Episode 84

Summary

Radio Rental Podcast Episode 84 Summary

Introduction

In Episode 84 of Radio Rental, hosted by Rainn Wilson and produced by Tenderfoot TV & Audacy, listeners are immersed in a gripping real-life horror story intertwined with the show's signature blend of horror and subtle comedy. This episode centers around Mary’s unsettling experience during a family camping trip, set against the eerie backdrop of the Appalachian wilderness.

Mary’s Terrifying Camping Trip

Mary recounts her pandemic decision to return to college in Harrisonburg, Virginia, a small mountain town teeming with college students but lacking in older social circles. Seeking new friendships, Mary and her fiancé meet a couple while enjoying a day at a local winery. Their budding friendship leads to multiple gatherings, culminating in an invitation to camp in the nearby George Washington National Forest.

At around [04:33], Mary begins her story:

“In the pandemic, I decided to go back to college and finish it once and for all... We went to a winery one day with our dogs. We saw this couple there who looked at first glance like they were probably around our age and they were playing cornhole by themselves.”

Despite initial reservations, Mary and her fiancé decide to join the camping trip, which takes a dark turn. Upon arriving at a seemingly deserted campsite, strange observations begin to emerge:

“Something weird that I noticed when we got there was there was no other campers at all anywhere in the park, which is pretty weird, especially during that time of year.” ([05:40])

As the evening progresses, the group indulges in drinks, including a suspicious bottle of Bullet rye that Mary avoids due to her aversion to dark liquors. This decision proves pivotal as unforeseen events unfold.

The Unexplainable Disappearance and Reappearance

Late into the night, after walking to the lake with headlamps, Mary and her fiancé abruptly lose consciousness, waking up disoriented an hour deep into the forest. Both are severely ill and confused about their whereabouts:

“We hiked back to the campsite, finally made our way, but the whole way back, we were feeling sick. I'm throwing up. He's throwing up. We're shivering. We can't figure out where the hell we are.” ([08:15])

Adding to the mystery, Mary discovers that six hours have inexplicably passed, far beyond the time they should have been camping. Compounding the strangeness, Mary's fiancé discovers his phone missing, later found in a ranger's trash with no clear explanation of how it ended up miles away.

Confronting the Unknown

Mary's investigation leads her to speak with forest rangers, who confirm that no unusual activities have been reported in that area. Disturbingly, other hikers have reported similar experiences of lost time and unexplained disappearances:

“I did some research on George Washington national forest. I've found a couple stories where people had said that they had gone on hikes just for the day and lost time completely.” ([18:40])

The uncertainty of what transpired that night leaves Mary grappling with unsettling questions about possible alien abductions or other paranormal occurrences.

Host Commentary and Reflections

Throughout Mary’s narration, host Jeremy interjects with humorous and relatable remarks, providing a balance to the intense storytelling:

“Yo, that's crazy. That's like a glitch in the Matrix type shit.” ([21:27])

These moments offer listeners a brief respite from the horror, maintaining the show's unique tone.

Recurring Nightmares and Lingering Fear

Mary reveals that the traumatic events continue to haunt her through recurring nightmares, where she relives the camping trip with an eerie twist—confronting the enigmatic gas station attendant who seems to be the key to her unexplained ordeal:

“I've always had the same dream going on. 20 years of just reliving it exactly as it happened over and over and over.” ([25:29])

These persistent nightmares underscore the lasting psychological impact of her experience, leaving both Mary and listeners questioning the thin veil between reality and the unknown.

Conclusion

Episode 84 of Radio Rental masterfully blends real-life horror with engaging storytelling, taking listeners on a nerve-wracking journey through Mary's unexplained camping nightmare. The episode not only highlights eerie coincidences and possible supernatural elements but also delves into the psychological aftermath of such traumatic events. Through Mary's eyes, the podcast explores themes of trust, fear, and the unknown, leaving the audience both unsettled and intrigued.

Notable Quotes

• “We need to get the fuck out of here. When we get in the car, I was driving, but both of us were unwell.” — Mary ([35:10])

• “How the hell did his phone get all the way over there?” — Mary ([27:45])

• “We've gone down the rabbit hole looking into all this glitch in the Matrix type stuff, and it's completely fascinating.” — Mary ([38:20])

Final Thoughts

For those who haven't listened to Episode 84, this summary encapsulates the chilling essence of Mary’s experience while preserving the immersive storytelling that Radio Rental is known for. The episode serves as a compelling reminder of how ordinary situations can swiftly descend into the realm of the uncanny, keeping listeners on the edge of their seats.

Transcript

[Rainn Wilson]

You're listening to a Tenderfoot TV podcast.

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[Rainn Wilson]

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.

[Chris Reddit]

The following podcast includes scary stories with content that could be triggering to some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.

[Rainn Wilson]

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.

[Jeremy]

Oh, hey, it's you. What's up? It's. It's me, Jeremy. You remember? We met in line to check out tapes and then you wouldn't talk because you rude as hell. But I'm not. So we friends. Oh, wait, hold on. Gotta follow the script. That's right. Welcome back to Radio Rental, a video rental shot with an exclusive collection of scary stories all told by real people. Nailed that shit. I'm getting good at this, man. Cool to see a familiar face again. You're probably surprised that I'm back here. Yeah, me too. I honestly didn't expect it. Like, literally, like, I have no idea how I got here. I spontaneously appeared here, I swear to God. Like, one minute I was playing GTA on my couch, then I blinked and I was standing here wearing this little red vest, my size and everything. Even as Jeremy embroidered on the front. It's fucking insane. At first I was freaked out. I ain't gonna lie to you. You know, I was losing my shit. But I'm just learning to go with it, you know what I mean? Don't fight the universe, Jeremy. Also, yo, I found out who Terry is. Yeah, I guess he's like, owns this place or something. I found out because when I Popped up here today. He left all these voicemails on the landline saying all types of crazy shit. Honestly, the guy sounds a little Eee. That's my new sound for crazy. Here, I'll play you one.

[Rainn Wilson]

And if a multi dimensional void opens up in the floor in the corner of the store, don't worry, that's actually very normal. Don't fall in. It's a real headache, believe me. And if you see a mouse, don't kill it. It's Malachi's frenemy, or perhaps it's my wife, we're not entirely sure. And, oh, and there's sometimes a mystical doorway that sometimes appears. And if you're suddenly called to walk forth into it, do not. Unless you want to be trapped in there with a monster and a large collection of beans. I don't have time to go into it. Long story. Oh, and lastly, there's a little WD40 on the lazy Susan under the sink. That should cover it. All right, see you when I see ya.

[Jeremy]

What's he talking about? Wife, mouse, beans. Anyway, let's watch one of these tapes, man. Get out the box, Malachi. Get out the box. Ain't no food in there. Get out. All right, let's do this.

[Mary]

In the pandemic, I decided to go back to college and finish it once and for all. I was living in Harrisonburg, Virginia, which is in the Shenandoah Valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains. My boyfriend, now fiance, was living there with me. Harrisonburg is a small little mountain town that has the locals, but also a ton of college students because it's a college town. I'm in my 30s, so it was kind of tough to find people my age to hang out with, and we didn't really have many couple friends in the area. There's a lot of breweries and wineries and distilleries and stuff out there in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We went to a winery one day with our dogs. We saw this couple there who looked at first glance like they were probably around our age and they were playing cornhole by themselves. Everybody knows that cornhole's a four person game. We had been drinking a little wine and I was like, should we go ask if they want some teammates? We walked over there and we're like, hey, you know, y' all want to play cornhole together? And so we got to hanging out with these people and talking to them, and I'm normally not the type of person that's like, hey, come back to my house and hang out. But we were having A good time. They actually were the exact same age as us, so we were like, cool, maybe we can have, like, a couple friend to hang out with. They had just moved to the area. I'm like, hey, y' all want to come back to the house? We can order some pizza, hang out, you know, keep this going for a little while? And they're like, yeah, for sure. So we all go back to the house, we order pizza, and everything was cool. We had a great time. And they're like, let's get together again. We had gotten together with them one other time. We floated the Shenandoah River. My fiance's brothers were in town, so we all were just kicking it and had a fun day. Went to a brewery after and then went home. Another time that we hung out with him. Super chill. They invited us to go camping with them. This would be our third time ever hanging out, and we're thinking, like, yeah, like, for sure. I was in the middle of midterms since I was back at college. I was like, yeah, I have a lot to do. I'm down to go hang out for a little while, but I'm not quite prepared to, like, overnight camp tonight. We looked, and the campsite was only, I think, like, 35 or 40 minutes away from where we lived. So we were like, yeah, we'll just drive there, chill for a while, come back home, sleep at the house. We drove out there. They had this little campsite that was like one of those drive your car up to it, park had a little fire pit, point five down to the lake, zero point five back up to your campsite where you can set up your tent. Something weird that I noticed when we got there was there was no other campers at all anywhere in the park, which is pretty weird, especially during that time of year. It was, like, really nice out, like, kind of starting to get into fall. That's when a lot of people like to camp. And it was a weekend. So I'm thinking, hmm, okay, that's odd. Maybe some rain is, you know, in the weather, you know, forecast or something. I just kind of brushed it off. We're hanging out. We started having some drinks. I brought some of those Topo Chico seltzers, just a few of them. And my fiance and I were gonna drink those that we would eat and hang out for a bit, and then we were going to go back home. They had their own beers, and then they had a bottle of Bullet rye. I hate any kind of dark liquor. It makes me sick. They're like, hey, let's all have some of this bullet, and they start passing around the bottle. My fiance takes a swig. They take swigs, and I take, like, the microscopic amount of dark liquor because it makes me ill. We keep hanging out. We're eating some food, we're chilling. I keep having a few seltzers. You can tell that they were getting pretty drunk, but they were staying the night there, so whatever. But I was trying to be cautious with how much I was drinking because I knew that I would be driving. My fiance had more to drink than I did, maybe by like, two seltzers. But he was also just being low key. So we're hanging out by the fire. The guy goes, hey, do y' all want to walk down to the lake? We're like, yeah, sure. Because it was dark. I didn't want to take my cell phone down to the lake because it was sandy and stuff. And I was worried that I would drop my phone and lose it out there on the beach. So I put it in my car in the center console, and I grabbed two headlamps. I had my headlamp, gave the other one to my fiance so we could see walking down there. We were walking down to the lake, all four of us walking down that little wooded 0.5 path to get to the lake. When we got down there, I remember being down there for a minute. I remember the sand on the beach. I remember seeing the husband on the beach, and I see his face and then blackness. My fiance and I both woke up in the woods. He was laying on his back with his head turned perfectly. I was laying on top of him with my head turned perfectly. Almost as if we had been laid there and our heads turned. That way we didn't choke on our own puke. I woke up and started throwing up. My teeth were chattering, and I was just, like, feeling so disoriented. I started to shake my fiance, and I was like, babe, babe, something is not right. Wake up. And he was so out of it. He woke up and started screaming like, help, Help. Where am I? You know, didn't even know who I was for a second. And I'm like, snap out of it. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking, I don't know where I am. So shh. Shut up. Reorient ourselves and figure out where we are. He finally started to come to a little bit. We ended up hiking, essentially because we were in the mountains. We were an hour deep into George Washington National Forest, and thank God we woke up on a trail and not in the center of the woods, because at least there was a trail where we could follow to get out. But how we got an hour away from the campsite, and for both of us to be blacked out for that amount of time, I have no idea. We hiked back to the campsite, finally made our way, but the whole way back, we were feeling sick. I'm throwing up. He's throwing up. We're shivering. We can't figure out where the hell we are. And then we finally make it to a road, and we follow the road back all the way to the campsite. And the entire time, it almost felt like someone was watching us. The whole way back, I was looking at my fiance, and I was like, when we get back, we need to leave. Something is not right. I have a bad feeling we need to go. I don't care if we are drugged. I don't care what's going on. We need to leave. I was in a tank top and shorts and crocs, and I didn't have, like, really any dirt or scratches on me, and neither did he, which was odd, because, again, we were an hour away into the mountains, and there's no way that I would have hiked an hour in the backcountry in crocs with shorts on and not have mud or scratches or something on my body. When we got back to the campsite, the first thing I did Was go to my car and grab my phone and saw what time it was. And it had been, like, six hours. What the hell? How did we just lose all this time? How would both of us simultaneously pass out an hour away from where we were? Yeah, we were drinking, but there's no way that four seltzers Would have made us blackout for six hours of our life and not know how we ended up there. That's when my fiance's like, hey, man, what's going on? Something's not right. Are you in the tent? Are you awake? Are you asleep? What's going on? The dude wakes up, and he's like, huh? Where's Mary? My fiance and I look at each other, and we're like, what the hell? What do you mean? She's not in the tent with you? No. Last thing I remember Was asking if we all wanted to go down to the lake. But then I decided to stay back up here with the dog, and y' all went down there, and then I woke up underneath the picnic table, and I have no idea what happened. It just felt like bullshit. It felt like a lie. He didn't seem Panicked at all. He wakes up and his wife's not in the tent with him. And then he just doesn't seem freaked out in the slightest. And then he says that he didn't go down to the lake yet. I specifically remember before losing that track of time seeing him down there on the beach by the lake. To me, he changed his story, and that was really suspicious. So he comes out of the tent and we start looking for her. We start walking down that little path, the point five, that leads to the lake, which is connected to the campsite. And she is sitting on the trail slumped over with her head, like, bent over in the dark in the woods. And she's just sitting there, slumped over. It's kind of weird that she's just slumped over, sitting in the woods in the dark while he's asleep in the tent. And when we woke her up, because she was like, asleep, she seemed extremely out of it as well. I don't know if she was, you know, just really drunk or what, but she seemed out of it, like she had no idea what was going on. She gets back into the tent with him. The entire time, I'm looking at my fiance and we're communicating to each other through our eyes and our looks. We need to get the fuck out of here. When we get in the car, I was driving, but both of us were unwell. It was three in the morning at this point, and we're both, like, feeling sick and freaking out. We're running the situation through our minds. What if it was this? What if it was that? Was it them? Did they drug us? Did we get abducted by aliens? Like, what exactly was that we're driving in? The whole ride home, I don't recognize anything until I pull up in my driveway. Okay, I'm home. It was almost like my brain didn't process where I was until I pulled up right in front of our apartment the next day. We were violently ill. We probably should have gone to the hospital, but we didn't. I had put my phone in the car, but my fiance had his phone on him. And it was actually a brand new iPhone, so he hadn't gotten a case for it yet. We went down to the lake. He had his phone on him. Well, when we woke up an hour into the mountains, he, like, looking in his pockets to see if he could find his phone, and he didn't have it. So he's thinking, shit, I lost my phone somewhere along our journey. So the next day, I was just so freaked out. I literally called the ranger to ask Them if anything sketchy had ever happened there before, if they had any other campers there during that time. And then also that we were missing a cell phone. The guy was like, okay, yeah, I'll let you know. He said nothing weird like that had ever happened down there before. They did not have but one other camper apparently, and they must have been on the other side of the campground, because I saw no one when we were there. A couple days later, the ranger called me and was like, hey, good news. One of our rangers found your cell phone. He had picked it up and thought that it was broken, so he just tossed it in the trash can in his trailer. Okay. Did he try to turn it on or anything? And he was like, I'm not sure, but I'm going to go see if it's still in the trash can. And I'm like, yeah, please. So he went. He found this iPhone in the dude's trash can. He just threw it away. It was cracked, severely cracked, but on the back backside of the phone. So the front screen was, like, fully intact. He was like, I'm just going to mail it back to you. So he mailed it back to me. At that point, obviously, the phone's dead. I plug it in, it never cuts back on. The ranger was like, we found that phone in between campsites 5 and 6, but we were nowhere near campsite 5 and 6 when we woke up in the woods. So how the hell did his phone get all the way over there? And then we're the opposite direction in the mountains? When I got that phone back, I wanted to see what was on it. Then a part of me really didn't want to know what was on there. I wasn't sure if it was the couple who had done this to us or if there was something paranormal going on. Just because there's a lot of things that happen in the Appalachian mountains, and I believe in it, we decided that we would never hang out with them again. I did some research on George Washington national forest. I've found a couple stories where people had said that they had gone on hikes just for the day and lost time completely. That makes me wonder, like, is there something going on in that section of George washington national forest? Like, is there some sort of entity? Was it some sort of alien abduction? Or. I don't know, you know, is there something out there? I would like to think that it wasn't the guy. But then also, if it wasn't the guy, what could it have been? And how much more terrifying is that?

[Jeremy]

Yo, that's crazy. That's like a glitch in the Matrix type shit. Kind of like what's happening to me right now. I was just doing my thing, gta, knocking over trash cans and shit. And then bam, I'm here. Little red vest on and everything. And then you walked in. I didn't even consider alien abduction as an option. Something to think about. All right, let's break for ads. That shit's gonna start playing all godlike, you know what I'm saying? It's gonna be all over the room and shit. It's real wild Blue apron ads raining down from the heavens. You know what I'm saying?

[Rainn Wilson]

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[Mary]

Hot sauce.

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[Mary]

Ugh.

[Jeremy]

Let's move on.

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[Jeremy]

All right, thank you, sponsors. Good stuff from you today. Sponsors. Okay. Okay. Let's do another tape. Hell yeah. Oh, tape two. Damn, I love this little VCR machine.

[Groons]

It was August of 2007. Found out that my favorite uncle of all time, he had passed away very, very suddenly. Me, my two brothers, my sister, and my sister in law, Elle, we'd all decided we were just going to go down together because I had an suv. Saturday, we did the wake. Sunday was the actual like where we actually buried him. The initial plan was for us to leave like 1, 2 o' clock in the afternoon, but we're having so much fun. We were going to stay a little bit later. Sam's staying until like almost five o' clock in the afternoon. We get on the road, there's laughter, there's tears. And it was just really nice being able to have that bonding time with my siblings because we didn't get to do trips like that very often. And so we're just having a really good time. And we hit the Florida border, got through Valdosta, and it wasn't long after that I had this very sudden urge that I had to be got off at the first exit that I saw. Not really thinking about it, not paying attention if there was any signs or anything like that. I remember it being very, very dark. It was like a stop sign there. And if you know anything about southern Georgia, it's a very rural area. There's nothing. I remember getting at the stop sign, you know, looking left, looking right and say, okay, well there's, I don't see anything. And there was no gas stations, there was no restaurants, no hotels. It was just trees. So I said, okay, there's gotta be something. So I made a right and we started driving. And I'm trying to go as fast as I can Going there's gotta be something here. But there was nothing but like a two lane road and just dense trees on both sides of the road. No other cars, nothing. We were just driving and I see up ahead there's this gas station on the left. So I pull into this gas station and I park right in front of the two pumps that are fairly close to the street. And it was just two pumps that were just side by side. The plan was we were going to go in, go to the bathroom, get snacks, get drinks, go ahead and just fill up. So might as well, so we don't have to stop again and then be on our way. So I jump out of the car, I run into this gas station, I don't even really pay attention. I'm just looking for like a bathroom. And so I kind of do a real quick kind of scan and oh, there's a sign. Bathroom. So I run into the bathroom, I come out and my sister rushes past me and she goes in. And I noticed that my brothers and my sister in law were kind of just being quiet, kind of just had this like weird look about them. And my brother T was doing that thing when you, you're trying to get somebody to look in a certain direction. So you kind of use your eyes, but you're not talking, you're kind of like, look that way. And so I followed his eyesight. That's when I first saw the man standing behind the counter. And he was this very gaunt older man. His face was almost skeletal. His cheeks were really, really sunk in. He had like this scraggly beard and like this thinning silvery gray hair. But the one thing that really unnerved me more than anything was his eyes. Like his eyes were just like so incredibly dark, almost completely black. He had on this white shirt, it was kind of stained, kind of dingy, like with pit stains on it and this pair of like just dirty overalls. And I noticed he wasn't blinking, he wasn't moving, no emotion to his face whatsoever. And then I really started kind of look around at the surroundings. As I came around one of the aisles, I started looking and I was like, okay, this is kind of odd because the labels, they look familiar. Like I could tell, like, okay, those are M and Ms. But it looked off, they looked older. And then I started noticing that things were covered in dust. My brother T was just intensely staring at this guy. My brother R and my sister in law were just kind of like looking at each other, looking at me, looking at the guy. They were very visibly uncomfortable. The Fluorescent light that was inside the gas station was like only one giant fluorescent light light. It was flickering every once in a while and I thought, okay, this is very strange. I started getting that like pit in my stomach. We need to get out of here. Like there's something wrong here. I came back around and my sister came out the door and I grab her hand and we just bolt out. We get in the car. I peeled out of the gas station. We had left tire marks. I remember smelling the rubber burning. I make a right hand turn out of the gas station and we're driving. It's just this dark, desolate, two lane country road. There's no street lights, there's no cars. It's completely just pitch black road. We ended up driving for about 15, 20 minutes. No highway, nothing but trees. My brother T, who is my passenger in the front passenger seat, he was like, oh, there's lights up head. Okay, yeah, cool. Maybe it's something, you know. We'll try to get directions from there. So I slowed down. He was like, is that the same sign? I don't think so. No, that can't be the same sign. And he's like, no, I think that's the same sign. No, no, there's no way that's the same sign. As he got closer, he's like, what are we doing back this way? There's the pump. And the thing about the gas pumps were is they were very old. It was like they were from the 50s or 60s, like they were very old style pumps. These are the same pumps. It was the same gas station. We could still see the tire marks on the pavement in front of the gas pumps. This is not right. This is the same place, the same gas station. The fear really, really set in. As I am slowly pulling up. Light from the right hand window catches my eyes and I look in the window and I can see the shelves. I look over across the door and as I'm coming to look to the left window, that's when I notice that the man that was in the gas station the first time we were in there is now standing in the window staring out at us. That's the same person that we had just seen 20 minutes ago. So not only had we seen the same sign, the same gas pump, this was the same exact man that we had just seen 20 minutes earlier, staring out at us. No movement from him whatsoever. Completely emotionless. Why did we pass this gas station a second time? I know I didn't make any turns. I know there weren't any forks in the Road. I know I didn't do a U turn. There was nothing explaining what had brought us back to that exact same place. Something had to have looped me back around somehow. That's when the chaos really ensued. Everybody was just screaming and yelling. My brothers were telling me to go. It went from being fearful to being absolutely terrified. My heart just pounding. It was hard to almost breathe. Every fiber, every hair, every molecule in my body was screaming, this is not right. There is something very, very wrong here. Punched it. I was not turning back into that gas station. I didn't know what would happen if we did turn in there. The amount of screaming and yelling and my brothers, you know, banging on the back of my chair, yelling, go, go, go. It was just pure, pure chaos. I don't know really what to do because there's really no place for us to go. There's no roads to turn down, nothing else to pull into at this point, there really is only two directions. There's what's in front of us and what's behind us as we're going down the road. I'm looking for anything at this point. And that's when I notice that there is a concrete entrance after the break in the trees. And so I slow down thinking that there's something there. I notice that there's a sign, like an old gas station sign, and it's kind of broken. The plastic where the lights would have been is kind of shattered. The building itself is. I pull up in front of it. The roof is caving in. The windows are boarded up. There's no trespassing signs. But I could see the building enough where I realized that this was the same gas station. The confirmation for me that this was the same gas station was the fact that our tire marks were still on the concrete leading out of the gas station. Distinctively, my tire marks. I have no doubt in my mind those are our tire marks. I was dumbfounded more than anything. How do you explain why this seemingly country gas station with lights on and looked halfway decent went from being a functioning gas station to being completely dilapidated in a matter of 20 minutes? There's no explanation for that. The fact that everything was in the exact same place that it was the first time I saw it, the second time I saw it. The only difference now is was that it was broken down. Seeing that just caused my siblings to lose their minds even more than they already were. They were screaming and yelling and hollering, and it was, you know, go, go, go. Why? Why are you stopping? Why are you stopping? This just Makes. This makes no sense. This is. This is impossible. This is not possible. There's no way this could be happening to us. So I floored it again. I didn't know what to expect anymore at this point. I made the same trip down this road going on the third dime. Now, I didn't know how I was going to get my siblings out of the situation. So I just kept going straight, hoping and praying that we were going to find something, anything where I could ask directions or find out if I made a loop or something. And so we're driving what seems like. Seemed like forever. Everybody's freaking out, like, why aren't we at the highway yet? Like, why aren't we seeing anything? I had no answers within five minutes of us passing that gas station. The third time we were back at the highway, I almost felt like it just kind of popped up on us because I was expecting to be driving for a while. I got on the highway, I swear I took that turn doing like 90 miles an hour just to get away from there as fast as we possibly could. I felt like, okay, now there's something tangible, something I'm familiar with. We're going to be okay. It's behind us now. I didn't make any turns. I didn't do a U turn. I didn't go on any fork or anything like that. There was no other roads for me to turn onto in order to be able to do those things. This road was perfectly straight. It was level. It makes no sense how he passed it three times. I didn't do a U turn in the middle of the road or anything like that. I didn't do any of that stuff. I just kept going straight. Absolutely no sense. I've gone down the rabbit hole looking into all this glitch in the Matrix type stuff, and it's completely fascinating. I still have dreams about it, and I've always had the same dream going on. 20 years of just reliving it exactly as it happened over and over and over. When I shared my story for the first time that night I had a dream about was the first time the dream changed. And I remember everything happens exactly the same, except I run into the gas station that time I start yelling at him. In this dream, who are you? Why are we here? Like, wanting, demanding all the answers I think I've been wanting for so long. And he lunged at me, and I woke.

[Mary]

Up.

[Jeremy]

Holy. That's messed up, man. All right, time for those ads to start again. Hello, ads. Ads commence. Ads begin. Come on, man.

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[Mary]

Um, that's a hard question.

[Jeremy]

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[Mary]

I'm able to do anything I set my mind to.

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[Mary]

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[Jeremy]

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[Mary]

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[Jeremy]

Hey man, that was fun today. Kind of some trippy shit. Okay, well, I guess it's time to go. I wonder if I'm gonna just spontaneously disappear in the middle of talk talking to you or something like that, because that would be so rude.

[Chris Reddit]

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 Chris Reddit. 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 Nurney. Sound design, mix and master by Steven Perez and Cooper Skinner. Additional editing by April Ruha and Dayton Cole. Our production manager is Joyce. Our social media manager is Caroline Orajema. Video editing by Dylan Harrington. Cover artwork by Trevor Eyler 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 radio rental story that you'd like to share, please email us at yourscarystorymail.com or contact us via the form on our website radiorentalusa.com follow us on Instagram at radiorental. On behalf of the RadioRental store, we'd love it if you'd subscribe. Rate and Review as always, thanks for listening.

[Rainn Wilson]

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