Scary Stories For A Rainy Night - Ep. 247: Graveyard Shift

Podcast: Scary Stories and Rain
Host: Being Scared
Release Date: October 3, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode of Scary Stories and Rain immerses listeners in a series of deeply unsettling true stories, each recounted in a calm, intimate tone against a backdrop of steady rainfall. The narrator shares personal accounts and listener submissions, delivering chilling tales of online stalkers, urban legends, terrifying encounters, and psychological horror. The overall theme is the vulnerability and dread that can lurk just outside everyday life—online, in the woods, or even inside your own home.

Key Stories and Insights

1. The Facebook Threat and Social Media Caution

[01:29 – 07:30]

• The narrator reflects on his previous openness on social media during college, posting check-ins and personal details for anyone to see.
• He receives a message from a stranger:
  • Quote: “I'm going to kill you 🤠.” (03:00, paraphrased)
• Upon investigation, the sender's profile is filled with disturbing content: rants, knife-wielding photos, references to violence like “that chainsaw goes through his neck like butter…” (04:30).
• The narrator becomes anxious, realizing how much personal info he’s unwittingly shared with a stranger who may be watching him.
  • “He could have ambushed me at a dozen different places that I… just couldn't avoid because they were school or grocery shopping or just my dorm room.” (05:40)
• He blocks the stranger but can’t resist periodically checking back. The stalker begins posting photos that appear to be taken in the narrator’s own town, causing weeks of sleepless anxiety.
• Insight: The terrifying power of overexposing your life online, and a cautionary message about privacy:
  • Quote: "Now I am kinda weird and cautious about social media. I don't put too much out there. I don't use my real name, I run the strictest privacy settings possible and I really recommend that you do too." (07:10)

2. Legend of Spearfinger: A Smoky Mountains Urban Legend

[07:30 – 13:30]

• The host recalls his childhood in the Boy Scouts and a camping trip in the Smokies, where a scoutmaster shares the Cherokee legend of Spearfinger—a stone-skinned monster hunting for children’s livers.
• Vividly retold details:
  • Quote: "She used to slice up her child victims whose livers she ate raw… whenever her deep voice rumbled around the hillsides, it would scare all the birds away…" (09:30)
• The legend’s chilling refrain, “Ue la na siku” ("liver, I eat it"), and the monster’s ability to take the form of loved ones is described.
• That night, another scout, Devin, pranks the narrator by pretending to be Spearfinger at his tent, complete with a twig for the finger and the hissing, whispering refrain.
• The story blends humor and real fear:
  • Quote: “I must have been boiling with rage at the time, but Devin just thought that it was extra funny, waving the long wooden twig at me and making the same hissing sound again before bursting into laughter.” (12:30)
• The narrator admits this was the most scared—and embarrassed—he’d been as a child.
• Insight: Urban legends wield deep psychological power, especially when brought to life.

3. The Disappearance of Geraldine Largay

[15:27 – 22:26]

• A gripping recounting of a true missing person case: Geraldine Largay, trail name “Inchworm,” who hiked almost 1,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail in 2013 before becoming lost in Maine’s dense wilderness.
• Details her attempts to reach her husband via cell phone, her tragic isolation under a dense hemlock canopy, and the fruitless search efforts by authorities.
  • “She tried over and over to send messages, but none went through…” (17:10)
• The story exposes the harsh realities of wilderness survival and the despair of being lost and unseen, despite proximity to rescue.
• Final journal entry:
  • Quote: “When you find my body, please call my husband George, and my daughter Carrie… it would be the greatest kindness for them to know that I am dead and where you found me. No matter how many years from now.” (19:55)
• Her body was found two years later—just a mile from where rescuers had repeatedly passed by.
• Insight: Even in a modern country, the wilderness holds unfathomable dangers, and disappearance can happen frighteningly easily.

4. Art, Instagram, and the Obsessive Follower

[22:55 – 30:10]

• “Honey,” a young artist, describes finding solace in art during mental health struggles, leading to a growing Instagram following and commission offers.
• She receives a commission request from a man offering $1,000—who pushes her to value her art more highly.
  • “I couldn't believe it. A thousand dollars for a picture. Which was way more money than I had ever made in my whole life…” (24:50)
• The man claims to be an artist in “very unusual mediums,” finally sending disturbing self-destructing images of animal heads altered with ritualistic, grotesque modifications.
• He reveals a desire to work with a real human skull and asks the narrator if she’ll help him obtain one.
• The narrator is fearful but reluctant to cut him off, worried about both personal safety and financial need.
• Quote: “...if they do work out where I'm at, there's just no way I'd be able to go around feeling safe, not with someone whose ambition it is to work with severed human heads knowing where I lay mine at night.” (29:45)
• Insight: Online success and vulnerability often go hand in hand, especially for creators who share personal details.

5. The Intruder in the Isolated Rental

[30:10 – 35:40]

• The narrator and his girlfriend move into an affordable yet remote trailer-conversion home near a forest, not realizing it’s next to areas frequented by homeless and drug-addicted populations.
• One night, an intruder in black breaks in, claiming he needs a phone for an emergency, and flees.
• The police are powerless, the couple terrified. Days later, a news article reveals a serial predator matching the intruder’s description was active in their area.
• Quote: “Apparently there was a serial predator in our town. He frequented the exact area of our rental. And this sketch was exactly how I would have described the individual that I saw in my living room that night.” (35:10)
• Insight: The dangers of rural isolation, particularly for young and vulnerable residents.

6. The Stalker on the Bus

[35:40 – 43:55]

• Forced to take the bus due to car troubles, the narrator is persistently harassed by a malodorous man in a construction jacket claiming to work for a company.
• After calling the company, he discovers the man was fired months earlier—the stalker was targeting him deliberately.
• Weeks later, the same foul smell greets the narrator at home; he discovers the man has broken in and is lying in wait.
• The police intervene just in time, tasering and arresting the stalker.
  • Quote: “It was like an actual nightmare knowing that he had been waiting in my apartment for me all after. I thought I was totally rid of the guy…” (43:20)
• Insight: Gut instincts and sensory cues (like smell) can be life-saving; the uncanny persistence of stalkers.

7. A Near Tragedy at a New Year's House Party

[43:55 – End (~50:35)]

• After a family crisis, the narrator throws a party for friends to stave off holiday loneliness, but teenage drinking drama escalates.
• Following a fight with his girlfriend, a friend named Chris becomes despondent, locks himself in the bathroom, and attempts suicide by drinking bleach.
• The narrator recognizes the signs just in time, kicks a hole in the door, and helps save Chris's life.
• Quote: “Chris had his stomach pumped and he survived, but it took a long time for him to be back to normal because… he had trouble eating, drinking and breathing for at least a month…” (50:00)
• Insight: The unpredictable spiral of youthful emotions, the importance of vigilance during crises, and the lasting trauma of close brushes with death.

Notable Quotes and Moments

• On Online Danger:
  “We put ourselves on Front street in a big way with social media and there could be literally anybody out there just lurking on our profiles.” (07:05)
• On the Haunting Power of Smell:
  “It was that same rotten mouth smell that had clung to this bus guy like a dark cloud… as I stood in the dark hallway of my apartment… that's the most terrified I have ever been in my life.” (41:25)
• On Coping Through Art:
  “I was still dealing with my demons, but when I learned I could actually profit from them, that I could make use of something that plagued me, it was a great feeling.” (25:30)
• On the Tragedy of Disappearance:
  “It is quite simply terror inducing that, even in a country as populous and settled as the United States, a person can still go missing on a simple mountain trail and vanish almost without a trace, only to be found months later having starved to death.” (21:50)

Summary

This episode weaves together diverse, true-life horror stories touching on internet stalking, childhood legends, isolation, and near-tragedy, each underscored by the anxiety of being watched, exposed, or alone. Whether rooted in folklore, modern technology, or the simple randomness of life, each narrative is a meditation on vulnerability and the unpredictable dangers that can surface in the most unexpected places.

Perfect for: Sleepless nights, horror fans, and anyone drawn to the eerie realities just beneath the surface of everyday life.
Podcast Mood: Intimate, atmospheric, suspenseful, candid.