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January 10, 2020 48 mins

Have you ever experienced something bizarre -- some unexplainable coincidence, chilling interaction or even a run in with what some might call the supernatural? If so, then you may have the next story for Radio Rental. In this episode, the guys interview Payne Lindsey, creator of Up and Vanished, Atlanta Monster and more, about the inspiration behind his newest podcast, Radio Rental.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Hello, Welcome

(00:25):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is Noel. They call me Ben. We are joined as
always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled Decade. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. This is ah.
This is a special episode for us. Pretty excited about this.
We have a returning guest today. Today we're joined by

(00:49):
our colleague, longtime friend of ours, Paying Lensy. That's right,
the CEO co founder of Tenderfoot TV. Paying. People recognize
you as the creator and host of podcasts such as
Up and Vanished, Uh, The Atlanta Monster, and your latest project,
which is why we wanted to talk to you today,

(01:10):
Radio Rental. Thanks. Yeah, thanks for being on the show man.
Thank you, guys. I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah, we've we've
been listening to Radio Rental and with the lights on. Well,
well yeah for me, get started. For me, I actually
try and get to the darkest place I possibly can
like to listen to it in my sensory deprivation. That's
the best place actually for me, it's in the car

(01:32):
at night after I've driven home from work, like it's
getting late so early now here in Atlanta where we are,
by the time I'm getting home, if it's like six
seven something like that, I'll sit in my car and
keep listening to an episode on purpose because the the
show itself and what we're gonna tell you exactly what
it is after this, but the show itself has such
an eerie quality to it that it almost intensifies the experience.

(01:56):
If you're just alone in a car and it's kind
of cold, I don't know, I would n spooky driveway moment. Well,
the purpose there is still, like in my mind and
for me personally, is to it is to enhance the experience,
like to to get a an even further sensory experience
from something right. And to my mind, what Radio Rental

(02:19):
does with the sound design and the way the stories
are told, it does give you this sensory experience of
being there in a lot of these things. So let's
let's let's start off by Paine, tell us what Radio
Rental is um you know, as an overview, and then
we'll start getting into some of this stuff. I mean, basically,
at its core, Radio Rental is just weird, bizarre stories,

(02:41):
kind of an homage to Are You Afraid of the Dark,
and it's presented in this um weird way where Rain
Wilson is playing this video store clerk who works in
this old kind of eighties retro video store called Radio Rental.
Radio a rental means it's like British Cockney slang for

(03:03):
mad or you've lost your mind. They'd say you've gone
radio rental and the British Cockney rhyming slang exactly. And
so it's my first anthology series where each episode is
a new story and there's about two to three stories
in each episode, and they're all true stories. They're all
real stories, and it's the real people telling you them.

(03:25):
And so there's other stuff like this out there where
people do retellings of stuff, but we put a lot
of effort into actually going to make the connection with
these people, vetting them as much as we could and
flying out to them wherever the hell they are, and
sitting down and interviewing them and making this kind of
short story, cinematic experience out of it. And there's a

(03:46):
lot of work that has to go on behind the scenes, right,
like just for the process questions before we get into
some of the real spooky stuff. How from germination of
the idea, genesis of the idea, to actually getting the
first episode out. How how much time did you and
your team have to put into, as you said, finding

(04:07):
these people, vetting them and speaking with them. It seems
like it must have been a pretty involved process. It
was like every other podcast I've made where I was like,
this is a cool idea, let's do this, and then
like a few months in, I'm going, this is a
lot harder than I thought it was gonna be. And
so this was that on a whole new level where
I'm very reliant on these people to want to do

(04:32):
this with me, because I mean, I can have I
can find a really great story, but if that person
is not interested and telling me that story, or maybe
they are but they sound really weird on the microphone
or or whatever, right, there's there's so many factors that
I can't control, which makes it kind of scary. Um. So,
I mean, initially I was looking all over the place

(04:54):
and I didn't really even know where to find these
types of stories or or really what was going to
uh merit radio rental story to begin with. And I
knew that in these first batch of episodes that whatever
story we put out there that is going to be
what radio rental is, it will always evolve from there.
But I need to set the standard for what is

(05:15):
a radio rental story. And you know, it's not every
single story that you hear, it's not every scary story.
It's this kind of in between area where you know,
you know when you hear it, like you hear another story.
And if you've heard radio Rental at this point, if
you hear another story out there, you would know, Okay,
that's probably a radio rental story. And so I wanted
to kind of coin that term and really kind of
set the standard for, you know, what you're experiencing and hearing.

(05:39):
It was very difficult just to kind of find these
people and make contact with a stranger on the internet,
um with someone we heard user name, and convince them
to let me fly to where they are and meet
them in a hotel and recorded them for my podcast.
So let's dive in a little bit deeper to something

(05:59):
I was, you know, the the entire time that was
listening to the show, which is out now unavailable wherever
you get your podcasts. Do you want to point that
out the full first season? Right? And uh, this so
we don't want to spoil too much of the specific episodes,
but we do want to talk about some of the things.

(06:20):
And one of the things that haunted me throughout listening
is that this subtle, this subtle play of fact and fiction.
You know, this is a lot of this feels like
there's some modern folklore elements to it. Um, which is
why I love that you point out, Um, are you
afraid of the dark? You know, there's this this this

(06:42):
kind of chilling camp fire. It could be true element.
These are true stories because you did find Again, this
is the part we should emphasize pain You did find
real people who told you these stories. Right. Uh, We're
there ever times where you felt the little line between

(07:04):
like fact or fiction sort of blurred or what what
did or was it always to you was always clear?
Or were there are times where you were like, I
don't know if I should be alone in a hotel
room with this person. I mean, there's definitely this line
of where I mean, there's a few stories in there
for sure where you can't really rationally explain what happened,

(07:28):
and just kind of structurally with what I was trying
to build here, I wanted to have a good balanced
mix of stories. I didn't want to come at you
with the most unbelievable stories ever and just shock you
where people are like, yeah, this is just like unbelievable stories.
They don't believe any of these stories. I wanted to
hit you with a real thing that happened, definitive from

(07:49):
the beginning. And so every now and then you get
this little twist where you're like, oh, I don't know,
like I do, don't, I don't. I can't explain that,
but I don't not believe it it and so, and
that's how I feel about some of these stories where
it's like in this line of I don't know how
to explain what happened, but I believe this person, but
like what happened, and so you're you're thinking about it

(08:12):
like scratching a head, like what the what the hell happened.
I think there's a pretty good example of this in
that first episode that we actually got to hear a
sneak preview of a while back. But man, it it's
one of those that is a true story of something
that really happened, for sure. And then the story itself
as it's being told and as it's kind of revealing

(08:32):
things as you go, um, you don't even really you
don't think like, maybe this isn't real, maybe this isn't
and then it hits you right at the end, Oh,
this is a true thing that occurred. I remember this
from the news. So let's talk about Um, I'm just
I'm calling it the flight. I don't know what you
called it in the within the episodes, but we hear
about this man's extraordinary experience doing something very ordinary, which

(08:56):
is just taking a flight. Can you can you tell
us a little bit of about that story? Yeah, I
mean it just it starts off. He's a kid at
the time, and he's flying from Paris to Miami. It's
in December of two thousand one, and he was very
familiar flying. He fled, He flown several times with his
brother and his dad was in first class and his
brother and him were in the back and midflight, all

(09:20):
of a sudden, this flight attendant starts screaming the word no,
and obviously anyone screaming on an airplane, Nope, not a
good thing, right If they're screaming, yes, it's still even that.
You're like, what come, he's screaming on airplane? Not a
good thing. And so eventually that escalates to even louder

(09:44):
and he sees this kind of scuffle going on, and
all of a sudden, someone passes up this fire extinguisher
and hits this dude in the middle square in the face,
and he's like, what the hell is going on here?
Chaos just erupts in the flight. Turns out there was
a terrorist on board. His name was Richard Reid. And

(10:06):
this is right after nine eleven, so you can imagine
being on that plane. I mean, that would be terrifying
as hell. And this guy, Richard Reid, he was six
ft four over two pounds. He had a bomb in
his shoes and he was attempting to light it with
this box of matches and the flights and it saw this,

(10:27):
probably assuming he was trying to smoke a cigarette or something,
not light a bomb. Yeah, sir, please don't smoke a cigarette.
And that escalates and she reaches for the matches. This
guy bites her on the hand and it just turns
into a complete show on the plane and eventually they

(10:48):
subdue the guy. Everyone kind of steps up to be
a hero, which is amazing, and they tie him up
with phone cords and belts and all kind of stuff,
and a doctor on board and jects them with I
think dies a pan or something just to calm him down,
and they divert the flight. They landed and SWAT team
comes on board. All of a sudden, it's all over
the news and this is right after Non eleven. Absolute

(11:10):
craziness and this is literally why you take your shoes
off at the airport. Yeah, I mean that was a
real dick move. Well, it's it's incredible to me because
the people on that flight had no idea how dire
that situation was, even though they saw that maybe he's

(11:30):
trying to light something like shoe, that's weird. Why would
he be doing that, Like, let's not do that could
be a bomb. But he had C four in his
shoe that would have obliterated that point in a minute,
quick question. Can you detonate C four with the match?
Doesn't it require some sort of like electric So he
had a hole, like I mean, there's a picture of
his shoe online something that they kind of gutted it
this big black boot and I mean he had some

(11:52):
sort of wiring system where I mean that there was
a fuse He's gonna light. I'm not sure exactly how
it it worked. Me it didn't work, thank god. But
I think they said it only didn't work because his
shoes were damp one it had rained that morning, and too,
he was just sweating, just being nervous. I mean, it's
crazy to think that, like if they had gone off,

(12:12):
the entire plane's just up in flames and it's just
no one lives right, oh for sure. See four. I
mean that'll take out like a like a whole building.
I mean, if you have enough of it. Insane yesh
se four Just for background, we don't need to go
into why I know this, but four do. It's stable.
It's stable enough that if you just put a if

(12:34):
you just put a match by the substance, or even
if you shoot it with a gun, it's not going
to explode. You do need that system that you just
describe PAIM, which is the one of the scariest things
I think for people on the flight who were of
course watching the news afterwards, where they figured out, well,
sure this person clearly had some mental issues, but they
still had it together enough to build a shoe bomb.

(12:57):
You know, we joke about it now, but we only
joke about out things like that because that was a
real thing. And to your pointment, one thing that's stuck
with me about that is hearing the story. We're put
in the p o V of that person and we
don't know what's happening either in the way that the
way that the narrative plays plays out. I also had

(13:20):
that moment at the end where I went, you know,
for lack of a better phrase, I went, oh, I
remember that happened. Um, And that's that's something that had
me thinking too, like when we talk about the fact
and fiction, and when you're talking about the emphasis you
put on having this like, let's have this demonstrably true
thing in in the very first from the jump, because

(13:43):
now every other thing that happens, we're all waiting for
that moment where we go, oh wait, oh no, oh man.
That was yeah. So I gotta say another thing that
was I think incredibly important about that first story is
it's terrifying now in in today's age, how we have

(14:05):
so it feels like we have so many events like
that that we start to forget them then, and we shouldn't.
And so maybe the best maybe the best way to uh,
to impact people with that are to get the best
moral is the one that you just so perfectly described,
which is and that guy is the reason we can't
wear shoes playing, you know. I'm look, I'm still pissed

(14:28):
at Richard for that. Yeah. Absolutely, Look, I don't even
have laces. I have to catch a flight later today.
So it reminds me of that thing in Arrested Development,
where like he's got the one armed guy who always
uses to teach his kids a lessonies. And that's why
you always leave a note. I want to add really
quickly here. There was a two thousand fifteen article I
remember seeing an NBC but I'm not sure exactly who

(14:51):
spoke with Richard Reid again. But he expressed regrets, like
tactical regrets about what he did, uh and I'm practical,
like you should have done a better job of blowing
up the plane. And then he wished he did a
better job. This is a crazy This is a quote
from it says, I do have some tactical regrets of
a sort which I won't go into here, but I

(15:12):
don't regret losing my freedom. Okay, dead eyed robot like Jesus,
that's cool. Enjoy your meals, yeah, right, enjoy your one hour.
You can't go to Chili's anymore. So well he he
goes on to talk about the Charlie Hebdoe thing, and
he's like, no, I don't think that's a tragedy. I
think it's a tragedy that people can belittle other people's
beliefs in that way. Okay, Okay, we'll move on then. Thanks.

(15:37):
We'll pause here and return to Radio Rental after a
word from our sponsors, and we're back. We can't really
spoil this show, no matter what we can can. Well, well,

(15:59):
that's what we're talking about. One out now, Yeah, that's
one episode in episode or that's one story in episode one. Right,
there's a lot of stories, and there's at least two
in every episode. I mean think there's over a dozen
in this season. So I mean, even when you think
you've got it figured out, you don't, because we're trying
to confuse ourselves while we're making this anyone everybody's confused. Um,

(16:22):
when one story that stuck with me. That actually, uh,
that I went back and re listened to and thought
about for a few days is the story about the
person who keeps receiving messages as someone gets closer and
closer and closer to how basically that like, I um

(16:47):
that that felt so black mirror esque. Yeah, you know,
and it feels like that's the other thing. I don't
want to be too repetitive, but that that's one of
the ones especially what I thought I could really happen.
I gotta go beef up my where is my phone
number on the internet? I need to watch out. Yeah,
but that's also one of those things that feels a

(17:08):
lot like that folklore story that maybe we've heard before,
you know what I mean, we're familiar from inside the house. Yeah,
well we're you going in and interviewing the person. It's like, uh, now,
you know, I have to listen to this story and
be as objective as I can, but ultimately just take
have this person take me through this story as clearly
as clearly as possible, and the way the way he

(17:31):
tells it, Oh god man, it's creepy. That's yeah. With
that one especially, that's one of the tales where I
thought you know, like full disclosure, we all know each
other outside of the show as we do like we
we are actually friends. This is one of the ones
where I thought I should I gotta ask pain, like,

(17:55):
you know, maybe not in front of people, but are
asking if that was an actor because that was really good?
Was like, is that a voice actor? And I had
I haven't asked you, but that guy, know, he was great.
I'm telling me he was. He was funny, he was
well spoken. We I mean we actually it was Mike
and I who were in there. It was in Phoenix
recording this guy. I think after we recording him were like,

(18:15):
do you do radio? Do you do podcast? Um? But
he's like no, but you know, I get that a lot.
And he's just kind of one of those guys who
was just I mean, he's the kind of guy who
would engage with the stranger, right. So he's kind of
you know, chipper and funny and just you know, just
kind of brightens people's days and says witty things and
you know, I'm not afraid to say what he thinks.

(18:37):
So which is just that person and he's well spoken
and he told it and what I thought was a
pretty comical way at times, but yeah, he was. He
was amazing. He's like, he was literally exactly what we
were looking for for this show. And when we talked
about the show, I guess, um, one of the things

(18:58):
we should do a little bit of of quid pro
quo claris stuff here is we mentioned some things that
we we found UH had a lot of stay in
power with us as listeners. I I have to ask,
and it's totally all right, there's no wrong answer here.
I have to ask, Man, is there any anything that

(19:19):
you that you covered or that you found while you
all were creating Season one that stayed with you? Like
anything that you know you left UH in a day,
month weeks later you said, Man, I don't. I don't
know there's there's actually definitively one story that really bothered me. Um.

(19:43):
I don't like to think that I'm desensitized to any
of it. I think that I'm I'd like to look
at it as if I've just gotten better at compartmentalizing
this stuff. Sure, Um, but like there's very a few
things that really scare scare me. I mean, I don't
like paranormal stuff just because I'm like, I don't know
how to deal with that if that ever came into
my house, you know. Um, But those those kind of

(20:04):
stories are also easy to kind of write off if
you don't believe in that or something, So you know,
they're not always the scariest as some people. To me,
the scariest story that bothered me the most in the
whole season was a story called Laura of the Woods. Um.
I don't know if you guys heard this one, but
the basic synopsis is this kid, he's ten years old

(20:26):
and this small Indiana town and he's playing in the
woods by himself with his g I Joe's, and all
of a sudden he gets his overwhelming just feeling of
fear that someone is looking at him, someone's watching him
out there. And there's this like three story house pretty
close to them. Right there is there's this like house
in the neighborhood that's like I mean, they called it

(20:48):
like the ghost house or something. It was like the
classic haunted house in the neighborhood that no one knows
who lives there. And you know, you never see him
go in and now, but you know someone's in there.
Everyone knows everybody but these people, right, And so he's
playing by the creek, right outside of this house and
he get says, overwhelming, a feeling of just fear. And

(21:10):
he turns around and he sees this girl who's standing there,
and as he tells you the story, your first thought
is that this is a ghost because it's so surreal.
It doesn't make any sense, right, this person is out there.
She looks really weird. Um, she's younger, but she has
this weird hair and her outfit doesn't really fit her right. Um,
But either way, he becomes friends with her, and you're

(21:32):
like okay, And so he spends several weeks that summer
playing with her out there in the woods and like
physically doing things with her, swinging on the swing and
you know, just physically playing out there in the creek.
Even she showed him what a cigarette is, right like
one day she was like, hey, I want to show
you something, and she took him to this tree and
she had carved her name in it, Laura, And she

(21:54):
put her hands with a hole in the tree and
pulled out this pack of marble red cigarettes and talk
him not as smoke. And he felt at crazy like
all bad, oh man, I'm doing in the real bad
And she chief like ten cigarettes. He smoked maybe a
half a cigarette, puked afterwards. But you know, he he
became friends with this girl, and you know, he told

(22:15):
his sister about it, and they're like, okay, they got
a little girlfriend in the woods. Whatever. And then one
day he went out there and she was just gone,
just nowhere to be found. Weeks went by, months went by,
never saw her ever again, and he was like, what happened?
You know, where you move whatever? And she had told

(22:35):
him that she lived in that creepy house, right, she
told me. He that she lived there on the third floor,
and that she was an only child, and you know,
she had a mom and dad who lived with her too,
but she was the only child and she was homeschooled.
So he thought, okay, maybe she's back, and maybe she's
got in trouble or something, or she's just back in
her house. Um. Anyway, school starts back up again and
he goes back to the public school, and all of

(22:58):
a sudden, that house, that creepy house, it goes up
for sale, and so everyone in the neighborhoods like, I'm
gonna go see the inside of this house, right, and
he's like, mom, we have to go in here. Also,
I want to see if Laura's in there, right, like,
where's Laura? And so they go to this open house,
right and uh, the mother is giving the tour and
he sees what is obviously her dad and then what

(23:20):
is obviously her mother because it looks just like Laura,
like almost exactly like her in the face. So he's like, okay,
that has to be your mom. You know, where's Laura?
And so they're going through the tour and then they
stop on the second floor and the lady's like, yep,
and that's the whole house. And he's like, I know
that there's a third floor because I know that's where
Laura lives. And um, his mom asked the lady. It

(23:43):
was like, um, hey, you know, like I'm so glad
to finally meet you. Um, you've we've been here for
years and we never knew who lived here, you know,
we're so curious. And she was like, yes, sorry, you know,
we don't want to leave the house much after our
daughter died a few years ago. And he's like, holy shit, yeah,
well what or who was I playing with in the woods?

(24:06):
And then the mom does this really creepy thing where
she looks at him and says, what's wrong, boy, it
looks like you've seen a ghost. And he's like stop.
And so all of a sudden, his mom and his
sister both look at him, like, what the hell have
you been playing with in the woods? Whatever is going on?

(24:26):
You can't go out in the woods anymore. You're in trouble.
And so he said one time he broke the rules
and he he did go back out there because he
was convinced that Laura was being held captive in the house,
that something bad was going on. It made no sense.
There was no way it was a ghost. He why
would not show the third floor sense? Right? She was
being weird the ghosts comment, and he physically touched her.

(24:49):
He he smoked the cigarettes with her, right, And so
he goes out there one day and he looks up
at the house and the mom's just on on the
third floor looking down at him, just staring at him.
He said, a scared of him, and he never went
back after that. And so for decades he lived with
this story where he's like, you know, what the hell happened?
He told a few people, and then years later he

(25:11):
was back in that same property because one of his
family members and his uncle bought the property nearby, and
so like they were out there in the woods, very
close to where that area was in that house, and
someone in his family just brought up, hey, remember the
whole Laura the Woods story. And he's like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
They're like, let's go see it, man, Let's go see

(25:32):
that tree. And says like, all right, whatever, And so
he takes his whole family over there, and as they
kind of wind through the woods, he sees the tree
Laura carved in it. He walks into the tree, puss
his hand in the hole, pulls out a pack of
Marlboro Red cigarettes decades later, cigarettes still in there. He said,
everyone his family is like, okay, this this is terrifying.

(25:58):
And he's like, okay, what was my childhood? What was
going on this whole time? And he said that weeks later,
it was on his mind every day and he was
just having this really vivid nightmare one night and he
basically woke up and came to the conclusion that he
had his nightmare where he's walking through the woods and

(26:18):
then he like saw Laura sitting on a bench and
then he like taps on the shoulder and she turns
around and looks at him, and she grabs her hair
and starts pulling on her hair and starts coming off,
and it's a wig. And it was literally the mother
the whole time, pretending to be a little girl in
the woods. And he's once he kind of snapped, I

(26:40):
guess into reality and realized what it was. He kind
of realized that he knew this all along, that he
and he was somehow suppressing it or something, and it
was I mean, for decades it was a mystery. But
to me, it was the scariest because it wasn't a ghost.
What's scarier than a ghost an old lady pretending to

(27:03):
be a little girl in the woods because she's like
snapped because something out of grief or whatever. That really
scared me. And the guy was so genuine. It's a
real story, and just like the way he was talking
about it, I just that's one I just couldn't shake.
I was like, this is just gives me the I

(27:25):
don't even know. I just like it's like that wouldn't
have been in the news or anything. How do you
find this guy? I found this story on Reddit and
what's funny is um actually actually Mike found it on
Reddit and it didn't have that many likes even. It
was just kind of just buried in some subreddit I'm
not sure which one. And I saw in the comments

(27:45):
that some guy said, hey, that's my story. You stole
my story. This didn't happen to you. I originally posted
this on uh some other random like bands website, like
in their like forum. It's we go to that, And
sure enough, this guy posted this story years earlier. This
was like back in two thousand and ten, this guy
posted this, and I was like, what are the chances

(28:08):
this guy gets back to me? And sure enough he did,
and I was like, man, this is like the scariest
story ever. I hope he doesn't bail. And literally, um,
he messed at the hotel and the first thing he
said was, hey guys, I'm not gonna lie. Almost bailed
in the lobby. I was like, just because he was
like having second thoughts, should I tell this story? Like
should I? You know, is this dumb? I was like, no, man,

(28:30):
this is like, this is a genuinely scary story, and
I believe you. Let's tell it. I mean, like, that's
the thing about you know, some people, you know, if
they're like doubters, might want to say, you know, this
story isn't true or you know whatever, but like to
be honest, on the other side of this, the production
side of this, most of these people were very um

(28:52):
reluctant at times to to tell all the details because
they're real stories and they're just like any other interview
subject who experienced the things scary. They're like, yeah, no
one's gonna believe me, or you know, it was a
horrifying experience that there you know, uh, cautious about reliving,
you know, so that's really what we're experiencing. And most

(29:12):
of the time it's like people being like, I don't know,
they're not just chopping at the bit to tell me
their story for Radio rental rightly experience that it's kind
of scary, right yeah. And there's one well, there's uh
one thing that I respect immensely is I know that
you and your team did uh did a lot of
fact checking too, Like does this match up with this chronology? Right? Absolutely?

(29:33):
And what's interesting about Laura in the Woods in particular,
which goes to something um that you mentioned nol, is
this absolutely this absolutely could happen. And until there is
a crime committed, an actual crime there's no there's no
reason law enforcement would be involved. It's not there's not

(29:55):
a law against dressing up as you are deceased child.
How would you write it? You know, let's take a
quick break and have a word from our sponsor and
then back with more from pain lendsay and we are back.

(30:15):
Can I bring up a story that it feels very
similar to this to me? Um, it's one that's just
titled ham and cheese, like it's it's just a ham
and cheese sandwich or whatever, forget. So it's a perfect
it's a perfect story for us to discuss on this show.
It's it's about a man who's working as a sandwich

(30:38):
I forget the title of it. But he makes sandwiches
with subway right, and he's just at work one day. Uh.
He says. He lives in kind of a seedy part
of town, so people are a little cautious. But it's not,
you know, terribly scary out there. He's just at a subway, right,
and he's going about his every day. Some dude walks in, uh,

(30:58):
and I don't I can't remember exact actually how he
describes him. All I remember is, um, he looks I
think he's got like dark, dark features, like dark. He
was the Middle Eastern, and he said he described him
looking a little bit like him, not not like exactly,
but kind of the same kind of dark features, uh,
you know, dark eyebrows, Yeah, and kind of a younger man. Um.

(31:21):
And the one thing he really noticed was the man
always kept his hand in his like his waistband in
the back behind his back, kind of thumbing his waistband,
Like what are you doing back there? Man? And he
got this vibe when he walked into just like just
kind of instincts like something's not right about this guy,
Like he is there a gun behind his back? Is

(31:42):
there a knife? Like? What is he doing? Yeah? And
he's being really quiet and just you know, if he's
gonna say, if he says anything, it's quick and and
that's it. And the dude is just super nervous. They're
making He asked him, you know, what what do you want?
The dude just says hamm and cheese, ham and swim
and Swiss. Yeah it was Swiss. And so you know,
as a sandwich professional, there I forget this sandwich artist.

(32:05):
Sandwich artists. He's making the sandwich and everything. And then
he has to ask him, do you want it toasted? Right?
And there's this moment where he knows he's getting this
vibe off of this guy, like something's wrong because it's
going to be a robbery. Yeah, exactly, And he he
has to ask him, do you want it toasted? And
he knows that to toast it if he does want it,
he's got to turn his back to the dude for

(32:27):
a little bit. Wait, they toasted subway. I thought that
was all the quizzes been toasted in California somewhere. This
is in l A somewhere, Okay. So so he asked
him this and the guy is just like, yeah, fine, whatever,
Yeah toasted. So he turns around to do this thing.
Are our protagonist here is really really nervous and there's

(32:52):
nothing on this sandwich but bread ham and Swiss, and
he just turns around to do He's like wrapping it
up to put it in the toaster, and for some reason,
his nerves get to him, everything gets to him, and
the sandwich falls, right. He drops the sandwrops the sandwich
man and it lands in a very certain, very certain way. Right.
It's almost like a pattern with this. Yeah, he just

(33:14):
kind of like as soon as he dropped it, which
he'd never done in a thousand times, and he drops
the sandwich and like right as he's dropping it, it's
like time slowed down or something, and this overwhelming rush
of deja vu kind of hits him. And so as
the sandwich is falling and the way the cheese landed,
he was like really kind of taking note of what
it looked like, almost like I just had this deja

(33:37):
vu I've been here, I've seen this before thing. And
like right after he gets out of his own head,
he looks up because he's like, oh, ship, that guy's here.
And he's just gone, like, not there at all. I
didn't hear the door open or close. Had only been
a couple of seconds maybe, And his first instinct is

(33:58):
where is this guy? So he runs on the parking lot.
There's not even a car in the parking lot. There's
nothing there. He even goes around the corner. There's just
no people around. Right now, He's like, that makes no sense.
How did that happen? Like, I mean, I guess he
ran was there a getaway car in the restroom or

(34:18):
something that would be the only other option nowhere to
be found, And He's like, okay, whatever, right, weird enough,
but it gets weirder, yeah, because I think it's a
week or so a little and he's back, you know,
at work doing his thing and here's the door open

(34:40):
and looks up and it's really strange because it looks
like pretty much the same guy but older. Yeah, like
really really similar almost, if not the same guy, but older,
like discernibly older. Right, Yes, dude comes up, asked for
a sandwich? What was he asked for? Hammond Swiss? And
he's got that same vibe to this, just kind of like, okay,

(35:04):
the same vibe that the other guy gave him as
soon as he walked in. And then he said him
and Swiss. He's like, okay, what's going on? But I mean, also,
you know, common sandwich. But then when he noticed him
thumbing in his waistband, he's like, you're kidding me, right, Like,
what is this person doing? Is he messing with me? Yeah?

(35:25):
And so it gets to the part where he's has
to ask him if he wants it toasted, and this
to him is like the drum roll ultimate test if
I'm gonna die or if this is just the weirdest
thing ever. If he says, yes, I'm gonna die. And
so he asked the guy, do you want it toasted?
He's just like, no, I'm good, and he's like, oh, okay, cool,

(35:46):
So he's good. He's all it's all good, it's fine,
and then he goes through the checkout process and he
goes it's kind of tangent about how and I guess
there's some tax or something in uh, California if you
want it to or for hot food. For hot food,
if you wanted it toasted, it's been cooked. Basically, if
you used energy in order to write, it's like ten

(36:07):
cents or something. But they have a conversation about that,
and then the guy kind of gives him a snark
remark back and was like, you know, I would have
paid the tax. It's not why I that's not why
I did. And he's like yeah, obviously, like and so
he's claiming, like whatever, and he pays for the sandwich
and then he walks to the door and he's just

(36:29):
turns around and looks at him and he kind of
gives him this all knowing grin, and he just says,
I just don't want you to drop it, and then
walks out the door. It's like what and he said,
it literally just scared these out of it. Beautiful. And
then for background, for anybody who's not too familiar with

(36:50):
the Sandwich Change subway, a lot of people probably hearing
this story, hearing Radio Rental and thinking, well, doesn't he
have co workers or something? Not? Really subway is not
like at night. Yeah, the subway is notorious for having
one to like a maximum of three people. So uh,

(37:11):
Salinger said, you know, if I'm paraphrasing that, the mark
of a good story to him is that when the
story is over, you don't want it to end. You
want to know what else happens to the characters. And
that's one thing that I think is powerful about this
this story in particular, because every like everybody listening now
to this episode, listening to Radio Rental is probably going

(37:32):
to say, well, what happened to l A sandwich guy?
Is like, is he all right? So I wanted to
pose it to you guys, like for potential possibilities of
what happened there and we we you know, assuming that
this is an absolute true story and it happened the
way this this person said it happened, right, So is
it possible that It's like a father and son who

(37:54):
are incredibly similar, and like the son told him a story.
What do you think is it a time travel situation
or is it a really elaborate kind of stalking, kind
of like troll kind of situation. That's yeah, I don't know, Yeah,
I mean maybe, but why did he look so different
and so much older only a couple of weeks later?

(38:16):
And elaborate prank sounds a little Rube Goldberg guess for this,
a little like the mouse trap game. But the first
thing I had thought of was, you know, a familiar
relation uncle son, father's son, something like that. Um, given
the age difference. But to what end though, I don't understand, Like,
like what what's what's what are you accomplishing? We travel
to l a a lot man, that place is crazy. Yeah,

(38:40):
but uh, but that the familial relation could also explain
certain physical habits like tucking one arm back just a
major coincidence, right, maybe maybe, but that's the thing, you know,
that's uh, there are like we can we can all
rationally accept one to two coincidences, right, but as coincidence

(39:05):
as they accrete over the course of something with the similarities. Uh,
the sandwich even though, I think we're all being pretty
fair in our skepticism. Like you pointed out paying, You're like, well,
it's a common sandwich, but but they have they make
many different kinds of sandwiches. So we've got physical similarity, right,
We've got physical similar mannerisms, same sandwich. We've got what

(39:29):
appears to be a reference to the earlier situation. One
of the questions I would ask is did the door
ding when the guy opened it and walked out, because
we see him walk out. He remembers no sound of
the ding the first time. Yeah, the first time, so
uh yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's it's

(39:52):
almost like trying to figure out the nuts and bolts
behind the magic trick. Right. Yeah. The did have one
printed question. He is in California, A certain substance is
legal there. He is at work. Yeah, I was like,

(40:16):
were you high? He he wasn't. Okay, okay, Because that
that moment, I'm not saying I recognized this moment or
identify with it, but the moment of like something happening
like oh man, I just dropped the sandwich I was
making for somebody, and I watched it hit the ground
and it's intriguing to me for some reason or another.
If in that state, I could imagine that it takes

(40:38):
longer than you thought, Like you spend more time staring
at the cheese than you thought totally, and maybe you're
like tuned out a little more. That dude just like
takes off and you're just like, oh man, this feels weird.
Wait where that guy go? Yeah, And this guy is
totally willing to accept that that's what happened, right, He's
not like this had to be some ripple in time.

(40:58):
He's like, you know, rash and only speaking. It was
probably a guy who was gonna try to rob him.
In the beginning, he freaked out and like didn't realize
how long he looked at the ground and was super
nervous in his own head. And the guy just darted
out of there quickly and just got the hell out.
And then the next week or two was just a
super strange coincidence. And that guy has no idea how

(41:21):
much it terrified him, but it was really kind of
just the way that it felt to him. It was like,
you know, and and maybe he just played it up
in his head, because I mean, the guy when he
looked at him leaving the second time, he just said
he had this this vibe is feeling about him where
he's like, got you, you son of a bitch, like,

(41:42):
and he was like, it just felt like that to me.
Maybe that's in his own head, but like it was
really just the feelings and the way that like his
own sensory was kind of going off, coupled with all
the coincidences and just the strangers of it that made
him I feel like maybe it was something more, maybe
could be something more, but like what And he doesn't know. Yeah,

(42:04):
And I think that that ambiguity too, is a huge
part of it because everybody has had We've all had
some moment in our lives where something at the very
edge of the map of things we can explain occurs, right,
And uh, you know, as people are listening to this episode,
we're probably hearing stories as a matter of fact, you

(42:24):
know what, right to us, right to know old pain, Matt,
Paul and I with your own strange stories. Definitely. Yeah,
are you guys still accepting stories for We've had a
bunch of amazing submissions. Um, we have an email if
you want to send them. It's just your scary story
at gmail dot com. So if you have what you

(42:46):
think is your radio rental story and you want to
tell it, then we'll see what happens. Wow. Yeah, okay, well,
you know we're we're getting close to time here. I
do want to bring up just before we close here,
there are some stories in there about real encounters with
killers in in radio Rental and I'm not going to

(43:09):
spoil those because those are some of the most impactful
uh stories within the show and for me, um, we can.
I just want to mention some of the names. So like,
if you're interested out there listening to this and you
want to look up some of these killers that I
was somewhat unaware of before listening to this. Um you

(43:29):
guys touch on Mark Goodoh, the baseline killer. Yeah in Phoenix. Yeah,
and there's a story in there that is so freaking creepy.
That's one of the scariest ones. I think. I completely agree.
I talk to you stop Okay, who was that, by
the way, and who said can I talk? So the

(43:53):
um the lady that I was interviewing, she was really
sweet and she had a great voice, and she just
into the character and was like, yeah, I went, you know,
open the window. And he just said, can I talk
to you? And so she that's her read it and
we just kind of like altered her voice a couple
of times to kind of make it, but she whispered

(44:13):
it several times in her interview, and I was like, Wow,
it was creepy hearing her just imitate him. That's not right.
But but and that's a story. I don't want to
spoil any of that. It's just it's there's another story
about another serial killer that ends up getting encountered in
Baton Rouge, in mad Rouge, where there's that moment where

(44:35):
this guy could have been picked up by police that night.
If things that would have gone one way, he could
have also killed this person's girlfriend that night. And So
when you think about just the concept of multi universes,
which we we like to talk about a lot on
this show, where all of these different things are occurring,
you know somewhere out there within this realm Um, that

(44:59):
the story worry that you have exists in this this
version of our reality where again I won't spoil it,
but what happened happened in that story. It's crazy. So
what are Pain and Matt talking about? We won't tell
you but you can learn for yourself when you dive

(45:20):
into radio rental. The first season is available in its
entirety now wherever you're listening to podcasts, wherever you found
this show probably and we guarantee you it's a wild ride. Also,
I love that we mentioned this earlier when to hit
it again. You may end up being part of part

(45:45):
of the narrative in subsequent seasons. If that is, you
have a story of your own and you email Pain
and his team in the meantime. Of course, Pain as all,
thank you so much for being so generous with your time.
Man coming on, It's always a pleasure. If you have

(46:06):
not checked out Up and Vanished, then do check it out.
If you haven't checked out Atlanta Monster, do check that out.
Those are both available in their entirety. You can also
check out the the second iteration of monster, Uh Matt,
and are you okay if I if I plug this, Yeah, sure,

(46:28):
let's do. It's Monster Monster Zodiac, which features our own
Matt Frederick in the y it's called Monster the Zodiac Killer.
And last thing, I'm just gonna Monster DC Sniper's gonna
be out right now if it's If it's early January,
so go search for it and subscribe. It's a it's

(46:49):
really great hosted by Tony Harris. He's an award winning journalist. Okay,
I'm done. I'm done, and so this concludes today's episode,
but not our show. Let's continue the Converse Station. You
can find us on Facebook. You can find us on Instagram.
You can find us on the other one Twitter, that's
the one. Uh. And Pain If people want to reach

(47:11):
out or follow you directly follow Tenderfoot. Where can they
find more? You can find me at just at Pain,
Lindsay Twitter, Instagram, and I think what are other ones? Um,
if you just go there you'll find the rest. Yeah.
I think Radio Rental USA. Radio Rental Instagram is at

(47:35):
Radio Rental and then the Radio Rental Twitter is Radio
Rental USA because some guy has a Twitter account for
Radio Rental that he hasn't used in thirty years or something. Uh.
And you can also if you are if you're the
kind of person who says, guys have a story to tell.

(47:56):
I love, I love to communicate more about this, but
may and I hate the social meds. We have another
solution for you. Oh yeah, you can call us. We
have a number. It's one eight three three st d
w y t K And if you don't want to
do that, send us a good old fashioned email. We
are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff they Don't

(48:34):
Want you to Know is a production of iHeart Radio's
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