Short Scary Stories for a Creepy Night

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. In today's episode, we're going to revisit three of our most popular stories that recently got remastered. They're on the shorter side, which is why I'm sharing them all in one. They have a slightly different tone to them. If you started listening to the show early on, Y're gonna know what I mean. My name is Edwin, and here it's a scary story A dead man calling for help. A few months ago, I helped my mom's friend Martha move out to a new house around Exit seventy eight. She said she was happy to finally be moving out of town and joining the life in rural America. Our town wasn't too big to begin with, but whatever. We made two trips back and forth moving boxes and small furniture. When it started getting dark, she pointed out some lights that appeared to be yellow head lights off into the distance. She told me that the strange lights would sometimes blink, turning on and off, on and off many times as she passed by. Then they would turn off and not light up again. They were not blinking when we passed by. We unloaded my truck and put the boxes in her living room. But then we agreed to make our next trip the following day instead. It was getting late and she was tired. On my way back, looking into the distance, I noticed the lights. They were turning on and off, on and off. They were like high beams, blinking. And that crazy lady was right, I thought, and I kept driving. I told her about it the next morning, after we finally finished moving her in, she suggested that we go check it out, saying that it was part of the fun of being out in the country. But I was curious, so we both hopped into my truck and headed down the road. The dirt trails were rough, but we could both see a large metal structure off the distance, like where cattle are kept. There was no way that this place was operational, but kept driving. As we got closer, we saw what seemed like a junkyard with old cars and broken down fencing. You see, this belonged to the mccave people. They're long gone now, Martha said, I remember the McCabe story on the news. They were involved in gangs and illegal activities a long time ago, kind of famous in our small town, and I still remember the story. There was a peace on the news released in the eighties about a missing man by the name James, who was thought to have been murdered. He was a family man, and it turns out that he was a close friend of my parents. They even wanted him to be my godfather back when I was born. They looked for his body in the hills and in the forest, but after many years the searches stopped. The family was forced to live with all those questions. He used to unload trucks for grocery stores, and he was actually supposed to be working the day he was last seen. He had been instructed to empty out one of the older trucks, a trailer with empty boxes and old cement blocks. The owner had been trying to get rid of it for quite some time and was happy to finally have a buyer. James had actually introduced them to saying that they knew each other from some past business they had worked on together. The trailer was driven off the lot, but on the way to the buyer's yard about ten miles down the road, it shut down. Feeling tricked, the buyer, a close friend of the mccabs, got two of his buddies to take him back to the seller's business and demand his money. Back. There was an altercation there, and the buyer took out a gun and shot the cellar along with James, dragging their bodies onto a car and throwing them off on the side of the road. The seller's body was found a couple of days later. The body of James was never found, or so the story used to go. We were ready to leave the junkyard after making a couple of circles around the property, and suddenly, clear as day, we heard some short, sporadic and deep honking. I was scared, since nobody should be there and there was zero chance that any of the cars there would be in working order, but the honking became longer and harder to ignore. We both looked at each other, waiting for the other to say something, but I was going to find out what it was. I got out of the truck and Martha followed behind me. We went around the structure, coming closer to the honking, and that's when we spotted a small truck with the trailer off, just a few yards away, and then the noise stopped. We looked at each other again. Honestly, I was glad someone was there with me. As I inched closer to the truck and into the driver's side door. I heard the honking begin again and fade and then stop. When I turned my back on the truck, it made clicking sounds like some type of animal must have been hiding under the hood. And suddenly I heard the back door of the truck swing open. It was Martha, being the crazy woman that she's always been poking her nose in everywhere. After the second door swung open, she screamed inside the truck. By the door, it was a dried up corpse, all curled up. Reports later found that it was the body of James. A block had struck him in the head. Apparently he had regained consciousness after the matter, but was unable to open the gate from the inside, and that was left of him after thirty years. It was a shriveled up body that and the will to someday be found again leave if no response. Delivering packages for Amazon is a pretty simple gig, but can get stressful depending on the amount of packages you have to deliver. Every once in a while, you get a single loader, which is a phrase that we used to say when the majority of packages that you get in your van are going to a single address. Of course, the company figures out that this is too easy, so they make sure that the drive to deliver it is extra long, up to half an hour or more in traffic. Here in Los Angeles, I used to get these a lot. It was on Eastern Avenue, which I guess was a warehouse since they got a ton of packages delivered there very often. I ask the man that receives the packages and counts them, and from what I understood, they take orders from other countries and they ship them for premium, so it's like a side business, but for customers outside of the United States to buy things, and people who are afraid of online shopping that would rather call the center to place the order for them. After delivering those, I would have to drop off the packages at some of the newer areas, some of which had addresses listed on my Rabbit that's the name of the scanner device that we use, but not yet on Google Maps. Unmarked roads, mailboxes out by the start of a large fencing, and deliveries to houses that are still under construction were some of the places I had to deliver to. It was winter time and the days were getting shorter by six pm. The roads that had street lights would turn on, but the ones by the hills where I was assigned would get pitched black. Sometimes I would have to drive twenty minutes out to deliver just one envelow, probably a trinket that the customer would end up returning anyway. There were five packages left in the bin on the seat right next to me, and it had been a long day, but I was happy that I was almost there and done with it. Counting them down was a good way to pass the time. But when I had two left in the bin, I saw that there was a mismatch. My device said that I had three packages yet to deliver, so I pulled over and stepped into the back, only to see that, yes, there was a small box almost under the seat next to me. Twelve minutes up the hills again, driving through the twisting road, I couldn't even see the tall grass next to the van anymore, just a shade of them, along with the shadow of the yellow arrow signs that cast deep in the steep hills in front of me whenever I took a turn. No cars around, just distant lights from the windows of spread out houses lit by the weirdos that lived up there. Some of them used to stay in trailers outside of their unbuilt homes. Up ahead, I saw the little dirt trail and the large private property sign with the security camera icon. So I grabbed the package, put on my blinkers, and stepped outside. I could see a few lights a short distance away from the road and through the trees. I didn't understand why people felt the need to be far away from normal things like this. I guess it's because they have people like me to deliver things to them. It took a few steps after I passed a rusty metal gate, looking straight ahead, avoiding the darkness all around me, with the exception of the yellow blinking lights from my van, yellow than black, yellow than black. The pattern was almost hypnotizing as I walked without knowing what was in front of me, like a strange dance party to the steps of crunchy leaves and gravel beneath me. All of it interrupted as I clearly heard a high to my right from the trees, then another hello, this time from my left. Your mind makes things up when you're feeling scared. I saw the windows of a small house about the size of a bungalow. Up ahead, the stench of rotten meat growing with every step, bringing back the memories of the dead possums we used to find in my backyard. I could hear a bee hive, the loudest one I have ever heard, again, my mind probably making things up. There was a shed on the path before getting to the porch of the little house, and on the grounds by the door of it were three or four packages. I grabbed my scanner to light up the package, and I was begging for the words to be there. I just wanted to leave, and then the light came on. Leave if no response, it was right on the label. I felt a strong sense of relief right then, and I considered tossing it right there with the others. This box would survive. It seemed light enough. But then I saw the woman on the falcking chair, probably waiting for me. Hello Amazon, but she didn't move. I walked up to her, the stench growing as I walked up to the wooden steps, her blue wish porch light highlighting the buzzing dark cloud all around her and the sounds. I grabbed my scanner and turned on the lights and pointed it right at her, her mouth stretched wide open, flies crawling down her white hair and into her wrinkled nose, as the others came out from the roof of her mouth and onto her teeth. I dropped the package, turned her round and ran past the shed. Have you ever run in the dark, something behind you, something next to you. You can't see your own shoes, And that driveway seemed to never end. Yellow than black, then yellow, than black, and yellow. Another short stories coming upward after this stay with me. My dead friend is still on Facebook. One evening, while sitting in my car, I saw that many of my friends were commenting on Frank's Facebook wall, saying things like rest in peace and words of goodbyes. My friend was dead. I couldn't get myself to comment on his wall, but I did message back and forth with his mom and his brother. My best friends have reached out to me to hang out and talk about the whole thing. But wasn't ready. You see, I was supposed to meet him that day. We were supposed to hang out, but I chose to stay in. I don't know, I just didn't want to go out. I felt tired and got a headache trying to come up with an excuse not to go now, looking at the last conversation I had with him. I just see as whatever, man, I'll text you later. That was his last message to me. They were supposed to check out the new coffee shop by our high school. They were hosting an open mic night, and it was supposed to be a good one, but instead he called up one of his other friends and got in a car accident and died. Two nights after he passed, the event started, my phone would ring at three am, a phone call from an abnormally long number. I picked up the first couple of times, but all I could hear was static. Once I stopped answering, I started getting random text messages from those similar numbers, but with jumble up text characters like the kind you see on a corrupted computer file. This went on for three weeks before things got scarier. One night, I felt someone tug on my sleeve and I heard my name being whispered. While I was trying to sleep, my phone started ringing once again. It all happened so fast that I thought I must have still been asleep half awake. I answered it, and I heard my name being whispered. This must be some type of prank, I remember thinking, and then I hung up. I kept my eyes open toward the ceiling, barely illuminated by the light coming from the window. When I heard the soft calling sound you get when you're the one calling someone and are waiting for them to answer. I was dialing some number by accident, and when I checked who it was, it said I was calling Frank. Instinctively, I tapped on the button to see my call history, and I was shocked to see that I had two phone calls with him in the past five minutes, one out going, which was my accidental dial, and one in coming, which I had apparently answered earlier. A fourteen second in phone call, the one where he whispered my name. I opened up my Facebook messenger app and tapped on his name, and I stared at her last conversation on there. We were talking about some girl he was seeing. Then this last message on the app was him saying how right I was and that he wasn't going to call her back. But then the three dots appeared. Frank Rosen is typing and then stopped. Then he started typing again. I put my phone down and turned on my lights. I wanted him to send the message Frank, I'm sorry, buddy, I wanted him to know that I was going to miss him, even though we never told each other that ever. He stopped typing Frank, I'll miss you man, Rest in peace. I typed it and hit send. Since then, I haven't been woken up by any more strange phone calls or messages. Alone at home, I used to remind my brother constantly about the strange things that would happen at my house. Everyone worked in the evenings and I would normally be by myself after school. It started as something seemingly insignificant, fruit rolling away from the counter, or something moving around in the trash can. Eventually that look of I believe you believe what you saw was all I needed to shut up about it, Even though I would go to the kitchen into the bathroom only if I absolutely had to, and I would get home after school, I would just grab the box of cereal or whatever else I could find to eat, and then go to my room. I would stay there until I heard the key shuffling of the front door, a sign that my brother had gotten home from work and that my parents would arrive a few hours after that. He would arrive with all the lights off and sometimes calling out my name. I remember the feeling and still some of the best memories of my life. Nancy, you who? And then he would flick on the lights. He had gotten his chicken nuggets or fries, something small. Sometimes he would find something at work, a little gadget or a toy during a shift at the hotel when I was even younger, he would be the one that took out the trash out to the dark alley, and he would be the one to order pizzas or ask for directions. He wasn't afraid of anything. Working as a part time security guard fit him, okay. I, on the other hand, was another story. But the noise is that I used to hear in the living room were real. Mom heard them once and she walked into the kitchen searching for a rat or a mouth while I was so scared that I cried from the corner of the living room, unable to speak. What I didn't tell Mom was that I had seen someone standing there in front of the stove. And even now I can't trust myself to know for sure if I had imagined the whole thing. All I knew was that it would make things a lot better for everyone if I just kept my mouth shut, and so I did. I ignored the sounds of the cabinets opening and the kitchen drow were shutting, the sounds of spatulas hitting against the metal sync. I would turn up the music of my CD player and just wait. But one night, it was getting late and my brother hadn't gotten home. I needed to use the bathroom, and I wanted to at least go out through the hallway and turn on the living room lights. So I got mentally ready and reached for my doorknob. I looked to the right. The bright green lights of the alarm clock by the television and the clock from the radio were still two minutes apart. The muffled conversation of our downstairs neighbors laughing at something on the television. It was almost nine o'clock. And there it went again, the cabinet slamming, shot, the pad moving around the stovetop. Someone was there. I hadn't even taken a step outside of my room yet, but that's when I heard it, the shuffling of the keys from the outside. My brother had just gotten home again, just a little too late. What did you think of these stories? Let me know via email or through the Spotify Q and a section or poll that should be on the episode page. Any comment or feedback will help, especially from returning listeners. You can find these and her whole collection of stories on YouTube as well from like Way, Way Way Back. I'll link to it in the description of this episode, and if you want to get these and the entire collection of Scary FM shows without ads, check out Scary Plus over on scaryplus dot com, or just click on the Scary Plus button on your app right now. Anyway, thanks a lot for listening. Keep it scary everyone, See us soon.