The Phenomenon of Time Skipping & Picture on the Wall

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. We're stepping back in time today for a couple of throwback stories, free mastered and with a special surprise. Make sure you comment or reach out if you recognize our guest storyteller today in our second story of the night, my name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. My uncle has a small ranch in the Sonoran Desert. Whenever there is a family member's birthday or some other event, we always assume that it will take place there. It's about a mile from the main dirt road and has amazing views of the natural desert scenery. This must have happened six or seven years ago when we were celebrating another event. My uncle was hosting a barbecue with all of the family. I don't remember exactly what event it was. I forgot many things about that day, but I still vividly recall one thing, the most inexplicable, chilling experience of my life. Before everyone arrived at the ranch and we were getting ready, I offered to go buy ice down the road at the house of some lady who had made a shop out of her property, which was also her home. I've always liked technology, stuff like iPods, games and things like that. This time around, I was really into two way radios that'll let you scan around for others who were also using them. Every once in a while we would mess around with other conversations we would catch on our walkie talkies. We would make them change the channels. I don't know why we thought that was so funny. I had a pair of them with me, so I left one of them with my cousin and I left on my own, updating him with my location and other random stuff. Just to have something to say. I would always respond with ten to four. I knew where the lady's shop was and worked my way there, looking straight ahead. Maybe it was a five minute walk, I assumed. I walked up to the front window of the house, where apparently you would order from. I asked for two bags of ice. She grabbed them. I gave her my money, and she gave me the change. I started making my way back with one bag in each hand. Ten four, my cousin said over the radio. I hadn't said anything, though. I couldn't reply since I had no free hands, so I ignored it. And as I saw the ranch coming into view, the wind started blowing those desert winds are terrible on the eyes, with dirt and sand blowing everywhere, so I shut them. But I kept walking straight ahead for a few seconds, and that's when I felt a push behind me. It was no longer the wind, but some type of bubble of strange force, like the kind you feel when you put two magnets together with the same poles facing each other. I turned around, but still couldn't open my eyes fully, so I kept walking. I remember feeling very strange, like nausea, nervousness. The wind now completely cleared up, and the ranch came into view through the fence. From a distance, the windows to the main house were shut and the music was off. Ahead I could see that the four cars that were parked outside across the field were missing. It was very weird, but my mind didn't really process the event until I walked up to the fence. I found it with a chain and a huge lock attached to it was holding it together. I rattled it, expecting to hear the dogs come barking, but no dogs ever came. At first, I thought that I had walked back to the wrong place, to a ranch that looked similar to my uncles, but I've been there many times, and I knew what it looked like. This is the same place we would visit in the evenings when I would come with my uncle to feed his dogs, except they would show up every single time. I began to panic a little bit. I started feeling very confused and my head was spinning. I walked around the property with the ice beginning to melt and leaking next to my footsteps. I put it down and grabbed the radio from my pocket, and I pressed a button to talk. The walkie talkie didn't make that little hiccup that it does when you push it. Do you know what I'm talking about. It wasn't really a beat, but just like a faint static sound to let you know to start talking. Then I noticed that it wasn't on, so I pressed and held the power button until I started hearing loud static like too loud. I immediately changed the channel, but the sound wouldn't go away. I lost track of what channel my cousin was on, but I knew what to do. Normally, I would just scan all the channels asking for him, and then waited for a few seconds for a response. Ten minutes must have passed before I decided to just head back to the lady's store, and maybe if I still didn't find anybody, I would just head straight toward the main dirt road. It would eventually lead to the main city. So even if I had to walk for three hours, I knew that I would eventually make it. With all the static, I doubt my signal would break through to anyone. I put the radio in my pocket and picked up the bags of ice once more. I figured I would just walk back to the lady's shop, and I was a little shaken up. As soon as the shop came into view, I heard the radio buzz. I put the ice down and took the radio out again, and then I heard a familiar voice. I didn't even reply. I just started almost running back to the ranch, and when it came into view, everything seemed normal and the music was on. I walked back to the front gate, which was wide open, and my uncle's dogs came running up to greet me. I went straight to the freezer, lifted the ice bags to place them inside, and then I noticed that the ice was still frozen solid, with no signs of water dripping out. I looked at my faint footsteps in the dirt and checked for signs of drops of water next to them, and I could swear I was following the trail of water when I was hurrying back to the ranch, But this time there was nothing. It was a desert. After all, water evaporates fairly quickly. The heat may have played the trick on me. Here I go again, trying to convince myself that this is normal, that this happens to everybody. When I graduated from college, I took up a job that I thought was a dream come true, the gig of a lifetime. My job was to travel around the country and meet with business people to purchase and set up software to manage some operations. It's pretty boring stuff to me now, but back then I learned all of the ins and outs of it in order to move up in the company and get better commissions. The company paid for hotel stays and gave me an allowance to spend on food when I got to a new town, and all I was in charge of was making my meetings on time and of doing well on my reviews. Well. One time I arrived in a town I hadn't visited before, and despite the many warnings to pack certain things. I completely forgot my laptop charger and had to look for one on arrival. At the time, that alone felt like the end of the world to me, risking not finding an open electronics store in order to make my early meeting, so I got in an uber to make the drive to a mult type area to search for a laptop charger that same night before everything closed. The first door didn't have one, but I found it at a second store about ten minutes away from there. My second hurdle was to find a place to stay. Since I wasn't able to confirm my stay through the email saved on my laptop and it got canceled automatically, I had to search around through Airbnb and other apps to find a place that late. Fortunately, there was a house two bedrooms at a super low cost, even though I really only needed one room. I thought I had gotten lucky after seeing just how cheap and close it was to where my meeting was supposed to be held the next day. I booked for that same night and got the confirmation immediately. When I got there, the porch lights were off, but the owner or whoever was in charge of the place had left the key exactly where they said it would be, and there was a note on the door welcoming me by name to the house. The note was on a post it over a Chinese takeout menu, and stuck all the way in the back was the menu of a pizza delivery restaurant. For some reason, my job took forever to reimburse payments made through food delivery apps, so ordering takeout like that would work out perfectly. The house itself was old, or maybe I just wasn't used to houses like those made out of creaky wood, and honestly, I had no way to see even what the color of the house was. It was just too dark outside. Soon I'd realize that it would be pretty dark inside too. When I first stepped in and flicked on the light, the only response that came on was that of an old desk lamp in the corner of the living room. I looked around for the ceiling light switch, but I was so tired I didn't even bother. I didn't even order food that night. I just walked over to one of the bedrooms and on the light switch. Same thing. A tiny lamp on an old desk flicked on by the corner of the room. Reflecting off an enormous picture right in the middle of the wall across from the door. It was too dark to see what it was about, but it felt completely out of place, But it gave off enough light to let me find the bathroom out in the hall, which was also lit by a dim lamp, so I washed up and got ready to go to sleep. The light itself was so dim that I decided to leave it on since I still needed to find the outlets to plug in the chargers from my phone and laptop, plus the switch to turn it off was all the way across the room. It was strange. Before I started traveling so much, I would have problems sleeping in new places. But I guess I must have gotten used to it at some point, because as soon as I plugged everything in and set my alarm, I drifted off to sleep in a few minutes. That wouldn't last long, though it was around two or three a m. When I first heard it, a tiny knock on the door. I opened my eyes wide and was able to see the entire room thanks to that dim orange light from the lamp in the corner. I hadn't checked the rest of the house like I normally did when I got to a new Airbnb, snooping around the bathroom cabinets and stuff, an odd habit I know. To my left was the large frame of the picture on the wall, reflecting the lamp itself, making the thing feel like a huge mirror. I turned my head toward it, and as expected, I could see the reflection of the bedroom door, the desk, the lamp, but I was completely out of view. I remember the place giving me the feeling of my grandma's house with that smell of old wood, but that desk lamp, along with the wood furniture and its long shadows, made the place feel colder than it was. I stopped breathing for a little bit, just here for that same tapping noise. Again. There it was. I jumped a little bit when I saw a moving shadow, followed right by the tapping once again. I sat up on the bed and heard it again. It was coming from the desk. But then I heard the buzzing sound. I'm not sure what you call those bugs that look like larger lady bugs, but there was one flying around the lamp and I kept bumping into the lamp shade, falling onto the desk flipping itself over again and flying around until sure enough it went straight back into the lamp shade and knocked itself to the desk again. I felt relieved. I figured it would be best to turn off the lamp. I uncovered myself from the blanket and rolled out into the warm, carpeted floor. As I walked over to the desk, my own reflection caught my attention. From across the room. The image of that glass moved with me As I took a step, stopped and looked right toward the picture on the wall. It was the photo of a bedroom. While it was sort of a portrait, a man was standing dressed in completely black clothing, looking right at the camera with a sinister smile traced throughout his face with his own wrinkles. It made me feel uneasy, so I flicked off the switch and went straight back to my bed, trying to not accidentally look at that picture on my way back. Even though it was probably too dark to see anyway, I did not want to risk it. My whole night was strange, I thought. I kept waking up to the voices of people calling my name, asking me what was wrong, and then the sounds of panicked voices asking for a person whose name I completely forgot. I remember feeling sweaty when they asked me where this person was, and I didn't know what to say. I blamed those nightmares on that picture on the wall. I woke up tired promptly at six am, but didn't hesitate getting out of that room. I grabbed my things from there and from the bathroom and went straight to the living room to finish packing my bag. I would be going straight to the airport from my meeting anyway. I double checked everything, closed the door, dropped the keys and the mail slot on the door, just like the note said, and hopped in another uber. I checked out through the accommodation app and was asked to leave a review, and it actually made me think twice. Normally I just say something nice and leave five stars no matter what. And though I admit that I hit the five stars without hesitating on pretty much everything, I couldn't find anything else to say except for simple check in and check out process clean and had no problems. Thanks. But then I checked the listing again. There's something wrong with this place. One of the reviews said. My child wouldn't stop crying all night because of the sounds from the kitchen. I scrolled past a few generic ones, but my mouth opened wide when I read a paragraph long review of an experience similar to mine. It described the sounds, the creaks, and even the strange dreams. This person did have something positive to say about the place near the end, which was that he was traveling with his family and that he liked the odd layout of the house. He specifically mentioned the night lights in the bedroom where his children stayed, and in his own words, he said that he liked the window because, even though it was oddly placed inside the bedroom, it let him easily check on his kids at night. That window, the window I thought was a huge picture on the wall. Sapphire, thank you so much for joining me here on Scary Story podcast listeners. If you want to hear more, type in stories with Sapphire to listen to more creepy stories. I'll leave links to everything in the description of this episode. Use her name, mister Stan thank you so much for suggesting the remaking of the first story. And Gabby, we have an upcoming story that you suggested. I still have to look for it because I couldn't find it among the comments, but I'll find it anyway. Everyone, you can support the show by trying out Scary Plus, thank you very much for listening. Keep it Scary everyone, See you soon.