The Window

[00:00:00] Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Today I want to introduce to you a brand new show that I'm working on about real life horror stories, things that others have experienced. At the end of this episode I'll add the exclusive trailer for it and show you how you can

[00:00:17] subscribe and listen to it for free, so stick around to the end. But for now, in this episode we have stories that deal with our homes, and the sinister stories behind them. My name is Edwin. Here's a scary story.

[00:00:38] Mom has always had a bad habit of checking up on my sister and I at night. I'm not sure if other families do this also, but I didn't think of it as unusual until I mentioned it to my wife one time in the middle of the night.

[00:00:52] I said that I was going to go check on our one year old. At first she smiled and went back to sleep, but one time she brought it up in conversation. Waking up in the middle of the night to check on a kid was weird.

[00:01:04] I'm sure she was fine, she would say. Still, I would roll out of bed, crack open her door and make sure that she was sleeping soundly. When we got back to talking more about it though, I started remembering something else.

[00:01:19] A type of repressed memory, I guess, but it didn't come back all at once. In my dreams, I would be sleeping on my twin bed next to my sister's bed. Her pink and white furniture pieces neatly organized, while my wooden drawer sets were opened in a complete mess.

[00:01:39] I could hear my sister's breathing on my left side, and I could see the shadows cast against the other side of the room from the light that came through the window. It was strange for me to remember our first house, the place where I grew up, but

[00:01:52] I was comforting to remember how happy I used to be as a child. Our room had no windows to the outside, I guess it was part of the oddities of the house itself. So instead, dad built us a window facing the hallway.

[00:02:06] And mom placed a nightlight out in the socket of it that would stay on the whole night. Sometimes I would still be awake when mom would peek into the room through the window, no longer having to crack open our door to check up on us.

[00:02:20] But I would feel an amazing sense of fear whenever I would see her body block the light and cast a shadow for a few seconds, and then head back to her room. Eventually mom would only pass from one end of the hall to the other, and it happened

[00:02:35] several times at night. Anyway, my wife thought that it wasn't that big of a deal that I did that, but she was a light sleeper so me moving around at night would wake her up sometimes.

[00:02:47] I don't know how else to describe the urge I felt to go check on my child that night, but it didn't come from a sense of warmth like I did in my dreams. I was afraid. And the thing is, I don't know what I was afraid of.

[00:03:04] I was asked this several times and I cannot pinpoint the fear to that being an abduction or illness. The fear that I felt was so much deeper than that. When I was forced to blurt out words describing what I felt, even I surprised myself at just

[00:03:20] how absurd they were. I thought of murder, knives, screaming. I thought of blood splattered against the wall. I would imagine my child being dragged away, screaming. Do you believe that is healthy, Mr. Garcia? There it was. You're knowing question one more time. That would only make me angry.

[00:03:45] Of course it wasn't healthy to imagine your child being murdered in the middle of the night. I was so fed up with these sessions that one time I ended up calling my mother from

[00:03:56] the car on the way home to talk about her habit and what drove her to check up on us the way she did. Mom, I mentioned. I do the same things you know. How sweet she mentioned. That was her phrase.

[00:04:11] No mom, it is because I get a strange sense of something bad happening, like Tracy's going to be killed or something. My goodness, she exclaimed. How can you think that? I explained to her that I thought that it was simply a habit I picked up from her,

[00:04:28] so I wanted to know why she did that. Oh well you know, Grandma used to do that to me, just to make sure I was sleeping alright. But also, you know I used to have trouble sleeping even back then.

[00:04:42] Plus being in that house where that happened, you know, made things worse. That's right. Mom did have trouble sleeping, I remember that. They had bought the house because they had gone on sale after an unfortunate

[00:04:58] event that claimed the life of a kid in a room with no windows. It was a break-in, I believe. I was worried, my mother. When I mentioned the part about the window, told her that I could always see her shadow even multiple times at night.

[00:05:16] She passed down the hallway. She soon went silent. Mom, I asked. Now, why would I do that to both of you peeking inside like we were at a zoo? She said. No, no.

[00:05:30] I would open up your door and walk up to both of you once I was sure you were sound asleep. Every single night. So now, who was that? A family home. This house was passed down from my parents to my small family.

[00:06:03] It isn't that big of a deal, my wife used to call it a shack, until I told her that it bothered me. I wasn't sure why it did, my parents had worked hard to buy that piece of land, even though they didn't have to build the house themselves.

[00:06:16] The land charge a hefty price just for having that place built directly on there. Tanks, wiring for electricity and everything had been added before the purchase, so my parents did not see it as a total loss. And so the story goes. Mom never liked the house.

[00:06:33] She said it gave her the creeps. Dad used to say that it was the area that mom was afraid of. It had lots of empty space surrounding it. The back of the house would look out into the dark scene of mountains

[00:06:45] and tiny groups of pine trees scattered through the site of it. At the front one can see for miles as a fog rolled over the dirt roads that would take us over the hill into the town, which is now a city where we would do the shopping.

[00:07:01] Mom had come from an even smaller town than that, so I doubt that she would have been afraid of living in a semi-secluded area like that. As long as I could remember, mom blamed the house, or how she called it, the shack. Dad loved it.

[00:07:17] They had a courtyard in the middle, though calling it that is a bit of a stretch. With such an old-fashioned construction, one had to step out into the hallway and through the courtyard just to get to the bathroom. It was a blast growing up there.

[00:07:29] My friends from the town used to love coming over to my house and camping there. Bonfires, mowers, tents, the whole thing. But it all stopped one day when two of my friends ended up crying over something that they claimed they saw.

[00:07:45] It must have been around midnight and the bonfire was dying out. When I heard Sam scream from his tent, the one he was sharing with two other kids. I was half awake, obviously, but I heard mom's voice and then dad turned on the main lights

[00:08:01] that lit up the entire field. Mom screamed and dad yelled out to someone out in the field. Then suddenly, a gunshot. Everything went silent then. Nobody knew what to do. I saw dad running out into the field when mom unzipped the tent and helped us find her shoes.

[00:08:23] Camping was over for the night, and we would be staying inside. I barely remember it, but Sam and the other two kids inside that tent claimed to have heard a growl while the others heard the voice of a man.

[00:08:38] Mom heard the whole thing but did not say anything else to us. She simply stared out the window, waiting for dad to come back. She tightened up a blanket around her back and stepped out to greet dad as he was coming back to the door.

[00:08:53] He looked at us, asked if we were okay, and he left the room in silence. Thank you, I heard her tell him. It had been the first time dad had ever reacted so strongly to one of mom's requests.

[00:09:07] Sam and another kid told me that they had seen a man lurking by the trees, talking to himself. Mom sitting on the chair by the window simply stared out into the darkness. You could tell she was listening.

[00:09:21] I never asked her much about that specific situation, but it was a big deal at the time. I had already experienced things at that point and the creepiest thing I had been told by mom was about my imaginary friend named Ruth.

[00:09:37] She was a young girl with braided hair that I had drawn a few times. Supposedly I would tell mom that he had gone out to play by the trees, and she would tell me which one was her favorite tree.

[00:09:49] They ended up picking a favorite one also, but I don't remember which one it was. I barely remember her, but according to mom, Ruth's mom was named Bonnie, and that both her dad and her older brother were named John.

[00:10:04] There were lots of things that happened in that house, things from shadows lurking through the hallways to the pots and pans moving in the kitchen by themselves. They were always minor. When I was growing up, I simply started to ignore them.

[00:10:21] But mom seemed to pay close attention to them. She wouldn't tell us, and especially wouldn't tell dad, but I have lots of memories of her setting her coffee cup down and walking carefully over to the courtyard, stepping

[00:10:36] out into the hallway, and of catching her staring out the window in the middle of the night when I would step out of my room to go to the bathroom. She would always smile at me and then turn her head back to the field.

[00:10:51] On the day we signed the papers, mom joked that now that dad wasn't on the legal documents anymore, I would finally be able to sell the darn thing. She had been given another folder that came along with the official signed documents,

[00:11:04] but the notary ignored them and gave us a brand new Manila envelope with her stamp on the front. She excused herself to go grab something from the printer on the other side of her office.

[00:11:14] In the awkward silence of that place, I held up the folder and mom looked at me. I shrugged and opened it up. First I would take out some of the newspaper clippings and hand them to mom.

[00:11:28] Headlines along with the photos of how our fields used to look like a long time ago. An entire family had been killed by an intruder before my parents purchased it. We just kept going through the newspapers.

[00:11:44] But then we both held up a large photograph of the family that was taken in front of the house. Welcome to your new home, Bonnie, September 1951. And then more photographs and death certificates. All from 1954. John Bonnie, John Jr., Ruth Willenmere.

[00:12:12] We then both heard the door open and we were greeted by the yellow teeth of the notary. Congratulations, she said, shaking our hands. The house was now mine. The following story also deals with the places we choose to live in and how some can have a darker past.

[00:12:40] This story is coming up right after this. The patch of trees. There used to be a little girl that I would play with when I was a kid. She wouldn't say anything and she wouldn't do much to bother us. She would just sort of be there.

[00:13:01] When I met her I was playing out in the yard of our apartment complex and she simply walked up to me and signaled me to follow her. Mom would always force me to change whenever my shirt got as dirty as hers but she didn't seem to mind it.

[00:13:15] The strands of her dark hair seemed to stick together against themselves and then do her neck. She laughed as she ran out toward the swing sets and I chased her around the sandbox and toward the trees during a random game of tag. That's when I lost her.

[00:13:32] I could hear her laughter coming from behind some of the trees but mom said to never go past that patch of trees by myself. So I just stood there, looking through the branches and the bushes, waiting for

[00:13:43] the little girl to laugh or to make a movement that will let me know where she was. That's when I heard my mom calling my name from our apartment on the second floor

[00:13:52] and I walked back slowly, wishing for the girl to show up so I could at least tell her that I had to go. She was nowhere to be seen. I simply looked up toward mom as she was going back through our door.

[00:14:06] I never gave it much thought going out to play with her or anything but I did start feeling suspicious of her whenever she would simply vanish out into the trees and not say goodbye. She would never come around when the other kids were there and she wouldn't

[00:14:20] tell me where she lived. Thinking back on it now, lots of things make sense obviously but back then I don't remember thinking it was anything that strange. She was just another kid probably from another apartment complex. The entire street was filled with them.

[00:14:39] One time when mom called me to go inside for dinner, mom asked me why I had been running around by myself out there and that's where my friends had gone. I explained that I wasn't running around by myself but that I had been playing

[00:14:52] tag with the girl from another apartment building. Mom gave me a strange look. She had seen no one else out there with me. Just don't go past the patch of trees on your own alright? she said. Past those trees was a dried up riverbed with metal fencing.

[00:15:12] There was nothing to do around there anyways. I had gone there with two of my other neighborhood friends one time and we had been poking a dead bird with a stick just beyond that fence on the dare. Mom never found out.

[00:15:26] The time passed and eventually the girl stopped showing up. Plus tag wasn't as fun anymore and I started simply hanging around the benches and talking with some of my friends that I would meet at school.

[00:15:39] I would keep an eye out for her though in case she ever came back again. Eventually we moved out of that apartment complex and into a house. I must have been around what 14 years old by that time.

[00:15:52] I looked down into the street one time watching a bunch of the kids cross the street to the sound of an ice cream truck arriving. One of them reminded me of that girl from the apartment complex.

[00:16:03] I casually asked mom about the patch of trees from that old place. Glad to be out of there huh? She asked me with a proud smile. Yeah, I guess I replied. She lightly pushed me to the side. You'll make friends here too she said.

[00:16:20] That other place was dangerous you know that and it really was a dangerous area. Mom told me about that place from when I was even younger. One little detail sent chills down my spine.

[00:16:35] Just beyond the trees, the police had found the body of a little girl who had been missing for several months. I often wonder if she was the girl I used to play with. Scary Story Podcast is produced by me Edwin Covarrubias.

[00:17:00] The new show I'm working on is called True Scary Story. But I must give you a warning. Some of the stories that will be published may contain sensitive topics to some audiences. So listener discretion is advised. The stories are true experiences.

[00:17:17] I will play the trailer and then leave you with that. Until next time, thank you very much for listening. Links to the show will be in the description of this episode as well. Okay okay, here it is. People share their paranormal encounters.

[00:17:36] I'm a skeptic when it comes to this type of stuff so I would always debunk it before I would even say it's anything relevant. Shadow, okay you see a shadow one time? No big deal.

[00:17:47] But if it's kind of being a little bit more active and like on its own and kind of disembodied, like it kind of gets a little eerie and creepy. Strange sightings, bizarre occurrences and situations that have no apparent explanation.

[00:18:01] I would see like a hazy white misty something dash across my left mirror. For myself, Edwin, creator of Scary Story Podcast comes true scary story. A show about real life horror encounters. That's it, the thing that happens out here. People report seeing all kinds of stuff.

[00:18:29] I was like okay, I must be seeing things, maybe just a wild animal. Available wherever you get your podcasts. It's just a demon, demonic something evil that I just didn't want to say. Find a link to it by going to truescarystory.com.