The Beep

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Do you remember the first podcast you ever listened to? In today's story, we have one such tale. My name is Edwin, and here it's a scary story. There was a show about old legends and mysteries, and then there was another one from people who stole stories from Reddit and then shared them with everybody. But there was one show specifically that made my bones rattle inside and I got a sudden surge of energy and fear mixed with excitement whenever a new story came out. The podcast had no title, a randomly generated cover image, yellow text over lighter yellow background. It was so rough looking that you would oversee it easily, but it showed up in my search for scares, and I went for it. I had just gotten to what would be my new home. My plan was try to make it in another state, at least for several months while I got everything together and I was able to find a room to stay in. It was a small apartment for the wopping price of three hundred and twenty dollars a month. Imagine me a first timer following the money once it ran out at my old job. Hanterville was a place and the city was in the southern part of the state. Safe, everyone said, nothing to worry about. Sometimes I would wait too long and the shops around the house would close up, and the only open places to eat would be the fries at the stand by the corner or the hot dogs from fourth Street. Everything was within a twenty minute walk, but time moved slowly, with it being spent mostly waiting around for Maria to get off work so we could hang out, or me trying for that desperate job search. I tried getting into running, but the elevation got the best of me. I tried volunteering, spending all my time in coffee shops, and learning a bunch of things online. The only thing that sped up time was you guessed it listening to stories. There were shows on travel, on languages, history, and my all time favorite ghost stories. Some of these episodes were half an hour long, so I would try to find places to walk to on purpose, just so that I could have the time to listen to more. And that's what somehow led me to the show, The One with No Name and the yellow cover. The stories were dark, no host to lead you into them, no real storyline, but rather a series of scenarios, people telling stories of something that happened to them, or recordings of conversations with very little context. There was a sudden sense of unease and discomfort during the episodes, and yet you knew that something dark was about to happen. They often wondered how they got these stories made, and so far, I don't think anyone else has gotten the chance to make the same things. It just seemed so real. The show had a few comments, like reviews about specific episodes. Most were only question marks, with people wondering what they had just listened to, while others seemed to get it. But along with those, there were a select few that really try to stop the show from continuing. There were these long, detailed reviews from people who claimed that they were being followed or being recorded, blaming it completely on the show. I don't remember them with all the details anymore, but there were a couple of reviews that really stood out, like there was one about this woman. She started her comments explaining how she first found the show. It was the same as me, just by scrolling along the lists of shows that were available at the time. That's when she found an episode called Holly's Donuts and it piqued her interest. You see, she had worked out a place called Holly's Donuts by her house and found it peculiar. Play on the story one night, and that's when everything started. She titled her review, did not listen to this Beware, and then talked about the episode that terrified her. First, she summarizes the story, and I remember this episode. It was about a woman who was the attendant at a donut shop during her shift when a strange customer showed up one night. He stood there for a bit with no expression on his face. Then suddenly he managed to ask long night, isn't it Without paying much attention to the customer, The attendant sort of nodded and then went back to putting more coffee in the machine. She was wondering if the customer would ask for something or if he was just going to stand there trying to make contact with the attendant, who, by the way, was frustrated, so she decided to ask if he wanted something, but the man simply stood there. After a couple of minutes, the attendant got tired of waiting and told the guy to holler or if he needed something, and went to the back of the shop. To finish up the donuts. The first wave of customers would be arriving at five in the morning, and she wanted to be ready, but apparently the man just stood there, doing nothing but stare at her over the counter, his hands by his side, completely still. The intendant must have been in the back for about two minutes before she realized that the beep announcing that anyone had crossed the doorframe had not gone off, and so she got worried. She stepped out toward the counter and found the man still standing there again, completely still. The attendant, even more frustrated by this point, ask the man what he wanted and that if he was just going to stand there without ordering anything, she was going to have to ask him to leave, and still the man didn't move. A bit afraid by this point, the attendant goes to the back and picks up the phone. She calls the security office of the plaza where this donut shop was, telling them that there was a strain man that wouldn't leave the donut shop. He was just standing there. Security takes about five minutes to get there while this guy still basically frozen solid by the counter, a blank stare on his face. The intendant decides to go to the back, peeking through the small window on the door to the kitchen every thirty seconds or so, when she suddenly hears a beat from the door. The attendant rushes out and sees a security guard standing in the front right by the counter, asking if everything was all right. When she looks around, she notices that the security guard is the only person in the shot. The intendant asked the security guard if he saw the man who was standing in there, but he says no. Confuse, the intendant asks the guard to stay there while she checks the security footage and nearly loses her mind, where she sees herself talking to nobody right there at the donut shop. The intendant apologizes to the security guard and says that it must have been a mistas, never admitting that she had practically imagined the whole thing. But that was it, no context, nothing else. The episode just ends, and at this point you're probably wondering exactly what I did? How did this story affect the reviewer? Now? What the story meant to her was a creepy part. You see, she claimed that she was the attendant that night and that the story from that episode seemed to pretend to be her telling her story, and she hated going to work at the graveyard ship to Holly's Donuts. She was just afraid of it, and this encounter with the strange man had made things worse. She now had to force herself to go into work every single night. Since the same review, she explained that she had tried to get in touch with the makers of the podcast but was unsuccessful, and that she had made it her mission to stop others from listening to the fear like this is not entertainment, this is unsafe, do not listen. Those were the final words on her review. I understood that, and although part of me thought that it was just marketing, you know, to get more people to listen to the program, there was something very eerie about the stories, in this case at Holly's Donuts, where this person was terrified of working the late night shift by herself. If the review was fake because it was just marketing, it was good. But I was hooked on these stories. Although every once in a while I would glance at the reviews to find more and more confused statements with the occasional warning, like the one warning from a listener from the episode Cemetery Bob. Cemetery Bob was a story of a man who had just lost his mother and he was sitting at one of the benches at the cemetery and that afternoon, just when the sun was about to set, another man walks up to the bench and sits down right next to him. Trying not to pay much attention to the stranger, the man sort of ignores him, and after a few seconds of silence, the stranger stands up, stares at him blankly and asks where's everybody again? With no context, just that uneasy feeling when you know something's about to happen, and the episode ends suddenly. In the review for that specific episode, a warning to listeners, the person explains that his story was very similar, that his mother was the only remaining family member, and that now he was going to be completely alone. Hearing the question where's everybody just made it worse. There was something that the stranger knew and decided to bring out at the worst possible time, And it was at this time when I realized that these stories had more common that I knew. All of them involved the uncomfortable presence of a strange man who would show up at a person's most vulnerable moment. Who was he? What did he want? Should have stopped listening right then and there. Part two is coming up right after this stay with me. Just like the story of Holly's Donuts or Cemetery Bob, there were others. The babysitter, a woman who encounters this same stranger at the door asking about the baby she was caring for, and the story of Bike in the Alley, the one about a guy walking home from work and encountering the stranger standing by a bicycle in the dark alley. In every single one of them, there's this man, a complete stranger with a blank stare us listeners waiting for him to say something, And I get chills thinking about the show even now. Although it's for different reasons. Now I can tell you this, I was glad once it was taken off the catalog. It was never meant to be listened to by anybody, And to this day I can't explain what happened to me. You see, I was obsessed with these stories. There wasn't anything to them, not stories of walking zombies or monsters, no ghosts, no demons, just regular people going about their day and having the same terrifying encounter when they least expected it. It made me think so much about my biggest fears, and no, they weren't about dying alone or working the night shift. There was nothing I could think of that scared me at the level that these other listeners expressed and the reviews. I actually liked these stories. It was a thrill I got from listening to one after another, especially at night when I would walk around town to make time to listen to every thing. Well, actually, there was something I was afraid of, although it sort of added to the whole experience. You see, nearby where I used to live, there was a sound that everyone could hear, a beeping coming from one of the houses nearby. I always suspected it to come from one of the empty three story buildings by the edge of town, but everyone that I asked had no idea where the sound was actually coming from. I know that it would help me get back to the house when I would walk through the long dirt roads on the nights when the moon was covered up, the beep would tell me when I was nearby. When I was closed to my place, I knew I could turn on the light for my phone at any moment, and I knew that the straight road would take me all the way back to my place. It was safe, like a ride at an amusement park. It was like that every night, a soft beep that would barely be noticeable to most, but once you heard it, you couldn't get rid of it. I tried to find the source of it once, but ended up circling the part of town without a clue in the world where it was coming from. And soon I simply used it as ambience as I listened to the stories on my night walks. It was almost eleven at night, and I was about to leave to listen to one of these stories, and so I was scrolling through them when I suddenly read a strangely familiar title. The beep twenty minutes long and perfect for my walk, and so I made sure my phone was charged, my earphones were on, and I stepped outside. It was dark, the moon nowhere in sight, and that press play. The story started off talking about a guy who was new to a town and was going insane to the constant beeping coming from a nearby place from where he lived. The voice was eerily similar to mine, but I tried to shake it off as I kept walking down the road. Ten minutes out and ten minutes back would do the trick. But something was different that night. As they walked with that be being becoming softer in the distance, it was adding a completely unsettling feeling to the story. I thought about turning around when they talked about this guy walking along the road, the beat being fading away. It was my story, I thought of the reviewer. So the warnings about listening to the show, the fears everyone talked about that maybe the makers of the program were somehow tracking the listeners, or that there was something else, something evil at play, something that knew our every move and was actually manifesting through the stories it told. Every night, thoughts of me seeing this stranger coming up to me staring blankly sent another chills on my back and try to talk myself out of it. The story must have been a coincidence that was far away from everybody, nobody knew me, and yet I felt it that unsettling gut feeling that something was about to happen and that it was time to turn back. I looked around to barely be able to see the white walls of a distant house, but by this time, shadows of the branches of the trees were also figures looking right at me. Every single one was a stranger, frozen in place. My heart began to raise so hard that I could feel it on the side of my face. I was going to turn back. The beeping was going to tell me how far I was for my place. It should take me three minutes to get there if I speed walk, I remember thinking to myself, I just have to hurry. I pressed pause on the episode. Now the only sounds were the beeping and the rustling of the trees. My shoes against the dirt road were at to the mix. But then I noticed that the beeping wasn't coming from in front of me anymore, rather from the trees that I passed my house. After getting so nervous how long had I been out there for? I stopped in place and looked around. I grabbed my phone to turn on the light, but then the beep was suddenly behind me. I turned around, and the beep seemed to move again. My knees were getting weak, and I could feel myself breathing a little bit faster. Something was out there. I gripped my phone tightly and started to run back toward the house, accidentally tapping the play button and hearing the story in my voice, talking about the beep, the sound that terrified an entire community, the person getting chased down a long dirt road in the dark. It didn't matter. My heart was so loud that it was in my ears now, completely stopping me from hearing anything but my footsteps, my breathing, and that beep. The story was nothing but a distant sound. It was taunting me, coming up from behind. I could feel it circle me. Unnaturally, I imagined a person with a beeping alarm like a recording an ice cream truck. Megaphone is the closest thing I could think of at the time. I started running as the wind picked up the beeping very close behind. When I spotted the corner of my street, I rushed toward it, sweat dripping from my forehead and into my eyes. I prayed for that door to open on the first try. The key had been giving me trouble ever since I lost my first copy. I reached for my pockets, afraid to look anywhere else but ahead of me, and I grabbed the keys. It was two steps away from the front gate, and the key out and ready. There was a bit of relief when I heard the lock click. I ran inside and slammed the keep behind me. I had the second key ready. I managed to get inside and lock the door to the living room. My mind was swirling with the thousands of scenarios, the stories of the reviewers, the beat from my neighborhood, how this thing could have turned out to be much worse. And then I realized that I was okay. I could just put this behind me. And that's when the story came back to my mind. The sound was playing through my headphone still. I turned it off and grabbed a glass of water. Then I walked up to my room. What had just happened was lingering in my mind during my shower, and I had that same strange feeling about the story. Was the episode about me? And how would anyone know that I was listening to it? The beat? Was it just a coincidence? I finished up started getting ready for bed quite late by this point when I heard the familiar sounds outside the beeB once a sound that added to the eeriness of the stories, was now becoming a source of fear all by itself. I got into bed with the beeB getting louder and louder, and so I got up and I walked through the window, just to make sure that it was closed, but the beeB continued. I reached for the curtains and there he was, the man with the blank stare. I managed to take one step back before freezing up completely, short, dark hair and a pale face, dark eyebrows and no expression. A few seconds passed, my heart beats beating up once again, so loud. I thought of the stories, I thought of the warnings. My eyes were fixed on this person right across the window frame, but then he slowly opened his mouth be Scary Story podcast is written and produced by me Edwin Kowarujes. Thank you very much for your comments and messages. You can help by tapping follow and dropping some stars for me, since that's how Spotify and Apple decide what to promote. And if you want to listen without ads, check out Scary Plus over on scaryplus dot com. And if you have questions, you know where to find me. The next checkout Horror Story, where I tell you about real creepy tales of haunted places, mysteries and paranormal phenomenon. It's the show with the title horror Story and yellow letters, but I'll also link to it in the description of the episode in case you can't find it. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary everyone, See you soon.