Bobby & The Monster | Neon Glow

Something's coming. Do you hear it? Can you see it? Trundling across the common, following the old hollow ways, sauntering down the lane, rocking up into the market square, laying out its wares. It reels you in with mysteries, trades with you fantastic tales, spins for you fascinating stories. Stories like the Haunted Pound Stretcher, flying saucers, poisoners and body snatchers, Haunted Woodland and the secret tunnels beneath our feet. Weird in the Wade is on its way, a podcast that explores everything that is weird, wonderful and a little off kilter in the town of Biggleswade in Bedfordshire. If you like your spooky stories told with a dash of historical context, or you like your history with a pinch of the paranormal, then this is the podcast for you. Never miss an episode. Subscribe to Weird in the Wade, wherever you're listening now. Japan isn't just temples and cherry blossoms. It's haunted castles, urban legends, yokai lurking in the shadows, and true crime cases where something doesn't quite add up. Supernatural Japan dives into Japan's darkest folklore, real history and mysteries that still disturb the present. From ghosts of ancient warriors to modern legends whispered online, every episode blends culture, crime and the unexplained. If you love spooky history, Japanese folklore and stories that stay with you long after the episode ends, search for Supernatural Japan, because in Japan, the past is never really gone. There's a shadow about the size of a person and it slowly turns around, it reveals a pure white face, empty eye sockets. He goes, I used to live here. He's like, I went to the war and then I never came back and then suddenly he was gone. On my way home, I called my wife and I was like, I just delivered to the craziest place. You have to look it up and tell me what it is. So I'm on the phone with her and she looks up and she says, David, this place is vacant. Whether you're here for the spooky, the storytelling or both, tell me your ghost story has you covered. Listen now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app. When the Internet began, Bulletin Board Services or BBS became the first online communities of the so-called information superhighway. Using their phone lines, people logged in from all over America to talk about sports, games, movies and on one BBS in particular. Share their ghost stories. Over time, those communities all went dark, except for one, a lone server that continues to operate somewhere in an unknown part of Pennsylvania's Rust Belt. A relic of the 1990s, veiled in mystery, it is a digital archive of humanity's strangest encounters with the unknown, as told by the people who experienced them. My name is Brandon Schecksneider and you are listening to Fear Daily. Subject Bobby and the Monster. User, 68 Perryville Stew. Posted June 18th, 1996. Parryville, my hometown, sits at the mouth of the Susquehanna River, where it feeds into Chesapeake Bay. It's not a big place, maybe a couple thousand people, but if you've ever driven from Baltimore to Wilmington, odds are good you've driven through Parryville. If you don't remember the town, you'll at least remember the bridges, the tidings on I-95 and the Hattom on Highway 40. Ever since I was a kid, I thought it was funny that out of the two bridges, the Hattom was the one people actually liked. The tidings was and still is a holy terror. The barriers are low, the lanes are narrow, and if you're driving anything smaller than a midsize, a good gust of wind might just carry you off like Dorothy. I was born in 1968 during a boom time for Parryville. The Bainbridge Naval Training Center was going great guns up the road at Port Depositan and brought a lot of people and money into the surrounding area. It's also where my friend Bobby's dad worked and when they finally closed it for good at the end of June 1976, his family had to move down to Havillock. The walk we took on July 16, 1976 was the last we took together as boys and I sometimes wonder if that's why we saw what we saw. Parryville is crisscrossed with train tracks and during the summer Bobby and I used to walk along them, throwing rocks, talking about the kinds of trains we'd see and sometimes the girls in our class. We'd usually start by clamoring up the embankment on Broad Street then, walking up the tracks underneath the Hadam and Railway bridges. The Hadam bridge is massive on any objective scale but when you're a kid, walking underneath it, it looks like it spans from one side of heaven to the other and it's hard to reconcile the fact you drive over it at least once a week. It seems as far away as the moon. The railway bridge is lower and with its concrete pilings and rust brown cover it somehow feels older than everything else around it. When you passed underneath it, the noise always seemed to drop away. You could dimly hear from across the water machinery working at the quarry but it was far off and diffuse, mixed with the gentle rust of the susky. On that day in July, just a week before Bobby's family moved, we were walking along the tracks, both trying to avoid the inevitable. Pavlock was only eight hours away from Parryville but when you're young, especially back then, it may as well have been on the moon. You feel things more acutely as a child and the knowledge that my friend was going away for good ached inside me as much as when my grandma, Opal, died. It was a beautiful summer day. It had a little rain in the morning but by noon the sky was clear and we were passing underneath the railway bridge. Because it got so much quieter after that we always called that part of the track the portal. We would pretend everything past that point was an adventure where around every corner waited monsters and bandits and all manner of what have you. On that day at least, we turned out to be right. We made it all the way up the end of French Town Road where the water treatment plant is now before the subject of Bobby's impending move came up between us. A big freight train was bearing down on us so we moved through the trees to the river's edge as it passed. Have you ever sat next to one of those Land Dragons as it goes by? The earth moves like God himself is on the prowl. So Bobby and I sat there, the ground shaking and the squeal of the boxcars behind us looking out across the water. Back then you didn't get many big boats on the river. The quarry has a barge but mostly you saw little fishing boats in the odd canoe going out to Garrett Island. That day though, there was nothing out on the water. We both cried then promised not to tell anyone that the other had done it. We said we'd ride each other every day, conspired ways we could visit each other and did everything we could to stave off the loss we felt inside us. And that's when it appeared. In the silence left by the departing train, we clearly heard water rushing much faster than the river's usual flow. In retrospect, it sounded like a whale breaching the surface of the ocean. Bobby and I looked away from each other out to the surface of the susky and saw, well, a head. A huge scaly head that was the size of a VW bug at least. The head sat atop what looked like a thickly muscled neck that was the size of a VW bug. The head sat atop what looked like a thickly muscled neck which extended for maybe 8 feet before disappearing below the water. The creature scales were blizzard-like, colored almost the same deep brown as the train bridge except when the light hit them just right and they reflected a sort of deep blue color, it was both frightening and beautiful at the same time. I don't think it was meant to scare us. On the contrary, I think we were blessed to see what we did but we still froze in place as this river monster lazily turned its head from side to side. Its eyes were roughly the size of a football, the pupils milky white and almost indistinguishable from the sclera around them. It opened what I assume must have been its mouth and bellowed once, a short, sharp sound that you could mistake for a foghorn if you didn't know any better. Its point made though, I'll never be able to tell you what it was. The thing sank beneath the surface of the susky in a matter of seconds, it disappeared as if it had never been there at all. It's hard to say how long Bobby and I stood there in the stillness of that warm July afternoon and felt like forever. And in my quiet moments, I like to think that we're still there. That the 22 years in between then and now were some kind of hallucination brought on by the creature and in a moment, I'll wake up back there so we can walk home together one last time. I'll be back. Feeling more confident in yourself can start with understanding the support available and MedExpress helps you explore weight management options from home. Begin with our short online consultation, reviewed by UK registered clinicians. There are no appointments or waiting rooms, everything is handled online. If eligible, treatment arrives discreetly at your door with professional support from clinicians throughout your journey. Discover a more confident you at medexpress.co.uk slash podcast. Looking for a hauntingly unique podcast this spooky season? Listen to I Talk to Ghost for chilling ghost stories, genuine in-studio medium readings, and a virtual seance table where the spirits have an opportunity to speak directly to you. Find I Talk to Ghost on all the fine podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Happy haunting. Subject, Neon Glow. User, 18WZR. Posted, March 1st, 1997. I killed the engine and leaned back in the driver's seat, letting out a long breath. The silence hit hard, the kind of quiet you don't notice until you stop moving. My legs ached, my eyes burned, and honestly all I could think about was taking a piss, maybe a few minutes of sleep and I don't know, grabbing some sugar or something before I got back on the road. The sign for the rest area had been a godsend, glowing green in the dark like a little slice of heaven waiting for me up ahead. I've been winding through these empty mountain roads for a while now, and when I finally made it down, I was a little surprised to not see any other vehicles, even right here in the parking lot. In retrospect, that should have made me nervous, but I was too tired to care. My rig's clock read 2.37am and the road ahead stretched another two hours to the distribution center, but my body was screaming for a break and I might be wanting to push my limits, but I do know exactly what they are. The place looked huge for a rest stop, like a glowing casino in the desert with a sleek modern design, wide parking lot, glossy windows, and blinding bright halogen lights. It had all the hallmarks of something built to handle heavy foot traffic, rows of vending machines, spotless picnic tables, even a pair of flagpoles out front, but just like the road leading here, it was empty, too empty. Not a single car was inside, not a trucker grabbing a smoke in the lot, not a clerk behind a counter. As I sat there in my rig, surveying at the building loomed over me, silent and sterile, it almost looked like it had been abandoned right after a cleaning crew finished scrubbing it down, for a place this size, there should have been someone. Well, I stepped out of the cab and stretched my boots crunching on the pristine gravel. The cold air hit me sharp enough to wake me up a little, but it didn't shake the unease creeping up my spine. My truck ticked softly behind me, the sound oddly loud in the stillness, it was the only noise for miles. The urge to piss is real, though, and if that is stinging you bad enough, you'll ignore just about anything. So I went ahead and made my way inside. The automatic doors slid open as I approached, revealing a brightly lit interior that was almost painfully clean. Tile floors so polished they reflected the harsh fluorescent lights overhead. Walls painted a sterile beige with dark wooden trim. There were plastic chairs arranged in neat rows, a little waiting area off to one side and a row of vending machines glowing faintly along the far wall. This was a nice truck stop, that is for sure, but where the fuck was everyone? No attendant, no janitor, no patrons. It was strange, most places like this had someone manning the front, even in the dead of night. The air even smelled faintly of lemon cleaner like someone had just mopped, but there was something else underneath it, something faintly metallic. I told myself it didn't matter, it was just a place to take a piss, so let's get moving. I headed for the men's room, my boots echoing loudly through the cavernous space, and found the restroom was spotless. Every stall, slightly ajar, gleaming porcelain toilets inside the urinals looked like they'd never been used, and the mirrors were so clear they almost looked fake. Even the motion activated faucets worked perfectly, the water warm and steady. It was too perfect. Places like this always had something, a flickering light, a graffiti tag on the stall door, a cigarette butt someone didn't bother to flush, but this, it felt staged, like a showroom nobody was meant to use. As I stepped back into the lobby, I felt it again, that strange stillness, heavy and oppressive like the building itself was holding its breath. The vending machines hummed softly, their lights flickering faintly, but the air felt colder now, sharper. It was the kind of cold that sinks into your bones. I fished a crumpled dollar out of my pocket and slid it into the slot of one of the machines. The gears word, clicking as I punched the button for a snickers. Nothing happened. I frowned and pressed the button again, still nothing. The machine screen blinked, the words out of service, flashing for a split second before the lights flickered and went dark. Weird. I turned to the next machine, but before I could put my money in, I heard it. A faint sound, soft and rhythmic footsteps. I froze, the hair rising up on the back of my neck. The steps echoed faintly, coming from somewhere deeper inside the building, but when I turned to look, there was no one there. Just rows of empty chairs, their plastic backs gleaming in the fluorescent light. Hello? I called out again, my voice unsteady. The footsteps stopped. Something was wrong. I could feel it now. Crawling up the back of my neck, the silence wasn't natural. It wasn't just the absence of sound. Again, it was a void, deep and suffocating, like the building itself was waiting for me. I'm back toward the door, my balls racing, but the automatic sensor didn't trigger. The glass door stood still, my reflection staring back at me, pale and wide-eyed. I waved my hand around nervously, anxiously, but nothing. Then I heard the footsteps start again, slowly, methodically. Reaching out, I grabbed the handle and yanked it open manually, the metal ice-cold against my palm. The night air hit me like a slap, sharp and bracing. I stumbled out into the parking lot, my breath foggy in the chill. The lot was just as empty as before, but it felt different now. The shadows around the edges seemed darker, stretching farther than they should. The halogen lights must faintly now. Their glow flickering just enough to make me glance over my shoulder. Nothing was there. I climbed into the cab and locked the doors, my hands shaking as I jammed the key into the ignition, the engine roar to life, and I wasted no time throwing it into gear. The tires kicked up gravel as I tore out of that lot, my headlights sweeping over the building one last time. I marched back onto the interstate, my knuckles white on the wheel, my breath shallow. But when I looked up into my rearview mirror, it was nothing but darkness. It was as if the rest stop, the bright white casino in the desert, hadn't ever existed in the first place. Fear Daily Fear Daily is an independent podcast hosted by Brandon Schexniter and written by Brennan Store, with Joanna Smith serving as the consulting editor, audio production by Rachel Boyd and sound design by Southern Gothic Media. This podcast is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to real events or locations, is entirely coincidental. Ad-Free versions of Fear Daily are available now on your favorite podcast apps. For more information, visit feardaily.com. But move fast before the server goes offline. In every small town, behind every closed door, a story waits to be uncovered. On Our True Crime podcast, we dive deep into the cases that haunt communities around the world, from chilling cold cases to crimes with unexpected twist. No detail is too small. Hosted by us, Jen and Cam, two lifelong friends who love telling a good story. 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