Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
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 or returning one, I'm glad you're here.
Every small town seems to have its very own ghost story.
Not always about something seen in the woods or standing at the foot of your bed, but sometimes just a voice or a knock on the door.
Something that reaches out after it should no longer be able to.
To me, those stories are always the hardest to shake, because most of us know what that's like.
To hear a knock at the door, to have our phone ring and wonder if there was something we could have said or done if we'd answered in time.
Tonight's story lives in that fear.
It's about grief, guilt, and that terrible possibility that sometimes the dead don't leave us alone.
Now, without further ado, do you want to hear a ghost story?
I got the call just past the state line. It was raining hard enough to blur the road into a smear of black and silver.
I had both hands on the wheel, leaning forward like that would somehow help me see through it.
My phone buzzed in the cup holder and it lit up.
The call was from Dylan.
I remember smiling when I saw his name. Not because anything was funny, just because I hadn't talked to him in a while.
The timing felt almost too neat.
I was already driving back to Ashby for the first time in years, and there he was calling me like he knew.
I hit Accept and put him on speaker.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Hey, I'm actually driving on my way in right now.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: For a second there was only static.
Then his voice came through, thin and far away.
Tommy?
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Yeah?
[00:02:05] Speaker A: You're really coming?
I could hear him breathing.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I told you I would.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: He didn't answer right away.
Outside, my car, wipers beat back and forth with a weird, desperate rhythm. I passed the old billboard for the flea market off Route 9.
The smiling cartoon farmer peeled almost clean off by the weather.
Dylan, I didn't think you'd come.
The tone of his voice made me sit up straighter.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Are you okay?
[00:02:37] Speaker A: He made this sound that could have been a laugh or a choke.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: No, not really.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: The rain was coming down harder now. I turned the radio off, though I didn't remember turning it on.
What's going on, Dylan?
He let out a long breath.
I don't know, man.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: It's just bad tonight.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: How bad?
He didn't answer that either. You see, Dylan was always like that. Even in high school, even when we were kids. He'd circle the thing instead of naming it. He could tell you the shape of a hole without ever admitting he was standing in the bottom of it.
Are you home?
Yeah. Are you alone?
Yeah.
I tightened my grip on the wheel.
Listen, I'm only about 40 minutes out.
Do you want me to stop by?
I don't know.
You called me.
I know.
So let me come by.
The line crackled, and for a second I thought the call had dropped.
But then I heard him talking.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: I keep thinking about those summers at Miller's Pond.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: I felt something cold move through me, like my air conditioning had just randomly blasted on.
Miller's Pond sat on the edge of town, tucked back behind a stand of pines and a rusted chain link fence no one had maintenanced in 20 years.
When we were kids, we used to ride back there with cigarettes we stole from his older brother and sit on the dock until dark, talking about all the places we were going to go once Ashby was behind us.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Do you remember?
[00:04:17] Speaker A: He asked me. Of course I do.
We thought if we left this place it couldn't touch us anymore.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: But it does.
It just waits.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: A truck roared past me in the opposite lane, throwing a sheet of water across my windshield. For a second I couldn't see anything at all.
Dylan, stay on the phone with me, okay?
He got quiet again.
[00:04:43] Speaker B: Do you think there are places that just keep versions of you?
[00:04:48] Speaker A: What do you mean?
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Like a version that never gets out and just stays there.
Walking the same road, sitting in the same rooms, thinking the same thoughts over and over again.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: His voice had changed.
It wasn't slurred, so he wasn't drunk, but it sounded tired in a way that made my stomach nod.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Look, do you need me to call somebody else?
[00:05:11] Speaker A: Your mom? Nate? Anybody?
No.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: Okay. Then just stay on the phone with
[00:05:16] Speaker A: me until I get there.
He inhaled sharply, like he was trying not to cry.
Dylan hated crying in front of anyone, even over the phone.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: Did you ever get to hear the old story about the north side of town?
[00:05:31] Speaker A: No. What story, Dylan?
[00:05:34] Speaker B: The one about how everything reaches back out.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: Every small town, ours included, had these kinds of stories.
You grew up around them so long they stopped sounding strange.
The woman on Birch who kept setting a plate for her dead husband.
The stretch of road where brake lights appeared in front of your car with no car attached.
The empty house on the creek where people swore they heard furniture dragging across the floor at night.
But I didn't hear this one.
No,
[00:06:09] Speaker B: I guess you just weren't around to hear that one.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: The rain was coming down even harder now.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: When I was little, my grandma used to tell me that sometimes.
Sometimes people don't know they're dead.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: A chill prickled along my arms.
[00:06:27] Speaker B: She said that if they leave something unfinished, they keep doing the last thing they meant to do, over and over and over and over, like a skipping record.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Dylan.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: What? She said. Sometimes they just reach out.
They knock on your door.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: They call.
[00:06:46] Speaker B: They just skip over and over.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: Stop it, Dylan. You're freaking me out. What? What are you talking about?
I'm sorry.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: I just didn't want to be alone.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: His voice had gotten softer, softer than the static.
Dylan, you aren't alone.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: At the house, he finally said after a long silence.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: I know.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: No, I mean really here, Dylan.
[00:07:24] Speaker A: What does that mean?
[00:07:26] Speaker B: The call cut out.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: I jerked the phone and looked at the screen.
Call ended.
I called him back immediately. It rang once, twice, then voicemail. I called again.
It rang once, twice, in voicemail again.
By the time I hit Ashby town limits, my heart was racing so hard in my chest it felt like another engine inside of me.
The Welcomed Ashby sign looked worse than I remembered, one side split from the post and dangling crooked over the ditch.
Main street was mostly dark. The diner closed, the laundromat closed. Even the gas station closed.
Dylan lived in the same house he grew up in, a narrow white place with a sagging porch on the north end where Main street bends towards the woods.
His mother and sister had moved to Florida after his father died, though Dylan stayed, said someone had to keep the place from rotting.
When I turned the corner, I saw the ambulance before I saw his house, then the sheriff's cruiser, then the little cluster of people standing in the yard under umbrellas.
Everything in me went cold as I parked on the curb and got out into the rain.
Somebody yelled something at me, but it sounded far away.
I was already moving up the walk, my shoes filling with water, my eyes fixed on the front door, standing open under the porch light.
A sheriff's deputy stepped in front of me.
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Are you family?
[00:08:58] Speaker A: No. I'm his best friend.
Sir, you can't go in there. Then, unsure what to do, I just asked, where's Dylan?
The deputy looked at me for a second too long.
That was all I needed.
No, I just talked to him.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: The deputy's face changed in that way
[00:09:23] Speaker A: people's faces do when they realize you haven't come to terms with it yet.
I'm sorry, kid.
The words didn't land.
I wouldn't let them.
No, I just talked to him.
Behind the deputy I could see movement inside the house Flashlights passing across yellow walls, the familiar shape of the entry table, the framed photo of Dylan and his parents at Myrtle beach from when we were 14 years old.
No, you do not understand. I just talked to him, I repeated again to the deputy.
The deputy started saying something, but I was already picking up my phone to show him recent calls. Dylan, 7:46pm I shoved the screen towards him. Look, I just talked to him.
The sheriff's deputy hesitated.
That cannot be, son.
He was found a little after 5pm today.
What?
I actually laughed, a sharp, ugly laugh that I barely recognized as my own.
That doesn't make any sense, Deputy. I just talked to him. You saw the phone call.
The deputy didn't answer, just looked at me with pity, like I was in denial.
The rainwater ran down the back of my neck.
Somewhere close by, One of the EMTs zipped up. Something closed. I heard it clearly, too clearly.
It's a sound your body understands before your mind does.
I bent over and put my hands on my knees, trying not to throw up.
The deputy tried to pat my shoulder, but I shrugged him off.
It's not possible.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: I just talked and. You don't understand.
I just got off the phone.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: But I knew even then, as the deputy just looked at me, unable to say anything now.
I knew that I couldn't explain it, not in any way I wanted to.
But Ashby was full of stories like this, Things people laughed at in the daylight but believed at midnight.
Some people don't know they're dead right away.
They keep doing the last thing they meant to do, like a skipping record.
I don't remember anything else from that day, at least not in order.
I remember sitting in my car, looking up at Dylan's house, thinking I was going to see him in the window with his phone up, waiting for me to answer.
I scrolled through my phone and found an old voicemail from Dylan from two, maybe three years ago, maybe more.
Dylan was drunk at one in the morning, laughing, telling me to call him back because he just remembered this stupid song. We used to scream on the way to Miller's Pond.
But nothing could make me feel better because the call was there and I knew what I'd heard.
A week later, after the funeral, I drove out to Miller's Pond by myself.
The road was half washed out, the fence almost completely gone now. The dock was still there, somehow gray and warped, perhaps one good storm away from collapse.
I sat where he and I used to sit as boys and watched the water turn dark with the evening.
I thought about all the versions of us that Ashby had kept, the boys who thought leaving would save them.
The boys who had no idea how much of themselves the town could really hold onto, the boy who got out and the boy who didn't.
My phone rang just after sunset. No number, just unknown caller.
I stared at it until the screen stopped glowing.
A second later, a voicemail appeared.
I couldn't listen to it there. I waited till I was back in my apartment three states away, with every light turned on and all my locks flipped.
There was no static, no rain this time.
Just Dylan's voice, close and clear.
Tommy, I made it home.
Thank you for listening to my story.
I think the story taps into a fear deeper than ghosts.
A fear of being too late.
Too late to answer. Too late to say the right thing.
Too late to keep someone you love from stepping to a darkness you can't follow.
And maybe that's what makes spooky stories like these haunt us forever.
Not just the idea that the dead might still reach out, but the possibility that our grief gives them one last thing to say.
I have no show announcements this week, but I would like to give a special shout out to a one Eric Royer.
He recently emailed me to see if I was doing okay because he noticed a lack of episodes.
So Eric, I want to personally thank you.
I really appreciate you giving me the push I needed to start again.
As always, I'm 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 enjoy the show, please leave a review. I would love to hear from you. Until next time.
