The Neighbor's House

[00:00:00] Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. There is something wrong with the neighbor in this story. Perhaps you can spot it. My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. When I tell you that my neighbor and I were not close, I mean our properties were not

[00:00:25] close to each other. Although it is important to note that I was not his friend and have no connection to him nor had any connection to him or his property other than being his neighbor. The area will not be disclosed and after my initial statement to the authorities,

[00:00:41] I decided not to speak of the incidents. Until today. I understand it has been years and that some of you will not believe me, so I'd like to remind you that I have nothing to gain from this.

[00:00:56] It is hard to know which one of us moved in first. One day we were just neighbors, then passing by each other's houses in our own trucks, waving to each other as we pulled off the side of the dirt road to let the other one pass.

[00:01:10] The only things I knew about him were the things my sister would share with me when she would spend a week at my house along with my nephews who liked nature and the outdoors ever since they were little.

[00:01:20] My sister, being the type of person that she is, makes friends everywhere and strikes up conversations with everyone she bumps into. They had brought along their dog this time and were taking him out for a walk around the

[00:01:33] river area at the edge of the property, which I knew would take them longer than usual, but right before sunset, I got a strange feeling and decided to go check on them to see if everything was alright.

[00:01:46] I saw the guy's red truck on the side of the road and stepped on the gas to pull up to them, just as my sister and her two kids were about to get in the truck, but they suddenly stopped and stared right at my headlights.

[00:01:59] The dog jumped out of the bed of the truck as my sister pointed at me and walked over to my truck. Everything seemed okay, but the neighbor remained at his truck simply staring at me, not a sign of him stepping out to say hello or anything.

[00:02:15] My sister said something to him before her and the dog and the kids walked over to my truck and got in. They were smiling, my sister telling me that he was going to bring them back to my house.

[00:02:26] They had spent a long time talking with the neighbor and it had gotten late. She knew how I felt about the whole thing, and I told her. I don't want them talking to the neighbors, that there's only two types of people who

[00:02:39] choose to live the way that I do. Either they're looking for a calm life or they're running away from something. Besides, I didn't want that guy in my property and I'm sure he didn't like me being in his,

[00:02:52] although I made sure to stay on the public access road. Respect goes both ways. But everything my sister told me of the guy seemed to pass. She said she felt sorry for him. They had talked about their lives and eventually of divorce.

[00:03:08] I interrupted to ask if she had talked about her divorce in front of her children. I mean, the whole thing was messed up but my sister had a strange honest way about her.

[00:03:17] I had a tough time opening up with my own problems, but she was willing to share them with everyone, and therefore people would share them with her. She had found out about the guy's wife who had left them less than a year ago and out

[00:03:32] of nowhere, one day simply saying that she didn't want to be around anymore, and left. There was hate in his voice, my sister said, whispering it to me as we arrived so the kids wouldn't hear.

[00:03:45] I think the guy needed someone to talk to, although he never made an attempt to talk to me at all. A chance he finally got with my sister who told me so many things about him, including

[00:03:56] the way he mentioned that his wife would come back, that it would only be a matter of time. And when she did, he would be ready. It's best to stay away from the neighbors, especially the ones that live alone.

[00:04:13] That's part of the reason why I used to live that way. It was a Tuesday morning when I saw the old mail truck coming down the road. The thing rarely stopped by here more than once a week but this had been an off-schedule

[00:04:26] delivery, which meant it was either an important letter or an express package. It was strange though, I mean that truck, it was coming from the wrong direction. When not much happens around where you live, you start to notice these things.

[00:04:42] I was walking down the steps of my porch when it pulled up. Mr. Greystone, the mailman, stepped out with a box under his arm. There is a note to deliver these today but Peter isn't home, he said.

[00:04:57] Part of his account asks us to leave it with the neighbor if that's okay. I took it as he extended the box over to me as I heard chirping and saw beaks coming out through the holes on the box. They're chicks, Mr. Greystone said. Great.

[00:05:12] The guy would be coming over to pick them up later, I remember thinking to myself. Unless I simply grabbed the box and took it to his house to drop it off before he got home, then I wouldn't have to see him.

[00:05:25] I'm not sure why the idea made me so nervous, although my sister was right about the guy. A few times I had seen him around, he didn't seem like he was all there.

[00:05:35] Anyway, I made up my mind to take the box over to him as the mail truck disappeared down the road. But I stayed there, listening to the chirps and overthinking the whole thing. Hitting other people was not a thing I liked to do, especially not to a neighbor.

[00:05:52] Not one this strange. It was around that same time, right before sunset, when I finally got in my truck to head over to the neighbor's property. And well, that's when everything started. I parked the car by the large no trespassing sign about 50 yards from the entrance of the

[00:06:11] house. I could tell it was made to look like a large cabin. The chirps stopped completely. I made a note to remember how suddenly they stopped when I got to the property and shut off the engine. Walking up to the house seemed to take longer than expected.

[00:06:31] The gravel path twisted two times through a small group of trees and then again by a broken down truck I had never seen. Immediately after that was a clearing that led diagonally directly toward the porch of the house.

[00:06:45] Through the window on the back part of the house was a flickering light. Hot, I thought. There was no smoke coming out of the chimney and besides, it was too hot around that time to have it on. And then at first I thought it was music.

[00:07:02] Strange deep rhythm emanating from the house, muffled by the many walls between myself and the room with the flickering orange light. I figured if I left the box by the front door he was bound to get them before night time.

[00:07:17] The poor things would die outside if he didn't find them. Then in another one of my quick decision moments, I knew it would be best for me to let the guy know that his delivery had been left with me at my house.

[00:07:30] Therefore it would be best to knock. And I knew that. I took a deep breath and took two steps toward the door, putting my hand in a loose fist to knock. But I held back when I heard a deep, guttural groan coming from deep inside that house.

[00:07:47] It was unlike anything I had ever heard. Animalistic. It was angry and rumbled throughout the house so much that the wooden floorboards along the porch had vibrated along with it. I put the box down and stepped backwards toward the steps of the porch and quickly walked

[00:08:08] down the path. How dark, as I made my way back to that truck. I was catching my breath as I made my way back, before turning one last time to look at the house, stopping there, on another man's property.

[00:08:22] But when I looked back, I heard a door slam. Even through the light of the dark blue sky, I could see that the white box was not by the front door anymore.

[00:08:36] I got back to my house and cracked open a can of coke from the fridge and sat on the porch. Not quite shaken up anymore, but wondering what that sound could have been. I started thinking back of the first time I ever saw that guy.

[00:08:51] I knew a small family had been in that house because of what the realtor told me before I built my house on the property. I was not sure if it was that guy's house or someone else's. I never took the chance to figure it out.

[00:09:04] The only neighbor, I guess you could call him, that I knew was an older gentleman who lived with his wife a few kilometers down the road. They were collecting money for a church event one Christmas and I gave them $10. I've only seen them a handful of times since.

[00:09:21] No one else. At my old job, the one I had retired from, we had a procedure to troubleshoot problems, going from the most basic to the most complex solution. About 80% of these problems were solved with easy steps, simple explanations, just like

[00:09:38] the one I knew had to exist for what I had just heard. But it bothered me. I don't know how the following events unfolded, and to this day I'm not sure of what I saw.

[00:09:52] Like I promised, I'll be telling you this with the best of my abilities and the best of my memory. For those things that I don't remember, I kept detailed notes of the occurrences just as they happened. It's just how I was taught to do things.

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[00:11:48] It was late at night and I wrote it down as 3 in the morning, although it could have been earlier or later than that when I heard something moving around the yard by my window.

[00:11:59] When I stood up to take a look, the first thing that I saw was a flickering light from the window of the neighbor's house off into the distance. Then I caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a large dog going through the yard

[00:12:13] and over the closest tree to my property. It was moving slowly and away, but it suddenly stopped, turned around, and stared right at me through the window. The thing must have been, what, 20 yards away, and still I could see that it was enormous.

[00:12:33] Against the trunk of the tree I could tell it was about to reach one of the branches without standing on its hind legs. Of course I thought it had been a dream, obviously I did.

[00:12:45] I wasn't some lunatic making up things for attention, that's the last thing I ever wanted out of this thing. The way it looked at me and brought its head down as it leaned closer to the ground and began approaching my window scared me, it truly did.

[00:13:01] I ran to the door frame where I kept my shotgun and loaded it up before looking out the window again, and the thing was gone. That shotgun slept next to me that night.

[00:13:15] About two weeks after that I heard the sounds of laughter and deep hums coming out from the kitchen area of my house. I swear I could hear it. I was fully awake, just like I had been the time I saw the dog thing in the yard.

[00:13:29] I stepped out into the hallway with the shotgun in my hand and pointed it in front of me as those hums got louder and louder. It had been a song, like the sounds that two women make when they are singing together. Like the wind. Deeper.

[00:13:48] I turned left and into the kitchen as the sounds got louder before fading away. I looked through the window and through the darkness I could see that flickering light way out there, a tiny dot of orange light that reminded me that something wasn't right.

[00:14:08] I told my sister that following morning about what I had seen, and even though she couldn't help I knew she loved this stuff. It was like oxygen to her. She asked me question after question telling me stories of people who had witnessed things

[00:14:22] like the ones I had seen and heard. Entities from other worlds and realms that come to spread messages or to fulfill their own mission. It was a whole lot of information that in the end didn't mean anything to me because it

[00:14:36] did not explain why it had been me the one who was seeing them around the property. When all those years of living there, everything had been fine. She was going to be off work for four days and asked to come along with her kids to stay

[00:14:51] which I gladly said yes to. There was something about being there alone every night that made me feel uneasy for the first time. Memories of the sounds I had heard from that neighbor's house had gotten to me so much that it had made it into my dreams.

[00:15:09] Once where I saw a woman that would come asking for help on the side of the road before screaming in the same sound I had heard that night. When my sister got there she asked to sleep in the living room while her two kids would

[00:15:22] stay in the guest room. She wanted to be alert that night, she said. Things happen when the veil is thin and she was going to be there for it. Like clockwork, at around three in the morning I heard two knocks on my door and then whispers

[00:15:38] from my sister as she said to follow her quickly into the living room. I rolled out of bed and grabbed the shotgun on my way down the hall toward the front of

[00:15:48] the house all the while she was explaining to me what I should do once I got to the window. To look toward the east and to look toward the sky above the trees.

[00:15:59] But I didn't even have to get close to the window before I saw what she was talking about. Enormous birds or something dark that looked like them circling around a patch of trees in the distance.

[00:16:13] I could see them through the light of the moon that night, but as I got closer to the window I could hear the sounds they were making. Deep flaps and a constant hum that would make its way into your inner ear until it vibrated inside my head.

[00:16:29] The opposite of the sounds we're used to hearing during the day when the light is out. The ones that signal nothing other than darkness. It was my sister who pointed out the other flying creatures around the area, too large

[00:16:44] for them to be birds although they could have been. When we talk about it now, that's where my mind goes. And I would still be trying to convince others that they had been large birds or some type

[00:16:55] of nocturnal condor looking things, maybe owls, if my sister hadn't made the discovery. It was through her laptop that she found details of a woman, and God knows how she was able

[00:17:08] to remember this sort of thing, but she said it had been the name of the neighbor's wife. My sister was one of those people who could remember details of just about anyone she would meet.

[00:17:19] I used to think it was because of her love of gossip, but I knew there was a useful skill in there somewhere. She had asked me what the name of the high school in the area had been and there would

[00:17:30] be no way for me to know that, so before I could explain that to her, she had found the name. It was all the information she needed to find this woman and send her a message.

[00:17:42] Two hours, that's how long it took for her to get back to my sister. Her account, that she was more than eager to share, pushed the boundaries of what I knew was possible.

[00:17:54] I mean, to a complete stranger, she retold bits and pieces of her life with that guy, Peter, the neighbor's name, and his fascination with the occult. Peter had been fired from his job as part of a streak of bad luck he was having, although

[00:18:10] at the time he was not alone, with Hannah by his side to help him through the rough patch. But it's how it all started. A salesman, she said, had come to the door one afternoon and told him a book for anything he could afford.

[00:18:25] Curious about it all and having nothing to lose, he figured he might as well start reading. He was always a bit out there and he saw the salesman as a sign of something he should be doing with his life.

[00:18:38] She said he gave him two dollars and took the book from him, and he started reading it that very night. Hannah had warned him, many times, that the rituals in the book were not to be messed with.

[00:18:51] They had both been raised Catholic and despite their beliefs in God, there was a branch that warned them about the devil and his existence. Still, as time went on, Peter's curiosity turned into an obsession and eventually had claimed to have summoned a demon, the name and everything.

[00:19:10] Hannah was afraid of mentioning it. By the way, the whole time my sister was reading this to me, word for word, just as Hannah had written it, I was stunned. There were some nights, she continued, that he would chant and light candles, reciting

[00:19:26] ancient words and phrases she was sure Peter didn't understand either. It was one night when he woke her up to tell her that things were going to change, that he had made an agreement, and things did change.

[00:19:43] Peter got a new job, they were going to be expecting a child, and they used the extra money to fix up the house and everything. However, it all came at a price. Peter's explanation had been that this entity was a jealous one, one that they could hear

[00:20:02] from the corners of the rooms and the attic at night. Another side of the agreement was that he would recite from the books and provide what it needed. In Peter's flaky fashion, he would forget.

[00:20:18] The situation got so bad that soon after the birth of their child, Hannah decided to leave. Things had gotten dangerous around the house, with loud noises and thumps in the middle of the night that would scare their young daughter.

[00:20:32] Sacrifices, mainly rodents, had become a common thing for Peter. Hannah was forced to leave him after a close call, she said, although she refused to give more details about it. The sounds I had heard were the same ones Hannah had heard when she left the house.

[00:20:49] Stay away, Hannah warned at the end of the message. That man is up to no good. For several nights after my sister left, everything was calm at night. But not with me. Something had changed. I always felt stared at. Somebody was watching me, hearing me, at night.

[00:21:17] It was a Wednesday, I clearly remember, when I got a knock at the door at around nine at night. It was the police. They had found Peter's body hanging from the wooden beam in his living room. He had done it himself, they assumed.

[00:21:33] I felt strangely at ease knowing he was gone and began to get into my regular patterns of sleep. Until one night, when I heard a loud hum coming from outside. Constant. Deep. Then it became a daily thing. Feeling watched and heard.

[00:21:56] And at night, when I wouldn't see these things, I would dream them. Large dogs and birds and bugs coming from every corner of the house. A shadow standing in front of my door. And no matter what, I just always kept visualizing that same window. The flickering light.

[00:22:18] I didn't know what I had done to deserve this. I had walked away from my previous life to be alone. I didn't want to be around anybody. I was done with all of my friends and all the connections I had except for my sister

[00:22:34] and her nephews and her dog. It was a tough world out there. Scammers and thieves and people who would not make a fool out of me anymore. One night, I rolled out of bed and walked over the window.

[00:22:50] With every step I took, I tried to adjust my eyes to the darkness as I looked outside. And there, in the dark, was the orange flickering light once again. Just my luck. I don't remember exactly the day when this happened, but sometime around noon.

[00:23:15] I got a knock at the door. When I opened it, a man in a suit, a large smile and eyes that looked directly at me, standing there. Sir, he said, reaching out a box in front of me. I have something to show you.

[00:23:33] I reminded him of the sign on the front that said no solicitors. He looked at me calmly and smiled once again. Oh, but you see, in order for me to sell you something, that something has to have a price, right?

[00:23:49] I simply looked at him, not willing to join him in any of his tricks. What do you say? He said. I'll take whatever you can afford. Please subscribe to get the upcoming stories.

[00:24:18] And if you want to help with the production, you can check out ScaryPlus.com to get ad-free episodes of this and all of the other scary FM shows. We have a couple more coming up.

[00:24:29] Thank you very much for listening and for your messages over on Spotify, DMs and all the emails you've sent me. They really mean a lot. See you soon.