Did anything scary happen to you last week on April Fool’s Day? We all know that sometimes what starts as a harmless joke can spiral quickly into something much darker. The thrill of tricking someone, the joy of getting away with a joke until the laughter fades and something sinister takes its place. What starts as fun can quickly turn into a nightmare, where the boundaries between prank and harsh reality blurs, and the consequences are far worse than imagined. First, don’t look behind you. Followed by game over… for good. Finally in our last story, Five knocks, you’re dead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Blair Bathory and what is the Something Scary podcast about?
Hi, witches. It's your Something Scary podcast hostess, Blair Bathory. And thank you for being here, whether this is your first time or you're one of the brave souls who join us every week. And thank you for bearing with us last week as we took a much-needed break. And if you're watching on Spotify or YouTube, you may notice I'm in a new location.
That's because I'm filming some really fun stuff for the month of April and May, so stay tuned for that. But for now, let's get into our news stories. Did anything scary happen to you last week on April Fool's Day? We all know that sometimes what starts as a harmless joke can spiral quickly into something much darker.
The thrill of tricking someone, the joy of getting away with the joke until the laughter fades and something sinister takes its place. What starts as a prank quickly becomes harsh reality, and the consequences are far worse than imagined. First, don't look behind you, followed by game over for good. Finally, in our last story, five knocks, you're dead.
Before we get to today's podcast, I wanted to ask what kind of stories you like. Do you love legends or are you more of a ghost story gal? Prefer the paranormal? Maybe monsters are your jam. Let us know in the comments. And if you have a story you'd like to share, send us an email at somethingscaryatsnarl.com. So, wanna hear something scary? Are you next to die?
Sometimes it's not the calls you miss that haunt you, it's the ones you answer, like in this story inspired by Rebecca. Maya missed the last bus just great. It wasn't supposed to be an ordinary day, except for the prank war her little brothers had started that morning. Fake spiders in her shoes, toothpaste in her Oreos. April Fool's Day always brought out the worst in them.
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Chapter 2: What scary events happened on April Fool's Day in the first story?
Now, as she walked home, the sky had faded to bruise purple, and the air had a cold, damp bite. Her phone said 7.13 p.m., but it felt much later than that. The neighborhood was too quiet. No cars, no people, just the scuff of her sneakers on the sidewalk and the dull thud of her backpack against her back. Maya hugged her arms around herself, picking up her pace.
Then her phone rang, like a shriek breaking the silence.
Red roses, red roses, sang a high-pitched, childlike voice.
They sounded about seven years old, but something about it was weird, too flat, too mechanical, like a toy running low on batteries. Maya frowned, and that wasn't her ringtone. Probably her brother's, she thought. They must have changed it to mess with her again. It was their favorite thing, April Fool's pranks. She rolled her eyes and picked up. Hello?
The same little girl voice whispered through the speaker, sweet as syrup. Okay, who is this? No answer. The line went dead. She stood there for a second, frowning at the screen. No number, just unknown caller. Shaking her head, she stuffed the phone back in her pocket and kept walking. Ten minutes later, it rang again.
Red roses, red roses, chirped the voice.
She sighed, already annoyed, and answered. What now? I'm in your country, the voice said. Her stomach tensed. This time it wasn't funny. Stop calling me, she snapped and hung up. Her hand shook just a little as she shoved the phone away. The streetlights overhead buzzed faintly. One flickered. She walked faster. Her house was still 15 minutes away.
After another ten minutes, the ringtone blared again. Red roses, red roses. She nearly dropped the phone and she answered. Hello? I'm in your city, came the reply. The little voice was steady, too steady. No prank could make her feel this cold. She glanced around. The street was deserted. Every window was dark. No headlights to see, no footsteps to hear.
She crossed to the other side of the street without thinking. Her breathing came faster now. This wasn't a joke. She broke into a jog. By the time her house came into view, she was running. Her keys were already in her hand as she sprinted up the driveway. Her fingers fumbled at the lock once, twice, before she managed to shove the key home.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the mysterious phone calls and the phrase 'Red roses'?
She flinched, then picked it up, forcing steel into her voice. This isn't funny, she snapped. I'm calling the cops. The line was quiet for too long, then the voice returned low and close. I'm in your house. Maya froze. No, it wasn't from the phone, but from right behind her. A breath brushed against her ear, warm and wet. She screamed and whipped around, nothing.
Whatever this haunting monster was, it moved quickly. She shot out of the chair, sprinting for the stairs. Two at a time, she climbed, hard in her throat. She reached her room, slammed the door shut, locked it, and shoved her desk against it. She pressed her back to the wall, breathing in ragged gasps. Her phone buzzed again.
Red roses, red roses.
She threw the phone against the room. It hit the carpet with a dull thud and kept ringing, again and again. Then it stopped. The silence was worse. She held her breath, and then she heard it. Not from the phone, from under the bed. A slow, wet breath, shallow, measured. Then the voice whispered, closer now. I'm under your bed. Her limbs locked up. She couldn't move. She couldn't think.
Something scraped softly against the floorboards. She didn't dare look, but her body betrayed her. Her head turned and her eyes dragged to the shadowed gap between her bed. Fingers emerged first, tiny and pale. The nails were dark and cracked, bending the wrong way as they chewed at the floor. Then the hand. Small but wrong. Veins wriggled under translucent skin like worms. Another hand.
Then it started to pull itself out. Maya pushed herself further against the wall, legs trembling. The thing rose up, its head tilted at an unnatural angle. Where its mouth should have been was a seam, twitching, smiling. It had no eyes, just two hollows in its face that somehow looked at her. It crept closer on jerking limbs. Her phone buzzed again.
She flinched, but her gaze never left the thing crawling toward her. The screen glowed. One new message. You joined the game. Another message. Your turn. The thing's mouth seemed open, slowly, and it whispered. What would you do if a prank stopped being funny and turned terrifying? Have your friends ever played a prank on you that's suddenly gone wrong?
Tell us about it by sending us an email at somethingscaryatsnarl.com. Sometimes the things we let our children play with end up playing with them instead. Like in this story inspired by Solar 496. My name is Erin Gardner, and I am a victim of the endless nightmare known as Polybius. I was with my son and living in Portland when it happened. It was 1981.
He had talked me into visiting an arcade with his friend. I was never a huge fan of arcades, but my son was, and that was all they wanted to do. Arcades were the rage that year. Everyone was scrambling to get through the doors. As soon as I set foot on the arcade's carpeted floors, I knew I was in for a bad time.
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Chapter 4: What happens when the prank turns into a terrifying reality for Maya?
My son was delighted. The game seemed to be about playing as a spaceship circling a bunch of shapes, shooting them before they reached you, like asteroids. My son zoned out as he started playing. My mind wandered as the noise of my son mashing the buttons and wrestling the joystick drifted through the air. Polybius had poor graphics, even for an arcade game made in the 1980s.
I figured it was made by someone with a low budget. That would also explain why I had never heard of it before. My eyes drifted away from the screen and looked over the sea of heads, along with the usual face of arcade cabinets. There were also claw machines, ball pits, carnival hoops, a prize counter, and others.
I don't remember how long we were there, but it must have been a long time because my son's friend was asking if we could go. As far as I knew, that kid never got tired of video games. I turned back to my son, who was still playing Polybius. I looked at my watch. We had been there for five hours. I told my son to stop playing so we could leave, but he just ignored me.
I ended up having to drag him away from the arcade cabinet and to the front doors. Saying my son wasn't happy about this decision would be a pretty big understatement. We got into my car and my son yelled and kicked the whole way home. We drove my son's friend back to his house and my son was surprisingly silent the rest of the way back.
I looked at him in the rear view a few times and his expression remained blank and emotionless. I assumed his silence was an act of resentment. The next day, I was in the middle of work when I got a phone call. It was from the school my son went to. Apparently, he had been talking about wanting to die. He had never mentioned stuff like that before, so I was taken aback.
Maybe he was just having morbid thoughts. I tried to get back to work, but I kept getting sidetracked. His silence, his blank expression, his negativity. What could have triggered this odd behavior? When I went to pick him up from school, I passed the arcade. One of the things I noticed was a large black van in the parking lot.
It looked very out of place among the other smaller cars that were painted blue, red, silver, or white. When I picked up my son and passed by our way home, I saw three men standing by the van, dressed in black suits and sunglasses. One of them was cradling a small metal box in his hands.
Quick look through the glass doors of the arcade showed another man shutting the Polybius machine in a large wooden crate. One of the men lowered his sunglasses and cast a covert glance at my son in the back seat, who was gripping the car seat so tightly, I thought he might rupture it.
My son didn't say a word on the trip home, and when we got there, he shambled up to his room, his eyes vacant and glassy. After a few hours passed, I wondered why there wasn't any noise from my son. I walked up the stairs and knocked on his door, asking if he was okay. There was no response. I knocked again, louder. Nothing. I tried the door. It was open. His room was dark.
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Chapter 5: What is the story behind the arcade game Polybius and its effect on Erin Gardner's family?
Danielle's lips pressed into a thin line. When seriously she told her, she wasn't supposed to do that. Emma brushed it off. They were just stories, right? but Danielle's next words made her stomach flip. Hannah got the same email last week. She didn't forward it either. Emma remembered Hannah, quiet, bookish, always carrying three pens. She was in the hospital now. She fell down the stairs.
She said she heard the knocking before it happened. That night, Emma sat at her desk, AOL instant messenger glowing faintly on the monitor. She hovered her mouse over Danielle's name, considering, but when she opened her inbox to forward the message, it was gone. Not in her inbox, not in trash. It had vanished. Her clock glowed, 11.45 p.m., and then she heard it. Knock, knock.
Two knocks this time, but not at the window. They came from inside the wall behind her closet, slow and heavy. The knuckles dragging along the plaster. Scrape, knock, scrape, knock. Her chest tightened. She couldn't move, could barely breathe. Then she ran, straight down the hall, into her mother's room. Her mom searched the closet. Nothing. It was probably the wind, she told her.
But Emma had heard it. She felt it. Something had been inside the wall. It was April 2nd. At school, Emma was pale and jittery. Heather found her in the cafeteria, sitting alone. What's wrong with you? Heather asked, half teasing, half concerned. Emma told her, not everything, just enough to make Heather's voice twist into an uneasy frown. Later that night, Emma stayed over at Heather's house.
They watched DVDs and ate popcorn until the clock crept toward 11.45. Emma's body was wound tight, heart hammering as they lay in the dark basement. Heather was already asleep. Then it came. Knock, knock, knock. Three times. Not at the window, not at the closet, but from everywhere.
From inside the walls, dragging knuckles scraping as they moved, slow and steady, like someone searching for the right spot. Emma squeezed her eyes shut, praying it would stop, but it didn't. The scraping sound slithered behind her ears, and then Heather's breathing changed. A sharp gasp, a wet choking noise. Emma turned. Heather's eyes were wide open, staring straight ahead.
Her mouth opened in a silent scream, and then she stopped breathing. They said Heather died of sudden cardiac arrest, probably from a condition that was undiagnosed. But Emma saw the bruises on her arms. Long, dark finger-shaped bruises. When Emma returned home, she found a new email waiting. From UnknownSender666 at AOL.com. Subject, too late. Message, too late.
You can still live, but you have to make a trade. Send the message to someone who won't forward it. They'll take your place. Her hand shook on the mouse. She could do it. She could send it to Jason or Tiffany, someone who wouldn't believe. It would be easy. And then she remembered. She had already sent it. To Heather. Heather had it forwarded it. That's why she died.
Emma stared at the message on her screen, bile rising in her throat. Even if she forwarded it again, would it really save her or just delay what was already coming? How many people had played along, thinking they'd escaped until the knocks returned, until there was nowhere left to run? The reply came before she could finish the thought. You already traded, but there's one more thing you can do.
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