was just bouncing repeatedly. wall to wall so after I'd seen it initially I turned around I told Nick and Andrew that hey we need to get out of here as soon as possible Andrew then takes the flashlight from me to look at it for himself and at this point I'm already walking back towards the previous crawlspace he was terrified he like me could not explain what it was that we had just seen I mean you live your whole life knowing what certain animals are even if you haven't seen them you know what a giraffe looks like if you've never seen a giraffe in the wild but this was this was not something that anyone had ever seen or heard of or just encountered this was unworldly I'm panicking this is the scariest thing I'd ever seen in my life at this point and still this day honestly talking about it is making me shake a little when we exit the tunnel is when Andrew makes it clear to us that hey that thing was approaching us the entire way back slowly approaching but bouncing off the wall the entire time we make it back to the car it was a pretty quiet car ride back everyone was really scared I don't think I got much sleep that night at all I got home by this point it is probably I don't know 10 11 o'clock the next morning I was taking a shower getting ready for class I would sometimes brush my teeth in the shower and this morning I was I spat down into the shower drain and I could see that something had exited my mouth that I didn't previously feel I could see it in the toothpaste water circling the shower drain it was the size and shape of a dime red in color but transparent kind of grossed out by it I just ignored it thinking that if it was serious it would probably happen again and I could go see a doctor I just finished up got ready for class and went on about my day so later that afternoon I ran into Andrew it wasn't planned and I was actually hoping to avoid him since I hadn't talked about what had happened the night before with anyone and just didn't want to talk about it again he tells me that something strange had happened that morning he describes that he spat out blood but it was quote-unquote a clot in a circle and I told him the same thing had happened to me and we knew immediately that we had to go find Nick later that evening we met up with Nick and sure enough that was the first thing he greeted us with this morning I spat up blood that's what Nick said some some days go by might have turned into maybe a week or two of just thinking of what what could it have possibly been we're all rational individuals so do I think that was the first thing I thought was going to happen and that's where the demon came to mind we started doing some research the three of us in the school library different types of demons demonology and what they look like after some time we found a picture that had a demon with the same color and fuzzy shape of what I remember in the bridge and it was said that this demon is only ever summoned onto earth when someone specifically calls for its protection and protects the area if I had to guess someone had visited that tunnel in the 12 months that I was gone and did some sort of ritual where they called on to this demon asking for its protection and when it saw us it protected that area by scaring us well we all agreed that we would never go back however the story didn't keep quiet with Mick and Andrew they they went on to share the story with others and we had some good chunk of friends go back out there to recreate what we had seen no one really believed us with what we'd seen and so they wanted to go check it out themselves to see if they could find what we saw but no no luck we were the the last to see it to this day I really don't talk about it that much I figured what's the point of telling the story if no one believes me and when I tell it I I'm terrified I was really open that thing would have popped out and eaten them what if it had eaten them that would have been so sick and grew and gross and twisted and bad bad bad bad oh maybe next time what oh yeah break for ads break let's take a break hey thanks for stopping by radio rental maybe I'll see you next week hopefully because honestly I really like this I mean a normal amount I like this a normal amount I'm kind of indifferent honestly all right see you next time radio rental is created by pain Lindsay and brought to you by tenderfoot TV showrunner is Meredith Steadman lead producer is Eric Quintana executive producers are pain Lindsay and Donald Albright guest host is Tony Cavallaro writing by Meredith Steadman original score by makeup and vanity set with additional score by Jay Ragsdale editing by Eric Quintana pain Lindsay Steven Perez Cooper Skinner Meredith Steadman and Dylan Harrington sound design mix and master by Stephen Perez and Cooper Skinner our production manager is Jordan Foxworthy our social media manager is Caroline or a Gemma video editing by Dylan Harrington cover artwork by Trevor Eiler and Rob 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