House Rules

[00:00:00] Welcome to Scary Story Podcast.

[00:00:03] Rules are meant to be broken, they say.

[00:00:06] Not realizing how important they can be in keeping us sane.

[00:00:12] My name is Edwin and here's a scary story.

[00:00:24] Come on dad, don't scare her like that, I said.

[00:00:28] Natty's eyes were beginning to swell nervously as she looked at me.

[00:00:32] I could tell she was trying to decide whether or not to believe her grandpa about how eating

[00:00:37] strawberry jam right out of the jar would give her a third arm.

[00:00:42] I don't know about you, but I'm okay with just two, he said as he started to double

[00:00:46] down on his story just like he always did.

[00:00:50] I had this friend, Benny, you all remember him?

[00:00:54] Don't believe him, I told Natty as I smiled.

[00:00:57] But enough with strawberry jam, if anything it's going to make you lose your teeth before

[00:01:01] mine.

[00:01:02] My dad simply grunted, smiling at Natty, realizing that she was actually scared.

[00:01:08] There were so many things that dad would say that used to creep me out when my brothers

[00:01:12] and I were growing up, especially around the old house by the lake.

[00:01:16] There were reasons to be afraid, unlike now, when kids like Natty were more scared about

[00:01:21] running out of credits on their mobile games than about the bird's nest suddenly making

[00:01:26] chirping noises.

[00:01:28] Stuff that I grew up with.

[00:01:30] And I was grateful for that, although part of me wanted to share with them what the

[00:01:33] real world was all about.

[00:01:35] Maybe, once Natty was older, I might tell her about my stories at the old house.

[00:01:41] Just for fun.

[00:01:43] But for now I had enough eerie things to deal with.

[00:01:46] Dad was losing it, Magatel.

[00:01:49] His stories became longer and more paranoid, talking about things that he had started to

[00:01:53] see around the house since mom died.

[00:01:56] Breakfast, he said one day, was there on the kitchen table, I kid you not.

[00:02:02] Just the way your mom made it.

[00:02:04] Except it was rotten and infested with flies.

[00:02:08] Of course, I thought at the time that dad had simply forgotten to eat the food either

[00:02:12] he or one of us had made for him and it stayed at the table for several days.

[00:02:17] Although yes, it was unlikely because the man used that table every day and routine

[00:02:23] was part of his life.

[00:02:25] Up at five, eggs and bacon with coffee and a bagel in the afternoon.

[00:02:30] No matter what, losing your life partner is something with effects that few of us can

[00:02:34] understand at our age or think that it will never happen to us.

[00:02:39] He might have forgotten about breakfast, although the alternative, that perhaps there was something

[00:02:44] strange going on at the house, was always a possibility.

[00:02:51] There were other things he would say that would send chills down my spine and I blamed

[00:02:56] all of our experiences on the old house.

[00:03:01] The place had been renovated, sort of over the original place and had a few additions

[00:03:05] over the years.

[00:03:07] It had a porch and a garden now, a guest house in the back, but before then I remember just

[00:03:12] how eerie it was to be there in the evenings.

[00:03:15] A lonely house with hardly any close neighbors, an old shed behind it.

[00:03:21] Mom was a fan of lamps, like the old-fashioned ones that you would place somewhere outside

[00:03:26] by the door frames.

[00:03:28] They would be all around the house on the outside with mosquitoes and flies circling

[00:03:32] around them after sunset.

[00:03:34] There was one by the window that would stay on and I clearly remember falling asleep to

[00:03:39] the buzzing of their wings zooming around the glowing orange light.

[00:03:43] But I loved that house.

[00:03:45] The way it creaked as the house cooled down for the night, and the tapping of the critters

[00:03:50] on the roof as they started their own nocturnal adventures around the property.

[00:03:55] It had several rooms, a couple of them used for storage and were mainly empty, but the

[00:04:01] fields around it were huge.

[00:04:04] We had no driveway, but rather a large dirt path that led from the wooded area on the back

[00:04:10] to the entrance of the house, and then to a large peaceful lake in the front obstructed

[00:04:15] by only a few large pine trees and an oak tree smack in the middle of everything.

[00:04:21] I always felt like my dad knew something about the place that we didn't know, with these strange

[00:04:26] rules that even mom had to follow.

[00:04:29] I never saw my dad angry except for when the rules were broken, but they were simple.

[00:04:35] Stay out of the shed, no going out to the lake at night, and no pictures inside the house.

[00:04:44] The rules were followed for most of my young life, with a few exceptions as we became teenagers

[00:04:49] and we started having friends over that wanted bonfires by the lake, and then camera phones

[00:04:54] coming around, with pictures of family moments and dogs jumping on the furniture breaking

[00:04:59] the pictures rule.

[00:05:01] But the shed was avoided all the time, especially after the incident with my younger brother.

[00:05:07] He had gotten a puppy for his birthday and was out by the front of the house trying to

[00:05:11] teach it some tricks when it suddenly ran toward the back of the house.

[00:05:16] My brother chased him and before he knew it he was standing right at the entrance of the

[00:05:20] shed.

[00:05:22] I know my brother and even now I know that following the rules was what he was known

[00:05:27] for, a straight A student, doing everything he was supposed to, and a big part of the

[00:05:32] reason why he was my parents' favorite, although they were afraid to admit it.

[00:05:37] I was in the living room when my dad came running toward the front door, yelling for

[00:05:41] my younger brother, demanding that I tell him where he was.

[00:05:44] I told him that I had seen him by the front of the house playing with a dog as he ran

[00:05:48] out toward the yard.

[00:05:50] My dad ran out and when I followed him I could hear my brother screaming from somewhere behind

[00:05:55] the house.

[00:05:56] I followed my dad as he ran out toward the shed, the puppy was standing by the entrance

[00:06:01] and he shoved the door open and my brother ran out of there completely pale, stumbled

[00:06:07] for a bit, and then fell to the ground.

[00:06:12] Dad picked him up and took him inside as my mom closely followed, she had come outside

[00:06:17] from all the commotion.

[00:06:19] We all stood there for a few minutes while he came to and dad asked him about what he

[00:06:23] had seen in there, and all my brother could say was, the man.

[00:06:32] James, my brother, further explained that he had not gone in there on his own, that

[00:06:36] the puppy was by the entrance to the shed barking when he was suddenly shoved inside

[00:06:41] and the door was closed behind him.

[00:06:44] Even though mom and dad never told any of us anything else about the incident, except

[00:06:48] for making us repeat the rules over and over, that we would stay out of the shed, I knew

[00:06:54] that dad believed my brother James.

[00:06:57] And what made this all the more disturbing was that James had talked about the man several

[00:07:03] times already.

[00:07:05] It was a thing that he would see when he was sleeping at night and a reason why I would

[00:07:09] get woken up in the middle of it to walk with him to the bathroom.

[00:07:13] He would say that as he was sleeping, a man would stand at the foot of his bed looking

[00:07:19] at him.

[00:07:20] He said that he would tilt his head from side to side and that his smile would glow whenever

[00:07:25] he tilted to the right, illuminated by the light from the lamps that mom had, fading

[00:07:31] in and out for a while.

[00:07:36] James never knew when the man would go away.

[00:07:38] He would simply hide under the blanket and eventually fall asleep without telling me

[00:07:42] or my older brother who also shared the room with us as kids.

[00:07:47] James never told us about what else he saw in the shed, and to this day we haven't

[00:07:53] asked.

[00:07:56] I was fourteen by this time and had two of my best friends come over for a bonfire night

[00:08:01] in front of the house.

[00:08:03] I remember mom and dad arguing a little bit about it, with dad wanting us to stay away

[00:08:08] from the lake, when we finally came to an agreement on making the bonfire by the oak

[00:08:12] tree that by ten we would all be inside.

[00:08:17] Dad had gotten us some VHS tapes and microwave popcorn for the trouble, movies he knew we

[00:08:23] would like and that were probably recommended by the woman at the video store.

[00:08:27] She was right.

[00:08:29] My two friends and I were out by the oak tree, waiting for another friend to be dropped off

[00:08:34] a little later.

[00:08:35] We got to talking about everything teenagers talk about.

[00:08:39] Boys, high school gossip to kill time, when suddenly you heard someone crunching leaves

[00:08:45] as they walked up to the tree.

[00:08:48] All three of us turned around, expecting to see Ellie coming up, except there was no one

[00:08:54] there.

[00:08:56] So we sat in silence, afraid of saying anything about what we had just heard, but we were

[00:09:01] all thinking it.

[00:09:03] You see I had told them a few things about the house rules and the reasons why they were

[00:09:08] in place, but I could tell that they couldn't quite understand.

[00:09:13] You see the steps were too loud to be that of a dog's and too heavy to be Ellie's

[00:09:19] footsteps.

[00:09:20] There was no place to hide around there, since aside from the trees in front of us and the

[00:09:25] house, it was basically a large empty yard.

[00:09:29] We kept looking at each other for a while until one of them started laughing nervously

[00:09:34] at what we had just heard.

[00:09:37] Your dad said no going out to the lake at night, right?

[00:09:42] Why?

[00:09:44] I always assumed it was because he was afraid of us drowning or something.

[00:09:48] That's what I told him, unaware that we were all about to uncover the real reason.

[00:09:55] Without knowing it.

[00:10:10] Ellie showed up not long after we thought we heard her coming up to us, announced by

[00:10:14] the bright lights of her mom's minivan driving up to the house and past it where we were

[00:10:19] by the oak tree.

[00:10:20] She grabbed her backpack, waved goodbye at her mom, and then came up to sit next to me.

[00:10:27] Now it's really you, Tina said, expecting Ellie to ask why, but instead being ignored

[00:10:33] completely as Ellie simply agreed and asked about what she had missed.

[00:10:37] Tina was all excited about telling her about the ghost footsteps, as she called them, and

[00:10:42] then about my dad's warning about the lake at night.

[00:10:45] But Ellie seemed undisturbed.

[00:10:48] Yeah, mom told me to stay away from the lake as well, the mosquitoes, and she's afraid

[00:10:52] of me drowning.

[00:10:53] We all laughed at just how indifferent she seemed about it.

[00:10:57] Ellie was always a chill friend that would agree to just about anything.

[00:11:01] She was okay with everything too.

[00:11:03] Wanna see this movie?

[00:11:04] Okay, she would say.

[00:11:06] Did you see that so-and-so was staring at you during class?

[00:11:09] Oh really?

[00:11:10] Okay, she would say.

[00:11:11] And move on.

[00:11:13] Tina, on the other hand, was different and wanted to make a big deal out of everything.

[00:11:18] Jessica was more like me, in the middle.

[00:11:23] I never wanted to talk about ghost stories around anyone, especially considering how

[00:11:27] afraid the house would make me feel sometimes.

[00:11:30] But when you're around friends, especially at that age, I wanted to show off and talk

[00:11:35] more about it with others.

[00:11:37] And so I told Ellie about the footsteps and how I believed that the house was haunted.

[00:11:42] We talked about the shed, the man that would roam around the house, and what my thoughts

[00:11:47] were about the lake.

[00:11:49] Parts of it were made up and others were true, although I never considered just how serious

[00:11:55] they were at the time.

[00:11:57] Like the story of the oak tree.

[00:12:00] When my brothers and I were trying to hang a tire to use as a swing on it, my dad came

[00:12:05] out to help us with the rope.

[00:12:07] But when he climbed up and mentioned the rope markings on the tree, along with the tally

[00:12:11] counts carved high upon it, he made us tie the swing onto one of the pine trees instead

[00:12:17] of the oak tree.

[00:12:19] This tree has seen some things, he said.

[00:12:23] Which is why we ended up with the lopsided swing that would break off every summer.

[00:12:27] Eventually, we gave up on using it.

[00:12:31] But what about the lake?

[00:12:33] Ellie asked.

[00:12:34] Suddenly, very quiet and looking directly at me over the fire.

[00:12:39] I told her the story of my older brother who ran back to the house after trying to catch

[00:12:43] some fireflies out by the lake.

[00:12:46] I barely remember that night.

[00:12:49] He had been out for the majority of the evening and mom had asked dad to leave him be after

[00:12:53] he asked why he was out there so late.

[00:12:56] He's growing up, give him a space.

[00:12:59] I remember thinking about how much I wanted my space too, but I didn't say anything.

[00:13:06] It was then when Paul came running toward the house, screaming, and once he reached it,

[00:13:11] he was barely catching his breath.

[00:13:13] Dad was shaking him trying to get him to talk about what had happened, but all Paul could

[00:13:17] do was point out toward the lake.

[00:13:20] And so dad ran out there past the oak tree and up to the edge of the water.

[00:13:24] His flashlight was only a tiny dot out of the darkness in front of the house, reflecting

[00:13:29] two or three times over the water.

[00:13:32] He came back, got us to call James and told us to stay away from the lake at night.

[00:13:40] Paul was able to explain to us a few things once he was a little bit calmer.

[00:13:45] He said he had seen a man coming out of the water, his clothes and face completely covered

[00:13:50] with mud.

[00:13:52] The man had said no words, just made sounds as he slowly walked out.

[00:13:58] He walked over the branches of the pine tree where Paul had been.

[00:14:03] Paul never talked about the incident after that night.

[00:14:08] Ellie asked me if I had seen the man that roamed around the house and even though I wanted

[00:14:12] to say yes and make up something, I told her the truth.

[00:14:17] I hadn't seen anything in that house.

[00:14:19] The only creepy things I had heard were the sounds of the house settling at night and

[00:14:25] that if you don't count the screams coming from my brothers.

[00:14:30] I often wondered if my dad as he got older would find an explanation to what we had experienced

[00:14:35] at that house while we were growing up.

[00:14:38] But instead, with his age, he started sticking more to his rules, talking about the man

[00:14:43] that roamed around the house as if it were some intruder that we all had to worry about.

[00:14:49] Ellie interrupted my thoughts to ask about why it was the guys in the house only that

[00:14:54] had seen the man and not my mother or I.

[00:14:57] Tina laughed at Ellie, saying that she should go to college to study to become a detective.

[00:15:03] It's true, Ellie shot back, surprising everyone.

[00:15:06] Ellie hadn't cared much about anything before.

[00:15:10] We all stared at the fire once again hoping that another one of us would speak up and

[00:15:15] ease the tension we were all feeling.

[00:15:17] When suddenly we heard a splash coming from the lake.

[00:15:23] We all screamed and ran for the front door, leaving everything as it was by the fire.

[00:15:29] We were laughing when we finally made it to the den of the house, mom peeking at us through

[00:15:33] the kitchen window while dad came in asking what we had all seen.

[00:15:38] We told him the truth that we were telling ghost stories and that we got freaked out over nothing.

[00:15:44] Ellie then asked dad about the ghosts in the house and in order to not scare us even more,

[00:15:48] he simply told her that maybe one day he would find answers to what was going on.

[00:15:53] But for now, to just pick out a movie and that he would get the popcorn going for us in the meantime.

[00:16:01] But what about the pictures in the house, Ro? Ellie asked, unwilling to let it go.

[00:16:06] The complaints of other girls.

[00:16:09] Why can't you take pictures inside the house?

[00:16:13] Everyone started teasing her and laughing as she finally let it go.

[00:16:17] We then just watched movies, played games and forgot all about the topic for the rest of the night.

[00:16:24] A long time passed before any of us talked about the man around the house again.

[00:16:29] My brothers would get scared sometimes, even I would hear what they had heard every once in a while.

[00:16:35] But after years of this happening, it was normal around the house.

[00:16:40] Eventually, my older brother Paul moved out when he went to college and I went to study as well and got married.

[00:16:46] While my little brother joined the army after high school and left my parents alone at the house.

[00:16:51] That's where they remained all these years until I had my daughter and started making the visits much more regularly to their house by the lake.

[00:16:59] Mom died when Natty was two years old and I started taking care of dad by visiting almost daily.

[00:17:04] I was glad we had those times to remember near the end.

[00:17:10] Natty was eight when dad left us too and soon there was no other reason to go to the house except for the last clean up, as James called it.

[00:17:19] That's when we had to pack our parents' stuff and decide amongst ourselves what we wanted to do with the house now that our parents were gone.

[00:17:27] And it's odd because during these moments, it feels like our minds aren't quite grasping what is going on.

[00:17:32] It just goes way too fast and at times when everything seems insensitive to say or even think about.

[00:17:40] But I was going through the things in the kitchen and the bathroom, places where things expire first, looking at the brands that dad liked.

[00:17:48] The cans of uneaten beans and corn that mom had packed in the cupboards.

[00:17:52] But dad was too sad to throw away or eat.

[00:17:57] And it was when I got to their bedroom when I started cleaning up the closets and underneath the bed, when I found a box of memories that they had.

[00:18:05] Photo albums from around the house from when we were little.

[00:18:08] And I got to see the very few photographs of us with birthday cakes and opening presents during Christmas.

[00:18:15] Some of them were captioned by hand by my dad on the back.

[00:18:19] My fourth birthday. Paul's dinner to celebrate the end of Little League Baseball.

[00:18:25] James, awards from school.

[00:18:28] They were supposed to stay like that.

[00:18:31] Good memories.

[00:18:34] Once I showed my brothers the pictures during one of their visits, we all noticed something along those photographs.

[00:18:43] A man in the background lurking around the corners.

[00:18:48] The man behind the kitchen counter.

[00:18:51] The man in the group photos that nobody could identify.

[00:18:56] He was always looking at the camera, always with a straight face.

[00:19:01] And always hiding somewhere around the house.

[00:19:06] It was too late to ask anybody who he was.

[00:19:09] But my brothers all claimed that the man was what had been terrifying them all those years at the house when they were little.

[00:19:16] And now I understood the reason for the house rules.

[00:19:35] Scary Story Podcast is written and produced by me, Edwin Covarrubias.

[00:19:40] Thank you for all your comments and messages as we begin this spooky season.

[00:19:44] We have so many more ideas for stories that you've suggested.

[00:19:47] Remember that for ad-free and to support the stories, you can try out Scary Plus.

[00:19:52] Links to everything, including how to get in touch with me, are in the description of this episode.

[00:19:57] Anyway, if you're following the show, I will talk to you next week.

[00:20:02] Thank you very much for listening.

[00:20:04] Keep it scary everyone.

[00:20:06] See you soon.