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Witnessing something strange during the drive down the dark roads of Arizona. To join the official website, visit https://scarypod.com/join/ 

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An entity in the house brings along the haunting smell of life and death.

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Back in the day, we used to see these very sad photos on the sides of milk cartons with the word MISSING in capital letters. The black and white photos never really meant anything to me. That all changed when I saw my friend’s face on there.

The long messy hair, his crooked smile, and the yellow jacket he would wear almost every day, now all greyed out in that portrait.

We met in 1^st grade at the lunch table. The lunch ladies set up an ice chest with ice cream bars by the trash cans with a sign that said 25 cents. They were orange-flavored, and not very good, but I would always carry a quarter with me and waited for Wednesday to come just to buy one. I was about to stand up to throw my tray away, when I heard the sound of a coin hitting the ground and rolling toward me. I looked down and stepped on the old quarter as a nerdy-looking kid came up to me, tried to say something, looked down, and began to walk away.

“Hey,” I called to him, “here’s your quarter.”

Without saying anything back, he got on one knee and reached for the coin. He struggled a little to pick up the quarter but eventually got it between the nail of his index finger and thumb, then walked toward the ice cream table.

I grabbed my tray and walked over to the trash can and stood in line behind him by the table.

It’s been a long time since then, but we eventually became friends and I would go over to his house across the street and he would come over to mine to play Game Boy games and let each other borrow game cartridges. He was really good at finishing up the games.

I remember he was good at a lot of weird things, like cheating at card games, dominoes, and could figure out some pretty odd things. Once we got computers in our classroom in 3^rd grade, I started noticing a change in how he acted. During lunchtime, we would hang out in the library of our school and he would show me pages, which much later I found out were actually forums, where certain users would release challenges that anybody could work on through programming software.

I never really got into it and would usually play Doom, hidden away from the librarians and aides, but Carlos got really into it.

Some of the tasks seemed simple, but they had many steps. They were like puzzles or scavenger hunts that you would eventually direct-message to someone, a stranger, on the internet. As a prize, you’d receive some type of virtual points that would show up along your username on the forum, and you could get up to level 100 and be an “expert” or something like that.

It was the summer between 3^rd and 4^th grade when things really started changing.

His parents had gotten him a computer and a dial-up connection, so we would play chess and look up cheat codes for games, but he always seemed to be working on these forum challenges on the side.

One day, Carlos told me that he had gotten a message asking him for “The day when everything disappeared” which, according to him, was also part of a challenge. Eventually, he would only talk about databases and laboratories.

He started mentioning things about dimensions and alternative numbers.

I followed along with his stories, pretending to understand him half the time. I didn’t know I would be questioned over these things. Now I wish I would have paid more attention.

One particular project he mentioned before he went missing, was a search for a man. Supposedly, a man had been captured and had released a series of coded messages. One of the messages was a scanned photo with a date and short description on the back.

I remember this project because Carlos started becoming obsessed with me learning a type of system to read messages using a walkie talkie, then with images. When my family got an internet connection at my house, he started sharing strings of numbers that another program would capture and would spit out a sentence in plain English. This message then had to be counted for syllables, number of vowels, and referenced with a table that we had made up. It seemed interesting at first, but an hourlong process just to get the word “macaroni” seemed pointless, even for 9-year-old me.

I was walking home from school when a black car pulled up next to me and a man rolled down his window to say my first and last name. I admit that I was a chicken back then so I just ran as fast as I could through the little groups of kids along the way home without looking back, finally making it home.

I never found out what that was all about, as I don’t think the car even followed me home.

As soon as I turned on the computer and booted up the connection, I got a string of random letters and numbers. Carlos hadn’t been in school that day, so I figured he had just sent me a message out of bored. I pasted in the numbers into the program, and it calculated a 7. 7 meant H. Then I kept entering results until I read the whole word: HIDE.

That was the day Carlos disappeared.

A police officer showed up the following day at school to talk with me, and my dad was there with him, along with my 4^th grade teacher. Thinking back, I don’t know how much that teacher knew Carlos since the school year had just started, but she tried to help out, saying very nice things about Carlos. Things about his grades, and stuff like that.

I remember feeling confused and sad, and had to answer many questions about Carlos, including things he would do on the internet. I told him about the challenges and about the latest project, but the police didn’t seem to understand anything.

I never saw Carlos again. I spent years visiting the forum until it was taken down or transferred, and eventually I just stopped. But I know he’s still alive.

After graduating college and moving into my own apartment, I found that old computer and to my surprise, it booted up. All of my childhood memories started running wild through my head as I saw the old windows 95 logo and the icons of the crappy games we used to play.

What made my stomach turn, though, was the hundreds of transfers I received when I connected the internet adapter. They were from Carlos. The last one had been sent to me 6 months before turning on the computer.

I’ve decoded every single one, and they all seemed to be repeating patterns.

ALTERNATIVE, LIFE, EIGHTYEIGHT, HARBOR

ALTERNATIVE, LIFE, EIGHTYEIGHT, HARBOR

All except for one word, “HIDE” which was randomly placed in between all of the single word messages.

I’ve asked some of my programmer friends about this, and they’ve said that it does not seem to be automatically sent, and that the word HIDE might actually be a command and not a message, and that the messages may have been sending undetected.

I’ll keep working on finding out where he is or at least how send a message back to him. I’ve got a couple of friends together to help me on this project.

Despite all of this, I’m glad Carlos is alive. One time my dad said that he was too smart for his own good.

I think some secret organization discovered that as well.

There was a house I used to walk by when I was a kid. We lived in a suburban neighborhood, so many of the houses shared yards and everyone kept their houses neatly painted with white and blue paint, with the occasional yellow house. Every house, except one of them, that is. That’s what this story is about.

It was empty for long periods at a time, I remember it when I was in 3rd grade it had gotten boarded up, but then there was a young family that moved in, they had a daughter about my age and I had a lot of fun playing around with her, but she had to move and change schools shortly after. Nobody really knew why the house would be empty most of the time, but the rumor around the school was that it was haunted and that the house had a radio attached to the living room wall that would play a creepy song by itself.

During 4th grade, I got in trouble with my mom because me and a couple of my friends sneaked in there and one of the nosy neighbors called the police on us. But I DID get to see the radio. It wasn’t that big of a deal, honestly, it looked like a normal radio but on a type of hole in the wall, next to a mirror, and right next to it was a chimney. The place was definitely run down, but it was too dark in there to really have a good look at everything else. There was furniture and I even thought I saw plates and other dishes on the dining room table, which I thought was pretty odd, but like I said, it was really dark inside, so it might have been something else.

The police didn’t make a big deal out of it and my friends and I were just told to go home, but the dumb neighbor went to the house in the evening to tell mom everything and I got in trouble. That neighbor was annoying.

The house was empty for about almost a year that time before a woman and her daughter moved in. Her daughter was in 6th grade and over a year older than me, I met her the for the first time outside her house. I had a three quarters in my pocket, so I flagged the truck down and it stopped right in front of the old house.

The girl ran inside the house and then came back out with a dollar bill. Just as I was grabbing my cone, the bottom of it hit the window-sill thing of the ice cream truck and the scoop rolled right off. The girl laughed hysterically at my misfortune, and I laughed as well, but only because I didn’t know what else to do. The ice cream man offered to give me another scoop if I gave him back my cone, so I did, and he put another scoop of strawberry ice cream on top. It was smaller one this time though.

I learned that the girl’s name was Sarah and that she came from Knott, a town over the hills and closer to the city. We used to go there right before Christmas in my dad’s car to go look at the house decorations. She asked me if I also went to her school, about how she had a mean science teacher, and then she mentioned her creepy house. And man, were we wrong about the house because it turned out to have more stories than me and my friends thought.

I used to wait for the ice cream truck every day to see if Sarah would come out too, and I started to have short conversations with her out by the corner of her house about 2 times per week. Out of the many things Sarah mentioned, this girl who was pretty much a stranger to me at the time outside of her house and talking at a million words per minute, she said that she and her mom actually slept in the same room because of the noises around the house at night.

They would hear footsteps coming down the stairs, with a few steps down, then stop, then up again, then stop. She also said that strange lights would shine under their bedroom door at night, in different colors sometimes, but mostly orange and red.

I didn’t know if I should believe her or not, but then she mentioned the death song and the radio. She said that she heard a woman sing, in a calming voice, the words “and I will haaang you from your feet, and –” then the voice would change and get deeper and say… “LET YOU GO”. I asked her where it came from and she said that the living room radio wasn’t actually connected, but that it was the only logical explanation her mom could come up with.

My ice cream was dripping down my hand at one point, but I was hypnotized by her stories. This girl had been at the house for less than a month and had already experienced a bunch of stuff. My mind was so intrigued that I even forgot that I was supposed to be shy around girls.

I remember passing by her house very slowly every day after that, sometimes going around the block just to see if Sarah would come out, and sometimes she would and we would talk for a little bit about random things, but the topic always ended up being about the house. Eventually I asked her why they didn’t just move out and she basically said that they were going to, but that her mom was still looking for a second job and that as soon as she found one, they would start looking for a new house.

I wished her mom had found a job. But wishes don’t always come true.

I’ve been thinking about my childhood and that girl recently, even though it had been many years since then. I can still see her crooked smile and red hair. I hear the way she emphasized the K sounds in her words.

Because not long after she told me about her mom’s money issues, the house was boarded up, and Sarah was gone. Her mom didn’t get a second job.

My dad explained the full story to me a few weeks ago after it came up after dinner one night. Up until then, I had heard rumors about Sarah and her family, but they were pretty bizarre. The true story is worse than any of the rumors, though.

It turns out that Sarah’s mom’s body was found at the foot of the stairs with a broken neck one morning, and Sarah moved away to live with a family member in another city. The news articles didn’t explain very much, but I understood that the county police were involved, which now that I think about it makes me realize that it was probably suspected that it had been no accident.

There was a piano in the living room of this house I used to live in. I rented a small bedroom in the basement of a house in a town called Broomfield, and honestly, this was the first time I had actually been in a basement. I’ve lived in California all of my life and this was the first time out of the state, but I only had to be in this town for three months because of an internship I had gotten.

The family that lived in this house was strange, they never really seemed to talk to each other, though one time the mom asked me to take her son to a wrestling event. Another time, they tricked me into going to a “party” by a lake that turned out to be a church event.

They seemed normal overall, but they had a habit of being too quiet. No television, no radio, no talking. I really only heard them when they got home around 9pm every week night, and that was because the wooden floors creaked. I could hear the son crinkling bags of fast food, and the sound of the shower being turned on upstairs, and sometimes the microwave.

One afternoon, I had gotten home early from my internship because I was not feeling well and got to the house in the middle of the day. There was nothing particularly interesting about the city, and I was alone most of the time. I just remember searching for bookstores and coffee shops to hang out in, but that got old pretty fast.

I had picked up some Subway on my way to the house. I went to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water from the fridge, but noticed that the refrigerator light didn’t turn on. The water was still cold, though.

I went downstairs, and sure enough, the basement light didn’t turn on. Fortunately, my room had a window at the top that faced a small garden area above me. It was weird for me thinking that I was basically in a hole in the ground. I figured that if I really needed to charge my phone, I could just go to the car and charge it there. I didn’t need much else. I ate my sandwich and I promptly fell asleep. I woke up to the sound of footsteps upstairs followed by an odd melody on the piano.

This would have been completely normal had it not been one in the morning. But the melody stopped, and I went back to sleep.

In the morning, I went to the kitchen to make my coffee, but the coffeemaker wouldn’t work, and without power, the microwave would not work either.

That was when the house started giving me a strange feeling, and in retrospect, many things were pointing that something was off.

That evening, I got back to the house and the power wasn’t working. I tried calling the lady’s phone, but it kept going to voicemail. I had been in that place for about three weeks already, and I didn’t know what to do. I was 19 at the time, and so I called my parents to ask them what I should be doing. My dad said he was going to call the lady (they had a friend in common), and that he would get back to me.

He called back to tell me that the phone wasn’t working, and that I should probably begin searching for another place to move to, since being without hot water or electricity was probably not a very safe place to live in.

I wish I had known that the electricity not working would be the least of my problems.

That night, I kept thinking about what I could do, since I didn’t know anybody in the area and the thought of moving again really stressed me out, but eventually I started dozing off when suddenly the footsteps woke me up again.

Then came the same melody on the piano.

I figured it would be my chance to go upstairs and ask to see what I should do about the whole situation, so I put on my shoes and started to head upstairs. But as the living room came into view, I noticed that there was nobody sitting at the piano.

Then, it stopped.

This was the first time anything creepy like this happened to me, and I normally imagined myself walking up to investigate, but instead I ran back down steps following the light from my phone and bolted to my room, and shut the door.

I heard some laughter upstairs, and then complete silence.

The next day while washing my hands in the kitchen sink, the water started burping and then the flow of water stopped. As I was looking for a towel to dry off my hands, I noticed the moldy bread in the breadbox on the dining room table. Nobody else had been in the house besides me in the last few days.

Trying not to think too much of the situation, I went out for dinner at a Burger King and figured I would just stay out until I got tired before going back to the empty house.

Around 10pm I went back home, creaked open the door, went for the basement, and the straight to my room. I changed in the dark, I ate in the dark, and before the water went out, I showered in the dark. Now I even had to figure out how to get the toilet to flush.

Things seem obvious to me now, but back then I was just a kid, and didn’t know much of renter/landlord obligations. I listened to some music on my phone, set my alarm, and went to sleep.

At around 1am, like clockwork, I heard the steps. Then I heard the piano. But this time, I heard more footsteps.

Footsteps down the stairs.

Footsteps approaching my room.

Then, silence.

The thing about hearing something paranormal is that you begin doubting your judgement right away. You don’t know if you imagined it, but really want to believe that you did.

I tried to stay awake under my bed sheets but I woke up again to the sound of thunder. Then the piano.

As soon as I saw the sky turning purple in the morning, I started to gather my things. I stuffed my clothes in my backpack, and realized that no matter how hard I tried to carry everything, I wouldn’t make it to the car in just one trip.

Eventually summoned up the courage to head upstairs, walk past the piano, and straight to my car. I then went straight back to the house, down to the dark basement, grabbed a box, another smaller backpack, my bottle of water. As I started to make my way upstairs, I thought I heard the piano keys, but the door was open and I decided to go for it and slammed the door behind me once as I was out for good as I clearly heard laughter from inside the house.

I moved the next day after the footsteps incident. First to a Motel 6 for two nights, and then I found another place from one of the other students that worked with me.

Thinking back on this, I still remember how creeped out I was by the whole thing. Much later, I found out that the couple was going through a divorce, which explained why I never saw the kid’s father.

It turns out that I had forgotten my passport and my social security card inside one of the drawers and the lady called me to ask me to go pick them up from their new place. That’s where I found out about some details and also that the mom and the kids had gone to live with the mom’s sister for a while. Her phone had gotten replaced and she lost my contact information.

I casually mentioned that there were some weird noises in the house, when her son peeked at us from the kitchen and asked me, almost in a panic,

“The laughing man?”

“It must have been the laughing man,” I replied.

Then he walked over to me, his lips trembling, and managed to ask, “does he play the piano?”

There’s a small section of a curvy road, that’s well-paved by the way, that takes me through the hills and to my university. I live in Oregon and the mornings are usually humid and foggy, so driving around in early hours can be especially dangerous with wet roads and low visibility. It’s about a ten minute drive, according to Google Maps, but it takes me more like 20 minutes, since I drive extra slowly through this city.

I just moved here, so I’m still figuring out the city’s quirks.

One particular morning, I was heading down the road at around 6am to head to the newly-discovered 24-Hour Fitness Gym that was nearby. The road was dark and foggy, but inside the car I had some rap music playing, trying to get pumped up for the gym, since I hadn’t been there in a while but was locked into a contract with the gym and, well, I don’t want to get into that.

Anyway, as I was approaching the curvy section of the road, surrounded by big pine trees and steep drops, I lowered down the radio volume. I’m not sure why I do that when I begin to drive slower. Just a habit, I guess. Leaning more toward the steering wheel and windshield, I turned on my high-beams, big mistake, by the way, to do so in the fog. But I must’ve triggered something in the electrical system because my radio went haywire. The volume cranked all the way up and then the stations started changing by themselves, finally stopping at some station with a loud radio host talking about politics, he mentioned President Ronald Reagan, who was way before my time, by the way, as this event happened back in 2017, but the volume became so loud that my speakers began to pop.

I came to a full stop before the car stereo finally popped loudly and all the noise stopped. The silence outside was intense. Sorry, I’m just not sure how to describe the level of silence. It was… odd, to say the least.

I started to pull forward slowly, and then I started picking up a little more speed as I made my way down the hill, but suddenly my steering wheel became heavy and the car started leaning to the right, straight toward the gravel and metal barrier. I hit the brakes and my SUV started shaking to a stop. A flat tire, I remember thinking.

I put my hazards on and made sure to roll down my window in case my car’s doors locked automatically again while I was outside, as it’s been known to happen before, and then I stepped out of the car to check my front right tire.

It wasn’t flat. I went around the back of the car to check the other tires, but they all seemed fine. But just as I was turning to the driver’s side of the car to go back in, I heard a sound coming from the trees. Now, I know there are deer crossing signs everywhere, and I understand deer attract other predatory animals, but the sound was not animal-like. It was like a higher-pitched voice, a woman, perhaps… crying.

I couldn’t see to the side of my car since my headlights were pointing forward, so I just went back to my seat and rolled up my windows and changed my gear to drive. With automatic transmission cars, you need to step on the brakes before changing gears and you go through the reverse and neutral gears before reaching “drive”. This is important.

Red rear lights turn on when you hit the brakes. White lights turn on behind you when you pass through “reverse”. That’s when I saw the figure of woman standing right behind the car. She looked young, wearing a bright blue jacket, and long dark hair tied in a pony tail to the side of her head. I’ve heard enough scary stories to know not to be dumb and get out of the car in the darkness of the morning to quote/unquote help somebody.

I set the car in drive and continued down the road. I’m telling you the story all calm, but I guarantee you that my heart was about ready to jump out of my chest when this happened.

As soon as I reached the bottom of the hill and the first stop light, I grabbed my phone and Googled the local police station number, the non-emergency number. I told them about the incident, about a woman standing in the middle of the empty road and that perhaps she needed help. They said thanks and said they might follow up with me later, so they took my name and number down. The streetlights turned green, yellow, and red a couple of times while I was on the phone. That’s how empty the town was at this time of the morning.

The police never followed up with me, but I did experience the tugging of the steering wheel a couple of times, in plain daylight. It wasn’t until recently that I discovered the cemetery right before reaching the curvy road, though. I told my friends about it but they didn’t think it was too big of a deal.

I still don’t know if what happened that night was a big coincidence, or something supernatural, but I take the long way whenever I have to drive there at night.