Witch Island

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. A man just doing his job gets an assignment that will be his last, but not for the reasons he was expecting. My name is Eddi, and here it's a Scary Story. It was December of nineteen ninety nine and at the time we had to carry four large cases of gear just for a short segment we were doing for a radio station about to launch the television portion of their show. I had just gotten married and had promised that the rest of my career would be mostly in the studio rather than in the field. Filming on location was one of those things that everyone on the team would look forward to back when we were younger, so we'd rely on the new people to take over the role for us. I had mentioned in passing that it would be my last. The most exciting trips had been to Japan and the Sahara Desert, going places I had only dreamed of as a kid. There was always a certain distance one would feel when you are behind the camera. The signs of starvation or the natural disaster in front of you are only lights and shadows coming through your lens and nothing more. Everything would deteriorate after that, and this would be another one of those tasks. I looked at the list of shots that I needed to get, and I met with the host, a younger guy about twenty five or so, who had pitched the story to the network a few months before. I'd been there for the second meeting, and I must admit that I thought he was joking at first, especially after coming up to the president of the network and the other directors about an idea for his late night radio and television show, Radio Obscura. It's what it was going to be, called, a show that would replace the empty gap of seventies hits between eleven and one in the morning. The network had a relationship caller hotline before that people would call in to talk about their problems and whatnot, but it got canceled pretty quickly after the other women of a public figure called in. The station got an influx of listeners after that, but the backlash and pressure to get it off the air was too much once the directors realized that advertisers wanted to avoid the drama. But this new segment was just what you're imagining. People talking about the occult dark entities, hauntings and all that other stuff. The kind of thing people would look for at night. Although the audience was already analyzed and determined to be primarily women getting ready for bed and unable to fall asleep. Books, pharmaceuticals, and household goods companies were already lined up for advertising slots. The guy with the idea was well prepared. If anything. I tried to get some more information on him, before realizing that it was not any of my business. Besides, finding anything about political views, marital problems, or what his net worth was would only make me judge the guy and believe it or not, it comes out on camera. What was mentioned over and over about him was that he was known to go off script, as he would say it to trap his audience, not captivate or entice a trap. He wanted to make them feel what he was feeling with no way out, and I kept thinking of the hard time us as his film crew would suffer during the trips. I had already worked with many personalities and was used to it. It seemed to bother the rest of the team. The pilot episode was simple. He would go to one of the islands off the southern east coast of Mexico. The idea was to go for a few days before the on screen talent and capture footage, and then once a talent team arrived, they would tell the story of the place. It's going to be a complete ambience thing where the viewers would get to experience firsthand the haunting of which island. It was during that first day when things started getting weird. On arrival, we were met by the contractors who would guide us through everything, and one of the drivers insisted on taking us to the house of a man who knew all about the tiny island to tell us more. I personally wasn't interested. The area was hot and all I wanted to do was go to an air conditioned room, But as a conversation became serious, the rest of the team agreed to go visit the man. They spoke of curses that had been investigated by international scientists who suspected it was an undiscovered virus that had its origin to there. At least that's how they explained the bizarre coincidences and deaths that followed those who'd visited. Zoologists had been sent at one point too, in order to investigate the strange sightings of a four line I get a creature like a dog I heard that would stand up to change its appearance to a human like, thin animal that would blend with the trees. They said it was completely off axis after sunset, and it had been that way for years, even for the scientist. And that was a case until Julio Marquez, the guy who was doing the show, had sent in his requests. The whole town knew that he was coming, and some had arrived with curiosity and others with warnings. For us, there was an old man sitting on the porch of a small wooden house. As we pulled over, the dirt was hot. As we stepped out, he shot us a glare and did not move a muscle as we went up to the porch. Everyone looked at each other, but I was looking around for water and found a shop out of a window about three houses down, so I said I'd be right back and walked over. The whole situation was strange to everyone, but not for me. These types of things happened while on the road, and I would be rolling the tape right now had it not been for how uneasy the old man looked to have us there. The place had cold water bottles. Thankfully, I took the largest gulp in front of the woman as she was giving me back my chain from the large bill I had gotten at the ATM. I looked around at the green trees and blue sky, trying to think of the time I would take a real vacation and not another one of these. There was a rush of excitement once I remembered how it might be the last trip I ever take while filming, even though I had promised that it would not happen again. I know that I'd be able to talk to my now wife into just one more. The last of anything always seems more exciting than it is. The team had gathered around the old man on the porch as the driver translated his warning. Always had recently disappeared while trying to record something for a magazine at a bad habit of completing the stories before they were told. So I automatically explained to myself that a pair of young writers had tried to go in after hours, and the only way to not draw attention to themselves would be to go in a small boat, a kayak or a canoe, and those things, especially with audio gear, are tough to manage. If the boat even hints at flipping over you'll be trying to protect your camera and batteries, even over your own life. It's weird how our human instincts work when we have expensive stuff or a project on the line. But the translator shut my mind right up when he said that the boys had been found under the strangest circumstances in pieces. Foul play, drug cartels, criminal activity all came to mind instead. But he then told us the story of the Witch. A woman can be spotted from the shore certain nights and had done so for decades. At first, the police recalled with official reports and everything, but no one could ever be found there. The story had made national news at one point, with newspapers reporting on it around Dia delos Muertos to creep out the people, at least during the festivities. Had become somewhat of a tourist attraction too, but it was usually the tourists who would lose her patience with the police and officials after the reports of a stranded woman on the island be ignored. Oh but she's real, the driver translated for the man. It's her island. What you are about to do will curse you. You should not be wondering if it is real, or if it can happen to you, but instead wonder. When the assistant sound manager asked, what could happen to us, all Julio's story was just about that, the hunt for the Witch of the Island. At least that's with the scripts, all said. The old man paused and then extended his left hand and then the right, moving his hand on top of the other like a knife on a chopping board. Muerte, he said, death Part two of which Island is coming up right after this. 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Call time was at seven pm to have our meeting and dinner and then head out to the boat that would take us to the island. We got through the maps and the shot lists review pretty quickly before talking about what we had heard from the old man by the side of the road. It had shaken up Lisa, our other camera person, and the assistant sound manager the most. They had joined us in several trips already, but mostly for events like the State Fair in Kentucky and a concert out on the West coast. With it being their first international trip, it made sense that they would be a little bit nervous, But if anything, I would be worried more about the stomach problems than what we were about to film. But I must admit that one of Lisa's questions about what we would do if we found something we were not supposed to find got me thinking they had all seen me as a leader of the crew because of my seniority. I knew that I had to be able to come up with an answer, no matter how absurd. The situation sounded. We have emergency numbers and two men remaining on the boat the whole night, I replied. Our statellite phone would easily connect us with our producer, who would step in to help no matter what. Like the time we were detained at the border for having cameras out in the Middle East. We checked our gear and got on the boat by eight point thirty, and it was a still night. The moon was full, and I immediately thought of how carefully this thing had been planned to grab the perfect shots. The island was indeed small, maybe about the size of a baseball field in total, not counting the jagged rocks around the edges. Tall and short trees filled the entire thing, with the section around the middle that was slightly higher than the rest. We stopped for the first shots of the place from a distance. The more of the rocks and stillness the moon naturally gave the place the eerie atmosphere we wanted. When we got off the boat and stepped on the air, immediately went cold again. Finding something to blame, I chose the trees, wet from the mists from the ocean that were cooling down the air. None of us with jackets. I looked around to see if anyone else could feel it, and yeah, it was cold. We all knew where to go. From studying the map with the only trail, we wanted a shot of the clearing the vegetation on the top of the hill. In hindsight, I know that what we were doing was risky, and although I was never a believer in the curses or the supernatural, I look back and think that perhaps I never got the chance to experience a place when it was for work. I never got to take the story seriously, and I never considered that anything could ever happened to me as long as I had my camera. But everyone, including me, would be proven wrong. As we were approaching the start of the trail that would lead us to the top of the hill, Lisa shouted for us to wait, and then with another question that sent chills down my spine, she whispered, are we the only ones here? Her gaze would not leave one of the tall trees immediately next to the clearing. In the moonlight, we could all see a tall thing standing past the branches, pale and with what appeared to be its arm moving up towards its head and then dropping down to its side. It must have been what one hundred feet from it. I reached for my camera and aimed at it, but quickly shuffled off into the dark trees. I got it, Lisa whispered, her voice trembling as she took out one of the monitors to review what she had captured. Her hands were shaking as we gathered around her gear. There in the dark screen, you could all see it tall, pale and almost alien like creature, although from what we could see, it was wearing something dress that dropped all the way to the ground. No, I said out loud, almost laughing at what I had seen. My thoughts again had gone to a prank, a part of an elaborate plan by this Julio Markes guy, who was known to do almost anything to get what he wanted on camera. The whole team looked at me. My comment had been out of touch seeing Lisa's reaction, but I quickly gathered my thoughts and asked Lisa to replay it to back up the footage on the spot. At no moment had we thought about going after it, but it was going to be tough to continue without talking about what we had just seen. At that point. Both the boat operator and the guide had stayed behind on the boat, but one of the assistants went back to ask for him to come out with us. When we explained what we had seen, he said that we had to hurry up and get our material that we needed because he and the boat operator had heard cries from the south side of the island about ten minutes before. Even though he was nervous, he accepted to go up the hill with us. It was almost eleven by this point and he was in a rush to get back down into the boat. We got the shots, and on our way back, nobody talked about what we had seen. The strange noise is that we would hear along the trail, like the whispers the white eyes from the members of the crew whenever they reacted to them, whispers like songs and stories combined the stillness of the air. The boat ride was silent, with only the operator and the guide talking to each other about what they had heard. We had our stuff ready, tapes backing up in their cases. We were the only ones at the lobby of the hotel that night as we talked about what we had seen. Something I had never done before, but again and didn't want to look sensitive to the rest of the team, so I was glad when someone else suggested the idea of a prank, whether from Julio or from one of the locals trying to scare us off. But no one was allowed on the island. We're the only ones that held a permit. Then again, laws are just laws and suggestions in some places. We decided as a group to not bring it up to the talent crew that was meant to arrive later that night to film during the daytime the next morning. If there was anything there, they would have to experience it for themselves. Everything went as planned the next morning, with filming interviews and the daytime recordings back on the island, where later that day Julio was scheduled to arrive on his own boat. Something about the guy made everyone uncomfortable, but hosts tend to be like that, coming along with their own crew, assistance and mode of transportation. The guy was for sure not going to be at the same hotel as us, and that he did. We were filming around sunset and he told the tales of the witch were fromed the ritual in one of the clearings, and then retrace the steps, requesting for me to zoom in on different sections of the trees, and then on the footsteps that were clearly left by the rest of the crew, as he excitedly said that this was proof of someone else being with us on the island. The sun had set when we were on our short break, overlooking the water, sitting on our cases, hitting the cold sandwiches, and suddenly Julio came running up to us, saying that he needed a camera man now. I grabbed my camera and ran after him. In the distance, we could hear howls of pain coming from the only hill. It took me only a couple of seconds to realize that we were running after it, soeat was running down my back almost immediately, and I turned back around to the area where I had been sitting, only to see the rest of the crew coming up the hill behind us. I slowed down to let the others catch up while Julio disappeared up the hill. The rest of the crew and I hurried up the hill. Now with only the sounds of the water slashing against the rocks of the island, we could all see around us now, but when we called for Julio, the deafening silence got to me. My blood rushed away from my face as I tried to catch my breath. There was no explanation for this. What followed next was beyond what any of us were expecting. We spent the rest of the night searching for him all around the tiny island, on the shore and on the boats, with help from the local police department. Our producer was called and he was able to get a private group of searchers to come help, but it was no use. The sun was rising when our boat operator got back to wait for us, along with other groups of reporters who were told to not speak to anybody by our producer, Gregg. As we were heading back to the main shore, we looked at each other in silence, not knowing what to say the story. The entire production was quickly scrapped without another word from any one at the station. No explanations offered, no closure. When I asked what Lisa was going to do with the footage, she said she had already turned it in and wanted nothing to do with it. Julio was never found. The driver said that he'll eventually show up, but they always do. We are relaunching Dark Memory as horror Story and if you're not subscribed, dead to find it on your podcast app horror Story. The cover has yellow letters and a windshield. It's a show where I talk about hauntings, dark history, and legends. Go find it and subscribe. You can listen to horror Story and all of our shows completely add free by going to scaryplus dot com and trying it out. If you have questions about it, just send us an email. I'll leave it in the description of this episode. Thank you very much for listening to my stories. See you soon.