Transcript
Host (0:00)
Hey, welcome to episode 131. In this episode you're going to hear some crazy true stories. I really hope you enjoy. And I hope you enjoy the rain sounds as well. By the way, if you haven't followed me on Spotify yet, please do that. It really helps out the podcast a lot. And also if you want to listen ad free, you can subscribe to my podcast for just 2.99amonth so you can listen to all of the future episodes and past episodes completely ad free. No more interruptions. And also if you want the same kind of stories but with a different background sound, you can check out my new podcast Scary Stories and Fire. The link is in the description. I really hope you enjoy. Have a good night.
Storyteller (0:42)
70,000 people are here and Bob Dylan is the reason for it. Inspired by the true story. If anyone is going to hold your attention on stage, you have to kind of be a freak. Are you a freak? Hope so. And starring Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan. He defied everyone. Turn it down. Pay loud to change everything. Make some noise. BD Timothee Chalamet Edward Norton Elle Fanning Monica Barbaro A complete unknown Only in theaters Christmas Day pretty DAR under 17.9.
Ryan Reynolds (1:11)
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Mint Mobile Ad (1:33)
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Amazon Prime Ad (1:44)
This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. There's nothing sweeter than baking cookies during the holidays. With Prime, I get all my ingredients delivered right to my door, fast and free. No last minute store trips needed. And of course I blast my favorite holiday playlist on Amazon Music. It's the ultimate soundtrack for creating unforgettable memories. From streaming to shopping, it's on Prime. Visit Amazon.comprime to get more out of whatever you're into.
Storyteller (2:16)
At 19 I moved out for the first time with an old friend, Nathan. We rented a two bedroom basement level apartment for a year together and at first things were great. It was like having a long term sleepover with your best friend and we were able to have our own alone time in the apartment because we worked opposite schedules. I worked a retail job during the day and Nathan worked overnights for a month or two. We had a good thing going. He would work and I would be home and vice versa. We would stay up late playing video games when our schedules aligned. The first thing that I noticed that was odd was the closet in my bedroom. In the master bedroom there was a small walk in closet and I noticed the carpet in the corners looked as if it had been dug out by an animal. There were also several gaps in the walls along the edges of the carpet. At first this seemed no different really from the general cheap apartment disarray and maintenance issues. This didn't scare me at first. I figured someone had an overexcited pup and I left it alone. It started off with little things. At first I would think that I would hear Nathan calling my name and I would respond, only to realize that he had been at work for hours. Leading to our bedrooms was a long hallway that seemed to make us both uncomfortable. The hallway light would be left on as often as possible and we would laugh it off as a childhood fear of the dark. I think we were both too skeptical to talk about how we would occasionally think that we had seen the other walk out of the hallway only to realize we were alone. On more than one occasion, I would have a friend sleep over who would complain they were kept awake at night by the constant flickering of the hallway light. My roommates and I tried our best to be respectful of each other's schedules. If I knew he had just come home in the morning and was sleeping, I would try my best to stay quiet when heading to work. One morning, Nathan told me that while he'd been relaxing in his room after work getting ready to sleep, he had heard footsteps in the hallway and the door to my room being shaken. At first he thought it was just me rushing around getting ready for work, but he was concerned because I was being much louder than normal. He he looked over at his alarm clock and realized that I should have been at work by this time and says he decided to check on me. He opened his door and looked down the hall towards my room. He says that he froze when he saw a dark figure standing outside my door in that moment. He said that he rationalized it by saying he thought I was just running late for work and had gotten embarrassed at being caught and ducked into my room. He retreated back to his room and said that he hadn't heard anything else for the rest of the day he had never heard me say anything or leave and opted to forget about it, even when I came home later and confirmed that I had not been late that morning. As time progressed in that apartment, we were both constantly irritable and tired. It felt impossible to rest in that apartment, especially when I was alone. Nathan would sometimes chalk this up to me being nervous, and as a woman alone in an apartment at night, I would spend my nights huddled on the end of the couch furthest from the hallway, tucked in a blanket under the lamp. On more than one occasion, this is where I slept, as it felt more secure than walking down that hallway to my room. I am awoken one morning in my bed by the sound of someone trying to beat down my bedroom door and ice settles in my veins. The banging on the door sounds desperate and I can see the door shaking under the weight of the hit. Immediately I'm concerned that our apartment flooded, we have been robbed, or something has happened to Nathan. I bolt out of bed and rip open my door and once again I am met with sudden silence in an empty hallway. Fearful that I have misheard where the knocks were, I go down the hall to the main door and check outside, and there's no one. Yet again I sit down on the couch in the living room, unable to go back to sleep even if I wanted to. When I realized Nathan had been home, I chalked it up as him sleepwalking, and he confesses later that he had had repetitive nightmares that morning, but doesn't believe that he was walking in his sleep. His room was small and he had taken up most of the main space with a weight set that he would have to crawl over to enter and leave. I later had to reason as well that in the time it had taken me to open the door, he would have had to sprint back to his room and slam the door shut to avoid me seeing or hearing it. As weird as this was, the worst was yet to come. We had had a disagreement before Nathan went to work and I had been laying in my bed, still a little angry and watching videos on my phone until I could doze off. When he worked overnights, his job was close enough to our apartment that he would come home for lunch, or what they called lunch, almost every night. So when I heard the door creak open at 3am I wasn't uneasy at first. I hear the various sounds of him in the apartment opening cabinets and walking around. I roll over, upset because he's being much louder than normal, and immediately I feel my heart drop into My stomach. Nathan would always turn the lights on when he came home. It was reassuring on the nights I was in my room to see the hallway light seep through the door frame to let me know I wasn't alone in the apartment anymore. But this night, when I rolled over, there was no reassuring light coming from underneath the closed door. It was pitch black. My heartbeat quickened immediately, and I messaged Nathan to ask if he had come home. But I got no response. I strained my ears to listen, and what I hear sounds. Nothing like normal. There's footsteps running around the apartment and coming down the hall to my door, then running away, doors opening and closing and cabinets creaking. In that moment, I was so absolutely sure that we were being robbed. I began to shake. I didn't know how to deal with this, and what I had heard sounded so angry and chaotic outside my door. Tearfully, I grabbed a knife that I kept under my pillow. Because the apartment walls and door were so thin, I couldn't have called 911 quietly enough to save myself. My instinct in that moment was to fight and deal with the consequences later. I stood just behind the door, listened to the footsteps run towards me, braced myself, and when I heard them start to fade down the hall, I ripped open the door to surprise my attacker. I am met with absolutely nothing but silence and darkness. I stare down the black, empty hallway, adamant that they are hiding from me. I am frozen in place, staring down the hall, waiting to hear anything. The front door is in clear view from my position, and it's still closed. Whoever it was has to still be here. I scan the room at the end of the hall. I feel a lump in my throat as I lock my eyes on a large, dark figure peering around the corner at the end of the hall. I take off down the hall and. And a whip around the corner, ready again to fight. But there's no one in my apartment. When I turned on all the lights, I checked. The door was shut and locked. All the windows are locked. Nathan's room is empty, and there's nothing out of place. All the cabinets and drawers I had heard being ripped open are closed, all the tables still upright. My body, in this moment, reacts in a way I wouldn't expect. I go from overwhelming fear to complete calm. I shove what has happened to the back of my mind, walk in my room, lock the door, and go to bed, dead asleep within seconds. To cope, my brain shoved this memory to the depths, and it only resurfaced months later, after I had moved out. When Nathan and I finally divulged all our experiences together. For the remainder of my time in the apartment, the tiredness and irritability continues. Even my sanctuary of the living room is compromised as I would awake many times in the middle of the night to see a dark figure walking out of the hallway towards the couch disappearing. When I would turn my head to look, things would fall over. I would hear knocks on my bedroom door and more and more I was questioning my own sanity. Eventually, when I couldn't take it anymore and things financially weren't well with the apartment, I decided to move back home. Within a month, I was back to feeling like myself again. We are still not entirely sure what was in that apartment, but we have some theories. I feel it important to preface our theory with. Not too long after moving into this apartment, I had taken to practicing Wicca. I don't say this to add horror, but rather to explain what we believe happened. In my early practicing, I would fill my room with cleansing materials like quartz stones and sage to cleanse before spells and maintain an energy in my room. We suspected whatever was in our apartment had originated in my closet and that whoever was in my room before had done something sinister in there. The rips in the carpet and the gaps in the wall with small objects just out of view, we were too scared of finds we could get for destroying the closet to lift up the carpet and check what may have been underneath. It's been theorized that I had unknowingly driven whatever darkness lived in that closet out and it spent the rest of the time I lived there desperate to come back in. The longer it was kept out, the angrier it got and the more that we took it out on each other. Later, when I moved out, things continued to worsen for my roommate who remained. He was constantly tired and angry and fell into a dark headspace. The spirit we think was in there was able to go back into my room when I left. And the girl who lived in my room after me said she was plagued with nightmares and had been locked out of the room on many occasions. Even though the door locked from inside. She would try it and the door would be locked. Then later she would try it again and the door would somehow open. Nathan would send me videos of doors opening in the apartment on their own and the TV suddenly showing black and white cable static in the middle of DVDs and YouTube videos. My roommate was able to move out of the apartment a while ago and we have both been doing better slowly as time went on. We have shared a lot of our experiences that we had in that apartment with each other, and we are both glad that we came out of it okay. It made quite the believer out of my roommate as well, who remained reluctant to acknowledge it until his final few months there. Apartments are funny places. You never really know how many people have lived their lives in that exact same space, what they may have left behind or done in the room where you lay your head at night. Maybe there was something in that apartment, something left over from whoever came before. Or maybe it can all be chalked up to late nights, bad dreams and miscommunication. In the end, what you choose to believe is up to you.