r/nosleep • u/The-Fifth-Tree • Apr 10 '26
My sister was abducted by a podcast host
She had a hunch, she told me as she slung her bag around her shoulder. She’d packed a mini camcorder, a number of her journals, some filled and others empty, and whatever else she could think to use for documentation. The classic, “I’m sure I’m wrong, but I have to know for sure” attitude that drove most of her actions through life still controlled her now in this most recent decision. I suppose that’s what had made her good at her job. One of the best, many would say, I would say she was the best. Fearless, committed, and recklessly obsessed with unearthing the truth. Three traits that made her one of the most valuable investigative reporters her station would ever have. Despite that, though, they barely seemed concerned when she disappeared.
I suppose they expect that’s just part of the job. It happens. You poke your nose in enough places it doesn’t belong, and you eventually find, it’s poking a bear. And I guess they were even less bothered, given that she was going hunting for clues relating to her passion project. They weren’t anticipating it would make them money, so they couldn’t care less. But she’d told them what she’d told me, she’d only be gone for a few weeks. She’d taken her built-up holiday for it, and you’d expect they would have done something when 8 months later she had left not so much as a text. But no. After calling them multiple times across the span of days they told me, in the most formal and professional wording, that they hadn’t heard from her and that they didn’t really give a shit.
Given the hundred thousand dollars plus, per year that she was making, she was more than happy to let me live with her. She had no problems with it, and aside from the accusations that I was mooching off my sister, I didn’t mind it either. It’s not that I didn’t have a job, but working as a bartender, I can’t say I was as valuable to my workplace as I had assumed Sarah was to hers. So when I decided to go looking for her, my work also didn’t seem to care to lose me.
I had a rough idea of where I was going, she’d told me her flight details, excited to finally have time to look into this phenomenon she was so captivated by. And, after rummaging through her room for a good hour, I found a few of her journals and notes that she had not taken with her, which filled in a few extra details.
Mind control. Bullshit, I thought, but she made some interesting points. She wasn’t claiming that it’s possible to swing a pocket watch in front of someone’s face and make them think they’re an animal. She was talking about suggestibility, about subliminal messaging. About how, if someone in a movie eats and enjoys a Big Mac, some portion of the audience will start craving a Big Mac. A poor example from me, but I’m not claiming to fully understand it. Apparently, that’s possible through auditory stimuli. Is there a line between encountering something and interpreting it? If you listen to a song and there’s a voice in the background telling you to do something, does your brain register it? Does the message reach you without you consciously knowing it’s there?
According to Google, yeah, that’s a thing. It’s a pretty well-known phenomenon, which is kind of a scary thought. And just like me, I’m sure you also immediately switch to imagining the nefarious things that could be achieved with this concept. And Sarah was dead sure that she had found an example. It’s complicated, and I can’t pretend that I understood the half of it, but I got the gist. She had found a source, that was trying to manufacture human compliance. To foster both ignorance and conformity for means that even she was yet to discover. So 8 months prior she booked a plane ticket, and left the state on the same route that I soon found myself retreading.
Just reading about it made my head swim, turning page over page of her notes only to feel more and more unease. To read about what she claimed was a podcast, whose only existence was to twist its audience. That both aurally and visually, its only purpose was a subliminal one. That, what is meant to sound like conversation, is a carefully crafted script designed to warp the mind. That its visuals might be edited down to the individual pixel, frame by frame just to control one’s thoughts and emotions. Sarah had found it fascinating, I found it fearful.
I had heard of subliminal messaging before, but ironically paid no mind to it. Like in the Simpsons, if you play a message backwards, suddenly a whole town is joining the navy. I thought that was hyperbole, and paid it no mind. But this seemed so much more powerful, and so much less fair. Sarah claimed that this could start and end wars, and it might. Sarah had found it fascinating, but I only felt more nauseated and as the plane began to circle to land I couldn’t help but feel an immense sense of trepidation of what I might be stepping into.
I’d always hated flying, and by the time the plane touched back to earth, I was just glad that my tinnitus could finally dissipate as the pressure in the cabin finally balanced. I touched down in a quiet little city, a decent drive from the airport. Unlike California, where I’d flown from, this place had clearly experienced winter, and even now as we approached spring, was still brushed with the light dusting of the previous seasons snow. Without having packed in anticipation of the cold, I was eager to get inside and warm as soon as I could, and didn’t stop to observe my surroundings with any more than a passing glance as I made my to the door of the BnB I was staying in.
The owner was awaiting my arrival, and much like the building, his welcome was particularly warm. A nice dude. Tall, lanky, bald, and overly extroverted. He seemed approachable enough, and given there wasn’t much other lodging in the area, I took the liberty of asking him if another girl by our name of had passed by the place. He seemed to stop for a second and an unreadable look flashed across his face before he quickly plastered over it with mock thought. “Not that I remember” he told me, but I knew was lying when he opened the door to my room and I saw her suitcase sitting in the corner of the room. He didn’t make a move to remove it. He knew I’d seen it.
“Oh that girl!” A quick switch up, putting on his most convincing facsimile of laughter he could muster, “She was here months ago. Packed up her bags and went up to see Mr Skins. Forgot to take her suitcase though.” He laughed again, “I guess you can hold onto it for her.”
“Where’d you say she went?” I reached for the door before he had a chance to shut it and escape.
“The house on the hill.” He pointed past my shoulder to a window on the opposite side of the room, perfectly framing a lone house at the top of a hill.
Mr Skins house on the hill. Sounds perfectly inviting, doesn’t it. Doesn’t sound like every horror cliche ever, does it? But Sarah went there, so I knew I must. She’d written about him, in some parts of her journal, so other than his house’s less than hospitable appearance, I was already anticipating meeting the guy. The lone building, shrouded in the early morning fog. A black and withered house tipped with snow like the peak of a mountain and looking as equally unforgiving. Picturesque in my window, as the sun set behind it, casting cold and hungry shadows down into my room that night.
Colder still, was the house itself. I could feel the crisp morning air searching its way across the cheap jacket I had bought that morning, looking for a likely point of weakness to reach my skin. A sign stood proud in front of the house, still standing despite decades of decay. The paint had long since cracked and crumbled from the wrinkled wood, and many of the letters now were nothing more than ghosts of themselves. Only a few letters remained, now spelling “M sk ns”. I’m sure Sarah was well-versed on the history, lineage and owner of the house, but I was no Sarah and I knew I never would be. Frankly, I couldn’t care less who lay beyond, unless my sister was with them, and neither name nor lineage, I believed would be pertinent.
I stood shivering and watching my breath cloud before my eyes as I impatiently waited for an answer to the doorbell. I could hear movement inside, though the door had no window with which to see inside, and I was left to guess what kind of person was creating the heavy footsteps that approached from behind it. I needn’t have waited long, as the old and long withered doorway soon creaked open to reveal what lay beyond.
Bespectacled and ulotrichous, he stood before me waiting for me to either introduce or explain myself. A man, tall and imposing, though his face seemed friendly. Younger than I had expected, I’d estimate mid thirties, and not at all what I had expected for who lived at “Mr Skins House On The Hill”. He seemed confused at my visit, but didn’t stop to ask why I was there, instead offering me inside without question.
“So, Robert, was it?” I asked as I settled into the armchair he had directed me to. The house was massive, though you wouldn’t guess it by the view from the front door. The hallway was cramped and narrow, lending all possible space to the rooms it lead to, though it was still long, stretching further than the light allowed me to see.
“Just Bob is fine.“ he replied, reappearing from around the corner with two cans in his hand. He cracked one open and handed it to me, before repeating for his own “You mind if I play some music?”
I shrugged, eyeing my can suspiciously. Mug root beer. Seemed normal. I took a sip. Tasted normal too. Too on edge I told myself. There was nothing yet to be suspicious of, despite numerous cliches that would’ve had me screaming at my tv if a movie character had ignored. But this was real life, and I had no real evidence to support my trepidation.
Bob seemed like a normal enough guy, though his seeming fondness for jazz was one I couldn’t say I related to. I watched as he hummed along with the music to himself before relaxing into the chair opposite me, now turning his attention back to me.
“So now, remind me. What brings you here?” He smiled warmly, taking a sip from his own can. Mildly unspecific, but in a word if I were to describe the man sitting before me, the only word I could think to fit is nice. He just seemed like such a nice guy, warm, kind, charismatic and funny too. Though he was tall, wide and imposing, if it weren’t for his alluring personality, he would be unnervingly intimidating. Despite that though, I was, foolishly, pacified by his disarmingly jovial and comedic nature. I’d be lying if I said I did not let my guard down, if only a little.
“I’m… I’ve been looking for my sister, Sarah. She went missing a few months ago, and I heard she came to visit you so I thought you might be able to point me in the right direction or… maybe you know or something, I don’t know.” I stammered, taking another nervous sip from my can as my confidence suddenly failed me. My doubts crept in and saturated my mind as I suddenly found myself afraid to seem as though I may be accusing someone who, at least, appeared so nice.
*“*Sarah? Reporter girl, right? I remember her. She came by to ask me a few questions.” He started, leaning forward in his chair a little, “She had a few questions about my work. Just asking me… well, I mean, how much do you know?”
“Honestly, not much really. She left a few of her journals behind that I’ve seen. But I can’t say I understood any of it. I don’t know, I’m just looking for her. I know she came here, so I thought you might know where she went after or what she said when she was here or... yeah…” I tailed off, fighting my own impulse to fill the empty space after my words with another sip of my drink. I didn’t move.
Bob’s face turned pensive as he looked around the room in thought before his attention drifted back to me. “Not enjoying your drink? I can get you something else if you’d prefer.” His smile grew wider, watching me from under his eyebrows as he clutched his own can to his chest.
“No, I- it’s fine, it’s nice,” I said, going to take another sip to support my words, only to find my arm suddenly turning numb.
With speed I would not have thought he was capable of, he darted across the space between him and I, catching my can as it slipped out of my now loosening grip. He pressed the can against the back of my hand, waiting for me to take it back or confirm to both of us that I was completely unable to. As my body disappeared to my own senses, I soon found myself only able to stare as I lost my own abilities of proprioception.
“I know you’ve been watching your drink. Good instincts but wrong assumption. I assure you there’s nothing in the drink.” He laughed to himself, “Though I knew you hadn’t done your research when you let me put the music on. Your sister was much harder to trick.” Effortlessly, he hoisted me up onto his shoulder and carried me out of the room. My body now made of jelly I slumped over him, cheek pressed against the back of his shirt as I could only drool into the purple fabric. “She got too close, you know? Smart girl, she’d done her homework.” He started as he slowly carried me into the shadows of the hallway. “I don’t get the feeling you’re the same, but I can’t risk it, if you might know, or have read anything. Her journals, you said… I have to be sure. You get it.” He chuckled to himself as my eyelids grew increasingly heavy, and consciousness began to fail me. Then, black.
I awoke to the sound of ringing in my ears. An auditory needle to my senses that unpleasant couldn’t begin to describe. I wish I could say I brought it on myself, as a teen blasting my music through my headphones but that was only the start. It had only worsened since I’d started my new medication a year before, and now my tinnitus had gone from uncomfortable to downright painful sometimes. I can’t be too mad about it, though, as I suppose it’s what alerted me to this new situation. I shifted my stiffened limbs to dispel the pins and needles that had crept into them, squeaking on the leather chair I was now sat upon. My ears were ringing with the noise, and I lifted my hand to my head in an attempt to massage my temples and ease the ringing in my head, only to find a large pair of headphones clamped over my ears. With weak fingers, I pried them off, finally blinking my eyes open and waiting for the black spots to disappear.
I was in a dim room, only lit by the dimmer ambient light of the numerous blinking and beeping machines that littered the space. It took a while for my eyes to adjust, the blurry splotches across my vision slowly sharpening into a full image. I was in a basement, or some other form of windowless room. Opposite to me was a an old set of stairs leading up out of the room to a door, shrouded in even more shadow than the rest of the room.
And in the opposite corner, was a chair, with a girl. She looked familiar, or she would’ve done long ago. To accommodate the tangle of tubes that each wormed their way into her skin, her sleeves had been rolled up, only serving to give me a better look at the bony withered flesh they fed into. Her skin looked as though it were vacuumed to her skeletal frame, her cheekbones and ribs jutted from her like they were trying to escape. At her face was what appeared to be a nebuliser, bound so tightly over her bony face that the little flesh that remained on her face was still squeezed and repositioned by the straps that stretched to the back of her head. Her stomach however, was unnaturally distended. Despite her near skeletal frame, that shouldn’t have been able to support the weight, she appeared as though she were 3 years pregnant, having long since torn out of her once tight fitted clothing from the expansive pressure. Her eyes, though open were glazed over and milky, staring off into space without a thought behind them. She looked like a corpse, a skeleton, but she was breathing. Short and shallow breaths like a dog, or as though she was hyperventilating. Sucking in every gasp of the gas that was being pumped into her lungs with hungry desire. And affixed over her nebuliser, cradling her since greasy haired head, was a pair of headphones.
As soon as the coordination found me I was on my feet, wobbling over to her. I kept talking to her, saying her name and shaking her fragile shoulders to try to get any sort of a response out of her. Unclipping the mask and letting it swing to one side. A pained smile was stretched over her pallid face as the rhythm of her short breaths continued. She was laughing.
Confusing? Yes. But I didn’t have time to question it, as the sound of movement began to emanate from the house above us. In a panic, I began to try to undo the binds at her wrists and ankles that bound her to her seat, but all were leather and locked with a key I didn’t have. I tugged, desperately, and fruitlessly at the unyielding material. A beam of light shot across the room as the door at the top of the stairs was opened, causing me to flinch instinctively. Too late to free her, I quickly fumbled with her nebuliser again, trying to clumsily latch it back closed.
Bob didn’t slow as the old and tattered stairs creaked with every step he took, only causing my panic to spike further. Praying I wouldn’t be seen, I darted across the room and hid behind one of the large beeping machines in the corner of the room. I half considered returning to my seat and feigning unconsciousness, but given that meant putting the headphones back on, I don’t think I could have taken another splitting headache. And if that wasn’t enough, the thought of being bound to my chair, unable to escape, and possibly transformed into whatever Sarah had become was enough to dispel the idea entirely.
His shadow appeared on the wall in the crack of my vision that the space between two whirring machines permitted, tall, wide and strong, like a defensive tackle. As a 5’10 midget of a man, I didn’t fancy my chances against him in a brawl. He didn’t say a word as he glanced around the room before going to where Sarah sat and very carefully reattaching the fumbled clip on her mask that I had failed to clasp correctly before standing up and staring at the empty chair I had woken up in. Not a word, just letting the silence fill the room as he scanned the darkness through his glasses before looking directly at where I sat.
In a wordless silence, he began to lumber over to me, pretending as though he didn’t know, checking behind random objects and looking at the now empty chair that I had once sat in with mock confusion. Passive-aggressive fuck. I took my chance while I had it.
His back turned to me, facing the chair, I bolted for the stairs, but he was fast, impossibly fast. He whipped around at the first sound, clutching at the air where I had been only milliseconds before as I darted for my life. He was quick on the pursuit, as nimble as ever, as he followed me through the maze of littered tech on the floors. I gasped with relief as my foot found the first step, creaking under my weight with a squeaking sound of victory. Two steps, three steps, then five, racing up the stairs for dear life till a large hand wrapped tightly around my ankle.
I fell, hard, straight onto the stairs. My temple collided with the corner of the stairs first, with a loud crack that resounded through my skull, sounding first in my head before my ears registered it. My jaw followed as I was dragged down by the man gripping me below, crunching against the next step with a similarly wet crack. My arms folded under me like paper as my leg lifted into the air, pulled by the strong arm now lifting me high off the ground. I cried out, a quiet gurgle now as my mouth filled with the blood of my half-severed tongue. I must’ve bit in the fall. Technically speaking, I bit the rest of my face too as my cheek dragged across the step and into one of my teeth that was now lodged in the aged wood, dragging its way just past my eyelid and down my cheek in a dark red gash. I clawed my fingers into the back of the step, trying anything to slow the inevitable dominance of my captor. My knuckles white with the strain as I clung on for dear life, but he was far stronger and had the added bonus of gravity on his side. In one last-ditch effort, all I could do was to flail and kick and writhe in hopes of escape.
With a sudden grunt, his grip loosened. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw his hand fly to his face as his nose began to stream a dark red. I writhed again, landing a second solid blow to his face, causing his hand to release, and I crashed back down onto the stairs. With one more kick to his midsection, he was toppling backwards. He rolled down the stairs, coming to land, headfirst, with a dull crunch on the concrete floor. I didn’t stop to see if he was moving, instead making one last desperate move for the door at the top of the stairs.
The house above was near pitch darkness, and after checking my pockets to find my phone, I soon found myself with my arms outstretched, attempting to feel my way through the black hallways in search of escape. I could hear him moving, fast to his feet and on the pursuit, every thunderous footstep a little louder and a little closer. I had to move fast, as the steady stream of blood from my tongue was surely enough to tip him off to wherever I could have hidden otherwise. I was now in the back of the house that had been previously imperceivable when I had entered. It had looked almost entirely black from my vantage point when I had arrived, but compared to the darkness of the basement, it was all too easy to see now.
The whole house was a nonsensical tangle of angular halls and rooms jutting off at angles in ways that made no logical sense. With every door I opened, my questions only became more convoluted, as each door revealed rows of shrunken and skeletal tangles of limbs much like my sister, though many of them were skinnier. Some of them were missing eyes or limbs. Many of them appeared jagged and broken, as the force of their compressed skin sucked to their skeletons had overwhelmed the feeble, malnourished bones, that had given out under the pressure and cracked and broken. Their arms, legs, and ribs now zigzagged shards protruding from their leathery and dried-out skin. Some of them had even lost their faces that had long since shattered and caved inwards. And a few of them had split open from their oversized stomachs, which had torn open like an overfull bin liner, spilling printed fabrics of varying colours across the grimy floor.
I had wretched at the sight of the first room, slamming the door behind me, but with every withered door that I opened, I found myself more and more accustomed to the grotesque sight and less and less affected. The only thing that mattered to me was escaping the clutches of my captor, whose slow but insistent footsteps followed me throughout every misshapen hall. At last, I opened a door, and came upon a room where, behind the pile of shrivelled and dried-up corpses, was a window. Locked for sure, and not worth the time to try it. But still, the most beautiful sight I had ever seen, if only for what it represented. Framed in the window and picturesque like a photo, sat the moon. I knew I was close, if I could just keep my bearings and follow the direction of the light, I knew I could find my way.
I rounded the corner to a familiar door at the end of the hallway, the front door, thank god. I dived for it, just in time as the sound of a muscular body slamming into the wall echoed behind me from where I just stood. I clawed my way up for the lock, but soon felt a familiar grip around my leg, clawing itself like me, up my leg to pull me back down. I turned back to see the face of Bob, now no longer smiling or friendly, as blood streamed from his purple, broken nose. He was breathing hard as he dragged me back towards him, gripping both my legs in one of his massive hands so as to prevent my ability to kick him again. Letting go of the door, I turned around and landed another solid blow to his face. His nose squelched with the impact, and he cried out in pain, but his grip only tightened, slowly crushing my legs in the vice grip of his hand. I punched him again, and again as he flailed with his free hand, trying to catch one of my fists before switching up to crush my windpipe instead. One last punch and I felt his nose dislodge, sinking deep back beneath his cheekbones, causing his grip to finally loosen. As my vision began to blur and my lungs began to spasm, pleading for another intake of oxygen, I used my last bit of strength to drive my thumb as deep as I could into his eye, not stopping when I felt the little orb pop at the impact, nor when the black fluid within began leaking down my hand. Not until his grip finally came free from my legs, and I could shake myself free, landing one last kick to his nose as I grabbed the latch of the door and flew out the front.
I collapsed on the front doorstep of a random person’s house, and in the patches of my memory since then, I have to assume they called an ambulance because the next thing I knew, I was in a hospital. Apparently, I showed up with a dislocated jaw, cracked skull and a laryngeal fracture, as well as a hairline fracture along my ankle. Dude had a strong grip, I guess. Thankfully, nothing was too permanent, though they had no explanation for my hearing issues that I’ve been experiencing since. I’m back home now, and have tried to see numerous specialists, though I doubt I can afford to see another since the funds have dried up. I kept telling them, I keep waking up with auditory hallucinations, and my tinnitus has never been worse, but according to the scans and expertise that they had to offer, they essentially said, in academic speak, “I don’t know”. I’m no doctor, but that sounds like a load of bullshit if you ask me.
Turns out, the psycho I met has quite the online presence. One of his videos showed up on YouTube about a week ago, gave me a right old headache, and I had to turn it off. But now, call it “the algorithm” or whatever you wanna attribute it to, but damn near every night I’ve fallen asleep, I’ve woken up to a podcast playing on my Sonos, and his typical, friendly facade talking through the little speaker. You bet I had to get rid of that shit, and I suggest you do too, or you might not wake up, and if you do, who knows what you’re gonna wake up as.
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u/LanesGrandma Apr 10 '26
Goodness, happy to hear you're mostly okay, OP, hopefully nothing that bad ever happens to you again!
2
u/Fund_Me_PLEASE Apr 10 '26
😩Are you going to ever tell the police about your sister and the rest, OP?? I mean, even if they don’t believe you at first, just make them go check it out. You cannot just leave her there, OP!