House for Rent

[00:00:02] Hello and welcome to Scary Story Podcast.

[00:00:05] The following stories deal with strange events inside the home.

[00:00:09] If you've ever felt afraid of being in your own house, you might have some investigating

[00:00:14] to do.

[00:00:16] My name is Edwin, and here is a scary story.

[00:00:22] House for Rent.

[00:00:29] You got a phone call to go visit a place as soon as possible.

[00:00:34] The high season of apartment rentals had started and the race was on to catch the

[00:00:37] hottest places and rent them out.

[00:00:40] My manager was on her game that year.

[00:00:43] She got a whole group of college kids going door to door getting phone numbers of potential

[00:00:48] rentals, and two of us who would go and make the listings.

[00:00:53] My job was to take photos and videos of the places and list them on every platform out

[00:00:57] there, even Airbnb.

[00:01:00] It was odd for my boss to call me to grab photos of a place outside of business

[00:01:04] hours.

[00:01:05] But she insisted that this was a big deal.

[00:01:09] The house was going to be listed way below its value, which meant that this was

[00:01:12] be a quick sale.

[00:01:14] I put my food away for later and grabbed my camera bag and keys and went for the door.

[00:01:20] I didn't mind doing this type of work, but I knew that a night shot would be a

[00:01:23] tough one.

[00:01:24] So I hoped that I would get some good shots of the interior and prayed that

[00:01:28] it would be furnished.

[00:01:30] My boss said that it was staged and ready for photo work according to the sons

[00:01:34] of the owners.

[00:01:36] But she had been known to be wrong every once in a while.

[00:01:39] Hopefully her good luck streak this year would continue.

[00:01:43] I pulled up to the house to find all of the lights off.

[00:01:47] The fence in the front had been lined with rope, and the front yard was

[00:01:50] overgrown.

[00:01:53] My phone vibrated in my pocket, just when I was about to call my boss.

[00:01:58] That's when she texted me.

[00:02:00] The keys are by the mailbox, it said.

[00:02:04] I looked under the mailbox and found a nail with two keys neatly hanging from

[00:02:08] the wooden post.

[00:02:10] Once I was at the door, the sensors went off and the entire interior of the

[00:02:14] home lit up, even the lamps.

[00:02:17] This was a big place and the price definitely did not match the house.

[00:02:22] If everything they said was correct,

[00:02:25] this place would be rented out immediately.

[00:02:28] I stepped inside and set up my tripod and plugged in some more lights by

[00:02:32] the kitchen.

[00:02:34] I turned on the faucet, the stove tops, the fans, everything, and went to work.

[00:02:40] I didn't even think about the shots that much anymore.

[00:02:42] I figured the next team would be arriving to take photos pretty soon.

[00:02:46] So this was a game of speed.

[00:02:48] I went to the first living room, took my shots, and took a backup set of

[00:02:52] photos and moved on.

[00:02:54] This went on for about an hour, going through the two living rooms, the

[00:02:57] family room, the exterior fireplace area, the five bedrooms.

[00:03:03] There was one place that was locked.

[00:03:06] It looked like the master bedroom.

[00:03:07] I mean, technically every bedroom in there looked like a master bedroom to me,

[00:03:12] spacious and with beautiful decorations.

[00:03:15] But this one had a larger doorframe.

[00:03:17] If I was correct on my assumption, it would be no way that I could skip the room.

[00:03:23] The second key.

[00:03:25] I pulled the keys out of my pocket and tried it and it didn't open.

[00:03:29] I tried the second one and like butter, it turned almost by itself and opened inward,

[00:03:34] revealing one of the largest rooms in the entire house.

[00:03:38] It wasn't a master bedroom.

[00:03:40] It looked like an entire suite all by itself, along with a conference table.

[00:03:45] Once I had an idea of the size of the room, I switched up my lenses and went to work.

[00:03:50] I got a shot of the meeting area, the couches, the bed and the bathroom.

[00:03:55] I also made sure to get a shot of the enormous walk-in closet.

[00:04:00] I pulled up my computer on the conference table and backed up the shots,

[00:04:04] briefly scanning through them to make sure that I got everything.

[00:04:07] I'd be back for the exterior photos tomorrow morning.

[00:04:11] This place was amazing.

[00:04:13] The last photo review was what changed my mind though.

[00:04:17] If you see them for yourself, you'll notice a set of shadows in just about every other photo.

[00:04:23] It's subtle, I'll give you that.

[00:04:26] But they're there.

[00:04:28] Even the interns that my boss had hired had a tough time believing that I hadn't edited

[00:04:32] the photos myself in order to prank them or something.

[00:04:36] But I had no reason to and the photos needed to get online preferably that next day.

[00:04:40] There was no time to waste.

[00:04:42] The intern who helped me with the edits tried her best to crop out the photos.

[00:04:47] But there was one that made it online and that was the beginning of a series of problems

[00:04:51] that we had with the sons of the owners.

[00:04:54] But it wasn't only the shadows, those that looked like silhouettes.

[00:04:59] It was the stains on the white walls of the walk-in closet.

[00:05:03] Fingers I think.

[00:05:06] Blood stains on the wall that neither of us noticed that caused the problems.

[00:05:11] The listing was flagged by the services we were using and the owners tried to sue us.

[00:05:16] There was an hour fault.

[00:05:18] There was no way anybody could have seen that coming.

[00:05:22] Then one day my boss explained to me about that same house and that it had been on the news.

[00:05:28] During an attempted robbery, a woman and her daughter ran to hide in the walk-in closet

[00:05:33] where they were killed.

[00:05:34] I had been walking around there by myself without a clue.

[00:05:40] Not really by myself.

[00:05:42] We can't ignore the shadows.

[00:05:46] My boss has one of those photos in her office now.

[00:05:50] She didn't mind missing out on that specific house.

[00:05:53] It still hasn't had a long-term tenant.

[00:06:01] This next story is called Taps and it's coming up right after this.

[00:06:13] When we first moved into the home, we were so excited that we skipped doing what normal

[00:06:17] home buyers should do.

[00:06:19] Things like checking out the schools for example.

[00:06:21] Though that would be one of the least important things now that I think about it.

[00:06:26] Once we closed on the deal, we moved in right away and started decorating the place,

[00:06:30] trying to make it our own finally.

[00:06:32] It was tough for us to accept at the time that this place would never be completely our own.

[00:06:39] It started with simple things, you know like when your house settles, random tabs here

[00:06:44] and there.

[00:06:45] It was just like that.

[00:06:47] I stayed up late at night sometimes to talk with some of my clients that I have overseas

[00:06:51] so phone calls at 1 or 2 in the morning were common.

[00:06:55] And honestly they didn't bother me too much.

[00:06:58] What made me feel uneasy was that walk from my empty home office to the bathroom and then

[00:07:03] again from the bathroom to the bedroom.

[00:07:06] The first couple of times I bumped into the table I had set up in the hallway, though

[00:07:11] it was tiny.

[00:07:12] But there was no window on it like at our old place.

[00:07:16] It was so dark that I wouldn't know if I was going straight down the hallway or

[00:07:20] toward the stairs without lifting my arms away from my body to feel the cold wall

[00:07:24] with the back of my hands.

[00:07:27] In such was the case on a Tuesday night.

[00:07:30] My phone had died completely with my charger being upstairs.

[00:07:34] I decided to call it a night early.

[00:07:36] I was alone at the house this time coincidentally I suppose.

[00:07:42] Lots of little factors played a role in one of the strangest nights of my life.

[00:07:46] I'll try to tell you every detail of what happened that night and hopefully you can

[00:07:50] agree with me.

[00:07:52] I had just gotten off a video call when I picked up my cell phone from the desk.

[00:07:57] I barely got a glimpse of the 2% battery life it was claiming to have, sometimes just enough

[00:08:02] to get the flashlight to work for me as I walked down the hall and toward the staircase.

[00:08:07] But not this time.

[00:08:10] We need to do something about that, it was a phrase we shared around our new house

[00:08:14] whenever we found a new quirk.

[00:08:17] One of those things was the odd placement of the light switches.

[00:08:25] This one for example, that would make you turn off the light right at the start of the hallway

[00:08:30] instead of having the double switches.

[00:08:32] You know what I'm talking about?

[00:08:35] One at the end of the hall and one at the start of it so that you can turn it on

[00:08:38] when you start walking through it and off once you leave it.

[00:08:42] Well this house didn't have that.

[00:08:45] I guess I could leave the hallway light on the whole night, just like I have been tempted

[00:08:49] to do so for the past few years that I lived here.

[00:08:52] But for some reason it seemed too wasteful.

[00:08:55] I only started doing that recently.

[00:08:58] With my only source of light completely dead, I turned off the computer screen.

[00:09:04] Big mistake.

[00:09:07] The place was so dark without it that I should have first turned on the lights

[00:09:10] to the office space and then turned off my screen.

[00:09:14] My office had a window and it was the first time that the place looked so dark.

[00:09:19] Like I said, many things played a role here.

[00:09:23] This was one of them.

[00:09:25] So I stretched my hands outward, feeling for the edge of the desk grabbing onto the

[00:09:30] chair where a slow but steady mountain of jackets and papers was beginning to grow.

[00:09:36] Then I accidentally kicked the corner of a cardboard box stuffed with my old heavy

[00:09:40] books.

[00:09:42] I made a mental note to wear shoes when I walked around in the dark.

[00:09:46] I got to the light switch, flicked it on and opened the door out toward the hall.

[00:09:52] I wrapped my arm around the edge of the wall to reach for the switch when I felt it for

[00:09:56] the first time.

[00:09:59] It was cold and scaly.

[00:10:02] Like the texture of a lizard.

[00:10:04] Or at least how I would imagine it to be.

[00:10:08] But in the same manner, it scurried off with light taps down the wall and onto the floor.

[00:10:13] Of course I gasped as my heart started speeding up.

[00:10:17] I tried not to scream.

[00:10:20] Were lizards common to this area?

[00:10:22] There was no way of knowing.

[00:10:24] I didn't even know my address for the first month I was there.

[00:10:29] But I had to look so I peeked out of the office and down the hall.

[00:10:34] When I saw a tiny puddle looking shadow.

[00:10:37] Dark.

[00:10:38] Like a hole on the floor.

[00:10:41] Moving toward the stairs.

[00:10:45] I reached for the light switch for the hallway and flicked it on.

[00:10:49] Then it spread out like a puff of smoke and disappeared.

[00:10:52] It's odd the feeling that you get when you witness something like that.

[00:10:59] But it seems to happen every single time something strange happened at the house.

[00:11:05] Just you feel fear.

[00:11:07] Maybe numbness.

[00:11:09] But doubt creeps in faster than I'd be okay with admitting.

[00:11:14] When my friend and I got followed when we were leaving the mall one night, I kept telling her

[00:11:18] that maybe the man needed directions or help with something.

[00:11:21] If it hadn't been for her rushing us to the security office booth, who knows what

[00:11:26] would have happened to us?

[00:11:28] And the same thing happened with me now.

[00:11:32] I told myself that it was late.

[00:11:35] That there was nothing to worry about.

[00:11:36] It was just my imagination.

[00:11:39] That I had seen similar things to this one in the past and it was never that important.

[00:11:44] That I read too many books.

[00:11:47] That I watched too many movies.

[00:11:50] That it didn't make any sense.

[00:11:53] So I took a deep breath and to prove it to myself, I would go down the hallway without

[00:11:59] the lights on.

[00:12:01] Saying it to myself now makes it seem very dumb, I know.

[00:12:05] But at the same time, it was liberating.

[00:12:07] It wouldn't take long for me to regret it however.

[00:12:11] I got a last look at the hallway to memorize where the table was and how many steps it

[00:12:17] would take me to get to the staircase.

[00:12:20] I took another deep breath and turned off the light.

[00:12:23] My first step was when I felt a numbing feeling once again and yet I kept going.

[00:12:30] The second step was easier as I tapped along the floor.

[00:12:34] My socks trying to feel for the edge of it.

[00:12:36] It was supposed to be a little brighter upstairs with the light posed from the outside shining

[00:12:42] in through the window and the landing upstairs.

[00:12:45] Just two more steps and the stream of light would be visible.

[00:12:48] I would kind of see the blue light from the outside bouncing off the bend of the

[00:12:53] stairs.

[00:12:54] And I took them.

[00:12:57] It was three steps in total before I saw the light.

[00:13:00] And total and complete darkness behind me now.

[00:13:03] I tried not to look, but I couldn't help myself as my head turned to the right to follow a

[00:13:09] light tapping and the urging sensation to turn around.

[00:13:15] Then, in my right ear I heard it.

[00:13:21] Hello.

[00:13:24] I left my head replaced by the cold rush of wind inside me that I feel whenever I feel

[00:13:29] scared.

[00:13:30] I tried to take a step forward but I felt a cold grip of a hand around my ankle.

[00:13:35] It slipped off as I kicked at it trying desperately to skip every other step as I rushed up

[00:13:41] toward the bedroom.

[00:13:43] I ran as fast as I could, locked the bedroom door and pressed the button on my phone.

[00:13:49] I turned on the light and spotted the white charger on the light stand.

[00:13:54] I plugged the phone in.

[00:13:57] John and I talked about it, and I had already calmed down by this point.

[00:14:01] Nothing left to do except think about the situation later with a clear mind the next

[00:14:06] day.

[00:14:07] Now all I've heard is light taps on some nights.

[00:14:12] Usually the darkest ones.

[00:14:16] John says it was its way of welcoming me.

[00:14:28] Scary Story Podcast is produced by me, Edwin Covarrouyes.

[00:14:32] You can stay up to date with the show by tapping follow on your podcast player and signing up

[00:14:36] for updates over on ScaryStoryPodcast.com.

[00:14:41] The show is also on Patreon, where new and free episodes are being released that will

[00:14:45] let you listen without interruptions, all while supporting the show.

[00:14:50] The same is coming to Apple Podcast.

[00:14:54] Until next time, thank you very much for listening.