Okay. So this actually happened to my teacher’s sister, and this was a long time ago when she was probably about, um, seventeen. She was babysitting for um, like a neighborhood family. So one night the parents, ah, were about to leave and they were like, “So you’re good? You know everything?”

And she [the babysitter] was like, “Yeah, I’m good, I got the numbers, I got, you know, everything down pat.” She’d been doing this for a while so it was pretty easy. Um, so the parents left for the night and, uh, so the emergency list of phone numbers was on the refrigerator, the kids were perfectly fine. So um, at around nine the kids were put to bed so she just sat in the chair across from the TV to just watch some TV and wait for the parents to be done with their date or whatever.

[Gesturing to explain this scene–] So in the living room you have like this La-Z-Boy chair, and then the TV is like kind of across and over to the side, and like to an angle, kind of, are these glass sliding doors to the back porch. Um, so, this was in winter sometime, so there was a lot of snowfall around. And then when she was just watching TV she just glances over at the glass window and there’s somebody standing there. And she’s like, that’s creepy. So she just kind of freezes up for a second hoping it’ll leave.  And it kind of disappeared. And she’s like, okay, this must’ve been something in my mind, I just imagined it. So she goes back to watching TV.

Well, like five minutes later she glances over again and there that GUY is , just standing there in the snow. So she’s freaking out, she’s like ohhh my god, she like runs out of the living room and like finds her phone and she like can’t even be bothered to call the people on the list, she just calls the police and is like, “Somebody is standing outside the house that I’m babysitting right now, he’s like standing outside the glass doors in the living room, I was just watching TV and he was there.”

So the operator’s like, “Okay. I’m going to send somebody to check around.”

She was like, “All right.”

So ten minutes later the police show up and they were like, “What happened?”

And she was like, “Uh, well, somebody was standing outside of the glass window, I was just watching TV because I am babysitting the kids, and he was just there, and then he just disappeared. It happened twice.”

So they were like, “Okay.” So they check the perimeter of the house, but there are no footprints. So they’re like, “It was probably just your imagination. It’s a dark, you know, wintery night, things like that can happen when you’re alone, so, um, you should be fine. We’ll keep a police car in the vicinity just in case, but otherwise just go on with your night, because we don’t see any traces of anyone being here.”

She goes on with her night, everything’s fine.

Fifteen years later they’re moving out. They move—the family—they move the recliner, and on the back is etched: “I was behind you the whole time.”

Listener’s comment: perhaps the man outside was a reflection in the window from the inside!

[Told at breakfast]

So, um, this guy is going to stay in a hotel for a night because he’s in town for a business trip.  And, um, so he goes to the cheapest hotel he can find, and he goes to the manager and says, “Hi, I need one room, just give me the cheapest room.”

And the manager says, “Oh, we don’t have any rooms open.”

And he [the guy] is like, “ Really? Surely you have some rooms open.”

And the manager looks really cagey and he’s like, “Well, okay, I guess if—if really, like, ANY room…”

And he [the guy] is like, “Yeah, just give me a freaking room.”

And so the manager’s like, “Okay.” And so he takes him to this, um, to this room, and, uh, and the guy’s like bringing up—lugging up his suitcase and he gets the key in the lock and, like, and it won’t open. Like the door just won’t open. So he’s like pounding on the door and trying to open it and everything, and it won’t open. And so he like looks into the keyhole, because it’s like one of those old-fashioned ones, to see if there’s like anything blocking it or whatever. When he looks in all he sees is read, just like plain red, as if someone is holding up a sheet of red paper to the other side of the keyhole. So he’s like, oh my god, okay, what is happening. So he goes and finds a maid and the maid has like the master key and, um, when he asks, “Hey, this is my room, can you let me in? The key’s not working for some reason,” she looks really, really terrified. So he’s like, whaaaaat’s the problem…

And so the maid tells him that exactly a year ago two people were murdered in that room. Like the guy just like came in and stabbed them to death. And so ever since then there’s been a legend that their spirits haunt this room, right? And so she says the most terrifying part about these spirits is that they have completely red eyes.

Listener’s comments: the ending is a real BAM twist. I like that there was no “ghostly figure,” just red eyes.