9. Never Take The 2am Shortcut | True spooky ghost stories of the strange & unusual

0:00 The stories in this podcast may not be suitable for all listeners. Listener discretion is advised. If you have a true strange story you'd like to hear narrated on the show, submit it now on madamstrangeways.com or e-mail it to madamstrangeways@gmail.com. That's MAD. AM E. Oh, hello. I didn't hear you come in. No, I'm always happy to see you. As always. It looks like the rain just started, so have a seat. Help yourself to a fresh batch of honey cakes made with some blue Lotus honey from ancient Egypt.

0:44 They found it in King Tut's tomb. Even after 3000 years it's still good, just a little crystallized. But I may do a curse on the honey. Hmm, Well, there's only one way to find out. Let me know if you start feeling the ominous presence of a long dead pharaoh. But in the meantime, I've got some new strange stories for you here on Madam Strange Ways. Ghost outside my door by Daddio I was living in a mobile home with a friend of mine in 2001.

1:41 I had moved in within the last few months. My room was in the back of the home at the end of the hallway. My friend usually went out on weekends and didn't get home until late, but when he did get home he would almost always walk back and knock on my door to see if I was up so he could tell me about his outing. One Saturday night I was in my room watching TV and didn't feel like talking because I was really into what I was watching. So when I heard the door open and footsteps in the kitchen, I made-up my mind to pause what I was watching and just stay quiet and act like I was already asleep when he came back and knocked on the door.

2:23 After a minute or so I heard him walking down the hallway towards my room, so I just sat still waiting for him to knock. When the footsteps stopped outside the door, I could hear him breathing, but there was no knock. I figured he was just standing there listening for me to make a sound, indicating that I was still awake so he could knock and tell me about his night. But he just stood outside the door breathing for about a minute until the sound of breathing stopped. I was expecting to hear him walk back to the living room and turn on the TV as usual, but there was nothing. No sound at all.

3:13 I was beginning to get a little spooked at this point. Either he was still standing outside the door being as quiet as he could, or I had just heard something terrifying. After 5 minutes or so of no sound, I finally got the courage to open the door and find out what was going on. As soon as I open the door I noticed that he wasn't there. There were no lights on and no indication that he was there at all. I looked out to see if his car was there and it wasn't. I knew it was impossible for him to go back out and leave without me hearing him, so now I could feel my heart pounding. I went back to my room and closed the door. I was no longer concerned with the program I was watching. Instead, I was just waiting for him to get home so I could find out if he somehow managed to leave again without me hearing him.

4:21 That was the only logical explanation for what I heard, but when he finally did arrive, he told me he was still more than an hour's drive from home when this happened. I had a few more strange experiences in the home before I moved out, but this was the 1st and scariest of them all. What a relatable story. Maybe not all of us have had a ghost lingering outside of our closed bedroom door.

5:02 However, when you were like, I really don't want to talk to my roommate. I just want to watch my show and I don't want to talk. So I'm just going to be quiet and pretend that I'm asleep and then he will think I'm asleep and then he will leave me alone and I can go back to watching my television in peace. That is the most relatable thing that I have heard all day. So Daddy, Oh, I get it. What this actually reminds me of not a ghost necessarily, but it's sort of related to a doppelganger, but not quite a doppelganger. And it's also sort of like Deja vu, but in reverse. Reverse Deja vu. So it's it's in Finnish and who I practiced these, I practice these. I did my research, but I don't speak Finnish and Scandinavian languages are scary because I struggle with Canadian pronunciations or things that are even in America like Quinnipiac, which I'm not even sure that I pronounced that right in a previous episode, but I have not heard differently. So anyway, this is Finnish and the concept is from Finnish folklore.

6:13 So it's exactly what you experienced, which is, you know, you're waiting for someone to come home, you hear them come home, you're sure that you heard them come home and then they're not home. And typically the way that this ends is that while you're being freaked out later, they do come home and they repeat the exact same sounds or the exact same things that you heard them do previously. Now, obviously you, you probably didn't let him come to your door, right, because you were scared. So we'll never know if he would have lingered outside of your door, you know, exactly like that. But I mean, I think it sounds exactly like it. So, OK, right, the words. So the, the concept of this happening, I think it's like the actual happening itself is referred to as Etienne. Please forgive me, Finnish, all of my 5 million Finnish listeners, I don't even know how many people live there in Finland.

7:11 I'm not sure, but I don't think I have one Finnish listener. But if I do, then I'm trying real hard, OK? Please don't, please don't, Please don't be angry at me. I think it sounds like the actual happening is Etienne, but then the quote UN quote doppelganger itself, like the name of the entity that you're hearing mimicking your roommate that is Vadoga is what that would be called a Vadoga. And so that sounds like what you experienced, honestly, rather than it being a ghost. I mean, you said you had other experiences, so maybe, maybe that's not true, but I think we're on to something. There's there's also something to be said about when you're expecting to hear something and you're waiting on something and then your brain hears something outside or something in the house that you would normally pass off as nothing. But because you're attuned and you're waiting and you're primed, you know, maybe, maybe you didn't actually hear someone outside your door.

8:19 Wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't that be nice? But what if it had knocked instead of just standing there breathing like a creep? What if it had knocked? Would you have pooped your pants? Because I would have pooped mine. The Man on the Path by TJ Hotter, creator and narrator for Tapes of Trepidation. Throughout my life, I've had several encounters that I can only explain as paranormal.

9:03 I was never a firm believer in such things until I was older. I guess I always thought things needed an explanation. However, when you experience strange things that you just cannot logically explain, no matter how hard you try, it makes you a believer. At least it sure as hell did for me. Now, most of my encounters that are significant happened in my early 20s while working in a small shop in an older building. Stories for another time, perhaps. However, these experiences weren't the first time I had what I can only rationally explain as a paranormal encounter. I had two before, and I'd like to share one with you that left me very shaken to say the least. I grew up in a rural community just outside of a small town. My childhood home was pretty close to a major highway that was just through a forest behind my house. The forest was large enough that we didn't really get much of the noise, but it was a small enough forest you could walk through it in about two hours.

10:10 Also close to my house on this highway was a large rest stop area for truck drivers and travellers. It was a place a lot of young people started out their working careers at, myself included at the age of 17. Luckily for me, there was a back Rd. that acted as an emergency access Rd. for the building that led to the rest stop just down the road from me. I was able to walk to work all the time without any issues. You'd walk down the back Rd. and could continue past the access gate to a nature park area of sorts and then be at the building. Alternatively, you could cut across a path about halfway down the back Rd. that led through the forest to the building.

10:51 It was once a maintenance access Rd. that had since been abandoned and overgrown. I always took the path to work. It cut at least 10 minutes off my walk and I walked down it a few dozen times since I was a kid. However, I never walked down it at night. My parents always picked me up since there wasn't a lot of lights along the main back Rd. aside from the occasional porch light. It wasn't so much that they were worried about my safety, but that they didn't want me coming across a skunk or some wild animal of the night, which was a real possibility where I lived. I didn't mind. Who wants to walk home after a long shift anyway?

11:32 One night I ended up working much later than normal, so I told my parents not to wait up. Walking home wouldn't hurt me anyway. Right around 2:45, AMI set out to begin my walk down the overgrown, abandoned path I had walked down dozens of times. It was dark, but a fear of the dark has never been my thing. Unfortunately for me, my iPod had died and this was a little ways before smartphones. All I had was the sounds of the surrounding woods to keep me company. The moon was incredibly bright that night. It almost felt like I was walking during the day. Not that I was complaining, I didn't have to worry about accidentally stumbling into any critters now. Unless they jumped out from the shadows of course. As I walked deeper down the path and closer to the edge of the forest, I suddenly started to get a rather uneasy feeling. I'd never felt anything like it before. It made the hair on my arms start to rise, and I felt the wrong kind of butterflies in my stomach. It felt as if I was being watched. A few seconds after this feeling hit me, I noticed that the surrounding forest had grown quiet, which made me feel even more uneasy.

12:55 I picked up the pace, I was only a couple minutes from the main back Rd. I'd be fine, I just kept telling myself. My worry was that a coyote was stalking me in the dark, which was rare but not unheard of in our area of rural southern Ontario, Canada. It turned out though, it wasn't an animal watching me. As I saw lights from a car drive by in the distance on the road, I let out a sigh of relief. For some reason that made me feel better, until I heard a voice yell from behind me, clear as day. What the hell do you think you're doing? I spun around, startled more than I'd care to admit, and saw a man standing in the distance by the tree line of an area I had walked past.

13:45 After taking a second to settle myself down, I just responded with sorry I'm just heading home, I work at the rest stop. I yelled back in my most polite tone. The man in the distance seemed to be scowling from what I could see and was giving off a very negative energy. Clearly he was pissed off. He moved towards me a little and yelled at me again. You can't just walk through here. This is my goddamn land. I was super confused, the Township owned this area, at least to my knowledge. I tried to apologize and said I was just cutting through and would leave right away. He just kept yelling at me and mumbling about this being his land and he was sick of people not respecting that.

14:30 For a second I was a little concerned for the guy. He was elderly, his clothes were ratty, and his mumbling became more incoherent near the end of our exchange. I quickly took several steps towards him to ask if he was OK, and I noticed he looked pale. Like really pale, Unnaturally so, nothing like I had ever seen before. After a few more steps, I stopped in my tracks. The man looked at me, still mumbling to himself, but as I looked closer at him I noticed his mouth wasn't moving at all, he was just staring at me with an expression of pure malcontent. This is when I realized something that made me turn around and run faster than I ever had in my life. The man was definitely standing, hell he was taller than me by a bit and I'm about 6 foot.

15:29 He was out in the open, no grass or bushes were obscuring him. So when I got even closer and could see his whole body without any shadows, I realized I didn't see any legs under his body. This man was just floating there staring at me. I didn't think, I just turned and ran faster than I ever had in my life. I turned around to see if he was chasing me, but he was gone. It had only been a few seconds. No normal human being would have been fast enough to leave my field of vision that quickly. Even if he had run into the forest, I would have seen him, or at the very least still see the trees moving. He was gone with no trace.

16:17 I kept running, got to the main road and collapsed onto the ground, breathing heavily from the run, but also from fear. I couldn't rationalize what I had just experienced, and truth be told, I didn't want to. That night, and for several nights after, the man haunted my dreams. He'd never say a word. He would just stare at me with that same look of pure disdain and malcontent on his face. After a few nights, the nightmares randomly stopped. I was grateful for that. I never told my parents about what happened, or anyone else for that matter really.

17:01 I kept replaying it in my head over and over again. I know I really had seen and interacted with this man, but his skin, not seeing his legs, Was it a trick of the light? I don't think so. Do I believe a man had moved into the woods or was lost? No. The authoritative way he spoke. He knew where he was and what he was doing. It was the sort of tone that had a strong purpose behind it. I did walk down that path again, but only during the day and never alone. I didn't have any encounters like that again, but I also didn't go looking for anything to happen either.

17:47 Some people I worked with said they always felt weird walking down that road at night too, but they never had any encounters like that, although they were never on that road as late as I was. What do I think happened that night? The only answer I've been able to come up with is I believe that area must have once been the man's property and he feels the need to watch over it. It's well known that people's energy can be tied to a location, and the fact that it was around 3:00 AM, I'm sure that was a coincidence, but it is when the path between this plane and the next opens. After all. It makes sense to me and it's what I've told myself to make peace with it. If that's the case, I don't blame the guy for yelling at me or scaring me the way he did.

18:36 After all, who wants random people walking through their yard? First of all, Tji suspect that you purposely typed out Ontario, Canada just to make me read that out loud, so thank you for that. But now I know how to pronounce it, so joke's on you. Secondly, wow, I I don't know how you ever took that path ever again.

19:18 If this cranky old man with no legs, I mean, no, that's a, you know, I will walk 10 more minutes. Actually, now that I'm saying that maybe that would be worth shaving 10 minutes off of my walk to see it. Horrible angry old man apparition. Those the no legs thing is so scary because, you know, OK, so was it that his apparition, you know, was only able to show up in that moment because he was so mad that he used his ghost energy? And so he was.

19:58 He seemed kind of fully formed. And then, like you said, he started mumbling, right? And you couldn't really understand what he was saying. And he got more and more incoherent. And that's when you noticed, Oh my God, this man doesn't have legs. So, you know, either one, did he run out of ghost juice or two, in life, did he have some kind of accident? You know, maybe that's how he died. I mean, we'll never know. We could find out. All you have to do is go back to this back Rd. and AT2230, go back to this road at 2:30 AM and then report back. You might need to do it a few times. You might need to go back there a few times.

20:39 So, you know, just keep doing it until you see him again. Just be, you know, I mean, you were polite the first time, so maybe be a little more disrespectful. Maybe try that. Maybe that would be better. So keep us updated. More to come everyone, more to come. I'm not sure why my only old man voice is southern. It just feels right. It's either like southern or from England or maybe Ireland. Maybe just I can just be safe and just say the UK. Those are the old men voices that I came up with, not Canadian. And I didn't want to do an insulting impression of Canadians, seeing as how I have already embarrassed myself within the Canadian community.

21:25 So it is what it is now, Strangelings, if you also enjoy fictional horror narration, go ahead and check out TJ Hotter's Tapes of Trepidation, which is a podcast or also a YouTube channel. So go ahead, check it out. Tell him the Madam sent you. Thank you so much for stopping by for such a lovely spooky time. Now remember, if any of the strangeness scared you, remind yourself that you can feel afraid and not be in danger.

22:16 You're safe here with me. Until next time. If you've enjoyed your time here with me today, please make sure you follow the podcast. Follow me on Instagram at at Madam Strangeways and share the strangeness with a friend by telling them about the podcast. Those are the secrets to unlocking my eternal gratitude. Madam Strangeways is produced and narrated by me. Madam Strangeways theme music is by Marina Ryan at marinamakes.co.youcansubmityourownstrangestory@madamstrangeways.com or send in your thoughts or theories on the stories in this episode to madamstrangeways@gmail.com.

23:09 Thank you for listening. Until I heard a voice yell from behind me, clear as day. What the hell do you think you're doing? Why was that my accent? This is Canada, where was that from?

23:50 Thank you so much for stopping by for such a lovely spooky time. Remind yourself that you can feel afraid and not be in danger. Until next time.