Extraterrestrial

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:08] Speaker B: I'm Ben, and welcome to the show where you and I gather around this campfire to hear some of our fellow campers scariest experiences. Whether you're a new camper or returning one, I'm glad you're here. Tonight's story was sent in by a camper who thought spending the weekend alone in her aunt's remote property would be an easy favor. Just her and old Dog and a quiet stretch of land. But by the second night, something was knocking from the dark, and whatever was out there didn't seem human. Now, without further ado, do you want to hear a ghost story? [00:00:47] Speaker C: I agreed to watch my aunt's dog because it was only supposed to be for a weekend. That's how she sold it to me, anyway. Two nights, Friday to Sunday, feed Hank twice a day, let him out before bed, and baby water the herbs on the back porch. If I thought about it, easy money, easy favor, whatever you wanted to call it. What she left out was I somehow always forgot that until I'm back out there, her place does not feel like the kind of property people should live on by themselves. She's got this little white farmhouse sitting in the middle of 100 acres of scrub oak, palmetto pine, and open pasture with one dirt road that cuts through it like a scar. No street lights, no visible neighbors, no sound except the wind and whatever decides to move around after dark. In the daytime. It's beautiful, quiet in a way that feels expensive, the kind of quiet people in the cities probably dream about at night. [00:01:51] Speaker A: At night it feels abandoned by God. [00:01:54] Speaker C: My aunt loves it out there. She says the land gives her peace. It says when you live far enough away from people, you can finally hear yourself think. Maybe that's true, but I think if you live far enough away from people, [00:02:11] Speaker A: other things can hear you too. [00:02:14] Speaker C: That first night was fine. I got there Friday afternoon, unpacked, my bag fed. Hank watched the sun go down through the kitchen window while I ate leftover lasagna out of a plastic container. Hank was an old shepherd mix with bad hips and a bark that sounded bigger than he actually was. He mostly followed me from room to room and sighed dramatically whenever I sat down, like he blamed me for not being my aunt. By 10, I'd locked the doors, checked the windows, dropped twice, and settled into the guest room. The first strange thing happened. Maybe 20 minutes after I turned the lamp off. Hank started growling, not barking, not his usual grumble when a raccoon got too close to the porch. This was a low and steady, the kind of sound dogs make when they've decided something is wrong but don't want to draw attention to themselves. I sat up in bed and listened to the house had gone so still I could hear the ceiling fan ticking. [00:03:14] Speaker A: Yank. [00:03:15] Speaker C: I whispered. He was standing in the hallway outside my room, rigid, staring toward the front of the house. I remember feeling annoyed before. I felt scared. I thought maybe there was a deer at the window or a possum on the porch. Something normal, something explainable. I grabbed my phone and used the flashlight to follow him down the hall. The front windows looked out over the long dirt driveway and the the open strip of the yard around the house. Beyond that was mostly darkness and the sliver of outline of the trees in the moonlight. Nothing there. No headlights, no animals, no person, thank God. But Hank wouldn't move. He stayed planted at the front window like that, growling, vibrating in his chest, his ears pinned back. And then, just for a second, I saw something move near the fence line. It was too tall to be a dog, too narrow to be a deer. It crossed between two fence posts in a quick, smooth way that didn't look like running so much as gliding. I actually laughed a little. Then, out of nerves more than anything, I told myself it was a trick of the light, a branch moving, maybe even a person if one of the farmhands had come out that I hadn't known about. But no one worked there at night, and whoever or whatever I had seen was already gone. So I stood there another minute, waiting for it to come back before finally pulling the curtains shut. [00:04:46] Speaker A: That should have made me feel better. [00:04:48] Speaker C: It didn't. Hank refused to sleep in the living room after that. He followed me back to the guest room and laid beside the bed, still awake, still facing the door. I didn't sleep much, and the next morning I felt stupid. Daylight has a way of humiliating fear. Everything I'd worked myself up over the night before looked harmless in the sun. The yard was just a yard. The fence line was just old wood and wire. The trees were sparse and familiar. I walked Hank around the property with a mug of coffee in one hand, trying to shake the leftover unease. He sniffed around like normal, peed on the same stubborn fence post three times. Seemed fine. When we got out near the edge of the western field, though, I noticed something strange in the dirt. There were impressions in the ground. Not hoofprints, not paws. They were too long. At first I thought maybe someone had dragged a tool or a pipe through the soft patch near the trough, but the marks came in a pattern. One, then another Then another, like stepsonly spaced too far apart. And there were no handprints, no tire tracks, no signs of anything else around them, just these deep narrow impressions leading out into the field towards the trees. I stood there staring at them while Hank whined and tried to pull me back toward the house. That bothered me more than the marks. Hank was old and stubborn and never in a hurry unless food was involved, but he was tugging against the leash hard enough that his collar was digging into his fur. Alright, I said, trying to sound casual. Alright, we're going, we're going. I did not go back to the field that day. I stayed close to the house, made a point of keeping the TV on, and texted my aunt around lunchtime. I asked her if anyone had been on the property overnight. She texted back almost right away, no. Why? I stood there looking at the message for a while, then typed back, thought I saw something by the fence. She sent a laughing emoji and wrote, probably one of the sandhill cranes. They look creepy as hell at night. I wanted that so badly to be true. I almost forced myself to believe it. Almost. That evening around sunset, the sky turned [00:07:05] Speaker A: the color of a bruise. [00:07:06] Speaker C: Purple clouds, orange light low on the field. That weird in between time when everything looks overexposed and dead at the same time. I was on the back porch, filling Hank's water bowl when all the cicadas stopped. [00:07:18] Speaker A: Every single one. [00:07:22] Speaker C: It happened so sudden it felt like a sound had been ripped out of the air. Hank's head snapped up. Mine did too. If you've ever been somewhere rural, really rural, you know how loud silence can get when all the background noise dies at once. It presses on you. It makes you aware of your own breathing. There's no wind, no frogs, no insects. Then I heard three knocks. Not on the front door, not on the back. Three heavy hollow knocks coming from somewhere out in the field. [00:08:01] Speaker A: I froze. [00:08:02] Speaker C: A second later it happened again. [00:08:05] Speaker A: Knock, knock, knock knock. [00:08:09] Speaker C: Far enough away that it echoed deep enough that I felt it in my ribs. Hank started barking, full panicked, losing his mind barking, and backed himself against the porch railing. I brought him inside so fast his paws slid on the kitchen floor. I locked both doors and locked them again, like maybe this second time would make them stronger. The knocking came again, once more, closer now. Three knocks. [00:08:35] Speaker A: Pause. Three knocks. I wish I could tell you I was brave. [00:08:40] Speaker C: I wish I could tell you I went outside with a flashlight and figured out what it was. I didn't. I turned on every light in that house and sat on the living room floor With Hank pressed against my leg with a fire poker in one hand, like that was gonna do anything. And around 9:30, my phone lost service. That alone wasn't unheard of out here. My aunt got one bar if the weather felt generous. But I'd had enough battery and enough signal earlier to text. Suddenly there was nothing. No bars, no data, not even enough to send a message. [00:09:17] Speaker A: It felt targeted. [00:09:19] Speaker C: And I know how that sounds, but that is exactly how it felt. Like the world had been pinched shut around the house. The knocks stopped eventually. I don't know when. At some point, fear got so exhausting it started to flatten out into this numb, waiting feeling. Hank fell asleep around midnight, though it didn't look restful. [00:09:41] Speaker A: Even in his sleep, he kept twitching [00:09:43] Speaker C: and letting out these little distressed sounds. [00:09:46] Speaker A: I must have drifted off, too, because [00:09:48] Speaker C: the next thing I remember is waking up in total darkness. The lamps were off. The TV was off. [00:09:56] Speaker A: The entire house was black. [00:09:59] Speaker C: For a second, I didn't know where I was. Then Hank barked once, sharp, explosive. And I saw it. A shape moving past the window. [00:10:09] Speaker A: Tall, thin, not walking like a person walks. [00:10:14] Speaker C: I scrambled for my phone, nearly dropping it. Hit the flashlight and pointed it at the curtains just as something tapped the glass from the outside. Not knocked. [00:10:22] Speaker A: Tapped. Three quick little taps, almost delicate. I couldn't breathe. Hank was barking so hard he sounded [00:10:31] Speaker C: like he was choking and. And he would not go near the window. Tapping came again, and this time I heard something else. [00:10:38] Speaker A: A sound like someone trying to imitate [00:10:41] Speaker C: speech after only hearing it once. Not words, not really. [00:10:45] Speaker A: Just a wet, broken approximation of a human voice. [00:10:50] Speaker C: I backed up so fast I hit the hallway table and sent a bowl crashing to the floor. The sound at the window stopped. [00:10:57] Speaker A: For one hopeful, stupid second, I thought [00:11:01] Speaker C: maybe that was it. Maybe whatever it was had gone. [00:11:06] Speaker A: Then the motion light on the porch came on. The curtain glowed around the edges and a shadow passed over it. This thing, whatever it was, was tall enough that its head blocked the upper half of the window. I don't know what made me do it. [00:11:22] Speaker C: Maybe because not knowing is sometimes worse than knowing. [00:11:27] Speaker A: Maybe because some terrified part of me [00:11:29] Speaker C: needed to prove I wasn't insane. [00:11:31] Speaker A: But I stepped forward and pulled the curtain back. It was standing in the yard, maybe 15ft from the porch. I still have no language that feels right for what I saw. People say alien because it's the closest [00:11:47] Speaker C: word we have for something that looks [00:11:49] Speaker A: wrong in every category your brain tries to place it in. It was taller than any man I'd ever seen, but impossibly slight. Like it had been stretched. Its limbs were too long, its shoulders too narrow. Its skin looked pale and tight, gray [00:12:09] Speaker C: in the porch light, almost translucent in [00:12:12] Speaker A: places, like damp paper pulled over wire. Its head was smooth and wrong shaped, not huge the way movies do it, but elongated somehow with. With eyes set too dark and too deep to reflect light properly. Its arms. I still think about its arms. They hung almost to its knees, bent in a way that made the joints look loose, unfinished. It was staring directly at me, not curious, not angry, not animal. Like it had come there with intention. I think that was the worst part. Not how strange it looked, not how impossible it was. It was the certainty that it knew I was inside long before I looked out and saw it. [00:13:00] Speaker C: Hank was screaming by then, not barking, screaming the way dogs do when fear overwhelms whatever instinct tells them to sound tough. [00:13:08] Speaker A: The thing tilted its head. Then, slowly, with a kind of awful precision, it raised one hand and touched the post three times. Tap, tap, tap. [00:13:22] Speaker C: I yanked the curtain shut, stumbled back so hard I fell. I sat on that tile floor with Hank shaking against my legs, and I listened. [00:13:31] Speaker A: Nothing for a long time. Then movement overhead. Not footsteps, too light, too irregular. But something crossed the roof. Something moved from one end of the house to the other with a speed that made no sense. It gave the sound I still hear in my nightmares. Three knuckles rapping. I can't explain that the windows were all locked. I'd never heard glass break, never heard a door open. [00:13:59] Speaker C: I never heard anything heavy enough to suggest a person had actually entered the house. [00:14:04] Speaker A: And yet there it was, on the [00:14:06] Speaker C: other side of that door. [00:14:08] Speaker A: Knock, knock, knock. Hank tucked himself so tight against me [00:14:13] Speaker C: I could barely feel where my body ended and his began. [00:14:16] Speaker A: I covered my mouth and stayed completely still. The doorknob didn't turn. The knocking didn't come again. After a while, five minutes or an hour, I couldn't tell you, I started hearing the same broken, almost voice from the living room. Soft murmuring, like someone practicing how to be human. I thought insanely of my aunt's voice, of the way my name would sound in her mouth. Then I realized that was exactly what it was doing. It wasn't talking. It was trying on sounds, trying shapes, trying voices. At some point before dawn, I must have blacked out from exhaustion or shock or both, because the next thing I knew, pale morning light was leaking under the bathroom door. Everything was quiet. [00:15:10] Speaker C: I stayed there for another hour anyway. [00:15:13] Speaker A: When I finally opened the door, the house looked untouched. No broken windows, no muddy footprints, no signs of forced entry. The Front door was still locked. So was the back. The power was on again. [00:15:26] Speaker C: My phone had service again. The TV sat dark and innocent in the corner like it had never shut off on its own. If Hank hadn't bolted past me and gone straight to the front window whining, I might have convinced myself I'd had some kind of waking nightmare. [00:15:41] Speaker A: But there in the dirt just outside the porch were three long impressions, side [00:15:49] Speaker C: by side, like something had stood there [00:15:52] Speaker A: for a long time. I didn't stay to investigate. [00:15:56] Speaker C: I packed in under 10 minutes, loading Hank into my car, and drove straight into town. I called my aunt from a gas station about 20 miles away and told her I was sorry but that I was taking Hank to my house and would not be able to watch her house because I was never going back. She thought I was joking until she heard my voice. I told her everything. There was a long silence on the other end. Then she asked me a question that made my stomach drop. Did it knock? Three times. [00:16:25] Speaker A: I remember going cold all over. [00:16:29] Speaker C: I asked her what she meant. She was quiet for another second, and when she finally answered, her voice sounded older than I had ever heard it. She told me when she moved out there years ago, an old man from the feed store had asked if she was living on the Booker land. She said yes. He told her, very matter of factly, that if she ever heard three knocks in the field after dark, she was not to answer them. She laughed at that time, asking if it was some local ghost story. [00:16:59] Speaker A: Mann told her it wasn't a ghost story. [00:17:02] Speaker C: Said people around there had been seeing something on the land since before his grandfather was born, something that Watts watched houses from the treeline. Something that learned routines that mimicked voices badly enough to draw people outside. He said the old families used different names for it, depending on who was telling the story. Devil, visitor, Pale man, Star thing. But the rules stayed the same. If it knocked three times, do not knock back. I asked her why. Why? She'd never told me that. And she said the thing I hate most about this whole story because she'd [00:17:41] Speaker A: never heard it herself, not until the [00:17:45] Speaker C: weekend before I came. [00:17:47] Speaker A: I didn't speak for a second. Then I asked why she'd still asked me to stay there. [00:17:54] Speaker C: She started crying before she answered. [00:17:57] Speaker A: She said she'd thought it had passed [00:17:58] Speaker C: through, that things like that only happened once, if they happened at all, and [00:18:02] Speaker A: she didn't want to scare me with some old local nonsense, especially when she [00:18:06] Speaker C: wasn't even sure she believed it herself. I wanted to be angry. Maybe. Maybe I was angry. But underneath that was something worse. Because if she had heard it the weekend before, then it had already been there. Which meant by the time I arrived Friday afternoon, it may not have been discovering the house. [00:18:28] Speaker A: It may have been waiting for someone [00:18:30] Speaker C: new to come back. My aunt sold the property six months later. She never told the buyers why, and I've never been back, and I never will. But about a year after it happened, I woke up around 2 in the morning. Don't know why. I got out of bed and stood there in the dark, listening. [00:18:51] Speaker A: At first I heard nothing. Then from the other side of the door, very soft and very patient, came three little taps. Tap, tap tap. And a voice. A voice that sounded almost like my [00:19:08] Speaker C: aunt's said my name thank you for [00:19:13] Speaker B: allowing me to share your story. I know you wished to remain anonymous. There hasn't been a whole lot of UFO or alien stories shared on the show, and I think that is why your email stood out to me. There's also just something especially unsettling about stories from places that feel so peaceful during the day, but completely different after dark. With that, I have no show announcements this week, but if you would like to support the show and gain access to our monthly bonus episodes, head over to patreon.com do you want to hear Ghost Story? But as always, I am just glad to have you all as campers on this journey. Please keep sharing the show with anyone you think might like these stories or someone you're just trying to scare. If you're enjoying the show, please leave a review. I would love to hear from you. Until next time.