Tracers | Wedding Present

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. Are you interested in the 3569 ways your household could have killed you in the Victorian era? Do you know how malaria and syphilis played a role in the John List family murders? And have you ever wondered what Prince Albert's sex chair had to do with the murder of Stanford White? Okay, nothing. It had nothing to do with it. We're still telling you about it, though. It's a pretty great sex chair. If you're looking for another show that talks about Ted Bundy, this is probably not the podcast for you. But if you're looking for two women that cover lesser known cases from all over the world with a lot of background information, so much background information that you will rock your local pub quiz from now on. Then find Rachel podcast on your favorite podcast app. We also have German cannibals. See you soon. Tschüss. 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 Tracers. User 8-8 Sarge. Posted June 21, 1997. Every time I close my eyes, I see the same thing. Red tracer rounds, arcing out into the desert night, lighting up pitted black skulls, their eyes right with hunger. Giants, whose fore-long limbs skitter like overgrown spiders over the dry ground, their screams cutting through the dark long after we've beat them back underground. Those are the dreams I have that make me long for nightmares instead, because nightmares aren't real. Those things I see very much are. The Palo Verde Fire Team, or PVFT, was established in the late 50s after the first tunnel or night siege took an entire nuclear power generation facility off-line. Back then, no one knew what they were dealing with, and how could they? Every single thought around enriched uranium had to do with the nation's enemies wanting to get a piece of it. It never occurred to anyone that this brand new fuel wasn't the only thing to come out of the nuclear age. You're, I guess, more accurately that this shiny new technology could lure something very old out into the world. Seismic detects them first. That's a unit based in a concrete bunker at the AO southwestern edge facing Signal Mountain. They monitor for micro-tremors, which signal the initial stages of a tunneler approach. Once the bunker boys sound an alarm, Fire Team A responds to the projected emergency site in LAV's equipped with Browning M2s. Time and experience have proven that unless you can hit them in their eyes or open mouths, anything smaller than a 50-cow round just pisses them off. Underground, we can control the tunnelers to a degree, direct their approach, but once they breach, ordinance is all that stands between you and them. How we can direct them underground is both simple and complicated. Simple because all it took was a series of copper pillars sunken around the site's perimeter. They either can't or won't go past them. The why of it is the complicated part and goes back to the question of what the tunnelers are, which no one has really been able to answer. From what I've heard around the campfire, after that first siege, a long series of conversations between brass and the few witnesses who lived through the attack led to a consultation with elders from the nearby Gila River Reservation. Though the creatures described by survivors bore no relation to anything in their lore, the elders suggested burying coppertails, which they claimed could disrupt the routes of wandering spirits. High rubs thought it was bullshit. Whatever these things were, they weren't ghosts, but after a second emergence within the site, during which tunnelers devoured fully a third of the stockpiled fissile material, trying anything was deemed preferable to doing nothing. To everyone's surprise, the copper pillars worked, allowing the military to better dictate the rules of engagement. That doesn't mean we can control every conflict. You can't account for every variable on the battlefield, especially when you're fighting against an enemy you don't fully understand. If ever any of the men had forgotten that simple fact, last night was a brutal reminder. I fully admit, we'd gotten a little complacent. The last tunneler attack had been on Boxing Day, a quick half hour long dust-up with zero casualties on either side. Since then, the bunker boys hadn't seen hide nor hair of them. It was the longest gap between emergencies since I joined the PVFT in 1988, and in retrospect, we should have guessed something was brewing. Certainly, shouldn't have allowed Fireteam C to be taken off active alert. Heads up came just after 2 am, the call from the bunker, micro-tremors in the direction of Signal Mountain. Fireteam A, myself, Alvarez, Cody and Walker were out the door within five minutes. I was driving, Alvarez was on the 50 cal. It would only made it three clicks out toward the area of engagement when Seismic called in a second emergence, this one further east, out toward Gillespie volcano. Fireteam B was dispatched. As we got closer to the Copper Line, I could hear the tunnelers approaching, a frenzied sound like horses hoops beating their way up from underground. Emergences themselves are nightmarish things. The ground explodes, vomiting up what looks like giants with too long arms and legs. Their faces, a thin skin of black stretched over a huge skull. Towering above us, even the LAV, the tunnelers really did look like huge spiders, just with half the legs and a lot more aggression. The second we hit the edge of our preserve, the dirt rippled in a kind of wave. Then our skyward, ear-splitting screeches followed as bony limbs pulled their oversized bodies out of the ground. Vasquez wheeled the 50 cal right, its sharp report almost as loud as its target. The Humvee shook while tracers flashed through the dark ahead, rounds punching ragged holes through the creature's torsos, cleaving skulls in half. Still, the tunnelers came hard, easily a dozen of them swarming toward us over top of the Copper Line, which could only contain them below ground. Vasquez was quickly overwhelmed at one of the things thrust a skeletal appendage through his neck and out the back. I hit reverse, the engine whining as we pulled back, making space between us and the horde. Vasquez's still impaled body was ripped from the top of the LAV, held aloft by the tunneler who had speared him. It almost seemed to be waving in victory. Something Cody and Walker couldn't help but notice as well. It hissed us off, so with Walker now manning the browning, I gunned it toward the enemy who seemed to be retreating. This was incredibly stupid because before I knew it, a thunderclap came from our left side and we were hit so hard, the vehicle rolled. In the split second before we were upside down, I knew what had happened. The tunnelers had intentionally drawn us over the Copper Line, leading us into a trap. The second emergence had caught us completely by surprise and now my whole body ached as blows rained down on the overturned LAV. This was a small mercy. The PVFT had been a part of a pilot program where our light armored vehicles had additional plating added to their undercarriages. Eventually, when the next war came, this would be rolled out for use by US combat personnel everywhere. Until then, we were their grateful guinea pigs. Tunneler strikes that would have shredded our LAV and now thud it into the additional armor. It was only a temporary reprieve, however, because we were way out over our skies with no backup. Walker had managed to keep himself intact during the flip and I heard him call out, telling me he was in the process of trying to detach the 50 cal from its now broken mouth. Next to me, Cody was groaning but alive. I grabbed my AR and fired three bursts through the shattered driver side window, at least some of the rounds striking true, judging by the roars outside. It wouldn't stop them, but it might slow them down slightly. More blind fire, a handful more hits, the armor strikes were coming fast and furious now. I tried the radio with no luck. The impact had knocked it offline entirely. It wasn't all bad news though. As clever as the ambush had been, it showed the creatures weren't exactly intelligent. Overturning our vehicle had put us at an impossible angle for their rigid limbs to reach us. With a thud, the now detached 50 cal fell onto the dirt. Decision time. It was the only thing which could really hurt them, but operating it free of amount was a three-man operation. A gunner, a carrier, and a ammo bearer. We had the numbers, but leaving our position, suicide. Suddenly, the roar of tunnelers was drowned out by the barking 50 cal. Walker was operating it from its position on the ground. The noise was deafening and immediately my ears felt as if they were packed with cotton wool. I barely heard the cries of our enemies as those dumb enough to wander into the gun's narrow range of fire were caught off at what amounted to their knees. The new round of bloodshed went a scare into the opposition and they backed off. Not much, but enough to give us breathing room. Cody had fully come around by this point. I asked if he was strong enough to be ammo bearer if we decided to make a break for it. He agreed that he was. I looked to Walker, who had turned away from scanning the gap between the lav and the earth, and he nodded. With the grunt, I heaved myself through the broken glass around me to the back of the lav. Walker let out another burst, then pushed the browning ahead of him, scurrying after it. He never saw the blow coming. A tunneler who had been waiting above us for just such an opportunity. Walker was swiftly pulled out of view. The entrails dislodged by the attack, remaining behind to stain the sand red. That was it. Without three people to operate the 50 cal, we were fucked. I think the tunnelers knew it too, because even with my damaged eardrums, I could hear the heavy thumping of their approach. I again blindly fired my AR, three bursts that hit home, but ultimately did nothing. Adrenaline had my heart pumping so hard the reality of death couldn't set in. Even as the disgusting fuckers outside began ramming the overturned lav and an attempt to get at us, all I could think about was getting one last chance to put a round into one of their eyes. Another roar, this one distant. All around us, the night exploded into a brilliant white. Moments later, and the tunnelers were shrieking louder than ever before. Some of them collapsing to the earth, entering my eye line just ahead of the smell of garlic. White phosphorus. We had air support. WP is a highly caustic substance used by the military for illumination. Ignited by oxygen and burning with all the fires of hell, Willie Pete will carve right through your skin and bone something even those nightmares from underground are made of. Once we were evaced by Fire Team C, we learned that B had gone through exactly what we had without the happy ending. Now, we begin a long, unhappy process of rebuilding, because as long as there's nuclear material out there, the tunnelers will come for it. Progress doesn't come cheap. 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. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com. Subject, Wedding Present. User, Be Nots. Posted, February 23rd, 1996. When my husband and I got married last spring, I really thought we were living the dream. You know, a small town girl marries her high school sweetheart, moves into the big old farmhouse that's been in his family forever. It was one of those storybook moments that people back home envy, where everything feels like it's finally falling into place. The house, the house, was a wedding gift from his parents. His great-grandparents built it, and it's been passed down through the family ever since, and now it was our turn. Of course, with all that history and tradition, came lots and lots of stories, and that included the fact that everyone joked it was haunted. How could it not be, right? At every family holiday, there was some story about the spirit that lived there, how you could hear footsteps in the attic late at night, or doors that wouldn't stay shut no matter how many times you slammed them. I laughed along, just like everyone else. I called it quirky, and said it gave the place character. If I'm honest, I thought it was fun and really appreciated feeling like I was about to be included in the family. Except, I don't think it's funny anymore. It's not haunted in the way you'd expect. There are no ghost ladies floating around in Victorian dresses. No phantom voices calling out my name in the still of the night. It's quieter than that. Subtle. Like, the house is testing me. Seeing how much it can get away with before I crack. It started with the smell. You know how old houses have that musty, lived-in smell? This isn't that. It's like damp soil mixed with burnt hair, but I don't even think that is a good enough description. It's not there all the time, though, just enough to keep me on edge. Some mornings, it's barely noticeable. Other times, it's so strong it makes my eyes water. I've scrubbed everything. Walls, floors, the basement, even the attic, which I swore I'd never step foot in. But it always comes back. My husband says it's probably mold, and I should just let it go. It's an old house, he says. They smell weird. I'll call somebody to come check and see if there's something in the walls, but you'll get used to it. I have not gotten used to it. Besides, the smell isn't the only thing. There are these cold spots. You'll be walking through the house, and suddenly it's like you stepped into a refrigerator. The worst is in the baby's room. Well, what was supposed to be the baby's room? I was painting it soft yellow one afternoon when the air just dropped. Like someone opened a window in January, only the windows were shut and the furnace was on. Yet I could see my breath hanging in the air. It was that cold. I got out of there so fast I nearly tripped over the drop cloth, spilling the yellow paint. I didn't go back in for a week, and when I did, the open can of paint was just as good as if I had walked out only 15 minutes earlier. There's no way I'm going to put my firstborn in there. Period. Then there's the bedroom door. It doesn't stay shut. I close it every night before bed, tight as I can. Every morning it's open, not cracked wide open. I even prop a chair against it. Still, it's open the next morning. You know what my husband said, right? I'm being dramatic. Asshole. Door shift, he tells me. It's an old house. Things move, but it's not just these things. It's all of them, all together. Hell, I'll leave my coffee cup on the counter, come back 10 minutes later, and it's on the table. Light switches turn off by themselves. The radio in the kitchen turns on at full blast at the strangest times. Always some old country station, even though we've never tuned it to that. Sometimes I think he's messing with me, like he's trying to make me crazy, but with the amount of stuff going on, there's no way he could be doing it. No, it's more like the house itself is wearing me down, bit by bit. At first I was annoyed, but now it's like this constant hum in the back of my head that I can't turn off. I catch myself holding my breath when I walk down the hallway. My nerves are always frayed. I jump at every little noise. I start to keep a radio on just so the silence doesn't feel so heavy. I'm so, so very tired, and we've only been here six months. We were supposed to raise a family here. That was the plan. I had visions of little feet running down the hallways, playing hide and seek in the orchard out back, watching the kids chase fireflies in the summer. Now I don't know if I can even live here. My husband keeps telling me to suck it up. It's just the way it is, he says. This house has been in the family for generations. It's not going anywhere. I get that, I do. This house is part of his identity. It's woven into the fabric of who he is. Leaving isn't even an option for him. But some nights, while I'm awake in the dark, I wonder if maybe it should be. I'm not sure how much longer I can live like this. Fear Daily Fear Daily What would you do if you came face to face with something you couldn't explain? Real Ghost Stories Wherever You Listen to Podcasts And Start a Paranormal Journey Like Never Before 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, Jenn and Cam, two lifelong friends who love telling a good story. This isn't sensationalized news. It's real cases, real people, and the chilling details that keep you up at night. Our True Crime podcast brings the facts, a little perspective, and just enough humor to remind you you're not alone in being fascinated by the darker side of life. Our True Crime podcast, where bizarre crimes, meticulous research, and genuine friendship collide. Subscribe today if you dare, because sometimes the scariest stories are the true ones. The True Crime Podcast