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Scary Stories and Rain
Scary Stories For A Rainy Night - Ep. 405 - It Stood Outside My Window
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- [00:01]
Jay Shetty
So good, so good, so good.
- [00:03]
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- [00:28]
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- [00:59]
Narrator / Storyteller
Marvel Television's Wonder man an eight episode series now streaming on Disney. A superhero remake. Not exactly what we'd expect from an Oscar winning director. Action Simon Williams audition for Wonder Man. I'm gonna need you to sign this. Assuming you don't have superpowers. I'll never work again if anyone found out monolips are sealed. Marvel Television's Wonder man all eight episodes now streaming only on Disney. Hey, before this episode begin, I just want to let everyone know that my film that I've been producing for the last two years, Gale Yellow Brick Road, is now streaming on Chilling. So if you weren't able to go see it in theaters a couple months ago, no worries. Click the link in the description to this video or just search Chilling in your app store and you can watch Gale Yellow Brick Road tonight at home. I really hope you enjoy. Please leave an honest rating and review on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. Thanks again. Hey welcome back to the podcast. I really hope you enjoy this episode and if you'd like to hear more stories like these with a different background sound, please check the description to check out my other two podcasts and if you want to get rid of all of the ads, you can subscribe for just $2.99 a month. Last thing I really appreciate you being here and I'd really love if you would follow the podcast and come back again soon. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoy. I grew up in an extremely small rural town in Florida on a farm. The population of our town was less than 1,000 people. The closest city, Gainesville, Florida was about an hour away. The nights were pitch black dark because there were no street lights or light Pollution like in the city, except for the light of a million stars. My great grandfather passed away when I was about eight years old, leaving my granny heartbroken. We lived a field away from my great grandmother, who was about 75 at the time. Unfortunately, Granny had already started getting early Alzheimer's and sometimes didn't act like herself. The family besides me, decided that it would be best if I moved in with her so that she didn't have to be alone in the evenings and at night. Granny lived in an old farmhouse that she had helped build by hand with my granddaddy in the 1930s. The house was constructed of wood with a tin roof. We did have electricity at this time, but no air conditioner or telephone. The front door was wood, and the top half of the door was a glass window pane with a small decorative curtain across the very top, the kind you might see on a kitchen window. Needless to say, anyone could see inside the house as clearly as we could see them. The door lock was the original one made by my granddaddy. It wasn't really a lock at all. It was a piece of wood nailed to the frame that you turned horizontally when you closed the door, meant to keep someone from pushing the door open. I slept in the room with my granny. Our bedroom was at the very front of the house, right next to the front door, and my bed was pushed directly up to the window that looked out over the front porch and yard. I always felt safe because my family and aunts and uncles lived in the adjacent farms all around us. In 1990, that all changed. I was 10 years old by now. Granny was getting more forgetful, sometimes wandering around the house at night. In the nearby city, something awful had occurred. A man had broken into apartments of several college students in Gainesville, murdered them and done horrible things to their bodies. There were no suspects. The police called him the Gainesville Ripper. Rumors spread through the community like wildfire. Some said the killer was dressing up like a cableman or electric man to get people to let him in their door. Fear and anxiety grew daily as the police had no leads. My dad decided it was time to teach me how to use our family weapon. Just in case, dad took me out in the woods and I practiced. That night I fell asleep with the weapon beside the head of my bed with clear instructions to not open the door for anyone we didn't know. As a 10 year old, I felt like this was a pretty big responsibility, and my anxiety kept me from sleeping much. Those next few nights. They reassured me that I would never have to use the weapon. But better to be safe than sorry. Until the next night, which was the most terrifying night of my life up until this point. I was laying in bed looking at the digital clock On Granny's dresser, 3:05am in bright red digits. Granny had gotten up to wander around the kitchen. She did this often and I just let her do what she thought she needed to do. I heard a tap on the front door window pane. I listened intently and then silence. Suddenly the porch light flipped on, illuminating through my little window. What was Granny doing? I scurried out of bed to the front door just in time to reach for Granny's hand as she was trying to turn the piece of wood, keeping the door locked at the same time. I looked out the window, my eyes meeting the eyes of a strange man standing there. The porch light was behind him and I couldn't see his face very well, but his hair was long and unkempt.
- [06:54]
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- [07:19]
Jay Shetty
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- [07:46]
Narrator / Storyteller
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- [07:49]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [08:07]
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- [08:22]
Narrator / Storyteller
He jiggled the handle and pushed hard on the door with all his weight. I was terrified and I excitedly screamed at Granny asking what she was doing. She told me Granddaddy was at the door. She sometimes thought Granddaddy was still alive. There was no convincing her it wasn't him. With the man pushing furiously against the door, I had to drag Granny with both hands into the bedroom so I could reach the weapon without giving her a chance to open the door. I grabbed the weapon and ran into the living room, aiming directly at the front door, my finger on the trigger. The stranger was gone. I had no telephone to call for help. We were trapped. I sat in the recliner by the front door, staring out into the darkness beyond the porch light, with weapon in hand for the rest of the night, unable to swallow, shaking so hard I could barely aim the weapon. I waited for the man to return to try one of the flimsy windows or the back door. Every moving shadow, distant dog bark, bump in the night or snap of a twig had my heart racing and blood rushing through my ears. The wind would blow and make the screen door creak open and fall shut with a bang. It was torture. My arms ached from holding the weapon, my nightgown was soaked with sweat and I was on the verge of bursting into soul wrenching sobs. But I had a job to do, guarding us from the Ripper. Oblivious, Granny tottered around the kitchen getting ready to make breakfast because Granddaddy would be wanting his coffee soon. I didn't argue or care what she did as long as she stayed away from that front door. I never saw another glimpse of the stranger, but I felt like he was out there watching us. After staying wide awake all night, terrified, holding vigil, I made sure Granny was back to sleep, slipped out the back door and ran straight across the hay fields home to mom and dad for help once the sun came up in the morning. The police eventually caught the Gainesville Ripper and it was not the same man I saw at our front door. That night my family hired an elderly lady to stay with Granny and I moved home permanently. To this day I don't know who was at the door on that pitch black night, but I still panic looking out of windows at night into the darkness. So this story takes place in the winter last year I work as a chef in a hotel based in the UK and as the hotel is in the middle of nowhere, they are able to provide staff accommodation. We also get a lot of people from abroad come and work here for work experience as most of the staff are quite young who live in accommodation. This of course means quite a lot of partying. One night me and my friend AJ are finishing a long shift and decide to have a few quiet beers and not attend any of the parties. We go to my room and start chatting about the day's events and the conversation after a few beers moves onto the paranormal and what we both have experienced. AJ is from Mexico and he starts telling me about stories from his hometown. I find out that he used to be quite the urban explorer, visiting abandoned locations and documenting them. That's when he tells me about randonautica. For those of you that don't know, randonautica is basically an app that asks for your GPS data and sends you a location using randomly generated nearby coordinates. Little did I know at this point that there had been some true horror stories by people who have used this app. I really wouldn't advise it, especially at night. As we were a few beers down at this point and AJ already had the app downloaded, we decided it would be fun to go for a walk and see what was at the location selected by randonautica. It asked us to think about what our purpose was. For example find something scary or something unexpected. As it was nearing 2am of course we went with something scary. It popped up with three nearby locations. As neither of us had a car, we decided to take the one that was closest. As I said before, we live in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, surrounded only by woodland and fields. So this meant that we would be walking along back roads in the pitch black with only our phone torches as light. As we started walking, everything seemed to be amplified. The wind whistling through the trees, the animals rustling in the hedgerows. We walked down a hill near the hotel and towards the bottom we could see traffic lights illuminating the path ahead. We were talking and feeling positive, maybe a bit merry from the beers we had before. Nevertheless, we were getting closer to the location and I struck started to feel a bit on edge. We crossed into some fields and this is where things started to get weird. Our path was blocked off by some gates. The gates were padlocked shut, but they were small enough to climb over. The location was past the gates, through the field and off to the left hand side. I looked at AJ and suggested we head back, but we both came to the mutual agreement that we had come too far to just turn and walk away. We both jumped over the gate and started walking through the muddy field. Now it was really dark. The moon had gone behind some clouds and it seemed to get colder. It was nearing 3am we both pointed our torches in the way the app was telling us to go and suddenly we could see what looked like an old storage container just sat there in the middle of the field. Is that it? I asked. No, said aj. It's over in that direction. And pointed to his left. We both continued to walk towards the storage container, though don't ask me why. I think it was just out of curiosity. We both stopped at exactly the same time. Our torchlights lit up the front of the container. There. Someone had spray painted a clown. A sinister looking clown. I was frozen. If we had stumbled across this during the day, it would have been scary enough, let alone at 3 o' clock in the morning when we were walking towards the unknown. AJ broke the silence by letting out a nervous laugh. It's just a clown, bro. I just looked at him. Yeah, mate, it's just a clown. Spray painted on a random storage container in a random field with no one around for miles. After a few seconds he said, let's keep walking. At this point, the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end. Something really didn't feel right. I am not actually scared of clowns. It's just I really didn't expect to see that. And something was off. It's just over there, bro. He said, pointing at a tree line. Absolutely not, I thought to myself. Not a chance am I walking up to those trees. It was the start of a vast forest that ended at the hotel nearly two miles away. I am not running through the forest and getting lost if there's something out there waiting for us, I said in a shaky voice. Again, we both came to an agreement not to turn back. We edged closer towards the forest until we could see a little opening. It's in there, he said. I looked and started walking faster towards it. I didn't want this to be drawn out any more than it had to be. Something stopped me in my tracks. My blood ran cold. We were on the treeline at this point, and through the trees I saw a light. Someone or something else was there. I knew where that light was. It was in the pinpointed location. I turned for what only could have been a split second to tell AJ we were in danger. When we heard it. Twigs and branches breaking. Whatever it was, it was moving closer. I looked back, even though I knew I shouldn't have, and a tall black figure was standing in between two large oaks. I didn't get a better look. I couldn't. My legs just geared up and I ran. I ran without looking back. Me and AJ were sprinting now, faster than we ever had before. We didn't even know what direction we were heading in. We didn't know how far we ran until we saw that illuminating glow of the traffic lights. We both slowed down, panting and spluttering. It felt like my throat was bleeding as the cold night air hit my face while running and through gasping breaths had cut my windpipes like glass. We looked around and couldn't see anything. I think we're in the clear, AJ said through staggering breaths. We walked quickly up the hill towards the hotel. I have never been so happy to see the lights in my entire life. This is a warning. Never download randonautica and if you ever do, only use it in the day later it came to my attention that people have gone to locations only to find dead bodies and some people say it's associated with the Dark Web. I don't know what that thing was or who they were. I guess I never will. What makes this story more scary? I don't think it was paranormal. I think it was a human lurking in the trees waiting for us. This happened to me when I was around 10 or 11 years old, back in the early 1990s. Every summer when I was a child, my mother would send me and my younger brother to stay with our cousins in Mexico. It was always a great time. We would spend countless hours playing, going to the beach, eating delicious food and renting movies. We would normally all sleep in the same room, but on this particular night an argument ensued between me and my cousins and they kicked me out of the room. Me, also displeased with them, was just fine with that and decided to sleep in the living room while everyone else slept in their respective rooms. I went to bed around 10:30pm or 11:00 clock. I managed to fall asleep within minutes. Sometime during the night, I do not know the exact time, maybe around 2 or 3am I heard someone knocking on the back door which led to a back room which was used for storage. That part of the house was under construction and and a construction crew was coming every day to work on that room and they were supposed to build a wall and close that room up, which at the moment was open and anyone could have access to it. Now I heard the knocks followed by pleadings saying in Spanish, miss, please open, please open, please. Like I said, I was sleeping in the living room which was located in the front area of the house and the knocks were coming from a room that was all the way down the hall. On both sides of the hall were different rooms which is where my aunt and uncle slept and my cousins. I was concerned about the pleadings and wondered if that man needed help. But I was also perplexed about the fact that no one else seemed to hear what I was hearing. I actually mustered the courage to get up and investigate, made my way down the hall and actually attempted to open the door. I twisted the handle several times and the door would not open. All the while this man continued to plead for someone to open the door. I even attempted to talk to him and hello sir, do you need help? But he did not respond respond just continued to plead for someone to open the door. As I was unable to open the door and also becoming a little frightened, I decided to run back to the sofa bed and get under the covers. Not long after that I passed out. The next morning everyone was up, Auntie was cooking breakfast and my cousins were no longer mad at me. I was ready to tell them about my experience the night before while we all gathered to sit at the table, but decided to wait and see if anyone else would mention anything about it. And big surprise, no one did. It seems I was the only one who heard that man and the knocks. Summer came to an end and I was getting ready to say goodbye to my cousins. I was getting ready to have one more ball game with my cousins. The construction crew have no fear.
- [22:44]
Plan B / Chosen Foods Advertiser
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- [22:57]
Narrator / Storyteller
Chosen Foods who had also finished the construction of the house and they were sitting chit chatting and drinking beers. My cousin kicked the ball a little too hard and it went long. One of the construction men saw the ball coming and picked it up and made his way to me. As I ran towards him he said here's your ball. I said thank you as I grabbed the ball from him and then he asked, why didn't you open the door for me little girl? I bolted back to my cousins. My mother picked me and my brother up shortly after that. I continued to go back there a couple more times for the summer, but thankfully I never saw that man again. 20 year old Kelly Berg Dove lived with her 4 year old daughter in Bridgewater, Virginia. She was a popular young woman. Not a single soul in all of Bridgewater seemed to have a bad word to say about her, least of all her loving husband who she'd been romantically involved with since they were both high school sophomores. She also made a point of keeping in touch with her mother and sisters Almost every single day. All in all, Kelly was about as wholesome a person as you're ever likely to find, and even found the time to work night shifts at a local gas station to help support her family. They weren't exactly strapped for cash, but Kelly valued the idea of making a contribution that would allow them a taste of the finer things in life, as well as squirreling a little of her paycheck away each month for her daughter's college fund. But sometimes terrible things happen to the most wonderful of people. And on the night of June 18, 1982, something was about to happen in the sleepy town of Bridgewater that would send shockwaves through the close knit community. On the night in question, Kelly was working her usual night shift at Harrisonburg's Imperial gas station on South Main Street, Route 11. Kelly had gotten the job because her three sisters had either worked there in the past or were still currently employed by Imperial. The employer thought it would make the girls more accountable for their work, and he was right. Whenever one was sick or couldn't come into work, another would always take her place. And on this night in particular, Kelly was covering for one of her sisters for a little extra college money for her young daughter. Kelly's mom, Rachel, was also a very loving and attentive person. Person and would often call the gas station whenever one of her daughters was working to check if they needed any food or hot coffee brought over to help them through their shift. When Rachel spoke to Kelly that night, nothing seemed to be amiss to her. It was just another average night at a mostly quiet gas station in rural Virginia. But little did she know this would be the last time she would ever talk to her daughter. As the evening's events were about to take a rather dark and terrifying turn. At around 2:30 in the morning, long after Kelly's mom had retired to bed, Kelly apparently called the Harrisonburg police. The call was to inform them that she had been aggressively harassed by a guy she had described as improperly dressed. It seems Kelly was far too polite to describe what this male customer actually did in any kind of detail, but it's safe to assume that the implied meaning was that he had exposed himself to her. Just a few minutes after this first call, Kelly called again, this time pleading with the dispatcher for a patrol unit to be sent to the gas station. The same man that had apparently exposed himself was calling the station to make obscene threats. And it seems that Kelly was growing anxious as she believed he was willing to follow through with them. The dispatcher promised to Get a unit out to her as soon as possible and that she should hang tight. However, just Moments after the second call ended, Kelly called 911 yet again. Only this time she was in a complete panic. With a voice that was dripping with fear, she demanded to know how far away the responding police officers were, as the same deranged customer had apparently returned and was sitting in a silver or gray Ford that was parked in the gas station's forecourt. The last thing the 911 dispatcher heard was Kelly screaming that the man had just gotten out of the vehicle and was heading towards the gas station's main building. She then slammed the phone down, apparently preparing to defend herself. The cops rushed over to the Imperial gas station, expecting to arrive to a violent assault in progress. But to their bemusement, when they arrived at the gas station, the place was as quiet as the grave. They searched the entire site, but Kelly was nowhere to be found. All that remained was her purse. There were no signs of any kind of violent struggle, no indications the store had been robbed, but there were also no clues as to where Kelly was. It was as if she simply vanished into thin air. What's clear is that if the suspect was armed, he could have forced Kelly into his vehicle in just a matter of seconds. Kelly's family believe this to be the case, as they insist that any attempt by an unarmed man to grab her and shove her into their vehicle would have resulted in Kelly fighting back vigorously. The police investigation that followed led officers to a nearby convenience store where a clerk informed them that he had been visited by a man driving a gray vehicle about a half an hour before Kelly's disappearance. The clerk told them that the man was aged between 20 to 25 years old and had blonde shoulder length hair. This might seem like an obvious lead, but the cops were unable to track down this man, so no connection between him and Kelly's apparent abduction could ever be made. The police then interviewed Kelly's three sisters who were also employed by the gas station. They were shocked to hear that the obscene kind of phone calls that Kelly had received that night were commonplace, but that no one had ever acted on them, believing them to be from some harmless old pervert whose bark was louder than his bite. They also didn't entirely believe that the man that had harassed Kelly that night was the same person making the phone calls as there didn't seem to be anything overly threatening about the lewd calls. While the driver of the silver or gray Ford was obviously aggressive enough to show up to the gas station in person. Yet after news hit that one of the gas station girls had apparently been abducted, the phone call seemed to stop entirely for a while, only resuming around six weeks later when this apparently harmless old perv called and made lewd comments to one of the gas station's new hires. This could well be because whoever was making the calls simply wasn't involved in the abduction and didn't want to implicate themselves as a suspect in such a violent and disturbing crime. But it could also be because the same person who made the calls was satisfied with abducting Kelly and didn't feel the need to make another call. Not until the same hunger resurfaced in them around a month and a half after the fact. When local media outlets contacted Kelly's parents regarding their daughter's disappearance, they gave a rather shocking answer to some very probing questions. When asked if they had any idea who might have kidnapped or harmed their daughter and if this person might be a member of the local community, Kelly's parents unequivocally answered in the affirmative. Although the police had asked them not to publicly speak the man's name, they believed her abductor had been someone Kelly had gone to high school with. Someone who had a long history of indecent exposure and making obscene telephone calls. And, according to Kelly's sister, also drove a silvery gray Ford. But surely, if Kelly had known the man personally, even just by association, she would have named him in one of the three 911 calls she made leading up to her abduction. But it's also very possible that this person had either obscured their face somehow, or Kelly had simply not recognized him. Given that they had both graduated some time ago, there's also the possibility that Kelly was so terrified that she just failed to mention the man by name during one of those calls. Either way, the police obviously found the possibility of this man being the culprit so plausible that they asked Kelly's parents not to use his name publicly. Yet, despite this, he was never charged with any crime, as there was simply not enough evidence to attempt any kind of conviction. There were several other suspects in the case, and authorities were sure to question all of them. But at a time when CCTV cameras and DNA evidence were still just technological pipe dreams, actually placing a suspect at the scene that night was all but impossible. For all intents and purposes, the person who showed up at the Imperial gas station that night is a ghost. Someone who showed up, bundled Kelly Bergdove into a vehicle, and then seemingly vanished themselves. Barely a trace of either of them was left behind merely a purse and a vehicle description, far too little for the cops to go on to secure a suspect, Kelly or her body. Almost 40 years later, what happened that night remains almost a total mystery. With Kelly being declared legally deceased by local authorities. Despite her family pouring money into private investigators to try and find out exactly what happened, they are no closer to getting any solid answers as they were almost four decades ago. The only truth we have of that night is the terrifying reality that Kelly went to work that night, not suspecting a thing, and ended up encountering someone that caused her to vanish from the face of the earth. And that, horrifyingly enough, is something that could happen to each and every one of us. I would like to start by saying I am not a strong believer in the paranormal. That being said, the reason I'm here is because I have no explanation for the story I'm about to tell you. To set the stage, I was a senior in high school during the 2020-2021 school year, which means my last year of grade school was complicated. Even though we were allowed in school, there were still a lot of rules and protocols added due to the virus. Long story short, someone in one of my classes got the virus and I sat close enough to them that I got sent home to quarantine for the next two weeks. I know, what fun. Well, on top of that, my parents didn't want me spreading the virus to the rest of the family, so I spent days in my room, ate dinner on the other side of the kitchen, and most importantly, moved all my toiletries out of the bathroom my sister and I shared. Luckily, our house happened to have a small bathroom with a shower on the first floor. Unluckily, this meant that when I went through my nightly routine of brushing my teeth and washing my face, I was left all alone downstairs in the dark. Like I said, I'm somewhat skeptical of the paranormal, but I'm still totally creeped out when I'm left alone in a dark house. So as I rushed through my routine every night, I spent the whole time on edge worrying that some terrible monster was waiting in a dark corner for me to turn out the last light until it pounced and I would never be seen again. But in the back of my mind, I was certain that it was impossible. In fact, despite my fear, I was absolutely certain I was the only one downstairs for those brief moments when I was the last one awake. Until one night when I may have been proven wrong. The last thing you need to know know is that the bathroom downstairs was One of those that had two doors on either side. One led to the kitchen and the other led to my dad's office. My dad's office also had two doors, one that was always closed and led to the bathroom and one that was always open and faced the base of the staircase. So one night exactly like any other that week, I was scrubbing my teeth as fast as I could while keeping an eye on the mirror to make sure there was nothing trying to sneak up behind me. I had spit my toothpaste out and was rinsing the toothbrush off when my ears perked up over the rushing water coming from the faucet. I thought I heard my dad call my name from the top of the stairs. The sink was so loud and his voice was so quiet that I wasn't entirely certain what I had heard. So I turned the water off and shook my toothbrush dry while I strained my ears against the uncanny vacuum of silence that filled my house. I figured that if I had heard my dad, he'd call my name again to get my attention. So when I didn't hear so much as a breath for the next few seconds, I figured I was just hearing things. I turned the faucet on again and began washing my face. And when I turned it back off, I heard my dad call my name again. This time it was so clear and unmistakable. Not only did I know it was my dad who was calling me, but I was also able to tell that he was on the landing of the staircase, slightly closer now. Yeah, I called back, feeling a little sorry that he probably thought I was ignoring him when I really had heard him call my name after all. I waited for a response, tilting my head slightly toward the open doorway leading to the kitchen. However, the response I received was not the one I was expecting. Instead, from the closed door that slid separated the bathroom from the office came three distinct single knuckle knocks. I was very confused at this point, wondering why my dad hadn't responded to me, what he needed to tell me that required him coming all the way downstairs to the bathroom, and why he decided to go to the locked door from the office instead of the open one from the kitchen. Now, I could have just opened the door he was standing behind, but for some reason, I found myself taking the unnecessarily long route out of the bathroom, through the kitchen, through the hallway, and to the open door to the office. This isn't a decision I remember making. I just did it. In fact, I wasn't thinking about anything, including the fact that I never actually heard my dad's footsteps approach the door or even come down the creaky staircase, and I certainly had no idea what to think when I turned the corner to look into the office. I stood in the open doorway and strained my eyes against the inky darkness, looking at the spot where my dad should be standing. But he wasn't there. Needless to say, I went straight to my room and turned on every light on the way. It took me a long time to calm myself down and fall asleep that night. All I could think of was staring into the darkness of that office and wondering what might have happened if I had just opened the door when I heard the knocking. I was around 17 when this incident happened. I was in junior college and had rented out a tiny apartment in a standalone building. This building was right behind a construction site, meaning that not many people were around this place, especially in the night. For context, I was living with another girl, lets call her Nancy, who was completing her education too. One day I had to go attend a friend's birthday party. There were about 12 people that attended the party that evening. I didn't expect it to be late by the time I'd get back home, so I did not see it as a problem that my friend wouldn't be able to accommodate me in case something were to go wrong. However, things did not go as I had planned. Being young and stupid, I gave in to my friend's request to stay at the party until late that night. This meant that I would be on my own when I was to go back home since there simply was no space for me in my friend's tiny apartment. Especially not when she had five more people staying over that night. To avoid going back alone, I brought two of my companions for a sleepover, Sondra and Kathya. Our Uber dropped us off in front of the construction site. Since that night the conditions were less than ideal to drive to the building I lived in. The workers had just been careless and left piles of concrete in the way. We were left with no choice but to cross the construction site to get home. I remember how Sondra kept saying that she was a little apprehensive and she should have taken her pepper spray along with her. I tried to act brave, but honestly was a little scared. Kathia, on the other hand, was carefree and we followed her lead. We were walking through the construction site when we saw something that took us aback. We saw a bizarre flickering blazing light coming from one of underneath the construction buildings. It was really odd as there was no chance that it was a construction worker. At 2:30am in the middle of the night, before we had time to register what was going on, we heard something that made our hearts stop for a moment. It was a shrill frantic cry of a woman coming from the same building. Judging by the sound of her voice, she was in excruciating pain. What happened next gives me nightmares to this day. We saw someone falling from the building literally meters away from us, causing an earth shattering thud. Sondra almost yelled in terror, but Katia was able to quickly grab her mouth to make the sound fade. Thinking on her feet, she grabbed us both by the arm and pulled us behind a half constructed wall of another building just to be sure that no one could see us. We stayed behind this wall for what seemed like forever. Suddenly we saw someone wearing a bright yellow jacket exiting the building with a gas cutter in his right hand and an amputated arm in the left. We couldn't see his face because the place was not well lit and it was almost pitch black there. Honestly, considering the absolute horror that we were in, that was the last thing that would cross our minds. After another eternity of making sure that we were now safe, we made it back home still trembling with fear, we called 911. The police came and investigated. After a few days we learned that it was a homeless woman who was murdered brutally that night. Her arm was cut off with a gas lighter and she was pushed out of the fifth story and left to bleed and die. However, to this day, after several failed attempts, investigators have no clue as to who the murderer was. Hi, my name is Lindsay. I'm a 19 year old female living in Pennsylvania with my parents and two of my sisters. We live in a pretty rural area and there isn't much that goes on out here. I listen to your stories every morning at work and always wished I had a scary story of my own to share. Well, tonight I got my scary story to preface this story a bit. Me and my older sister have only been hiking one time before this experience, so we are by no means pros. We do however always bring some items for safety such as pocket knives, flashlights and a medical kit. For this story. I will not use my sister's names for the sake of their anonymity. My older sister will be called M and my younger sister will be referred to as F. So today is F's birthday and she has never been hiking before and we figured we would bring her on a little hiking trip to take advantage of the beautiful weather. The area we hiked at Prior is actually part of the state game lands. Hikers are permitted on the mountain trails during the off season of hunting. However, not many folks know about this spot because there are no signs or anything until you walk the mile or so into the woods. By then you reach a small parking lot of sorts which is always empty. There are two main trails that are marked with the occasional blue dot on a nearby tree. If not for these spray paint dots to mark the path, you might not even know it is a trail because of how little use these paths see. Probably not the best first hiking spot for a couple of newbies like us. I know, but it's super close to us and makes for a quiet hike with lots of scenery. So we decided to once again hike that trail because we were somewhat familiar with it. We were decently excited and ready to have a nice relaxing hike through the mountain and hopefully get some cool pictures. We started walking from our house all the way to the bottom of the mountain where we would begin our hike. On our way there, we were telling F about the trail and how beautiful it was. M then expresses concern that there could be animals of all sorts nearby. Because the area isn't normally frequented by many humans, I figured there would be animals. Of course, it is the woods after all, but I never imagined anything like what I am about to describe in this story. After walking for about 15 minutes, we reached the parking lot. M led the way with me in the middle and F following closely behind. The first couple of steps onto the trail require you to walk up a small but steep hill. M crested the hill before F and I, and as she did we heard a pretty loud rustling noise off to our left. I naturally chalked the noise up to some birds or maybe a squirrel messing around in the tree. But then M suddenly stopped in her tracks, causing F and I to also pause briefly. Just as I was about to ask what the problem was, M calmly said, turn around guys. Me and F just looked at her confused, not understanding what she meant. I just started asking why and she said probably the scariest thing I have ever heard. There is someone over there. Run. Now that sentence was a lot more scary to me and F because we know M very well and she doesn't scare easily. So to hear the clear panic in her voice as she ordered us to run away from something that neither F or I saw was terrifying. M and F immediately started sprinting back down the small hill. As I was still standing in my place, I quickly looked behind me, but I saw nothing. I did hear something though. I was still very confused Because I hadn't actually seen anything and M never saw what she saw. I ran over to M and F, who were waiting for me just before the entrance to the parking lot. I think part of the reason I hesitated running right away was because I thought M might be exaggerating a little. I should have known by the look on her face that she was not messing around. I had a miniature hatchet multi tool and a pocket knife on my belt, and you better believe I had them at the ready. I had no idea what I was expecting, but I knew that whatever might run out of those woods behind us was gonna get a full face of stainless steel. Steel. When I reached my sister's, I asked M what exactly we were running from. She just told us to keep moving as she constantly looked back at the trail we had just come from. She even told us to jog just in case it was following us. We did. After maybe jogging a quarter mile or so, M finally told us what we were running from. She said she looked in the direction of the noise we had all heard and what she saw was a gray figure hunched over about 10ft off the trail. She described it as being at least the height of F, who was around 5, 6. She said it looked to be bipedal, but she didn't stick around long enough to take in every detail about the figure. However, she did note that it looked as if it was shuffling towards us. I believe that's what made her get us out of there so fast. Fast. She must have feared that we were being chased. Now, I never have believed in monsters of cryptids or anything, but M. Said she honestly has no idea what the thing was. We don't have any type of animal in Pennsylvania that matches that description, at least as far as I know. I know that black bears stand on their hind legs sometimes, but they are not gray. And it didn't sound big enough to be a bear. The only other thing it might have been is a human. But why would someone hear us obviously distressed and not call out to let us know they were there and were not a threat? Unless the person was not there. As a friendly hiker, possibly a person living on the mountain, maybe someone doing drugs and were afraid they would get busted? I don't know. That seems to be the only logical explanation. But I am not fully convinced it was a person. I don't believe in Bigfoot or anything else like that, but who knows? By the time we were almost home, M told us that she used to go to the bus stop with two of the neighbor kids years ago, she said they would always talk about a mystery animal that they would see walking around in the woods near their house, which is very close to the state gamelands. At first she didn't believe them because she had never seen such a thing. But one time when the neighbor kid's grandmother was with them at the bus stop, Em asked about this mystery animal. The grandmother is and has always been a religious person and didn't seem to be the type of person to believe in something like her grandkids had explained. But to M's surprise, the grandmother said she also witnessed the mystery animal lurking around. What's more is our house is just across the lawn from where our neighbors claimed to spot this unknown creature. I am not sure if these two experiences are related. Besides, that was years ago. But could the figure M encountered in the woods tonight be the mystery animal? Maybe it was a human, maybe it was an animal. Who knows for sure. But what I do know is I don't think we'll be hiking on that state game lens again anytime soon. Back in the late 70s, I was a little girl around 7 or 8 years old. I loved spending time out on my uncle's farm as I found it to be a source of stability in my life. My mom couldn't sit still as my grandma would say. We moved all the time, 12 times just in one year alone. My uncle worked a full time job and had to run his farm, so when drifters would come by he would offer a place to stay and good home cooking courtesy of my aunt in exchange for an extra helping hand around the farm. One Saturday after a long day of work, my uncle took one of these farm hands out for dinner to the local restaurant which was also the bar, gas station and market. He lived in a tiny village with the only other establishment being a church. At that time, my uncle returned home without his farmhand. We'll call him Tom moving forward, stating that he had stayed behind at the bar to hang out with the other patrons. Later that night my cousin Rick came home and had decided to sleep on the couch in the living room instead of risking waking my aunt and uncle as he tried to sneak to his bedroom. You see, Rick was only about 15 or 16 if I remember correctly, and had gotten home way past his curfew. He had only been laying down for about 30 minutes or so when the front door opened. It was Tom and he was covered in blood. Now my cousin knew that Tom was a farmhand and could possibly have been butchering an animal, but he couldn't understand why he'd be doing that at this time. All he knew is that something told him to keep his eyes closed and pretend to be sleeping. So he did. Tom stood there for an unusually long amount of time just staring at him before he finally walked away. Rick could then hear what sounded like the washing machine start up, then the shower turning on. He recalls thinking the entire situation was odd, but did eventually manage to fall asleep. The next day started out like any other until my aunt returned home from church. She had to deliver the terrible news to my uncle that his lifelong friends that owned the local restaurant, bar, market, etc. Had been brutally hacked to death the night before with an axe. They were a husband and wife that had their home attached to their business. Upon hearing the news, my cousin Rick thought back to Tom coming in that night covered in blood. He took my aunt aside to tell her what he had witnessed and to see if maybe Tom would have been working that late. But of course the answer was no. She called the sheriff's office, who came out right away. Luckily, some blood was left on the washing machine and even though DNA evidence was nothing back then like it is today, they were still able to trace the blood to one of the victims. The thing that scares me the most about this is that it came out in court that Tom had stated to the sheriff that when he returned to my uncle's home that night, if anyone had been awake, he was going to kill them all and now wishes that he had. You see, I was sleeping on the couch opposite of my cousin that night. My mom never let me spend the night again. Last summer I went to a house party in the Garry Owen neighborhood of Limerick here in Ireland. We were right in the middle of lockdown restrictions and I know it was really stupid and selfish of me to go, but I was just so in need of a stress release. I'm a really social creature and I need to spend time around people like I was actually going mad being stuck inside all on my own. I do actually really regret going, but breaking the virus restrictions aren't the reason I wish I hadn't gone because I saw one of the worst, most horrifying things I have ever seen in my life at that party and it's something I don't think I'll ever get out of my head. So the party is going swimmingly for a few hours and I'm occupied being the little social butterfly that I am. But then I walk into the kitchen to get another drink and this big argument is unfolding between this couple that seemed to be based around allegations of infidelity. It was super intense and awkward being in there with them. So I just quietly grab my bottle of wine from the fridge and then head back to where I was gabbing away with some new friends. I didn't really think much of it. House parties can be weird like that. After all, one room people are passed out, another one had people dancing around. While some rooms host little arguments between couples that usually don't turn into something hideous, Only this one did. The guy in the argument storms out of the party, and then for a few hours, everything is good vibes again. But then at some point later in the night, the guy comes back to the party. People know his face by this point, so they don't really have any reason not to let him in. And I am guessing he didn't give them any clues as to what he was about to do, otherwise they would have never let him back into the house. The guy then searches the house to find the girl he had been arguing with. I'm not actually sure if they were a couple. I just heard them arguing about sleeping around. When he finds her, he confronts her, starts screaming at her, then reaches into his jacket, takes out a bottle, and then appears to douse her with the contents. People thought he was just being a jerk and throwing vodka on her. The outrage partly stemming from the wasted alcohol as well as the undue aggression. He then legs it from the room while she's screaming. From the people I have spoken to about it, the ones that were in the room when it happened, they first thought her screaming was her being a bit melodramatic about having some drink chucked on her face. But then she took her hands away from her face and it's covered in what looks like burns. It wasn't alcohol he had thrown onto her face that night. It was acid. Luckily, someone there was a chemistry graduate. They realized what was happening almost straight away and then grabbed something from under the kitchen sink that would neutralize the acid. I don't know what it was exactly, but it was some other chemical that probably didn't do her much good either. But it definitely stopped the damage from being any worse than it was. I heard the poor girl had to have a c skin graft from her leg, though. Like, even with the help she got, her injuries were absolutely horrific. The guy who did it went on the run for a bit too. Like the Gardai, what we call the police in Ireland, didn't manage to get cuffs on him for like a month. And we were all so relieved when they finally did. I can't imagine what kind of monster does something like that after an argument. To use actual acid to try to permanently disfigure someone's face. That takes a really special kind of evil, don't you think?
- [61:20]
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- [61:51]
Narrator / Storyteller
to all outside observers, it appeared that Dr. John Hamilton and his wife, Susan, had the perfect, loving marriage. In their 14 years of blissful union, John's passionate love for his spouse had led him to lavish her with expensive gifts and luxurious vacations, a brand new Porsche on their wedding day being just the beginning of a long list of romantically motivated purchases. But John wasn't just generous with his money. He was apparently generous of heart, too, and spent a great deal of time reminding Susan just how much he loved her in a variety of heartwarming ways. When Susan professed a yearning for employment for a purpose outside of being a housewife, John gave her a job at his highly esteemed obstetrics and gynecology clinic in Oklahoma City. He was there for her in every way, and by all accounts, they were a textbook case of romantic longevity. But that's what makes it all the more horrifying that on Valentine's Day of 2001, Dr. Hamilton's arrival at the family home kicked off a chain of events that would turn their perfect little world into a living nightmare. As you can imagine, in a marriage as loving as John and Susan's, Valentine's Day was held in high esteem. Every single year they were married, they exchanged gifts and cards, often having planned some kind of romantic rendezvous, be it dinner and a movie or a walk around a local park. But on Valentine's Day of 2001, John was needed in the operating room of his clinic fairly early in the morning, too. Any exchange of gifts would have to wait until his lunch break. But just as he promised, John ducked out of the clinic as soon as he was able and drove home to spend a romantic half hour with his wife, after which he would have to return for another surgery. He called her name as he walked through the front door, but she didn't answer. John suspected that his wife might have some kind of surprise in store for him, and he felt a ripple of excitement run through him as he walked up the stairs towards the master bedroom. He called his wife's name again, but still there was no answer. And it was then that something caught John's eye. Lying on the floor of the second floor bathroom, it was Susan. She was in a crumpled, lifeless heap with blood pooling underneath her. Paramedics were called to the scene, but Susan couldn't be revived. Those in attendance noted that she appeared to have been strangled with two of her husband's expensive silk neckties. But the blood on the bathroom floor was undoubtedly from the series of bloody head wounds she had due to repeated blunt force trauma, the wounds being so severe that parts of her brain were exposed while her face was completely unrecognizable. To his absolute horror, Dr. John Hamilton was the number one suspect in his wife's murder from the very beginning. Police have since publicly stated that there were many factors which led them to such a conclusion. The first being that there was no sign of forced entry to the home. Whoever killed Susan had keys to the residence. It was also a crime in which nothing of value was stolen, and one which there were no bloody fingerprints left in a bathroom which had blood almost everywhere. This meant that there was a distinct chance that whoever killed Susan was either extremely professional, incredibly lucky, or had the time and privacy to scrub the scene of incriminating evidence before the body was found. On top of that, while searching the home, police got their hands on a Valentine's Day card that Susan had written to John, presumably that year, and in the message inside wasn't nearly as loving and cheerful as you might imagine. I bought this two weeks ago, so I guess maybe it doesn't seem as appropriate, but I do love you. Have a great day, Susan. The contents of the card raised a lot of questions concerning the state of Hamilton's marriage. Evidently, it suggests that there had been some kind of incident or argument, one that had caused a degree of turmoil and somewhat soured that Valentine's feeling. As it later turned out, this incident involved Susan catching John making phone calls to a woman employed as a topless dancer. Police actually found hundreds of calls to this person on John's cell phone during their investigation and heard from close friends of Susan that she had confessed to considering a divorce to the cops. The explanation seemed simple. John had murdered his wife to prevent her from running off with half of his money. But at his trial, much of the Local community. Community came out in support of Dr. Hamilton and refused to believe that the man was capable of such a horrific crime, especially given that the victim was his own beloved wife. But when the paramedics who attended the 911 call John made were questioned in court, the jury began to notice some disturbing inconsistencies in his story. Hamilton testified in court that after he contacted emergency services, he had gotten to work trying to perform CPR on his wife's bloodied corpse. And this appeared to be true, as the paramedics confirmed that when they had arrived, John had been performing chest compressions. But as people who performed CPR on an almost daily basis, the paramedics noticed something peculiar about John's technique. It was incredibly ineffective. From a regular person with no first aid training, that could be understandable. But John's was so bad that it almost looked like he wasn't actually trying to revive Susan at all, which for a medical professional, is very suspicious. John also claimed that he had tried performing mouth to mouth resuscitation on his wife, but the paramedics claimed that John had no blood on his mouth or face when they arrived. There was so much blood around the victim's head that there's no way John could have performed mouth to mouth and not gotten any on him. Some of Susan's blood was also found on the steering wheel of Dr. Hamilton's car. And despite his claim in court that he had simply moved the vehicle to make room for emergency vehicles, a prosecutor was able to make use of the overall suspicion to claim that this was evidence that John had been considering an escape attempt. At one point during the trial, the prosecution's case against Dr. Hamilton appeared to be floundering. Hamilton's defense attorney had brought a number of key character witnesses to testify in court, and all had built a picture of John as nothing but a loving husband. And he believed that the nail in the prosecution's coffin would be the testimony of a crime scene investigator named Tom Bevel, an expert on blood splatter at crime scenes. Bevel was essentially brought in to confirm that the blood splatter on Dr. Hamilton's shirt, the same one he was wearing during his attempt at cpr, was consistent with a man simply trying to revive his murdered wife while in a state of extreme panic and grief. At first, Tom Bevel did indeed testify that much of the blood splatter could have well been from the doctor's attempts at cpr. But as it turned out, Bevel had noticed something that other investigators had overlooked. He had made a note of the few small flecks of blood that could be found on the inside of Hamilton's right sleeve, A pattern he had seen many times before on the clothing of people who have killed someone with a blunt object. In the seconds that followed, the courtroom was deathly silent. An expert defense witness had testified against the person they were supposed to be defending, and in just a few words, Tom bevel had condemned Dr. Hamilton to prison. When later asked why he made the decision to essentially act as a witness for the prosecution, Bevel claimed he just had to tell the truth. He said he had sworn an oath, Something that overrode any allegiance he may have had to his client. After that, it only took two hours For a jury of his peers to find John Hamilton guilty on the charge of first degree murder, Whereafter a judge sentenced him to life in prison. Those that followed the case Were highly disturbed by the sudden turn of events. John had, and still does maintain his innocence, even to this day. But more and more evidence points to the idea that he killed his wife in cold blood. His defense team even floated the idea that he must have been innocent, because the guilty timeline would mean that John went to work and performed flawless surgeries Right after murdering the love of his life. This might well be true, but in light of the guilty verdict, it's all the more damning because it suggests that Dr. John Hamilton was able to beat his wife's skull in on Valentine's day, then remain calm and collected enough to go and perform complicated medical surgeries. And if it's true, then maybe a more fitting name for Dr. Hamilton is Dr. Death.