Harrowing Tales Horror Stories

Harrowing Tales

Original horror fiction, told in the first person. Each week, Harrowing Tales brings you new scary stories about night shifts that go wrong, lonely roads after dark, strange encounters, and things that were never explained.

This is quiet horror. It’s slow-burn, atmospheric, and unsettling, with no gore, no jump scares, and no screaming. Every story is original, written for Harrowing Tales. They’re creepy stories for late nights and long drives, and quiet enough to fall asleep to, if you can.

All stories are original fiction. New episodes every week.

Read the Harrowing Tales books on Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/author/harrowingtales

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34 episodes
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Episodes 34

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S1 · E46
Monday · 11 min
Snow Load: A Backcountry Snowstorm Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! There’s a cribbage board on the shelf over her sink with a game still on it. Her best friend’s peg sits in hole one-seventeen, where it stopped in the winter of 1998. In this original horror story, a woman looks back on one last trip with Frankie, her best friend since nursing school, who quit after a semester to become an engineer because bridges don’t throw up on you. Before Frankie left for a bridge job four time zones away, they skied six miles into the backcountry to a rented yurt, cheap that week because a big storm was coming. Frankie carried a whole roast chicken on her back, named the woodstove Gordon, and cheated at the same game of cribbage they’d been playing for nine years. A card by the door said to rake the roof whenever the snow got past two feet. Frankie, the engineer, said a round roof over a hot stove would shed on its own. And around midnight, from up on the roof, came a long scrape, then a pause. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a winter storm, two best friends, and the sounds overhead that kept them safe. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E45
Saturday · 10 min
Same Address: A Halloween Night Taxi Driver Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! On Halloween night in 1989, a cab driver made four hundred and eleven dollars, still his record after thirty-one years behind the wheel. A hundred and fifty of it came from one man, in three different costumes, going to the same address every time. In this original horror story, a divorced father looks back on the best night a small-town cab ever has: every lodge’s Halloween dance letting out drunk, his daughter Shay’s braces due by the fifteenth, and Bernice on the night radio calling every driver “sugar.” His dashboard holds fourteen years of things nobody came back for: a pink retainer, a rosary, one roller skate, false eyelashes glued to the speedometer. At five past nine, a monk in a brown robe climbs into the back with his hood pulled so low there’s no face, asks for the end of Ferrier Road, where the dairy has been dead since the seventies, and tips him ten dollars. Two hours later, a gorilla from a different party asks for the same address. Same dry cough. Same scuffed brown wingtips. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of Halloween night, a small-town cab, and a passenger who keeps coming back. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E44
October 30 · 9 min
Twice: A Haunted House Halloween Dare Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Every kid on Larch Street knew the rule for the empty house at the dead end: you could knock on the door on a dare, but you knocked twice and you walked away, never three times. When he asked why, the older boy next door said it like it was obvious: “Three’s for the people who live there.” In this original horror story, a man looks back on Halloween 1978, when he was eleven and would have followed Ricky Thale, fifteen, off a roof. Ricky called him Squirt, taught him to spit and to whistle through a blade of grass, and gave him all his root beer barrels every Halloween because they tasted like a cough. That year Ricky made him an offer: knock on the house at the end of Larch Street, and he could come trick-or-treating with the big kids out past the water tower, where the new houses gave out full-size bars. The house had stood empty since 1959, every ground-floor window boarded from the inside. So at seven o’clock, in a ghost costume with eyeholes cut too far apart, he climbed onto the porch and knocked twice. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a neighborhood haunted house, a Halloween dare, and the older boy he looked up to. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E43
October 29 · 10 min
Seasonal Help: A Halloween Store Night Shift Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! He works the overnight stock shift alone at a Halloween pop-up store in a dying mall, nine weeks a year, locked in from outside until morning. It’s ten past three, and he’s sitting on the floor in the costume aisle, being very, very quiet. In this original horror story, a twenty-four-year-old writes from inside his shift at a seasonal Halloween store, in an empty shoe-store unit in the dead east wing of the mall. If he runs overnights clean, he gets a full-time job in January, and a full-time job comes with a dental plan. His company is Gloria, a six-foot animatronic witch who’s switched off and a great listener; his grandmother, who calls at a quarter past two to ask about the knife that cuts through a shoe; and Lonnie, the mall guard, who brings him coffee with sugar every night at two-thirty no matter how many times he’s told. He checks all eight security cameras on the hour, and every night he eats at one in the only spot none of them can see. Then the eight-foot reaper he parked by the register turns up in aisle three, facing the stockroom door. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a Halloween store after hours, a locked gate, and a security camera app that shows how many people are watching. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E42
October 28 · 10 min
Come Down: A Halloween Sleepover Spirit Board Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! At ten to midnight on Halloween 1996, five teenage girls were sitting around a talking board in her basement, and it spelled out a name. Not her name, but the childhood nickname nobody had called her since she was thirteen. She heard it with her ear pressed to the heating grate on the kitchen floor. In this original horror story, a mother looks back on the night her thirteen-year-old daughter Kelsey had her first sleepover since Grandma moved in. Her own mother had stopped recognizing her a month after arriving. She did the crossword every morning in pen, wrong, with total confidence, and some nights she stood in her doorway asking where Birdie was. The old house had a gravity furnace whose iron floor grates carried every sound from room to room like a tin-can telephone. Kelsey’s one request was “Be normal, Mom,” so she stayed upstairs, listening through the floor. Then the girls come thundering up the stairs, laughing, to tell her what the board said next. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a Halloween sleepover, a talking board, and a family name only one person in the house should have known. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E41
October 27 · 10 min
Leave One: A Halloween Graveyard Legend Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Every kid in town knew the rule on Joanie Pruitt’s grave before they knew their own phone number: on Halloween, you leave one piece of candy on her stone, because Joanie never got to finish her Halloween. Leave one, never take one. In this original horror story, a woman looks back on October 1991, when she was fifteen and in trouble. She’d cracked her mother’s heirloom watch at the homecoming dance, the repair cost twenty dollars, and her mother’s birthday was nine days away. Then a junior with her brother’s car bet her exactly twenty dollars that she wouldn’t climb into the cemetery at midnight and take one piece of candy off Joanie’s grave. Her best friend Tasha, who could do the principal, the priest and a cat being sick, spent the whole week doing Joanie’s ghost voice: “She’s gonna want that back.” And at dusk on Halloween, they watched an old woman with a cane climb the hill and leave one homemade peppermint on top of the pile. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a small-town legend, a dare, and the one thing on the grave that was really meant for Joanie. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E40
October 26 · 9 min
Mischief Night: A Halloween Eve Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Every year, the week after Halloween, the local paper ran the same little item: on Mischief Night, someone had soaped a single word onto a single front window, and nobody saw who did it. The paper called it a prank. Her neighbor, who had lived on Fulton Street for fifty years, said none of them were ever random. In this original horror story, a single mother looks back on her first fall in a narrow 1911 house she could barely afford. The radiators knocked all night, the fuse box blew whenever the dryer and the space heater ran together, and she worked nights on a hospital ward while her twelve-year-old son Petey left notes on the kitchen table (“Ate the meatloaf. All of it.”). Then, the Saturday before Halloween, she comes home to a single curved stroke of white soap on her front window, at about the height of her face. So on Mischief Night she turns off every light, pulls her chair up to the glass with a thermos and a flashlight, and waits to catch them. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of Mischief Night, an old house, and a message she read the wrong way. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E39
October 25 · 10 min
Flag Fourteen: A Corn Maze Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! The night corn maze had one rule, painted on a board at the gate: if you get lost, raise your flag and stay put, and a guide will come to you. In October 1994, a father and his eight-year-old daughter went in with flag number fourteen. In this original horror story, a man looks back on the brave night he planned for his daughter Cass, a girl as afraid of the dark as other kids are of dogs. For her eighth birthday, she chose six acres of field corn after dark, with a flashlight, an orange flag on a pole, and a farmer’s joke about the old roped-off well out at the north end. Cass named the walls of corn (the tall ones were Big Steve), held onto his belt loop, and kept her flashlight pointed at her sneakers so nothing could jump into the light. About an hour in, they’re properly lost, so they do what the sign says. They raise the flag, and a voice in the corn calls their number. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a night corn maze, a father and daughter, and a rule that’s supposed to keep you safe. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E38
October 24 · 9 min
The Popcorn Ball: A Halloween Candy Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! For forty-one Halloweens, the retired mailman across the street gave out the most famous popcorn balls on Wheeler Avenue. In 1997, from his hospital bed, he asked his neighbor for one last favor: hand out his treats, and save the single popcorn ball left on his counter for the boy in the fireman suit. In this original horror story, a single mother looks back on the Halloween she sat on Mr. Eberly’s front step in his place. He was the man who had shoveled her walk and fixed her furnace with a coat hanger the winter her husband left, and who taught her daughter Maddie to whistle with two fingers. Every other day she let herself in with the key under the ceramic frog to water his forty pots of African violets, from underneath, the way his index card said. His voice on the phone was weak and thick, as if he were talking through a dish towel, but his instructions were clear: the popcorn ball was only for the boy in the fireman suit, and only if he asked for it by name. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of Halloween night, a kind old neighbor, and a promise kept exactly as asked. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E37
October 23 · 10 min
John Doe: A Haunted House Attraction Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! In 2003, she took a job playing a corpse in a small-town haunted house: lying under a sheet on a gurney in a room called the Morgue, Fridays and Saturdays, six to one. The girl who had the job before her lasted one weekend, then quit without picking up her last paycheck. In this original horror story, a woman looks back on the October she was nineteen, taking two buses to community college and saving every dollar for a used green Civic. The haunted house was built inside an old feed warehouse. Her coworkers were Augie, who sang an entire French Revolution musical in order from the Meat Locker next door, and John Doe, a four-hundred-dollar prop corpse on the gurney eighteen inches from hers. The rules were simple: corpses keep their eyes closed, nobody touches anybody, and if you need help, you say “red.” Then, after the last group one Saturday night, a single set of footsteps comes into the Morgue and stops at the foot of her gurney. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a Halloween haunted attraction, the rules that keep you still, and what was lying eighteen inches away. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E36
October 22 · 10 min
Bring Whoever: A Halloween Party Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! He invited twenty-two people to his first-ever Halloween party. Twenty-three are in the shared photo album, and the twenty-third doesn’t show his face in any of the forty pictures he’s in. In this original horror story, a man looks back on the party he threw in his new house, a three-bedroom ranch forty minutes past where anyone he knew lived. The invitation said “costumes mandatory, bring whoever,” with a little ghost after it, and he meant it. His oldest friend Cal came dressed as a lumberjack, which is what he always wore anyway, carrying a slow cooker of chili like a baby, and as always he was the designated driver. Then there was the guy in the full rubber horse head, who took everyone’s coats, drank through a straw in the nostril, and snapped perfect photos all night with other people’s phones. Nobody knew who brought him. It made for a better party that way. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a Halloween party, a guest no one could place, and a friend who should have stayed the night. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E35
October 21 · 9 min
The Night Drop: A Halloween Costume Shop Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Her mother ran the costume rental shop for thirty-one years, and three different Novembers she burned a costume in a trash can out back without ever saying why. In 1987, the shop became hers. In this original horror story, a woman looks back on her first Halloween season running her late mother’s costume shop alone, keeping her mother’s rules: every costume tagged and pressed, a crease down each sleeve, due back November second. October pays for the whole year, and her best friend Roz, who could turn a pharmacist into a werewolf in four minutes and never returned a thing she borrowed, does faces for a dollar in the chair by the window. The morning after her first Halloween alone, two costumes she’d never seen are waiting in the night-drop bin, a fox and a scarecrow, pressed and tagged in her own handwriting. She hangs them on the rack, glad to have the last of her mother’s work. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a small-town costume shop, a mother’s unexplained habit, and what comes back through the slot after Halloween. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E34
October 21 · 9 min
On Maple: A Halloween Night Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! It’s Halloween night, and his eleven-year-old son is out trick-or-treating with friends for the first time. The boy’s only rule: Dad can track him on the location app and text all he wants, but he can never, ever call. In this original horror story, a newly divorced father keeps the deal while he’s home with his six-year-old daughter Junie, who is dressed as a raccoon who went to medical school, and Gus, a nine-year-old beagle who spends every Halloween hiding in the bathtub from the doorbell. Theo texts like a ransom note, in all caps, three words at most, calling him “bruh.” This is also the first year Theo gets a say in where he spends Thanksgiving. So when the app puts his dot in the half-built subdivision behind the middle school and the texts say he’s on Maple with everyone, Dad believes the texts. Then the questions start: is Mom coming tonight, is Junie still up, is the back door open. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of Halloween night, a father trying to do everything right, and a phone that keeps texting back. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E33
October 18 · 8 min
Phone in the Box: A Digital Detox Cabin Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! For her birthday, her best friend booked her a weekend alone in a cabin with no cell signal, and bet her eleven hundred dollars she couldn't last forty-eight hours without her phone. The phone went into a clear plastic lockbox with a timer on the lid. She could see the screen, but she couldn't touch it. In this original horror story, a woman who has spent eleven years writing social media posts for a cartoon carrot on the side of grocery trucks finally goes offline, at a one-room cabin up eight miles of dirt road, with her late father's truck and his cassette of loon calls still in the deck. She hikes the ridge, eats Sunday's snacks on Friday, and invents a roommate named Doug who lives in the loft and pays rent in pretzels. It's the quietest she has been in years. Then, on Saturday afternoon, the phone in the box lights up with a notification she can read through the plastic but can't open. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a digital detox, a phone you can see but can't touch, and how far "off the grid" really goes. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E32
October 15 · 8 min
Count Off: A Summer Camp Canoe Trip Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Every night at ten on the canoe trip, the scout leader shouted "Count off!" and nine boys answered from their tents, one through nine. On the first night, after Nine, someone out past the canoes said, "Ten." In this original horror story, a man looks back on August 1981, when he was fifteen and homesick, camped eleven miles up a wilderness lake with his best friend Wes, eight other boys, and Mr. Lund, an insurance salesman who ran the count-off like he was landing a plane. Wes called him Toast, ate orange drink powder straight from the jar, and wore a cheap digital watch that beeped every hour and that he never figured out how to turn off. It always beeped ten right after Nine, so the watch always got the last word. Everyone blamed the extra "Ten" on the older boys in tent one. Then, on the second night, the voice comes from right behind his tent. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a summer canoe trip, two best friends, and a goodnight that still haunts him. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E31
October 13 · 10 min
Lantern Out: A Fire Lookout Tower Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Someone had written a rule in grease pencil on the rim of the fire lookout's map table: LANTERN OUT BY DARK. She'd been afraid of the dark since she was four, so she broke it on her first night. In this original horror story, a woman looks back on the summer of 1994, when she spent the fire season alone in a glass-walled lookout tower on top of a remote mountain. It was the first thing she'd ever been good at. Her company was Opal, who packed in supplies every other Thursday on a bad-tempered mule named Senator and brought paperbacks that always had horses on the cover, plus Kenny at dispatch, who read her crossword clues over the radio in his weather voice. She read by lantern every night until she fell asleep, and every morning she woke to find the lantern turned neatly down. She decided she must be doing it in her sleep. Around one in the morning, the old steel tower would tick as it cooled, under the floor where the original ladder used to run. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of isolation, a fear of the dark, and a rule written by someone who never explained why. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E30
October 11 · 9 min
The Water Stays On: A Cranberry Marsh Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! His father left him one rule for frost nights on the cranberry marsh: once the water is on, it stays on until the sun comes up. "That's not advice," he said. In this original horror story, a man looks back on the fall of 1984, when he and his younger brother Gil were working the family cranberry marsh alone, with one good crop on the water and a bank note due in December. On frost nights they ran the sprinklers until dawn, sealing the fruit in a shell of ice to keep it alive: two flashlights, two radios, and Gil's thermos of coffee that was mostly sugar. Every time Gil walked past the pump house phone, the one that had never rung, he'd pick it up, say "Pump house," and hang up again. Then a flashlight starts moving through the spray past the far dike. A valve turns up closed that nobody closed. And on the coldest night of the year, a man's voice calls for help from out in the flooded beds. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of a family farm, a rule handed down from father to son, and what one decent choice can cost. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E29
October 9 · 10 min
Cover the Mirrors: A Mourning Superstition Folk Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Three weeks before she died, his grandmother made him promise one thing: when she was gone, cover every mirror in the house for seven days, even the little ones. When he asked why, she said, "So nobody sees me go." In this original horror story, a man looks back on the November of 1979, when his family gathered for a week of mourning in his grandmother's old house, the house he was about to buy from the estate. Gram had lived by her own rules for sixty years: curtains drawn every night at sundown, the toaster kept in the cupboard, every spoon laid face down. So they kept her last rule too, covering every mirror, the compact, even the hubcaps on her car. It was a warm week of casseroles, freezer pie, and sixty years of stories about how she cheated at cards. Then his six-year-old daughter, eating her cereal, says, "Gram's in the toaster. Behind you." A slow-burn, unsettling tale of grief, a family superstition, and a promise kept to the letter. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E28
October 6 · 10 min
Sleep Theatre: A Sleep Talking Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! Her boyfriend recorded her talking in her sleep: two hundred and eleven clips over one winter. Every Sunday at breakfast he played them back, kept a leaderboard on the fridge, and called it Sleep Theatre. They played every one of them except the last. In this original horror story, a young couple gives up their apartment to house-sit full time, starting with a winter at a farmhouse, plus Walter, an elderly basset hound who has to be carried up the stairs every night. A sleep-tracking app on the nightstand saves anything loud enough to count, and it turns out she talks in her sleep two or three times a night, in full sentences, with feeling. "Tell him the soup is fine." "Not the ferret." Marcus does the voices; the pancakes go cold. Then a friendly man stops at the end of the drive asking for the owners, and the clips start to sound less like dreams and more like answers. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of house-sitting, a sleep-talking app, and what gets recorded while you're asleep. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.
S1 · E27
September 30 · 9 min
Doubles: A Haunted Film Photography Horror Story
Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode! In 1986, he owns the only one-hour photo lab in a small town, so he sees every photo anyone there takes. One September night, in the middle of a stranger's roll of birthday pictures, there's a frame of his own upstairs hallway, with his daughter's door standing open at the end. In this original horror story, a man looks back on the three years he spent checking other people's film at the light table after closing, paying off a processing machine the size of a car so his wife could one day open her portrait studio. Film comes out of the camera as one unbroken strip, with every frame numbered in order at the factory. So there is no explaining a flash photo of his hallway sitting between a customer's frames eleven and twelve, with no cut and no splice. Then there are more: dark kitchens and sleeping bedrooms, one to a roll, each with the same small white scratch in the corner. And a man starts standing at the store's drop slot after closing, putting nothing in it. A slow-burn, unsettling tale of film photography, the pictures we hand to strangers, and something that has been looking in for longer than he's been alive. No gore, no jump scares, just quiet dread that stays with you. 🎧 If this one got under your skin, follow Harrowing Tales for new scary stories every week, and leave a rating to help other listeners find the show. 📺 Watch the illustrated version on YouTube: Harrowing Tales All Harrowing Tales stories are original works of fiction.

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