The Old Woman of Cedar Lane

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Upon request from our Scary Plus members and on the reviews over on Apple podcast, we have three stories today in this episode. Just recently, we also got great news from the editorial team over at Apple Podcasts. One of our shows, the one called True Scary Story, has been selected as show of the Month for October in their dark Side collection. Now this is all you, so I want to say thank you and thank you to the growing community over on discord, to those of you who are keeping up with our YouTube and all that video content, and for those messages that I've gotten over email with ideas and suggestions and all these other things. A huge shout out to the editorial team over at Apple Podcasts for featuring True Scary Story. I was so excited to see our show on there, along with some of my favorite creepy shows. I'll leave a link to that collection over in the description of this episode, but you can also find them over on your Apple podcast app. That being said on with the show, my name is Edwin and here's a scary story. The old woman of Cedar Lane. Growing up, I remember my family not being like the ones we saw on TV. Not that we were dysfunctional, but we didn't speak much to each other about problems. It's as though everyone had a role to play and wouldn't leave it no matter what. There was one situation that really changed everything, though, and even though I was very young, maybe around seven, the memories started coming back. Let me begin by telling you more about my family before I tell you what happened. My mom was a typical war re ward, wanting to know if my homework was in my backpack every morning before school, giving me extra jackets and snacks, and would come pick me up at the entrance of the school and not let me take the school bus back with my friends. The blocks are too long here, she would say. You see, she was from the city, or so Dad would say, whenever she went into one of her worry situations. We had moved into a smaller town, even though I didn't know what that meant, because everything was so much larger here. Just getting to the store would take us getting in the truck and going down long stretches of road before we would finally get to the Walmart and other markets in the area. I felt it was the biggest town in the world. Dad was different. He was quiet. He would sometimes wake me up early in the morning to come with him to check up on one of the animals that he was taken care of. I don't know if it was a side business, but people used to bring along trailers with goats and cows and other people would come by to pick them up after about a couple weeks. It was fun to see new animals and stuff as a kid, and my friends really like coming over for that reason. We always had something to do and Dad will let me roam around the field, and even though he would say every once in a while, Kevin, don't go past the tree line, I think that was his only rule. My sister, though, was the oddball of our family. Now. She was as close as you can get to a TV show teenager. She would sneak out of the house, sometimes being picked up by her boyfriend and then begging me not to tell my parents, and then she would come back home late. We had a big age difference, so the only times I remember actually spending fun times with her was when we would travel to see our grandparents and it would only be us there to find something to do, and she always had money from her job at the ice cream shop, but she did at that time, so those were the only times that she would offer to walk with me to the store and grab snacks and stuff. Walking in a new town and seeing the things on the windows. It was one of those beautiful memories that it's hard for me to forget, unlike this other thing that my mind had completely blacked down until recently. It was around eleven at night, and Mom was not happy. She was yelling at my dad for not caring enough, a phrase she used quite often around the house, because my sister had asked for a cell phone for her birthday and my dad said no, that she was too young to have one of those things that maybe next year. But Mom was on my sister's side, with her leaving all the time, she thought that it would be safe for her to have a phone on her not an expensive one, she said, just one for use in case of emergencies. I always try not to listen to them argue. It didn't happen often, but when it did, Dad would grow real quiet and step out into the porch with the mosquitoes and would sometimes walk around the area with the animals, raking the leaves or cleaning out the water containers late in the night. With only the light of the reflectors out in the field. Mom would sometimes start crying, and other times she would it's call her sister to complain about what was going on, to which she would always mention that she missed her old life. It didn't make sense to me back then, but today I think about that a lot, about the sacrifice is that parents make for their children. Dad was out by the car, I think when I heard him yell out for my mom. She came running toward the kitchen and yelled for something before rushing out into the front driveway. It was my sister. I could see the headlights since my room's window faced the road and part of the driveway. My sister was crying. I could hear her rush toward my mom and dad and struggle to get out the words cedar lane. My sister confessed. We were out by cedar lane. Dad stepped inside and by now I was standing in the hallway. When he saw me, he said, put on your shoes, let's go. I ran back to my room to grab them and put them on as fast as I could. I was gonna help Dad with something. Why is he going with you? Mom asked, angry and reaching for my jacket that was hanging by the door, quietly giving her permission. Dad was always very strict with this kind of thing. He would bring up how he grew up and how Grandpa would teach him that being afraid was not something he would tolerate. Fears of monsters under my bed weren't a thing around the house, because Dad would question me about why I thought a monster would be under my bed and not under his, a question to which I had no answer. My sister was still crying by the front porch, struggling to breathe and shaking with fear. My mom's arms around her, trying to nudge her to come inside. Dad, don't go out there, please, she said. Remember that at the time, none of this made any sense to me. It was years later when Dad explained to us about the robbers along the roads, people that would come out from the city. He would say, he told me of a newspaper article he read where they said that these guys would set up traps along the dark roads and use different scenarios for passerbys, kids, broken down cars, fake injuries, and even other women to try to get a car to stop for they would ambush the driver and take all of their things, including the car, but my dad got close to her and said that he would be right back. As he was making his way toward the car from the shed along with his bag that we all knew was his gun and AMMO. He gave her a hug and said that he would go take care of it. My sister started crying even more. My mom tried to get him to call the police instead, but Dad had a point. Why would they call the police and expect them to believe that a teen my sister had been driving along a road and had seen someone trying to get her to stop in the middle of it. He would be laughed out of this town with the most serious tone I'd ever heard. It happened super fast, with a little time for me to even get scared. It was a strange excitement. To be out late at night in a car with my dad felt like an adventure, and so we got in the truck and drove in silence down the road until finally we crossed the railroad tracks and made a left on cedar lane. Dad rolled down the windows on his side while mine was all the way to the top. I need you to keep an eye out for any movement, all right, he told me, staring straight ahead. I looked at him, accepting my assignment, and then I looked back out the window one more time. We were driving so slowly along that dirt road, with a truck wobbling along the dips and bumps from the rocks. The fields along the side of the road were closing in with tall grass on both sides. There were gaps in between the lines of grass that would open up to a dark sky for just a second. And it went like this for a few more minutes until finally I saw something. You were going at a walking pace in the car, and the space between the grass felt like you were watching a movie that would blink and open back up to the deep, dark sky. But Dad's car was getting slower when I saw it. I looked to my dad, and he stared right at me, asking what I had seen. I couldn't get it out of my mouth. I just stared at him, and he looked at me briefly before setting the car in reverse. I begged him not to go back. I started crying and yelling, Dad, don't there's an old woman there. She doesn't want us. He ignored me, and the tail lights turned to red and white as a car went back one lane, two lanes, and then three. She was right there on my side of the car, an old woman hunched over looking out toward the field, completely ignoring us. We could see her white hair, her shoes, and the stick she was using to prop herself up. Dad asked me to roll down my window until he reached over and cranked it himself. I got down as far as I could under the glove compartment, hiding from this thing that was out in the darkness of the field. It was then when Dad yelled out hello, and only the sound of the truck could be heard in response. Hello. Daddy yelled out again, hoping for God knows what would come out of that. And it was then when I heard shuffling in the grass and the sad, deep groan of something that up to this day I have never heard before, like a crying animal, a large one mixed with an airy scream. Dad's face went cold. He stepped on the gas and I lunged forward. The car was still in reverse. His head was facing the back of the car as he would briefly look out into the area lit by the headlights in front of us. Then he would look back again. The front of the car was followed by the pit of darkness wherever the headlights wouldn't reach. You were going to go in reverse until he found an opening to turn around. And trust me when I say this thing felt like an eternity. I sat back up just as the thing started groaning again, and I tried not to look, but without anywhere else to turn, I saw the old lady in front of the car, crawling toward us at an unnatural speed. The way she twisted and twitched toward us still lodged deep in my mind. Dad eventually found a clearing and he started to turn the car around, the thing coming closer and closer to his side of the window. Now I begged him to please just go, to just go, tears rolling down my face. He eventually put the car in drive and we kept going until we got back to the railroad tracks. For some reason, I thought we would be making a turn toward the police station on the way home, but I remember his reasoning and why we went straight to the house instead. My dad's voice came to mind as my friends and I were in the car a couple of months ago, when we drove past Cedar Lane one night, creepy road. One of them said yeah, I replied, saying nothing more. Thinking of my dad. I didn't want to be laughed out of this town. The break in This is a story of the dumbest thing I have ever done. Back in college, I started hanging out with some of the girls that my friends from back in high school would have made fun of. They liked things that I didn't like. They had money and cars, and they were always looking for parties and stuff. In short, I ended up joining their sorority, and I eventually moved out, and we ended up moving to a house inside of a complex. They weren't quite condos, but all of the houses were more or less the same. I never liked it. I didn't like anything of how my life was going, and honestly, I was just too young to see it. And my dress has got more colorful, the shoe got a little taller, and more and more often my weekends would start a day earlier on Thursdays. I'm not one to judge. People can do whatever they want, but I know this wasn't something that I wanted, which is what made it a problem. I started losing myself. I guess you could say. It was a Thursday night and some guy I had been talking to had picked me up to go to an area we all knew as the fire Pit, which was an area at the end of the street where there were a bunch of bars and live music restaurants and lots of people from college around there. None of my roommates wanted to go, but I decided to go anyway. They were gonna go on one of their weekend trips, those that I always found an excuse not to go on because I couldn't afford them. Anyway, at the fire Pit, we met up with some of his friends, and midnight turned into almost three am when we were finally on our way back, maybe one or two drinks far too many by this point. I crawled out of the car, practically laughing as I dropped my phone after leaning in to say goodbye, but then having it quickly fade along with the hum of the car as Mark left me in the dark street. It's an overwhelming feeling for me being alone. Back then, it was an even bigger deal, and I always seemed to get this way after a party. I remember every second of those nights, unlike my roommates who claim they wouldn't remember a thing the next morning. But I'll tell you this memory will never ever leave me. I went to the side of the house, as I usually did, to get to the back door that was closest to my room. I almost never locked that door, and it was such a hassle going through the front door. For most of us, I don't think we ever used the keys for it. There was always someone home, well except for this night, or so I thought. I grabbed onto the door handle while the sliding door and squeezed it shut. As I was inside, the place smelled different, and I got a bad feeling crawling all over me. Right away, I tiptoed toward the stairs, and with every step that felt even more out of place. I found the door to my room and stepped inside. I shut it as quietly as possible, even though I knew nobody was home. When I heard it a sound of someone snoring from out in the hallway. I knew all of my roommates, and none of them snored like this. Plus this sounded like a man. I thought that maybe someone had been sleeping over, so I tried to calm myself down, But then for I moved another muscle and heard something else, the sound of someone moving around in my bed. I could see this little shadow twisting and turning around in the bed. I dropped my purse onto the carpet and stared at the silhouette of this little creature, moving from side to side, groaning, almost crying. My body froze up. It has only happened a couple of times in my life, but it happened the same way. My face and arms would go cold first, and then I lost control of my legs and then draw to the floor. But no matter what I did this time, I couldn't keep my eyes off of that thing on my bed. It stood up and I could see it like a little girl against the back light coming from the window. That's when my body snapped out of whatever trance I was in, and i'd reached for the light switch. A little girl was staring at me, wide eyed and her mouth wide open. That's when I noticed that the bed wasn't mine. There were dolls and board games on the floor. The little girl screamed. As I looked around the room, finally realizing that this wasn't it, this was in my room. I heard footsteps from out in the hallway behind me. Then I got pushed forward when the door opened up to a man in his pajamas looking right at me, healing, who are you? What are you doing here? All I could do was stare at him, confused. This wasn't my house. I explained to him that I had gotten into the wrong house by accident, that I was sorry, and then I started crying too. A woman came over to the room, asking me who I was, and I did my best to explain what had happened, that I had just gotten to the wrong house, that I lived nearby, that the houses look the same, and I was sorry. The woman, our neighbor, helped walk me to the front door and then said that she would stay outside until I got to my own home, which I was thankful for. My place was only two houses down. I bumped into them a couple of more times during the semester, and each time I felt the same level of embarrassment. I never told anybody, but I knew that I needed to take a better look at myself. I moved out and things started turning around for me at school and overall, really, but I still think back on that little girl and feel terrible for scaring her the way I did. The next story is called the Ruby Dragon Ride, and it's coming off right after this. I used to work at a theme park during high school and it was an easy job compared to what I do now. Of course, the pay was terrible, but we would get free passes and free food most days, so we had a good time. It took only four months for me to pass those tests on the computer that trained you to operate different rides, and they used to go by levels. That was level B, which meant that I had permissions to get into the button areas and would control the starts and stops of certain roller coaster rides. Working at one of those places gives you the chance to meet all types of people. Some were older folk, the kids with their parents, the occasional drunk guy. For the most part, nobody would give me any trouble, and come to think of it, this story didn't involve a tough customer or anything it which is strange. The ride I was at had two operators and a supervisor. It was called the Ruby Dragon Ride and it was one of the bigger coasters that we had. It would go on its first hill drop to a tunnel loop around two times and then make its way to the final hill that would send everyone screaming. Without getting too technical, there was a pre check button where you would make a visual check to ensure that every seatbelt was engaged on both the monitors and the actual train car. You would have to check for selfie sticks, loose hats, and for people sticking their arms out of the ride. Once you did that, the other button would engage. You would have to send the alert that the ride was clear to start. You would press the button and off they would go. Late one night, I was the only operator there along with the assistant supervisor. The park was about to close. The final firework show was going on, and we would normally see a very small group of people coming along toward the roller coasters during those times, but this night it was almost empty. It wasn't the first time I had been there on a Monday, and I just found it strange. The assistant supervisor, a young guy from one of the other coasters, said that he would be right back because he had to go to the bathroom, and I sort of nodded at him and stayed at the little booth with all of the controls looking at the area that was sectioned off where people would form a line, and I found it so strange to see a young boy about nine years old going through the line dividers, not under or over them, but through them. I thought my eyes had been playing a trick on me. I mean, it was late and I was extremely bored by this point, but no. I rubbed my eyes and even looked away for a bit, and when I turned back, the boy was still there walking around that area. I looked over to the camera, since we would see pretty much everything inside and in the surrounding areas of the riot entrances, but I couldn't find them. It was easy for me at the time to think about how he was just some kid, like thousands of other kids roaming around the park without their parents, so I forgot about the situation and held back mentioning it to anybody. About two months after that happened, I was helping out a new employee of the park, a pretty girl named Vicki, who had joined my team. We ended up working together most nights and got to know each other very well, especially on those slow nights. We had this rule about lost children and how to respond in those situations, which happened very often at this park, though I'm sure that it's the same at other places. We were supposed to approach them as for their parents and they were in distress, we were supposed to call one of the tendants who would come by and take them to an outdoor play area sort of thing while they did the announcements to find their parents. Vicky was always very into those rules, even following her break times to the second, which I explained didn't matter too much because we didn't have the clock in machines there. You would just fill out a paper log and it was okay if she took an extra two minutes to walk back to her station. But she would do stuff like that. You know. Well, this one night, while I was filling out one of the reports that one of the maintenance people had left for me, I saw Vicky walking out into the line area. It was dark by this time and kind of misty. She was walking around there frantically looking around as if she lost something. When she saw me looking at her, she waved at me to come to her, which I did. She had also seen the little boy. She described him just like I had, with blue pants, white shirt and black hair. I was lost in thought when she snapped me out of it, asking what she should do. She thought I was trying to scare her when I told her that I had seen him at one point too. And words spread about the ghost boy of the Ruby Dragon Ride. Supervisors, especially the older ones, started telling us about how many encounters they've had with that boy, and now he would walk through surfaces. One of the attendants that we all knew as Grandma had the scariest story of all. She said that she actually approached him about ten years before my story happened, and that he had said that his name was Billy, that his parents' names were Margaret and John. She said that they went to the office where the children would wait for their parents, but upon arriving, Billy was gone. Scared that something might happen to him while he was under her watch. Parted it to her manager, who asked for the description of the boy, something that she gave right away as accurately as she remembered, and it matched ours completely. Nobody knows who he was exactly, since the park was known to keep some of the accident reports hidden, but more than one of the older employees says that it was likely the boy who died after falling off a ride called Final Splash. The whole thing was tragic and it even forced a ride to close down for good. That's on our ride, The Ruby Dragon Ride started construction. Scary Story podcast has written and produced by me Edwin Cobaruas up next, be sure to check out my other podcast called A Dark Memory, where I talk about real ghosts, mysteries and legends. I'll be sure to add the links to our Instagram discord and all the stuff that we have going on in the description of this episode. Thank you very much for listening. See us soon.