transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Where is Daredevil?

Speaker 2:
[00:03] I'm right here.

Speaker 3:
[00:04] Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again.

Speaker 2:
[00:08] So what's next? We're gonna take this city back.

Speaker 3:
[00:14] In an all new season now streaming only on Disney+.

Speaker 2:
[00:17] They're hunting us.

Speaker 4:
[00:19] It's time we started hunting them.

Speaker 3:
[00:21] I can work with them. This should be tons of fun. Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again, now streaming only on Disney+.

Speaker 2:
[00:30] 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.

Speaker 3:
[01:20] Anyone else like me noticed that the older we seem to get, the more the doctors and all say we need to make sure we're getting enough protein. Well, luckily, if you're someone looking for a quick, convenient way to get more in right from the start of your morning, we've got something for you. It's the Strong Coffee Company. That's right. You can start your day out with a little extra, ready-to-drink coffee packed with protein, collagen, and healthy fats, designed to keep you fueled without slowing you down. It's simple, it's efficient, and it fits easily into a busy day. And if y'all are anything like me, you're probably already pouring a cup of coffee first thing in the morning anyway, right? So why not try Strong Coffee Company? I've even got a code for you for 20% off. That's right. You can use our code Gothic at strongcoffeecompany.com and get 20% off your order. That's strongcoffeecompany.com code Gothic. 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 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 experience them. My name is Brandon Schexnayder, and you are listening to Fear Daily.

Speaker 5:
[03:39] Subject, Ragman, User, Dear X, Posted, August 2nd, 1997.

Speaker 3:
[03:53] As long as I've lived here, and I've lived in this town my entire life, no one has been able to remember the Ragman's real name. Met a few folks, most of them old timers, wiling away their golden years atop bar stools at the VFW who swear up and down they knew his family, but when you push them, there's nothing new. Not a single one can describe his parents to you, what they were like, or what they did for work. That information, like what's written on his birth certificate, resides only within the Ragman himself, shuffling around town, pushing his shopping cart full of plastic bottles and trash. And he doesn't talk. While I can't tell you what his real name is, I can tell you that we call him Ragman because of the clothes he wears, a heavy cloth coat and tattered blue jeans replaced a ship of Theseus style over time with squares of filthy fabric until nothing of the original garments was left. Because of the grime, it's hard to see the different squares except in the broadest strokes, a corporate logo here, some houndstooth there. Maybe if you got closer, you could make out more, it's just that you wouldn't want to. From the grit under his fingernails to the knit cap pushed down hard over his frizzy, unwashed hair, the Ragman doesn't only look dirty, he feels dirty. It's like he exudes an aura of uncleanliness that might never leave you if you inhaled it too deeply. The thing I used to find interesting about the Ragman is that, unlike some of the other homeless people in town, none of the locals ever really messed with him. Guys like Top Hat Steve and Fat Gary would eat endless shit from drunks, cowards and teenagers alike, all groups who share a need to physically establish their place in the hierarchy by enacting violence on those least able to fight back. Some of them eventually killed Fat Gary, whose heart couldn't take the chase he was put through during his last night on earth or the beating he received to cap it off. To no one's surprise, our illustrious sheriff never bothered with an investigation. To people like that, Gary barely existed. Strangely, though, less than two weeks after his brutalized body was found in a copse of trees, two deputies hung themselves in their garages, neither of them leaving behind a note. Byron McElvey, whose dad John was the town coroner, snuck some of the photos he'd taken of the scene out for us to look at during our free period. I regretted it right away because of the eyes, which were bloodshot and bulging so far out of the sockets, you half expected them to roll away. Still, I didn't want the other guys to think I was a sissy and looked at every photograph Byron passed around. It was in the final two that I caught something none of my friends had. Each deputy's light blue uniform shirt had been tugged out of their pants during the act of hanging, and even in the poorly lit Polaroids, I could see both were missing a single square of fabric at the hem. As if an unspoken agreement had been made, Fat Gary's death marked the end of violence towards our homeless population until I was in my final semester of high school. Our town is a hockey town, and that year it was our turn to host regionals and event that would bring a couple thousand extra kids, parents and officials to our streets. Business people and fans were thrilled with this, whereas everyone else planned to batten down the hatches until the whole thing blew over. As expected, it was Bedlam, with out of town hockey players running riot, stealing booze from Abe's Liquor and groping whoever couldn't outrun them. Needless to say, they weren't part of Gary's crowd, and I'll never forget the night I saw a group of green and white jersey players from Kemmerer catch sight of the Ragman as he made his rounds. They put a hurt on him that should have ended in at least a riot at an ambulance, if not a hearse. Instead, once their fists and boots were exhausted, the board jocks drifted away to cause mayhem elsewhere, and Ragman stood right back up. He watched them go, rubbing a gloved hand across his blood-smeared face, mashing the red and black sludge into his already matted beard. I was always a small kid, and the only thing speaking out would have accomplished is giving them someone new to direct their aggression towards. Even without that, something told me to stay away. It was how I imagined it felt to be a Discovery Channel photographer recording a gazelle as it wanders away from its pack, knowing full well that ugliness was soon to follow. When nothing seemed to happen, I inwardly seethed, wanting there to be some kind of justice done. I needn't have worried. On their way home, the camera team bus went off the highway up in Kingman Pass and rolled the whole way down the ravine before bursting into flames. That stretch of blacktop is about as far away from a fire station as you can get around here without going directly up into the sky, so there was no way for any kind of help to reach them in time. The bus burned to its frame. Not a single player survived. As for the Ragman, he carried on, pushing his cart full of trash to and from downtown, like clockwork, his patch jacket blowing behind him. If you hadn't been there that night, or seen what I had in those photographs, you might never know what to look for, but I did. The next time Ragman pushed that squeaky wagon past my house, I ran out to watch, screen door banging behind me. My eyes crawled over every inch of him, trying to find my prize and coming up empty. A curiosity won out over my caution. For the first time ever, I called out to him, Ragman. He stopped moving. Silently, the Ragman turned and locked eyes with me, his gaze so empty, I could have been staring down a well. Then, one gloved hand peeled his heavy jacket away from a filthy shirt, revealing on its interior three patches cleaner than the rest. Two of them faded light blue, and a third of green and white. The Ragman gave me a cold smile, so wide it revealed his teeth, far too many of them brown and sharpened to a point. He brought a single finger to his mouth.

Speaker 1:
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Speaker 6:
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Speaker 4:
[13:02] Hi, my name is Lisa and I'm a licensed psychotherapist, which means my work doesn't magically end when the session does. There are notes to write, appointments to manage, billing, insurance followups, and somehow all that admin used to creep into my nights and weekends. That's why I switched to Simple Practice. Simple Practice is an all-in-one electronic health record built specifically for therapists with HIPAA compliant tools and high trust certification. So, I don't have to worry about juggling systems or cutting corners just to keep things running. Scheduling, documentation, billing, insurance, client communications, even automated appointment reminders, it all lives in one place. And if you're starting or growing a practice, Simple Practice also offers a credentialing service that helps simplify insurance enrollment, which can be a huge lift when you're starting to scale. Start with a seven-day free trial, then get 50% off your first three months. Just go to simplepractice.com. Again, that's simplepractice.com.

Speaker 5:
[14:07] Subject, The Ledger. User, Datanon. Posted April 2nd, 1999.

Speaker 3:
[14:24] I built my entire life around control. It is the reason I have what I have and am what I am. It's how I've been able to climb the cutthroat corporate ladder with such effortlessness and the means by which I've survived in a world where survival is hardly a given. Control is how just over a decade ago, I became the youngest CFO this Fortune 500 company has ever seen and I did it all without a sweat really. You see, my job is to ensure that nothing, absolutely nothing happens without my knowledge. The numbers never lie. They are the only truth I've ever trusted. Yet, here I am today after all of this success that my beliefs are being challenged. Something is happening, something even I can't quantify, something I can't control. It started three weeks ago at the company's annual gala. The event was everything you'd expect. Caviar, champagne, people in tuxedos pretending to give a shit about each other. I was halfway through a conversation with one of our board members when I noticed him. A man who definitely did not belong. He was older, frail looking, with a worn out suit that might have been nice fifty years ago. As far as I could tell, he didn't speak to anyone else, just stood there near the edge of the room, watching me with eyes far too sharp for someone so tired. It was unnerving, but I had business to attend to, so I carried on, keeping an eye on him throughout the night. Eventually though, as I peeled away from some idiot hedge-fund type and headed to the bar, the stranger walked straight up to me, no hesitation. Mr. Kendall, he said, his voice calm and deliberate, I need a moment of your time. I should have brushed him off. I've dealt with plenty of lunatics who think they're owed something, but there was something in the way he looked at me, something that made my skin crawl, and the tone of his voice had a certain air about it that felt like he wasn't going to take no for an answer. Your company owes me a debt, he said, one that's long overdue. What? I snorted, caught off guard. That was the kind of line you'd expect from a bad mob movie. Was this dude drunk? I thought as the expression on my face clearly betrayed my inner monologue's ability to hide behind pleasantries. The debt must be paid, he said, leaning in closer, his breath cold and smelling faintly of ash one way or another. A chill ran up my spine and that amusement I had, quickly evolved into something more serious. I turned to call security, but when I looked back, he was gone, just gone. The next day, I told myself, none of that mattered. Crazy people show up at events like that all the time, and I had certainly had my share of cocktails, so maybe I'm just imagining the stranger parts of it all. But then, the email started. They came from an internal account, one I had never seen before. At first, they were just fragments, a single word or two. Balance due, payment required. I assumed it was a prank, like one of those chain letters, but then I noticed the dates. The emails said they were from the 1920s. Now, look, that was just absurd, so I called IT and had them come look into it. They found nothing. No record of the account ever existing. No signs of a hack. Just empty logs and blank stares. The next day, the ledger arrived. It was on my desk when I walked in that morning and came in a plain brown envelope with no return address. Inside was an old leather-bound ledger, the kind they used before computers. The entries were handwritten, neat and precise, detailing transactions from nearly a century ago. But when I flipped to the last few pages, my heart stopped. The names were familiar, too familiar. Executives, board members, all people I knew, people who had passed over the years. Accidents, heart attacks, and in one case, suicide. Well, each name was followed by a date and a single phrase. Debt paid in full. This had to be a joke, right? Someone was fucking with me. I slammed my hand onto the intercom button and called my secretary and demanding she explain where the book came from. And she insisted up and down that she had no idea. She had never seen it before that moment. Didn't even know how it got onto my desk. I apologized for my temper and told her I was just stressed, but I needed her to do me a favor and head down to the personnel office and get me several files. The men whose names were listed in that book. When she returned, it was clear that the dates in the ledger aligned with the dates of their death. I could not believe it. Especially because the very last entry was a name I knew all too well. Robert Kendall, it was me. I closed the ledger and locked it in my desk, telling myself I was losing my mind. Stress, sleep deprivation, hell, maybe even a lingering hangover. There had to be a logical explanation. But that night, that man appeared in my office. I was going over quarterly reports when I felt it, presence, like someone standing just behind me. I turned and there he was, but he was older than before. His skin seemed paler and stretched too thin across his face. I told you, he said, the debt must be paid. I tried to yell for security, but my voice caught my throat. I tried to stand, but my legs wouldn't move. The old man then leaned in, his lips barely an inch from my ear. You can't run from what's owed, he whispered. Then he was gone. This morning, I tried to convince myself it was a nightmare, but the ledger is still there, waiting for me in that drawer. I flipped through it again and again, slower every time. The dates matched everything, every scandal, every corporate shakeup, every mysterious death in the company's history. And every five years, there's a new name, always a high-ranking executive, always someone important. I did the math, I know numbers, and there is no doubt, the last debt was paid five years ago, tomorrow. All these years, all this time, I have truly believed that I was in control, that I brought the success to this company. But it turns out, it just might be the man with the ledger who really is. I guess tomorrow we'll know for sure.

Speaker 5:
[24:28] Fear Daily is an independent podcast hosted by Brandon Schexnayder and written by Brennan Storr, with Joanna Smith serving as the consulting editor, audio production by Rachel Boyd, and sound design by Southern Gothic Media. This podcast is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to real events or locations is entirely coincidental. Ad-free versions of Fear Daily are available now on your favorite podcast apps. For more information, visit feardaily.com. But move fast before the server goes offline.

Speaker 7:
[25:26] Hey sweetie, your mother showed me this Carvana thing for selling the car. I'm gonna give it a try, wish me luck. Me again, I put in the license plate, it gave me an offer, unbelievable. Okay, I accepted the offer, they're picking it up Tuesday from the driveway. I haven't even left my chair. It's done, the car is gone, I'm holding a check. Anyway, Carvana, give it a whirl, love ya. So good, you'll wanna leave a voicemail about it.

Speaker 4:
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Speaker 4:
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