The Rocking Chair

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. We have two stories in this episode today. The first one is called the Rocking Chair, followed by the second story called Red Rubber. Paul. My name is Edwin and here is a scary story. I found out what an estate sale is when my grandma died. I'm sure not many people have gotten the chance to go to one of those, but in basic terms, it was like a yard sale, except everything inside the house is up for sale, and the prices were determined by whoever took over the property. It seems like such a sad thing to do, considering that people go in like vultures to rip out the flesh of the houses, that people spend all their lives collecting tiny parts of them in exchange for cash. I was not very close with my grandma, and none of my sisters and cousins from my mom's side of the family used to visit her or anything. She was a sweet woman from what I heard. I remember going to visit her some summers when we were very little, swinging on the oak tree in the front yard, running around the well that they had by the small barn on the outside. So other than that, I had no memories. Still I felt sad knowing that all of her things would be going up for sale, and my dad, now deceased, would have done anything to keep her property in the family. Now, I know these things can turn into problems, some even leading to lawsuits between siblings, so I didn't want to make a big deal about it. The other side of the family had decided to sell or not claim the property, and I had to respect that, but nothing said that I wasn't going to be able to buy the things myself. With that in mind, I called my sister, but I should have known that very thing I was trying to avoid was exactly what happened. She had a good job, extra income, and the ability to help out, but she said that we shouldn't get involved. This eventually turned into an argument, and I regretted even telling her about the listing. I barely knew how to read it, and it wasn't on some fancy website or anything, but rather one of those city newspaper listings with a long list of home addresses along with the dates and times of the sales, just very confusing stuff. Grandma's house was on the other side of town, though the only person who actually remembered the place was. My sister was old enough to remember what it looked like in everything, but I was not about to ask her for help. So that morning I looked up the address to the house across town. I drove up to it at around six in the morning, and I stared out at the front yard. The place looked different. The oak tree was missing, and the house looked much larger now. The walking path that led up to the porch was broken and unkept, and the entire place looked like I had been empty for years and not only a couple of months. Like I had been told, I didn't know what I wanted to buy. I had taken out about eight hundred dollars in cash that morning to try to get as many things as I could. I emptied out the trunk of my car and was ready. It was then when a woman stepped out of the car that was parked right in front of the house. She walked up to me and asked him if I wanted to take a look around the house, since I was the first one there. I smiled and stepped out of my car, happy that I would get my first pick and be able to actually take my time looking around the place. The owner was my grandmother. I casually mentioned to the woman her smile was wiped away as she took a step back and just stood there, stumbling on her own words as she tried to force that same smile to come back. It wasn't working. She opened up the door and told me that the house had no power at the moment, so that a technician would be coming around with a generator and lamps to set it up for the buyers. A little while later, I stepped inside, watching the woman take more steps back and then stand by the porch. The house was even bigger inside. Curtains reached the high ceilings. The kitchen had more cabinets than my entire house did, and it had an enormous fireplace in the corner of the living room. I walked around from window to window, pulling the curtains off to the side to create beams of light and dust. This place had been empty for a long time, too long. I walked around the kitchen, looking at the old pots and pans, the silverware neatly placed in the drawers. I grabbed an old teapot and set it on the dinner table. No one else was going to pick it up. For a few hours since the place was scheduled to open at nine, and so I made my way to the living room to the bedrooms with the quilts and towels. I think I'm making the play seem fancier in my mind, but really it was just old and dusty, with things that old people tend to have in their homes. We try to convince ourselves that old things have memories attached to them, and part of us wants to believe that they are good, even if they aren't. I held two quilt in my arms as I walked over to the second living room, the one that faced the backyard. As I looked around for the photo albums and the memory boxes that I was told Grandma used to have. It was then when I spotted it, the rocking chair on the edge of the living room. It was facing the large window that looked towards the small field in the backyard. And I had seen these before plenty of times, all around antique shops and through the photos that Dad used to show me. It was made of solid wood cut and it was decorated with a small cloth leaning over the back. I walked immediately up to it, sliding my fingers along the parts where you rest her elbows. Decorations carved into the wood on the back. I knew I had to have it. I found the old photo albums in the master bedroom upstairs and quickly grabbed them and placed them in an old basket. I put that on top of the chair and went back for the teapot, and then started searching for the woman. It wasn't nine in the morning just yet, but I had heard her walking around the second floor while I was in the room, humming to herself. This didn't seem like the most exciting job in the world. I got that. I picked out the window to see her still drinking her coffee in the car, the passenger side door completely open. Are you ready, she asked me, as she looked around for the clipboard she had left on the roof of her car. I reached over to it and handed it to her. She walked over to the house to help me move the rocking chair. Talied up everything right there on the front porch, checking the boxes for furniture and miscellaneous items. She then charged me only forty eight dollars and helped me bring the enormous chair to my car before walking over to her car and sitting back down. It was strange to not see people coming by to buy anything, Since from what I had looked up, these places were popular among antique shop owners and also with deal hunters. I figured I wouldn't ask why nobody else had arrived. Even with some of what I considered Grandma's items of sentimental value, I felt empty once I got home, like I had closed a chapter of sorts, like all of Grandma would be spread throughout antique shops and eBay soon, and all I would have from her was the chair and the other box of things I was able to grab. I was finally able to put the rocking chair in my living room, decide into sort through the pictures later on that evening, and then putting it off until the following morning. That night, I was plagued by a nightmare unlike any other. I was being chased through an old field. That night, I looked back to see shadows hiding between the old trees waiting for me to turn around. Across a clearing right where the cornfield ended was a straight shot to the back porch of a house that I hadn't seen before. I took a deep breath and bolted straight toward it. The thing growled behind me like a whisper that circled all around me, rumbling as it got closer and closer to me. And I was just about to reach the back door of the house when I heard the loud creaks of the floorboards underneath me. That's when I woke up in a cold relieved. I reached over to the bottle of water that I kept by my bed and grabbed my phone to check the time two o two in the morning. And it was then when I heard it the creek. I put my phone down and let my eyes adjust to the darkness one more time. Had someone broken in The creeks multiplied and they did not seem to be getting any closer, but they were constant rhythm. I turned on the flashlight off my phone and scooted myself up to be able to get out of the bed to see where the sound was coming from. That's when I heard it again, the creeks with humming, deep, distant and familiar. Someone or something was my house. I stepped out of my bed and walked over to the door, hesitating with every step I took. I was feeling for the walls afraid of feeling a cold hand. As I reached into the darkness in front of me, the humming was becoming a little more clear. I walked on the hallway, following the light seeping in from the outside through the living room window. I was startled by the silhouette of the rocking chair against the window, and then I just smiled to myself. It was a new piece of furniture. I was simply not used to it. But then it started rocking back and forth, back and forth, it moved, and then it stopped. I stared directly at it as my vision darkened. Everything around me except for the rocking chair and shadow about ten steps in front of me. It was then when the humming started again, and it was coming directly from the chair. That's when I finally saw the thing. It sat up straight, with its dark torso blocking and even larger part of the window. It stretched his legs in front of the chair as it leaned forward, looked straight at me. I took two steps back and then ran straight to my room and then shut the door. I flicked on the light. My heart now on my neck and inside of my ears. It was blocking out the sounds. I was trying desperately to hear, to prove to myself that I wasn't going crazy. The hums were now blocked by my heart meet and I would never know. I sat against the headdress of my bed the entire night, finally being able to sleep once the sun started coming out as a humming and the creeks faded. I was woken up by a phone call the next morning. It was my sister calling to apologize and to let me know that she would be in town ready to go to the sale at my grandma's old property. I didn't know it was a two day thing, so I agreed, and she picked me up within half an hour. I didn't recognize the way there, but when we pulled up, I saw the old oak tree, the well in the backyard. This one was Grandma's house. The woman was standing in the porch, a white smile on her face as she watched us come up to the front door. Hey it's you again, she said, Now this one, I can believe it was your grandma's. No one ever wants to step foot into yesterday's property. I've had it on my roster for years. The following story is called Red rubber Ball and it is coming out. Right after this, cousins, neighbors, and old friends had just left the get together we had at our new house. We had barely set up our furniture and the grill in the backyard, and that was enough to make the place feel kind of like home. Dad and I were sitting at the dinner table looking at the pile of dirty dishes and pants to scrape down, while Mom and my brother were coming into the house after tossing some garbage bags at the end of the long driveway that this house had. They maneuvered around the dirty dishes on the sink to wash their hands, and sat with Dad and I around the bowl of chips that nobody ate the plain corn ones, I remember it clearly. The television was on a little loud in the living room. We were talking about trash day and if we could switch rooms later on what color we would paint the walls, and if we should be coming up with a new list of chores around the house now that we had moved in. It was strange sitting around such a large kitchen. After living in apartments all of our lives, we still kept most of the lights off. Ceiling light only lit up the dinner table, casting shadows over our eyes. As we looked at each other, I forgot what we were talking about when suddenly the television turned off. It was then when we heard the front door creak, just a little bit, enough to make my brother turn his head over to it. They must have left it open. It was then when we saw it for the first and only time. It was a red rubber ball, like the kind of used to see around playgrounds at elementary school. It was just rolling into the house, slowly, going straight toward the main hallway. My dad's body was twisting toward it, since he had been turned away from the front door the whole time, and we all just watched the ball roll quietly into the hallway, unnaturally turning into it, and it just kept rolling. I looked toward the front door, expecting to see somebody standing there, but both mom and dad stood up and walked over to the start of the hallway in silence. I'm not sure how, but it clicked in my mind that this could not be happening. For a ball to roll around like that so slowly and simply keep going through the house, It's just odd. I pushed my chair back and startled both of my parents into action as they walked down the hallway following the ball. My brother was the first one to speak up, saying what the heck, and then was standing up to walk behind my parents. I went straight for the front door, opened it, looked outside, and then shut it, and then locked it. There was no one there. Everyone turned around to look at me standing by the front door, but confused, we all just sort of stared at each other, and then we walked down the empty hallway and unison toward the den that faced the glass doors from the backyard. We search around the place, I swear every single corner in there, mostly empty room anyway, We could not find that rubber ball, but we had all seen it. We all talked about it, and we all reacted to it. We know we saw it, yet the whole time we spent living there, we never saw it again. I remember looking it up online the significance of a red rubber ball, and things about hopelessness and grief came up. My mom also tried to figure it out, and she talked about it with the priests at her church, and he had little explanations to offer except for a blessing of the house, which eventually got done but didn't really do anything. After a few months, I had made friends with some of the other teenagers in the neighborhood that went to my high school, and we started hanging out after school at one of the local parks. The area was generally safe and we never stayed out too late anyway, except for this one night when we were talking about one of the guy's crushes from school. The conversation had died down once the lights of the park were coming on, but not all of them. It was then when we all saw a small boy running around one of the dark areas of the park, chasing something around. I found it a little strange for a little kid to be out that late by himself, since he looked to be around five or six years old. He was running and laughing by himself. As he faded out into the trees where we couldn't see him anymore, we all looked at each other and silently agreed that it was time to go home. We stayed out there, walking slowly and talking about ghosts and other things. It was then when I told them about the strange experience with the red rubber ball. They all seemed very interested but also had their own set of stories. One of the guys there told me that in his house, whenever his baby's sister would start crying, the alarm clock in his parents' bedroom would go off, joking that it was like clockwork. The other guy told me something creepier, though, that he had seen several kids tapping on his window late at night, and when he walked up to it, children disappeared. That it wasn't just them, that it was the entire neighborhood that would talk about these things going on in their houses. They were all surprised when I asked what they thought was going on, and I was surprised that they were surprised. That's such a normal question. But it was then when I found out that right behind our street, literally against the fence of our backyard, was the start of Crest House Cemetery, a really old spot with gravestones among the trees of what I thought was just another government owned property where the woods started. My parents had already found out about the cemetery. I mean, they were the ones who purchased the place. Some of the stories they heard also involved electronics turning off, strange lights floating around the neighbors' houses in backyard. The one they could never quite seem to understand was the incident of the red rubber ball. Scary Story podcast is written and produced by me Edwin Kbarubias. Thank you so much for your ideas for these stories. You can find me by going to Edwin dot fm on your browser like Safari, Chrome or whatever you use, or by using the link in the description. I'll leave my email on there too. Up next, be sure to check out True Scary Story, which you can find by searching on Spotify or Apple podcasts. Don't listen by yourself though. Also don't forget a tap follow so you can keep up to date with the stories until next time. Thank you very much for listening.