Rewind: Episode 04

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And today, we're going to check out some. some stalker, stranger danger, weird, weirdo stories. This first one is really weird, and I think you're going to love it. And if you've already heard it, you're going to love it again. This one's called 404 Not Found. It's from Episode 1, the very first episode. Let's check it out. Okay. Let's just start by you kind of just, like, setting the scene for me, where you lived at the time, and just kind of set the stage for the story. Certainly. I lived out in Goodyear, still live out in Goodyear. But I traveled a lot through the Phoenix area. Goodyear is on the west side of Phoenix. There's a small airport out there and a number of businesses. In fact, it's grown up a lot in the last few years. I'll be honest and say that I'm not a great fan of living in Arizona. It's sometimes blistering. But it's home. I was, at the time, an itinerant IT guy, so I was servicing a lot of small businesses and municipalities. They liked to have me go all over the place. So it was kind of a fun job. I got to know a lot about Phoenix that way. It was a strange situation. I was actually between jobs, between, I should say, between clients, and I'd parked myself at the Phoenix Public Library. While I was there, I had this odd thing happen, which I got a text. Randomly. It was from the 404 area code. I happen to know that that's the symbol for "not found" on the internet, but it's also Atlanta, Georgia, I believe. I don't know how they got my number. I don't know what was going on. But I got a photo of, of all things, it was a rabbit with a flapjack on its head. Which was just random enough that it completely appealed to me. If you look up "flapjack bunny," If you look up "flapjack bunny," If you look up "flapjack bunny," you'll see thousands of examples on the internet. I'm sure there's some other cultural significance. I don't know what it is, but it's a thing. A lop-eared rabbit with a pancake balanced on its head. Immediately I was hooked. I was on board. I was on board. So I texted something back. I like the random moments of the universe. You've got to appreciate them. A day later, I was in Scottsdale, and I saw the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, and thought, "This is the proper return. I'm going to volley back with this." I don't know. I kind of like to be an interesting part of somebody's day, in a positive way. I think there ought to be more of that. We ought to be the person who walks by and says, "Hey, nice hat." Sort of silly, sometimes I've been walking through places and pointed at a spot on the floor and say, "Hey, they got the blood out," and just keep walking. That's an interesting moment in somebody's day. It gives them something to latch onto and have fun with. Or be terrified about. But it's, you know, something. It at least makes the world a more interesting place. I figured that whoever had sent me that had sent it by mistake. They were probably going to give up right then and there, especially when they got back a Wienermobile. Like, okay, whoever I sent this to is nuts. And that would be that. And didn't really think anything of it. I genuinely expected to never get a reply back, or something like, "Who the heck is this?" Did not expect a reply. I was very surprised when I got another photo back. Oddly enough, I was at a fire department. A fire department in town used to have me come out and work on their systems once a week. While I was there, I got a text, and it was a firecracker. Which kind of creeped me out for just a moment, because fire department, firecracker, what are the odds? It was just somebody holding a lit firecracker. Which is a bad practice, for one thing. You know, that's a good way to lose fingers. It didn't look like a professionally taken photo. Someone may have snapped it with their phone. I'm hoping they had thrown it away pretty quickly after that. Feminine fingers holding a lit firecracker. That really didn't tell me much more than, "Okay, this person's on board with the random." Other than the slight creep factor of me being at a fire department, and being a firecracker, which made me think, "Does this person know where I am?" You know, is this somebody I know punking me? Other than that, I thought, "This person is really diving in to the random moments of the universe." And I was on board and wanted to encourage that. Especially if it was a friend punking me. Then I was really on board. It was the idea of a stranger knowing where I was and what I was doing. That alarmed me a little bit. I didn't feel rushed to respond. And I actually wanted to, make sure it was something of a creative effort. I'm a bit of an amateur photographer. And I sent back a photo of someone who was waving a sparkler. I'd taken a long exposure, so the person was somewhat fuzzy, but it had a nice, beautiful spiral of the sparkler. One of my favorite shots that I've ever taken. I thought it was just fun. Again, I was still a little concerned. But it was probably 5% concerned to 95%. This is cool. More photos were exchanged. It wasn't hurried either by me or by this person. Over a period of several months, we would exchange photos. Never any words. And I'd try to somewhat respond to their photos. Like I say, there was the lit firecracker, so I responded with the long exposure image of the sparkler being waved around. At one point, they sent me a flower, and I sent a vase. I sent a bag of fruity dino bites. Just an image of a bag of fruity dino bites. Which is like fruity pebbles, but generic, because I'm cheap. They sent back a photo of a gallon of 2% milk. So it was kind of this weird exchange. There was a call and response aspect to it. It was something I was kind of keeping to myself. It was kind of my private entertainment. It was just a conversation of photos. I was into it. I was always kind of giddy when I would get one. Sometimes I'd have to stare at it for a bit to try to figure out okay, what's the meaning behind this? Okay, there's a mint leaf in this photo among whatever else is on there. Do I riff off of that, or hey, this photo has an interesting use of negative space. Do I want to replicate that somehow in the positive space? And so it was definitely mentally engaging. The fact that someone was undertaking this, presumably just for me, that was kind of cool. It was a rollicking good time. For a while. Until it wasn't. There was a day, probably five months in, when I got a photo that was of a "Now Leaving Georgia" sign. As if taken just off the side of the interstate. I'd never been really in a hurry to respond. I always wanted to respond somewhat in kind and somewhat creatively. So I was thinking of trying to actually head to the border, which is about 150 miles away from my house, and get a "Now Leaving Arizona" sign as a response. But I got a note back, or I should say an image back from this person a lot more quickly that was entering Alabama. Okay, person's on the road. Cool, taking a road trip. I respect that. Trying to do that myself as often as I can. Because they had sent "Leaving Georgia" and "Entering Alabama" pretty quickly together, I thought this was probably not my brother. This is probably not someone I know. Not anyone local, anyway. This is genuinely a stranger. And that changed the perspective just a little bit. But again, they're in Alabama at this point. It's still not a big deal. I got "Now Leaving Alabama." That one was a little bit blurry, as though they were actively driving. Now Mississippi. It was hard to ignore the fact that they were heading my direction at that point. It seemed like this person could actually be sending me these images in real time as they're traveling. Louisiana was pretty quick after that. Then Texas. Texas takes a while to get through, and it seems like the photo took a long time between the "Now Entering Texas" and "Now Leaving Texas." It made me nervous. It's the photos that were blurry, especially while traveling. I don't know. it wrong but i would think that if it was someone who was just trying to spook me that they would get clear images all the way but it actually seemed like this was somebody traveling taking photos opportunistically as they could as they passed by these signs new mexico the land of enchantment that was the one that man they're they're really heading this way it really seemed like that they were on their way towards me at that point. That was distressing. New Mexico was my back door at that point. I don't know if you're familiar with the author Orson Scott Card. He wrote among other things Ender's Game. That's probably what he's most famous for. But he's actually written some short stories and novels that he puts under the genre of dread. He talks about how horror is actually a relief. When you get to the moment, when you get to the jump scare, when you get to that, then you know what's there. Then you know what's coming. It's done. But dread, building dread is a much more powerful effect. And that was what was going through my brain. This is a slow, inexorable movement that I can't do anything about. Something is coming and I can't do anything about it. I just have no idea how to respond, what to do. It was so foreign that it was a profoundly distressing moment. It was that shift from sending photos back and forth once a week, once every few weeks. There was never any urgency to it. And then it shifted to this person's actively traveling. They're actively heading my way. New Mexico, then Arizona, my home state, and then I was really curious what was going to happen next. About seven, eight hours later, there was my city limit sign. They were there, presumably in my neighborhood. It was the same sign. I didn't reply anymore. I was done. I was out. That journey across the states and then into my hometown with no words at all, that finally got me. I was cooked. I was done. Stick a fork in me. I did sort of put my wife on a little bit of alert to watch out for strangers. I don't think I actually ever told her what the reasoning was. The person never, never sent another message, which I've counted as a blessing. Where they drew the line, I'm okay with that. If they'd taken a phone call, a photo of my house and sent it to me, then I would have burnt the place down and moved to anywhere else or stayed in the ashes because they would never look for me there. Something like that. As for what it could have been, a lot of us have taken jokes too far. And that's probably what I want to believe. Someone made the trip. Either that or they went through a lot of effort to try and time out the photo as well. Find shots that looked like they were actually actively in motion. I think someone made the trip. I'm going to let it remain a mystery. Life moved on. No regrets. In the end, it's just a good story. These days, I might have access to tools that would allow me to track that person down because I do work, among other things, I work with some of the most important people in the world. Law enforcement. So the mystery wouldn't last as long. And yeah, I'd feel compelled to investigate that one a little bit. Actually, I may even have a screenshot somewhere of that phone number. Wow. I think I'm going to let it remain a mystery unless I hear another thing. But I'm actually pretty sure I have a screenshot of one of those texts. So I probably have that phone number. Awesome. This has been great, man. This is awesome. Appreciate it, man. I'm so glad I got it. I was so pumped about it. I was like, man, this is the kind of story I'm looking for, these kind of things. Yeah, that was one of the first ones you told me about, right? This is in the early batch, I think, at least. And so after all, he still doesn't know who did it. But if anyone wants to confess, shoot us a DM or something. We won't snitch. Promise. Yeah, I don't know what I would do. The first few texts, you're kind of like, OK, this is kind of weird, a little strange, playing along with it. But once he gets closer to home, you're kind of like, no, no, not cool. You know, this is real stalker shit. So I've never had a stalker. Hopefully I don't. You can make that happen if you want. I mean, a boy can dream. A boy can dream. You know, that's how you know you've made it. Once you have a stalker, you're like, OK. OK, check. I'll pull some strings. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. Let's take a breath, take a break, and we'll be back. Maybe there are a few others worth questioning, too. It is so common to feel like you have to be the glue holding every relationship, project, and family moment together. 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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. Ready, set, go. Get in gear with an auto loan from Worth Credit Union. With a rate as low as 3.99% on new and used vehicles, plus 90 days no payment on your Worth Credit Union auto loan. From your daily commute to your next weekend getaway, let Worth help you get where you want to go. Worth Credit Union. Apply online today. Subject to credit approval, membership eligibility required. See worthcu.org for details. All right, we're back, and it's that time. We're going to listen to some weird shit again. I'm ready. You sure? No. We're not, but we're going to check it out. All right, let's hear some weird shit. Let's hear it. Let's go. I'm just sitting here calling numbers. I shouldn't be calling numbers. I'm calling at 1240 in the morning. I think you guys are amazing, and I miss you, and I can't wait till you come back in October, and that's it. Love you guys. Bye. She sounds terrifying to me, and low-key terrifying. She was up late at 1240 a.m. calling numbers, as in other numbers. Is that like what she does? I mean, I used to do that as a kid, for sure. Yeah, maybe that's her thing. Prank calls were what's up. She likes to show, so, you know, we'll take that. Let's get weirder, hopefully. Come on. what the fuck was that was that a fart wait like what actually is that i think it's why are they so weird i think it's a fart yeah these are like like actually weird yeah is it real though intentionally whoever called in confirm is that real is this fake is it ai ai fart yeah we're there i slop literally are you back we missed you okay we miss you too we'll be back no worries me and my wife just want to say we love the show and we listen to it all the time and we can't wait for the next season have a good one bye cool where's your wife why why wasn't she on the phone yeah do i trust that yeah it's kind of weird kind of sketch i like it thanks pain appreciate you um gonna go on to another tape another scary story on the same theme some weird stalker stranger dangers type stuff so this one it's a little weird it's not what you expect it's a stalker story but it's not exactly what you think it is and this one's from episode 10 and it's called i'm the stalker let's check it out you rolling this will be super simple basically like um i'll have you re kind of just retell the story okay sure just to kind of kick it off if you could just sort of set the stage for me it's just in terms of how old you were where you lived and kind of what was going on at the time yeah it was around 2016 so i would have been 46 at the time i do video production and at the time i was a one-man band so i had a lot of experience with the band so i had a lot of experience with the band so i had a lot of experience with the band so i had a lot of experience with the band so i had a lot of experience with the band the van i happened to choose to buy was a 1994 dodge ram 250 cargo van with windows on it but it happens to meet the exact criteria or the hollywood stereotype of what a kidnapper's van would look like if you ever see anyone in any show being shoved into a van or kidnapped or if there's some black ops team or someone spying on you or something it's always this type of van just meets the profile of what apparently a kidnapper or some sort of burglar or a criminal of general kind would want as i was driving home one evening from work in my van i was driving it was still sunny outside and there was a woman pushing a stroller staring at me very intently it actually made me feel a little uncomfortable she had sunglasses on so i couldn't see her eyes but she kind of had her mouth hanging open and her head was just kind of on a swivel she was walking one way and then staring into the street at me driving by my road also happens to have speed bumps and i had a lot of equipment and and fragile gear in the back of the van so i was driving very slowly over these speed bumps i was just going through my daily life just trying to work my job and go home about a week later after the incident that i had already mostly forgotten about we have a group email thread for the hoa in the homeowners association that i live within the email list for the hoa started heating up with emails flying back and forth one guy got on there and mentioned that a white van was stalking his wife that's pretty serious because there are parents with children in there i have my own children i have two little girls and then he went on to describe it as a white van and that's when i was like uh-oh okay i didn't know that that man was somehow connected to the woman that i had seen but i replied to all to everyone in the email list and told them there is a resident that lives there with a white van so don't come after me with your pitchfork and mob mentality i told them my address i told them the plate number on my van i just wanted my neighbors to feel safe and i don't want to have the police called on me in my own neighborhood or area since the topic of the email thread that was going around was all the suspicious things that people had seen in the email by the way i saw a very suspicious woman that stared at me very inappropriately and uh it made me a little uncomfortable and it was the very last sentence in my email i was like oh by the way i was driving by in my white van i stated the time of day what day it was so they could figure out on their own whether it was me that they saw or whether it was an actual stalker and he didn't need to reply i mean once he he realized that that was me and i'm a resident there and he now knows who i am and we could be cool he said i can read between the lines and see who you really are there is something about you that you're not sharing reading in between the lines of my email that i didn't like him or like his wife or that i was trying to cast out or belittle their their version of events he was so angry to the point that other neighbors that are normally really quiet and docile on the email thread started getting on and saying this this email is making me really uncomfortable so i stopped replying to all and after a while his emails stopped coming to me shortly after that i have a small dog as well that i would walk through my neighborhood and walking by a particular house suddenly this girl would come out and be extra friendly with us and chat about our dog and it was every time we walked by she would come out from her home i estimate her to have been about 10 years old she would tell me things like oh my family's really poor i remember her saying this and thinking it was really strange that she would say something like this she would always follow it up with i'd do almost anything for some money she would bring up something like my family's really poor i wish we could afford a dog but we can barely afford to feed ourselves i'd do anything for some money the girl didn't look hungry or poor or anything like that and she just said she wanted to say hello to my dog and then one day she shows up at our front door said that she wanted to come over and play with our dog and that her dad would never let her have a dog and she would just like to spend time at our house and hang out with the dog can i play with your dog can i come in and play with your dog that would be very inappropriate because i don't even know her parents and i don't want my kids going to some stranger's house and i wouldn't want any other people to come in and play with her dog and she just said she wanted to say hello to my house and i told her no you and i need to talk to your parents before you ever come here again and i want to talk to them anyway now so please i need to talk to your parents about a week later there's another girl in the neighborhood that we hang out with my two daughters my two kids it's kind of like a play date so i'll take them over to her place for a play date or she'll come over to ours we were over visiting at her place and she was about seven at the time she told me she had an older friend who was about 10 and said that that girl had confided in her that her dad was telling her to talk to me she told her that her dad was making her be friendly to us this little girl had told her friend that the dad was inside the house taking pictures of us talking whenever i walked by with my dog and was compiling some sort of attack fodder for accusing me of something taking pictures of us that's when it kind of clicked for me what what was going on so he was so convinced reading in between the lines of my email or seeing me drive by that one day that i was some sort of child abductor child molester kidnapper that he was trying to use his child as bait i had never met the husband face to face i had only seen the wife in the incident where she was trying to use his child as bait and i was trying to use his child as bait and i was staring at us in a way that i later found out was very accusatory he's been taking pictures of us not just me talking to his child but my kids and my dog and everything and i was violated and shocked to the point where i i didn't react to it for maybe a full day started just making my own guesses as to what's what he was planning on doing judging from his the initial incident with his husband and i just felt like he was generating some sort of campaign against me she stopped coming over she stops approaching us and i've never heard from them again and it's been four years now my conclusion from the ordeal was maybe this is a wife who was in that sort of stir crazy mode had seen maybe too many movies and told her husband he probably got excited and thought they were on to something and perhaps they genuinely were concerned that there was a danger to the neighborhood which is why he brought it up to the hoa and then might have felt that i was belittling his position on the matter my my kind of take is that assuming everyone is out to get you kind of creates a confrontational situation and in itself if he really felt like i was a stalker why would he send his child put put his child in danger like that i mean as a dad you constantly have to be aware of your surroundings and who your child her children are in contact with and not only that you kind of have to imagine the different possibilities of scenarios that can happen me Putting my daughter in a scenario like that is just something that could never cross my mind. All of my interactions involving the safety of my children have revolved around a sort of defensive, whereas he was just at the equivalent of putting his child on the front lines. I guess another take would be I'm a lot less suspicious of people now, judging them by their appearance now that I've tasted a little bit of what it feels like. I feel also a little bit angry at the dad for pretending that they're victims when there are real victims out there. I feel like they're kind of belittling the people that have really been affected by kidnappers or by child molesters or abductors or anything like that. Pretending to be a victim of something that you're not, it's insulting to those victims, to real victims. Is there a possibility? Is there a possibility he knew that you weren't a predator and he was trying to frame you? I feel like he must have known that I was not a real danger to anyone, but he felt so slighted by the email exchange that he wanted to create an image of me that would somehow tarnish my reputation. Awesome. Cool, man. That was great. Cool. Thank you. Yeah. Awesome. Okay, yeah, this one is really messed up. Luckily, the truth comes out in the end. Most of the time. But at least for this guy, it did. We're here for you, man, if you ever just want to talk. I guess you did already, so, yeah. Man, poor dude. Like, just running his business, minding his own business. Sort of running minding his business? Yeah, just running and minding his business. And they're thinking he's the stalker, like, trying to creep out little kids and stuff. But. Yeah, poor dude. But it sounds like, you know, he got, you know, out of that situation. But let's take a breath, calm down a bit. Let's take a break. We'll be back. 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'm Amy Trayden. Each week, Monique and I share one paragraph. A normal 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. A reporter receives a shocking tip about something that happened inside a woman's prison. He starts asking questions. And what she uncovers is far beyond. Bigger than one disturbing event. A deeply entrenched system. The people it protects. And the women who risk everything to challenge it from the inside. Snap Studios and KQED present We Are Jane Doe. A three-part investigative series. Listen on Snap Judgment. 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 hospital, is part 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 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. But I don't believe you. I kind of revert back to like that Bear Brook saying like, what if we were to just come across something? You know, and I wrote down, she said, you know, I, I found him. Follow Bear Brook on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, guys, that's it for today. Appreciate you hanging out with me, hearing some weirdo stalker stories. I've never had a stalker, but have you ever had a stalker? I've never had a stalker. Do you want a stalker? Are you, are you into that kind of thing? Who knows? Let us know. We want to hear it all. But join me next week on Radio Rental Rewind. Later. Later. Later. Later. Later. Later. Thank you. who use Xero to manage their finances. Learn more at Xero.com. That's X-E-R-O.