Scary True Stories Told In The Rain | Ep. 477

Scary Stories and Rain

A chilling episode of 'Scary Stories and Rain' featuring three true horror tales narrated over ambient rain sounds. The stories include a terrif

Key takeaways

• Sleep paralysis can create vivid, terrifying hallucinations that feel real, even when triggered by mundane sounds like a bathroom door closing.

Main topics

• Sleep paralysis experiences

Notable quotes

Open your eyes.

Conclusion

The episode blends personal terror, real criminal cases, and survival horror

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hey, welcome to Scary Stories and Rain. Do you want to listen ad-free? Just subscribe on Spotify for $2.99 a month. Now turn out the lights, enjoy the stories, and enjoy the rain. Speaker 1 (0:17) Before I start this story off, this was about a year ago, and though I do have some thoughts that this was sleep paralysis, I am leaning more towards the idea of it just being a nightmare. What makes me think that it could have been sleep paralysis was the fact that I heard my brother go to the bathroom, and when I woke up, he was coming out of the bathroom, but I could have just heard the bathroom door close in my sleep, and my mind included it in my nightmare. since it is a common occurrence. During the time of which this occurred, I was asleep in my room and my door a little less than halfway open. I felt awake, and I was asleep on my left side. To give you a quick layout of my room, as it is relevant to the story, my bed was centered against the wall, while my door is in front of my bed, all the way to the right of the front wall. To the left of my bed, I have a mirror. which allows me to see my door even if I am facing away from it. As I had my eyes closed, I heard my brother walk into the bathroom and shut the door, making the area outside of my room dark, since the only source of light that was illuminating the hallway was closed off. Suddenly, from my mirror, I saw a tall, lengthy woman walk up to my doorway. She looked drenched, and her skin was a grayish color. Since it was dark, I couldn't make out too many details, but all I know is that I was terrified out of my mind. I tried moving, but of course, I couldn't. I couldn't even make out the smallest noise. All I could do was hope that my brother would walk out of the bathroom and this dream or sleep paralysis episode would end. I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to see the thing for much longer. This was when I didn't have carpet in my room, so the sound of her dropping to the ground was even more audible than it normally would have been. It almost sounded like someone dropped a huge piece of meat on a hard floor, with the exception of the sound of her bones cracking when she did so. My breathing became rapid as I heard her crawl on all fours toward my side of the bed. almost inhumanly fast. I kept my eyes shut, fearing that if I opened them, it would take long to get over the horrifying face that I would see. All I heard for those few seconds was breathing, and my heart beating in my ears. This was in a whisper tone. Open your eyes. Out of nowhere, I was snapped awake, and let out a small scream as I thought the woman was still in the room. But she wasn't. There was no one by my bed. The bathroom door opened and my brother peeked into my room, confused. I didn't have to say a word, and he just switched on the light for me and went back to his room. But I stayed up for a few hours after that, being too scared to go back to sleep. Terrified I would see that same woman, and hear that same voice. Open your eyes. Speaker 1 (3:44) Randall Smith was raised an only child in the small town of Pearisburg, Virginia. The townsfolk remembered his mother as a nice lady who kept to herself, earning a living in a laundry room at the Giles Memorial Hospital. But for some reason, for the first few years of his life, Randall's mother chose to dress him in girls' clothing. We can only speculate as to the effect this had on the young man, but what we do know is that his school classmates would later describe him as something of a loner, as well as a habitual liar. He often told tall tales of money he didn't have, or of spurious-sounding adventures he had been on. This led to his peers calling him L.R., an acronym standing for Lying Randall. During his youth, Randall would often go walking the Appalachian Trail alone, finding solace in the rolling hills and deep primordial forests. After high school, Randall earned a living doing odd jobs around Virginia. Some might have fretted at the instability, but Randall relished it, as it gave him the freedom to ramble where he liked. And just like in his youth, he would spend the majority of his spare time wandering the Appalachian Trail. sometimes disappearing for days at a time. The trail stretches for just over 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine and attracts thousands of hikers every single year, most of which see the trail as a kind of rite of passage for serious hill walkers. Most use the trail as a means of escaping their busy, work-a-day lives, taking comfort in the peace and serenity of nature. But at times, the trails are anything but serene. and there have been a number of hideously violent crimes committed in the area. Perhaps the most infamous being the 2008 abduction and murder of Meredith Emerson by a psychopathic drifter named Michael Hilton, which took place in a region known as Blood Mountain. During the spring of 1981, two 27-year-old social workers from Maine by the names of Susan Ramsey and Robert Mountford decided to hike through Appalachia to raise money for a mental illness charity. On their travels, they had made friends with another hiker on the trail, but had to part ways shortly afterward. However, they had agreed to meet up near Parisburg, Randall Smith's hometown, to catch up and grab a bite to eat together. But when Susan and Robert failed to show up to the meeting, their hiker friend became concerned and contacted the police to report them missing. Deputy Sheriff Tom Lawson gathered up a handful of other deputies and then went up onto the trail to begin the search. On the way, they spoke to a number of other hikers, asking each if they had seen anyone fitting the missing couple's descriptions. Most said no, but one group said yes, reporting that they had seen a man and a woman talking with a rather strange-looking individual, who seemed to be acting in a bizarre manner near the Wapiti shelter. a small log structure that had been constructed so that weary hikers could rest a while before continuing down the trail. The deputies headed straight for the shelter, finally reaching it on May 30th of 1981. By that time, it had been 11 days since the last sightings of the missing hikers, and unless they were experienced in bushcraft, the chance of them reappearing unharmed were rapidly dwindling. While searching the small wooden structure, one of the deputies noticed what appeared to be a bloodstain on one of the floorboards. The men then fanned out, searching the area intensively until they came across a small clearing that contained a pile of leaves, one that looked like an attempt to cover something up. They kicked away the leaves, revealing a cloth sleeping bag that had a large, heavy mass inside of it. When they cut it open, they discovered it was the corpse of Susan Ramsey, the female half of the charity hiking couple. A day later, with the help of a sniffer dog, the body of Robert Mountford was found buried near a tree stump, also wrapped in his sleeping bag. Robert had a single bullet wound to his head, fired from a .22 caliber weapon, while Susan had been stabbed several times before being bludgeoned to death. Their bodies then dragged from the Wapiti shelter to the spots they were buried. Nearby, deputies found Susan's camera. They had hoped that the film might contain clues to who had murdered them, but found it had been pulled out and stolen. However, Susan's backpack was also found, a backpack which contained a paperback book that was taken for fingerprint analysis. Most of the prints obviously belonged to Susan. but one set belonged to someone else entirely. Investigators initially believed they belonged to Robert Mountford, but were shocked to find that they did in fact belong to none other than lying Randall Smith. The sheriff's deputies immediately traveled to Randall's home. He was not around, but the deputies had a search warrant and smashed their way into his place to make some seriously disturbing discoveries. Not only did they find bloody clothes and some items which evidently belonged to the murdered hikers, they also found a great deal of X-rated materials and, most disturbingly, some hospital instruments that had apparently been fashioned into makeshift X-rated toys. Deputies also found a handwritten note stating that he had been kidnapped and was going to be executed. But analysis showed this had been written in Randall's own handwriting and was no doubt merely an attempt to throw the police off his scent. The race was on to find him before he could hurt anyone else. Days passed. The police had no luck in locating Randall Smith. All of his usual haunts reported that he had not been seen in days, with rangers and police scouring the Virginia section of the Appalachian Trail with absolutely nothing to show for it. The effort was exhausting, and Deputy Sheriff Tom Lawson found himself needing a break. So he took his family on a brief vacation down to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. But in some bizarre twist of fate, Deputy Lawson ended up getting a call from the department back home, saying there had been an arrest in South Carolina of a man that was strongly suspected to be involved in the hikers' murders. An arrest in Myrtle Beach, of all places. Deputy Lawson hurried to check the suspect out. When he arrived, he was told that the arrested man claimed to have amnesia. and could not remember his name, or how he had ended up in Myrtle Beach, but that he was covered in insect bites in a way that was consistent with someone having hiked the Appalachian Trails for days on end. Insect bites that had been scratched so much that they were in danger of becoming infected. In order to get the man to reveal his identity, the deputies hatched a cunning scheme. They told the man that they could not get him the medical assistance he required without a medical consent form that he was required to sign. When given the form, the man scratched out a name onto the paper. Randall Lee Smith, he wrote. The police had found their man. Randall Smith was just 27 years old when he was extradited back to Virginia on charges of first-degree murder. At first, it seemed as if Randall would get the death penalty if convicted, but in a strange turn of events, he accepted a plea bargain that resulted in him getting a 30-year sentence instead of being executed. One of the victim's fathers was an Episcopalian minister who accepted the use of the plea bargain. and was generally against the idea of Randall being executed. It was also thought that the plea bargain was the better option, seeing as there was a complete lack of motive in the killing, with prosecutors believing this would weaken their argument in the event of a trial. The resulting reduced sentence caused outrage among the local community, and fury among hikers nationwide. Out of a 30-year sentence, Randall Smith only ended up serving 15 and was released in 1996 after reportedly being a model inmate who never caused any problems in prison. He walked out of prison a self-confessed murderer, but a free man, and returned to Parisburg as a pariah. Randall lived with his mother until her death in the year 2000. After she passed, he became more and more of a recluse. Although just like in days gone by, he spent much of his free time up in the Appalachian Trails,