If Dogs Could Talk (and Two More Haunting Creepypastas)

[00:00:00] Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. We have three short creepypastas today. In the first, a dog seems to have a strange reaction to what lurks outside. The second, about a kid's school tale, leads to an eerie discovery. And the last, a hidden Wi-Fi network reveals something terrifying.

[00:00:21] My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. I don't know how to explain this, but I heard my dog talk. I was in the back room of the house. It's what we call the second living room, the one that faces the yard. I was by myself, with my mom calling in to check on us every hour or so from work. By us, I meant me and my dog.

[00:00:49] Suddenly, all of the lights turned off. My dog Millard almost never left my side when I was home alone, and this night there was no exception. He raised his ears as he looked around the house. The only light was coming from the post on the corner of the yard. A dim, orange light that broke through the branches and into the house from the glass-lighting doors.

[00:01:11] We didn't have any history, per se, of ghosts or anything in the house, so I never felt afraid of being in there. But on this particular night, everything was different. Even the way Millard responded was different. The blackouts were becoming more frequent because they were fixing some streets around our neighborhood. Potholes and light posts and all that. But that meant that our cable TV, and of course, the electricity, would be out for about an hour at night.

[00:01:39] That's what they kept saying, but really it was only out for about ten minutes. Anyway, as I was looking toward the backyard with nothing else to look at, I spotted something standing on the branches. Millard got up and ran toward the sliding glass door, scratching at it to get out. I wasn't about to move from the couch, though, and simply looked at this figure literally walking on the branches,

[00:02:04] dashing away to another nearby tree and then dashing back, all at an unnatural speed. At the shape of a small hooded person that stretched out what appeared to be wings, right before jumping to another branch of a tree. Millard was growling at this point, and the smart dog that he is, he ran toward the hallway, hoping to get out of the house through the kitchen door, which Mom always kept unlocked. But it also left me completely alone in that room.

[00:02:34] In complete silence, as the branches of the tree snapped with this thing bouncing from tree to tree, all I could do was stare at the glass. That's when I saw the thing appear closer than before. Yes, it was a small hooded person, a brown or black cloak over its head, and it was only ten feet away from the doors. It stood still before crouching down, and I was terrified.

[00:02:59] Then I reached for the phone to call my mom, but when I turned back toward the sliding glass door, I was only able to see Millard standing in the yard, his tail completely still. Something unusual from that Labrador who wouldn't keep himself still while out in the yard. He walked closer to the doors and sat down, looking directly at me. I stood up before getting a better look at him. Something looked off.

[00:03:27] It was basically just a silhouette at this point against that orange glow, and yet I knew, I knew there was something weird. Still, I stood up and took one step toward the door when... I heard it. I said, Well, open the door, you. And it cursed at me. The voice was deep and distant, and I couldn't believe it. It was like everything I knew at that moment was turned upside down,

[00:03:55] reality suddenly not real anymore. But then, right at that instant, I heard growling from behind me. I turned around and pushed on that couch all the way to the wall when I sat back down. The loud thud blended with a deep familiar bark and panting coming from the hallway. It was Millard, running toward the glass doors at full speed and then stopping, growling and barking like I had never heard before.

[00:04:23] The silhouette on the outside completely disappeared when the lights came back on. All I could see was a reflection of Millard and my own figure that was sitting on the couch in that room. Millard stopped barking and turned to look at me. He sat down and wagged his tail and then came running up to me and curled up on the couch again. He had done a great job that night. And as of what happened, I still don't have any answers.

[00:05:00] I was eight years old and my sister was six when I started believing what they said about the devil. There was a house at the edge of the schoolyard that nobody dared to get close to. The house had a dog that would bark at the kids that would get close to it when they were running the mile on Wednesdays. I used to hate them. Under nine minutes. I know it sounds easy for you guys, but for me, especially back then, it was hell.

[00:05:26] My sister told me about a time that her and her friends went to give the dog their leftover pizzas. It was after lunch when they saw a woman peeking out of the window and then hide. They started calling her the witch of the blue house. Soon, the whole school was talking about this witch. Even us, in third grade, had our own versions of the story. Of how a certain kid, Martin, who no one had ever heard of, had gone in and never come out.

[00:05:55] There was no one who knew about it. No teacher there who ever had him as a student. But much later, when I learned about people directories on the internet, that kid, turns out, had actually existed. Marked as a kid who went missing, name on the milk carton and everything. Of course, it might have all been a rumor that fed into itself. Kid goes missing and suddenly every kid at school talks about him.

[00:06:23] The one that was taken by the witch of the blue house. I thought about it almost every day. Our walk home was through that sidewalk that passed by the blue house. But something about how he disappeared made me wonder if the whole thing could have been true. The news reports were all from the 70s. 1976, in March. The local newspaper scan surrounded his news along with the largest meteorite and how the drummer of the Who had collapsed during a concert.

[00:06:52] The specific article was next to a bake sale and a car mechanic announcement. It was weird thinking about it again. When you're a kid, I feel like you could witness a crime and not know it. A dark innocence. This day, a Friday after school, I waited for my sister. We were walking home when we passed by the only blue house on the block. We could hear the same dog barking from behind. Our friends, also a brother and a sister, walked up next to us.

[00:07:23] They were telling us that one of the older kids, a fifth grader, and his brother were going to visit the house and knock on the door the next day. They had already told everybody. And I wanted to look toward the windows of this house. But the entire yard was covered with trees whose limbs were hanging like a fountain. Large bushes with green and brown leaves growing up to the windows. Some say that there was a tombstone there. Though I had never seen it.

[00:07:52] Whenever there was a chance to look toward the windows or to look for the tombstone, it was like my legs automatically got into gear and one of us would trigger some type of escape response and we would all take off running. My sister asked our parents about the house when we got home and they didn't seem to know much about it. Although they said that the name Martin actually sounded familiar to them. But they left it at that. The entire next day was buzzing with all the talk about the fifth grader.

[00:08:22] A kid named Tommy was going to go to the blue house and knock on the door. Though the group that turned up was smaller than expected, when the day was over, there was a group of about ten of us out there on the sidewalk watching as Tommy and his brother, a kid about my age, walked up to the door. Tommy knocked and then tried to run away. The door opened quickly and a woman grabbed Tommy by the arm, bringing him inside the house and then leaving the door wide open.

[00:08:53] Everyone gasped at what we had just seen. It was made even worse when his brother walked up to the door yelling out his brother's name. He would turn to look at us, waving his arms trying to get us to come closer and help him. But nobody moved. Now this whole thing must have happened in ten seconds and yet it felt like forever. His brother stood there at the front door looking up as if trying to decipher something an adult was saying to him.

[00:09:20] It was all through the darkness of that door frame. He shook his head, no, and then looked back at us, pointed at us. Some of the kids freaked out and started running, but my sister and I stood still. We still had to go in front of the house to get to the corner where our house was. And that's when we saw her. An older woman with many wrinkles on her face.

[00:09:45] Her white eyes looking at us, completely still for what seemed like forever before she hid again behind the door. Tommy's hand then grabbed onto the door and stepped outside. Everything was so quiet when the door closed. The pair walked through the messy garden and onto the sidewalk. And Tommy had tears in his eyes and was having an asthma attack, taking out his inhaler as the group started to scatter away slowly.

[00:10:11] Some had to get home back the other way and others, like me, were curious as to what had happened and stayed. Tommy and his brother walked up to the sidewalk. Of course, I had seen them before. Some were in the cafeteria for breakfast or after school. But not like this. They were pretty shaken up about what had just happened, but his younger brother was able to say a few words in between his loud breathing.

[00:10:38] They both kept looking back, trying to keep walking faster down the sidewalk as my sister and I and three other kids waited for them to tell us something. But it wouldn't matter. The school still talked about how the witch of the blue house tried to take Tommy. That his brother has seen the witch. Claims that other kids had also been there, way too many to count, had added their own versions of the story. It was like that thing they used to say at church.

[00:11:07] That the devil wasn't a person or a monster, but a thing that surrounded us. Sometimes making us believe lies and spreading them around. I thought of what Tommy's younger brother had told us that day after they escaped from this woman. From the witch of the blue house. You see, when she grabbed Tommy, she called him by a different name as she stared at him. Little Martin, she told him. My little Martin.

[00:11:35] Reaching out for his face with her wrinkled hands. His name is Tommy, the brother said. His name is Tommy. Little Martin, she kept saying, until the illusion vanished right in front of her. She looked away and stepped away from him and disappeared into the dark hallway. I think about that woman a lot. The pain of seeing children from across her yard. I'm sure she didn't care about being called a witch.

[00:12:04] It's likely she didn't even know about it. She passed away sometime when I was in middle school. My sister was still in fifth grade back then. The rumor still continued. That the witch from the blue house would take kids and make them disappear. Not knowing the truth. But all she wanted was for one of them. Just one of them. To appear again.

[00:12:52] I moved into apartment 4A last August. Small studio. No AC. The kind of place where the neighbors avoid eye contact and pretend not to hear when someone screams in the middle of the night. Cheap rent though. The first night, while trying to connect to Wi-Fi, I noticed something weird.

[00:13:11] Among the usual routers, Netgear 24, Xfinity Wi-Fi, and FBI surveillance van, there was one labeled Offline underscore Room underscore 3B. It was locked. No signal strength. I assumed it belonged to someone who moved out or changed their settings. But the name stuck with me. It didn't follow the usual router naming vibe. I mean, Offline?

[00:13:40] Why advertise that? I asked the landlord about it the next day. It was an old guy who chain smoked through every sentence. 3B's been empty for months, he grunted. Last tenant just laughed. No notice. No boxes. Just gone. That was the first red flag. The second one came three nights later. I couldn't sleep.

[00:14:07] Just scrolling on my laptop, watching videos when at exactly 3.33am, the router Offline underscore Room underscore 3B lit up. Full bars. And unlocked. Out of curiosity, I clicked connect. My screen glitched. Like the pixels warped and shifted. It didn't just freeze. My cursor disappeared for a few seconds and then reappeared.

[00:14:36] My Chrome browser closed itself. A window popped up. An old school chat room interface like something from Windows 95. Gray background. Green text. Then came a message. Welcome. Your presence is required. I typed back.

[00:14:56] I typed back. I tried to ignore it. I tried to ignore it.

[00:15:25] Rationalize it. Sleep deprived hallucination. Maybe some weird glitch. Maybe someone was trolling me with a Wi-Fi emulator. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. So the next day I went to the library and searched for anything I could find about apartment 3B. And one news article came up from two years ago. Local man missing. Last seen in apartment 3B. And then the address. The photo showed a guy about my age.

[00:15:55] He looked like he hadn't slept in days. His name was Kyle Jones. No foul play suspected. And the police called it a voluntary disappearance. Then a second article came up from a year ago. Woman vanishes from city apartment. Room 3B. Different name. Same unit. I went back and asked the landlord again. Pressing him this time.

[00:16:25] Place is cursed. He muttered under his breath. I should have sealed it off. Every year. One tenant. Gone. Like they never existed. I asked why he still rented it out. He looked at me with bloodshot eyes. It's not about rent. It's about balance. That room wants to be filled. If it's empty. It spreads. That night.

[00:16:54] I set my alarm for 3.30am. I was ready. Phone recording. Laptop on. And like clockwork. At 3.33am. The offline underscore room underscore 3B router. Reappeared. And I connected. Same chat window popped up. But this time. It showed me something new. A video feed. Grainy. Black and white.

[00:17:23] It looked like the hallway outside of my apartment. Except in the footage. My door was wide open. And I saw myself lying in bed. Asleep. At least I thought I was. The me on the feed started twitching violently. And then sat up and stared directly into the camera. No. Not the camera. Me. And then a message appeared. One must stay so the others may leave.

[00:17:52] You are the next occupant. The screen went black. And the wifi. Cut out. I checked my hallway. My door was locked. Nothing out there. But something changed after that night. Now when I walk past apartment 3B. I swear I hear movement inside. Not regular movement. More like whispering electronics. Faint typing.

[00:18:21] Like someone scrolling endlessly. And then. Last week. I posted everything I just told you. On a paranormal tech forum. I uploaded screenshots. The chat logs. Even a still from the hallway feed. The post got tons of attention. Comments. Theories. Even a podcast invite. But then it vanished. The thread. Deleted. My account. Suspended.

[00:18:50] The screenshots on my hard drive. Corrupted. And just now. Just. Now. I opened my laptop. And checked for networks. And a new one appeared. Offline. Room. 4A. That's my unit. And it's open. And it's 333 AM.

[00:19:27] Scary Story Podcast is written and produced by me. Edwin Covarrubias. If you have any true creepy stories that you want people to hear. We have a new space to share them now. It's called Paranormal Club. And it's a podcast where we meet to talk about the unknown. Paranormal Club is available now. And you can find it by searching for Paranormal Club on your app right now. I'll see you there. You can support me and the shows by joining Scary Plus.

[00:19:54] It's a subscription where you get all of my stories without ads. Free for 14 days and then $4.99 a month after that. You can cancel anytime. And it's not like a new website or anything. You can actually keep playing the podcast right here on this app. Let me know if you have any questions about it though. My details and contact are in the description of this episode. Remember to share this story with a friend who might be into it. And if you tap follow on this show, I will tell you another story next week. Thank you very much for listening.

[00:20:25] Keep it scary everyone. See you soon.