Nightmares Are Real and Other Scary Stories

[00:00:00] My name is Edwin and this is Scary Story Podcast. Because you requested it, here are more remastered stories, the ones from season 1, but this time with much better audio. Nightmares Are Real. I have a tough time falling asleep in places that are not my bedroom.

[00:00:29] When I go on vacations, it takes me a few days to get used to new places. Looking on buses or airplanes, forget about it. This time I had spent the night in an uncomfortable hotel by the center of town when I went to

[00:00:43] visit my girlfriend's family out of state. They're all very nice people. I feel bad whenever I have to be around a group after not getting much sleep, because all I can think of doing is going to my bed and calling it quits.

[00:00:57] I wanted to grab a coffee, but my girlfriend was being weird about me drinking too much of it, so I skipped out on the iced coffee from McDonald's. It was around 3pm anyway, so I probably made the right call.

[00:01:11] Otherwise, I'd end up twisting and turning all night again. We got to her grandparents' house and I was greeted with a plate of bread and yes, coffee. I gladly said yes to the coffee, but after taking a sip, I realized it was sweetened.

[00:01:32] I take my coffee black because those sugar crashes are the worst. To not be rude, I took a piece of bread also and my girlfriend's grandma was there to make sure that I ate it so that she could offer another one.

[00:01:45] I was able to keep the conversation for almost 15 minutes before my eyes began to shut. And someone, I don't remember who, asked me if I was tired. I said yes and that I hadn't gotten much sleep.

[00:02:01] They're older people, so they're used to taking naps I guess, but they asked me to go up to the bed in the unit that they had in the backyard, to which I said yes. I literally had no more strength in me to get picky about where I slept.

[00:02:15] The guest house had two stories. The room was on the second one. Every single step I took tired me out even more. I finally made it and fell flat on the bed without even taking off my shoes. I was woken up by high-pitched laughter.

[00:02:37] Like an excited little kid running around. I turned my head toward the door and I looked at the light from the window across from me. It was almost sunset, but then I saw somebody.

[00:02:52] The silhouette was not of some little kid, but rather a short, older man covered in mud. He didn't move. He didn't say anything. This was not normal. It couldn't be real. But what was more confusing, however, was that I didn't feel fear.

[00:03:17] I wasn't freaking out, though I did feel sick to my stomach. Almost like wanting to throw up. The man disappeared sometime during the confusion when I scrambled for my cell phone. I'm not sure why I wanted it.

[00:03:35] I kept looking out for the man, starting to freak out finally. While staring across from the bed, I just fell asleep again. I had a weird dream that I was being chased through a patch of trees and something grabbed my arm. That's when I woke up again.

[00:04:00] My girlfriend had opened the door and was standing by the door frame, telling me that they were going to have dinner for me to come downstairs. I said okay and grabbed my cell phone and rubbed my eyes. It was 7pm.

[00:04:15] My face was a bit pale when I stepped into the dining room and my girlfriend asked me off to the side what was wrong. I briefly told her I had seen something weird in the room upstairs. A man staring at me.

[00:04:31] It soon became a topic of conversation around the table, family telling me of their own weird experiences in that room. Now some of them refused to use it. What they didn't know was that I went downstairs and to the bathroom first to wash my hands and face.

[00:04:53] Apparently my hands were so dirty that I actually dirtied up the bar of soap. I was about to rinse it. When I noticed a dark patch on my left arm, I could almost peel it off. It was a crusty, weird looking blob stuck to it.

[00:05:15] I came right off and then fell apart in the sink. It had dried up. It was mud. Death in a car. Junkyards have a certain odd feeling to them. They're like a graveyard of cars that have been in car crashes, repossessed or plain abandoned by their owners.

[00:05:55] It's sad. I was carrying the toolbox where my dad as we looked for the big SUVs to take a small assembly from the dashboard in a junkyard one afternoon. Along the way, I liked to peek into the car's glove compartments and the sections where the cup holders are.

[00:06:13] I've gotten lucky and have found several quarters before. After looking through a few cars, I found one that had a child seat in the back. In the seat there was a rattle. Plus some wrappers of what seemed to be gum.

[00:06:29] I blinked for a second and I heard a little girl giggling in the back seat, followed by some terrified screams. I pulled myself out of the car as fast as I could. Oh, I probably should have mentioned that I see things sometimes. I have an overactive imagination

[00:06:49] and I've woken up in the middle of the night seeing large spiders coming down toward my face from the ceiling. Weird creatures sitting on my chest and I see shapes in mirrors when I pass by. It's just my imagination. That's what everyone tells me.

[00:07:09] I went onto the car next to that one and I saw what I rarely see in junkyards. As I was coming closer to peek into the window, I noticed, Hey, I'll be right over here. Give me the toolbox. My dad called out. He was about 10 feet away.

[00:07:28] Okay, I replied. I'm coming. I went over and gave him the toolbox, still thinking about what I had seen in the car. It doesn't happen often, but I still look for the moments when it comes up. Sometimes it's in unexpected places like on a sidewalk

[00:07:49] or on the center dividers on a freeway. It stands out, splashed from the white paint. It's blood. Something happened in that car. I opened the door. It was a minivan, so it had the sliding door that creaked all the way until it got stuck on the end hook.

[00:08:11] Yes, the passenger side windows all had a big streak of blood. Tiny cracks on the glass with what looked like human teeth. Staring at the glass, when I heard a soft creaking sound, then a gasp. I didn't want to look toward the back seat of the car,

[00:08:34] but I couldn't help it. Slowly, it turned my head as I felt my face turn cold with fear. There was a woman there. Her face covered in blood. Her mouth was missing some teeth. And she looked like she was getting ready to speak.

[00:09:04] As she stared blankly into my eyes, I couldn't move. Her mouth grew wider. The mystery man from the shed. My house is in the middle of nowhere, as some would say. My family moved here less than a year ago

[00:09:44] and I still don't have many friends in the area. Everyone in my high school knows each other and it has been especially hard being the new kid. But I have made a couple of friends recently that also like making YouTube videos,

[00:09:58] so we started to hang out together sometimes after school. It's weird having to take a school bus to school through long stretches of forest and hills. Our closest neighbor is about a quarter of a mile away. I'm always paranoid ever since I had an allergic reaction

[00:10:15] and had to be taking to emergency services. I wonder how long it would take the paramedics to get to me. My room is on the east side of the house and through my window I get a clear view to our shed and also to the patch of trees

[00:10:33] that start way off into the distance. It almost feels like a farm, but my mom is a writer and my dad also works on the computer all day, so we're not even close to being farmers. I started using the backyard's field to make videos for YouTube

[00:10:50] and I recently got into the whole YouTube live thing. It's cool. My internet is very fast, even when I'm far outside the house, so I have no trouble streaming pretty much anywhere. One Saturday afternoon, while I was out with my friend Evan near the shed

[00:11:08] trying to record a DIY video for one of his classes, something strange happened. I was live streaming and had about 10 people watching. They were asking questions and that's when someone asked, who was living in the shed? I said nobody and I thought it would be cool

[00:11:31] to show everyone around inside so I opened up the doors and turned on the light. There were several of my boxes in there and some sawing equipment that the old owners left there. That was it. Or so I thought at the time.

[00:11:48] The shed is large and has two windows on it, facing the front. I guess it could easily be turned into a studio for video making. I put that on my list of things to work on. I had a lot of time on my hands ever since moving there.

[00:12:04] Way too much of it. I realized that I had too much time on my hands later on that evening too when I kept thinking about who lives in the shed question. The guy knew that it was a shed. People don't live in sheds. Why would he even ask?

[00:12:24] It was around 1 a.m. now when I woke up again. I dreamed that I was being chased. I then grabbed my phone and opened up Instagram when a notification popped up from YouTube. Comments. Yeah, I saw that too. In my honest opinion, this guy is crazy

[00:12:46] and it's all fake. I opened it up and saw that I had another notification on the recorded live video. A guy time-stamped minute 24.14, where apparently the window closes. Or so he said. I clicked it and watched it. And I couldn't believe what I saw.

[00:13:12] The window had been slightly open about two inches or so. And the only reason I could tell was because someone shut it from the inside. You can see it clearly. What was even more weird was that a bearded face could be seen through the window.

[00:13:32] And you could also see the hand that reached up to lock it. Video goes on to where I open the door and turn on the light. I watched the 10 seconds of video over and over. But I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just some boxes and sewing equipment.

[00:13:52] There was also some plywood leaning on the wall, but nothing weird. I showed my dad the video the next day and he agreed that he could see it too. And he was shocked. We both went over to the shed and opened up both front doors.

[00:14:10] They were barn style so they opened wide. As all the light flooded into the shed, you could see just boxes, a table, a drill, and plywood. I didn't want to be in there. My dad stepped in and looked around. That's when he saw buckets behind the boxes.

[00:14:36] There were a couple of paper Burger King bags, a plastic cup and a box of what looked like the ones that they served chicken nuggets in, all in a plastic five gallon bucket. It also reaped of piss in that area.

[00:14:55] Who knows how long someone had been staying in there or how many times I might have casually missed him going in there as I looked out into the fields from my window. My dad called the police and opened up a report.

[00:15:09] He also installed sensor floodlights and cameras the following week. So far, we haven't caught anything. The next story called Unwanted Night Crew is coming up right after this. Unwanted Night Crew. People always refer to the staff that cleans the office spaces at night as the night crew.

[00:15:47] But I work by myself. I do three floors, 14 common areas, conference rooms, a break rooms and the bathrooms in the middle of the night. Normally I just listen to podcasts or music on my phone. There's one floor that I don't like that I've never liked.

[00:16:07] I'd actually switch buildings with one of my friends that I partner up with sometimes because I always got a weird feeling about this particular building. Well, this particular floor. The first event I remember was the microwave beeping in the break room. Like when someone keeps pushing buttons.

[00:16:29] Whenever I hear a noise in an office building I worry a little bit because nobody should be in there at the time. The warehouses are empty. There's no security guard inside of the building. They typically only do the rounds from the outside looking around for suspicious activity.

[00:16:46] I went over to the microwave and saw that its door was open. I closed it and it popped open again right in front of me. I figured it was broken but I did freak out a little bit.

[00:17:02] I just left it like that with the light on and everything. The next thing I remember from that place was my vacuum cleaner refusing to turn on and having to switch outlets two separate times during my shift.

[00:17:16] It's annoying having to manually sweep everything and not being able to vacuum up afterward. I don't think anyone noticed that I had a vacuum two rooms at night. But the third thing was by far the creepiest thing I've ever witnessed.

[00:17:33] It was around 4am and the last thing I needed to do was clean up the bathrooms and collect up all the trash and then take them to the dumpsters out in the back corner of the property.

[00:17:48] As I opened up the bathroom doors I heard a loud growl coming from the inside. It wasn't even like an animal sound nor was it human. Some type of really low, slow, almost crackling growl. I ran back outside the bathroom and I had only taken two steps inside.

[00:18:12] Then I stood outside of the door leaning against the wall for so long that the motion detectors turned off the lights. I guess I was standing there frozen for longer than I had initially thought. The growling started up again with loud noises and doors slamming inside the bathroom.

[00:18:33] I ran down the hall and down to the first floor. I sat on the stairs like a wimp not knowing what to do. But I needed to get the bags out at least. I could apologize for the bathroom mess later on that really didn't bother me.

[00:18:51] This was the second of the two buildings that I did by myself and I needed the money. I don't know how but I gathered up the courage to go back up to the second floor and get into the bathroom.

[00:19:03] I sprayed the toilets with disinfectant loosely swept up the floor and wiped the mirrors. I went back to flush the first of the toilets but as I did the others flushed by themselves too. I wasn't going to wait any longer. I quickly walked outside and went downstairs.

[00:19:26] I grabbed my trash bags and booked it to my car. Trash bags and all. I would dump everything out at home. This happened around four months ago. I hadn't been in this building since then. Apparently I haven't been the only one that has experienced weird things in there.

[00:19:48] I mostly hear about chairs being moved and doors slamming shut. Never anything about the deep growling. But anyway, that's the building that I have to clean tonight. And I'll be by myself again. Let's hope nothing happens. The hotel guest.

[00:20:27] I am the only guard on duty at the hotel during the graveyard shift. Actually, I'm the only employee at night in the whole place. This hotel used to be a bank back in the day and it's one of the oldest structures still standing in this town.

[00:20:42] This is great for tourists but not so much for the piping and wiring systems. Aside from all that, there has always been something weird about this place. I've gotten used to it after ten years. Lately though, things got out of hand.

[00:21:01] Every once in a while we get backpackers that are traveling long term. That means they smell bad and they have a lot of friends that stop by. Some with unusual beliefs and energies and other things like that.

[00:21:13] I've been known to shut down drum circles on the sidewalk at night. And I've gotten rid of a few dream catcher devices that they leave in the rooms. A while ago, I saw a lonely traveling man, light a bowl full of leaves on fire through the cameras.

[00:21:31] When I went up to the roof to tell him that he couldn't be doing that, he apologized. Then left me alone in the roof. Crazy people. They would always give off an odd stare almost like he wasn't completely there. Either that or he was always high.

[00:21:51] He spoke to very few people. One evening he went out to eat and just never came back. He left his backpack and everything, which the police came by to pick up. There were no reports of any missing people in the area and nothing suspicious.

[00:22:13] There was one occasion like that in the past so it isn't too big of a deal. What is weird though, is that strange things have been happening to me at night. I'm not supposed to sleep in the office but I sleep there anyway.

[00:22:31] I wake up with every single sound and we have motion sensors in the backyards and hallways. Nothing has ever happened during my watch. Well, nothing has happened to other people. I was woken up by someone tugging at my arm one night. Then they tugged my leg.

[00:22:50] In the dark I reached out to the lamp and realized that I was alone in the office. Must have been a dream. The following evening we had around 10 guests in the entire hotel and it was a quiet night.

[00:23:04] I heard a loud cough next to my window which faced an external hallway. I expected it to stop but they didn't. So I grew concerned that someone was smoking in a no smoking area by our propane tanks. So I stepped outside and found nobody there.

[00:23:22] The coughing had also stopped. I told my boss about the occurrences at night and he agreed to double check the cameras. You couldn't see much action until I caught a glimpse of what looked like to be a dog walking in the dark.

[00:23:37] You stopped suddenly and stood up to lean against the office's window. A dog? Dogs aren't allowed anywhere in the hotel. I decided to get some of my paperwork done well into the night instead of sleeping.

[00:23:51] There were a bunch of guest sign-up sheets that needed to be inputted on the computer. It was around 3am when I heard the alarm. I heard the alarm. I heard the alarm. I heard the alarm.

[00:24:07] It was around 3am when I heard some shuffling outside and this time I turned around quickly to see someone's face through the window. They backed away and ducked under the window trying to remain out of view.

[00:24:22] I turned on the exterior lights manually since the sensors didn't go off this time. I heard footsteps running away from me through the hall and into the storage areas. The person was obviously not really trying to hide. Why would they be peeking through the window?

[00:24:40] There's really nothing interesting in there. At all, I grabbed my flashlight and went straight to the back storage areas. As I was walking around I saw a familiar scene. It was a crazy guy. Sitting on the dirt where his legs crossed. A ball in front of him.

[00:25:03] Full of leaves. And then he vanished. I tried explaining this to my coworkers and they say they believe me but they also think that I'm making far too big of a deal about it. I know what I saw that night.

[00:25:21] I've sought advice from a priest but he couldn't help. Some of my friends have suggested to dig around in that area and maybe I'll find something. But there's no way I'd ever be able to explain my reasons to be doing so. I think I'm going crazy.

[00:25:38] The weird events at night have stopped though. Maybe seeing what I saw was all that was required of me to make it stop. Let me know what you think about these remastered stories. We have more original stories coming up in the next episode.

[00:26:04] And to stay up to date with my stories be sure to tap follow right now on your podcast player. Up next, be sure to check out my other podcast called True Scary Story where everyday people tell their most scary experiences.

[00:26:17] Share yours with me by finding me on Twitter or Instagram at Edwin Co. That's E-D-W-I-N-C-O-V. Thank you very much for listening. See you soon.