Episode 24

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Published on:

30th Jun 2025

Episode 24 - A town enters another dimension and a horrifying predator stalks the streets of Portland

In today's exploration, we delve into the unnerving tales of Tifton and the Sentinel. The first narrative, "One Night in Tifton," recounts the harrowing experience of a small town that inexplicably loses all connection to the outside world, only to face an encroaching terror that challenges their very existence. As the residents grapple with a pervasive silence, they awaken to the stark reality of a predatory presence that disrupts their isolation. Subsequently, we transition to "The Sentinel," which chronicles the eerie occurrences in a Portland neighborhood, where a new neighbor's arrival coincides with a series of mysterious pet disappearances and an unsettling shadow that lurks in the darkness. Through these tales, we encounter the thin veil between the ordinary and the extraordinary, urging us to confront the unknown lurking just beyond our perceptions.

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Transcript
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Imagine a world teetering on the edge of the familiar, a place where the fabric of the everyday begins to unravel, revealing glimpses of the extraordinary lurking beneath.

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You're about to embark on a journey into the enigmatic, where the peculiar and the perplexing intertwine, where every tale twists the mind and tugs at the spirit.

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It's a descent into the strange, the mysterious, and the unexplained.

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This is when Reality Phrase new episodes are published every Monday and Thursday, and when Reality Phrase is available everywhere, fine podcasts are found.

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Before we move on, please hit that Follow or Subscribe button and turn on all reminders so you're alerted when new episodes are released.

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Today's episode contains two stories.

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First up is One Night in Tifton, the tale of a town that crosses a boundary to a different world.

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And second is the Sentinel, the story of an impossible predator that prowls the streets of Cortland.

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Now let's get to the stories.

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In the vast emptiness of Nevada's wind scoured desert, where the scorched earth stretches flat and unforgiving, lies Tifton, a town so small it exists only through its people's stubborn defiance.

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ng the silver rush of the mid-:

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Tifton was a place of quiet endurance, its people shaped by the empty desolation.

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The nearest town lay 42 miles away down a narrow, cracked asphalt road, only marginally better than driving across open desert.

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Most days in Tifton, civilization felt like a rumor, and isolation was the only constant.

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One morning, as dawn smeared gray across the sky, the town woke to an unusual silence.

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Televisions connected to satellite dishes only showed no signal.

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Landline phones had no dial tone, and the only satellite phone in town, belonging to the sheriff, also failed to find signal.

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But the residents barely blinked.

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Outages were common in Tifton, where distance and weather conspired to sever the fragile threads connecting them to civilization.

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In the town square, a patch of packed dirt framed by the general store and a one room ramshackle church.

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The grocer swept his porch, muttering about the inconvenience.

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Children, unbothered, raced through town, their laughter echoing off the sun.

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Blasted buildings.

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Life carried on, unperturbed.

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By mid afternoon, the silence still lingered at the general store, conversations turned to the outage.

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Old Clara, who ran the post office, complained that she couldn't check her sister's updates online.

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Tom, a wiry mechanic, grumbled about a missed baseball score.

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The mood was one of mild annoyance, tempered by the town's ingrained patience.

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No one was worried.

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They'd seen worse.

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Blizzards that buried the road for weeks, summer storms that washed out the road, along with a single power line that supplied the town, leaving them dark and completely isolated for days.

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None of that bothered them.

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The world would reconnect soon enough.

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As dusk painted the horizon in fantastic shades of purple and orange, the absence of service grew heavier, like a weight settling over Tifton.

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The air carried a faint unease, though no one spoke it aloud.

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They ate their dinners in front of blank TV screens, cleared plates, and prepared for bed, certain the morning would restore normalcy.

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But as night cloaked the town in a suffocating darkness, the power failed.

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Lights blinked out, appliances fell silent, and Tifton plunged into a void unbroken by even the hum of a generator.

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Flashlights were calmly retrieved from drawers, their beams cutting sharp paths through the gloom.

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A few lanterns flickered to life, casting trembling shadows on walls.

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At the general store, now a makeshift gathering spot, a handful of men debated the cause.

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Someone suggested a downed line.

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Another a solar flare.

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Ezra, a ham radio operator, hauled his ancient AM set down from his attic and twisted the dial, searching for a signal.

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The speaker hissed.

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Not a single station, news, music, or preaching broke through the static.

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The men exchanged glances, their faces tight.

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This was no ordinary outage.

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The first tendrils of fear took hold.

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Sheriff Hollis, a broad shouldered man whose lined face bore the weight of decades in Tifton, decided to drive out.

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Hopefully he'd encounter a crew from the power company and they could give him an idea of how long it was going to take to restore power.

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He strode to his truck, parked outside the sheriff's office and a squat building with a single cell.

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He turned the key, but the engine was dead.

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He tried several times with no success.

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Across town, others made the same discovery.

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Every vehicle in town refused to start.

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Tifton was not just cut off, it was trapped, with no escape other than walking.

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From beyond the low hills that ringed the town came sounds that turned blood to ice.

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Howls, jagged and unearthly, cut through the night, followed by screams that bore no kinship to wolf, coyote, or any creature born of earth.

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The sounds echoed, growing closer, their cadence erratic and predatory.

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Parents shouted for their children, their voices sharp with urgency.

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Men retrieved rifles from gun racks.

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The town held its breath, flashlights sweeping the darkness beyond their porches.

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Eli, a 10 year old with a mop of brown hair, stood on his family's porch clutching a flashlight.

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His father had taught him the stars pointing out Cassiopeia Ursa Major, and the steady blaze of Polaris on clear nights.

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But tonight the sky was a stranger.

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The familiar constellations had vanished, replaced by a chaotic sprawl of lights.

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Some pulsed faintly, while others were unnaturally bright, arranged in patterns that matched nothing he had ever seen.

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Eli's small hand pointed upward, but his voice was lost in the rising panic.

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The adults were consumed, their eyes fixed on the hills where the howls were drawing closer.

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Just beyond the reach of the flashlight beams, shapes flickered, angular, glistening, moving with a speed that instilled fear in all who saw them.

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They were there, then gone, leaving only the afterimage of a predator none of the town's residents had ever encountered.

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Seven people were taken in only moments.

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A farmer snatched from his yard, his rifle falling unfired to the ground.

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A young woman from her porch, her scream cut short.

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A child straying too far from the church was simply gone.

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The townsfolk fired into the darkness, their shots wild and desperate, striking nothing but air.

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The creatures, whatever they were, did not falter.

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Instead, they came in full, and the flashlight beams caught them.

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Their forms were grotesque and belonged in a psychotic nightmare.

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They had heavily muscled limbs, jointed in impossible ways, and their skin was a constantly shifting pattern of colors beneath an oily sheen.

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Their eyes were black voids gleaming with a hunger not of this world, and mouths split wide, revealing rows of needle like teeth.

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Tifton erupted into chaos.

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Families fled to the church, its sun beaten, wooden doors groaning under the weight of bodies pressing inside.

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Others rushed into their homes, barricading doors and clutching weapons.

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Gunfire cracked, screams tore through the air, and prayers rose in a frantic chorus from the church, where the pastor's voice trembled above the fray.

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The creatures were relentless, their movements a blur of predatory grace.

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They tore through barricades, splintering wood, wicked claws leaving gashes in walls that glistened with a strange, viscous residue.

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The townsfolk fought, and blood stained the dirt, some human, some not.

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Then, as abruptly as it began, it ended.

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The power surged back.

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Lights blazed with a harsh, clinical brightness.

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Televisions flickered on.

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Blaring advertisements and phones rang shrilly as if in punctuation of the sudden return to normalcy.

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The creatures were gone, vanished without a trace, and the air was still once more.

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The townsfolk staggered outside, their faces gaunt, their hands still tightly gripping rifles.

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Eli looked up, and the stars were as they should be.

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Orion's belt gleamed.

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The Big Dipper hung steady.

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The alien sky was gone, as if it had never been.

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The sheriff radioed the state police, his voice hoarse as he recounted the night's terror.

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Troopers arrived with the dawn, their faces skeptical.

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Word spread beyond Tifton, drawing a lone reporter who listened with a smirk, dismissing the town's story as a collective delusion born of isolation.

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Government agents arrived.

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They moved with quiet efficiency, collecting the bodies of the fallen torn and mangled beyond reason, and carted them away in unmarked vans.

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Strange tracks in the dirt and claw marks on walls were dismissed.

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Pools of unidentifiable fluid were sampled, the tubes sealed into metal boxes labeled as a biohazard, before being scrubbed from existence.

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The official report blamed a pack of rabid coyotes mutated by some unspecified disease.

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The agents left as swiftly as they came, and Tifton's truth was buried.

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The town limped on, its population scarred and diminished.

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In the general store, over cooling coffee, survivors whispered of that night.

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Some spoke of experiments, secret government projects that had torn a hole in reality.

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Others swore it was an invasion, a glimpse of something waiting beyond the stars.

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A few, like Eli's father, wondered if nature itself had glitched a cosmic quirk, briefly aligning Tifton with a place not meant for humans.

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But no answers came, and the world moved on.

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Tifton's story faded into obscurity, a cautionary tale no one heeded.

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Now, at dusk, the townsfolk's eyes drift to the sky in search of familiar stars before they tightly lock their doors.

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Tifton endures as people bound by a shared terror, forever watching the hills for shapes in the darkness, listening for howls that might return.

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If you're enjoying the stories, please support the podcast by buying me a coffee.

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The link is in the episode Show Notes, and I would greatly appreciate your support.

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Now on to today's second story, which is the Sentinel.

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In rain soaked Portland, Oregon, where clouds hang in the sky like a perpetual veil, Jane Hensley lived a solitary life in a Craftsman bungalow on a quiet street of dripping firs and algae stained sidewalks.

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A retired schoolteacher in her late 60s, Jane found solace in routine tending her garden, reading historical novels by the flicker of her gas fireplace, and watching the neighborhood's rhythm through rain streaked windows.

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Dog walkers, cyclists in neon spandex, and home delivery vans wove a familiar tapestry, their patterns as steady as the city's drizzle.

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But recently the neighborhood had begun to fray.

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Pets, cats slinking through alleys and dogs yapping in backyards had begun vanishing.

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Jane noticed the unease in her neighbors, and the missing pet flyers stapled the telephone poles, but she attributed it to coyotes from the city's wild edges.

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It had all begun the day a new neighbor moved into the rental house across the street.

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Jane had noted the activity with cautious curiosity.

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A man, tall and wiry, always in a gray coat and knit cap that shadowed his face, arrived under dusk's cover.

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He'd wheeled a suitcase inside, then made several trips with boxes that seemed heavy.

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By the way he carried them, Jane assumed he was another temporary tenant in a city that drew them like bees to a flower.

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But the timing of his arrival, the same as the shadow's appearance and the rash of missing pets, was alarming.

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She watched him closely, her unease deepening.

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One foggy evening, as Jane sipped tea by her window, she glimpsed something unsettling, a shadow flitting down the street, darting between houses.

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It wasn't a person, just a dark shape, fluid and purposeful, pausing in a neighbor's yard as if drinking in the light spilling through uncovered windows.

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Its edges blurred, then sharpened, and Jane's breath caught, but she dismissed what she had seen as a trick of the rapidly fading light.

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But the image lingered in her mind.

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The shadow appeared again the next night, gliding past parked cars, pausing near windows.

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It always seemed to be seeking something, its very presence inducing a creeping dread that seeped into her bones.

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Jane called the police, but when she described what she had seen, the 911 operator didn't try to hide the skepticism in her voice.

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Officers were never dispatched to speak with Jane.

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The next morning, a neighbor's cat was found wedged in the junction of two branches in a maple tree.

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The animal had been savagely ripped open and gutted.

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The police did respond to the owner's frantic call, but other than filing a report, there was little they could do other than suggest people bring their pets inside at night.

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Jane began checking her doors and windows frequently to to ensure they were securely locked.

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Still, her heart raced at every creak of the old house.

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A week passed before Jane noticed something else amiss.

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She caught glimpses of the man retrieving mail, sweeping his porch, coming and going in his car.

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But the gloom hid details.

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It wasn't until a rare morning when sunlight pierced the clouds that Jane stood standing in her mailbox, saw it.

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The man crossed his lawn, boots squishing on wet grass, but the ground beneath him was blank.

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No shadow stretched to mirror his steps.

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She blinked, dismissing it as a trick of the light or her aging eyes, but the absence of a shadow paired with whatever it was she had seen prowling the neighborhood.

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The Jane's curiosity sharpened into obsession.

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On the few sunny days that followed, she confirmed it no shadow trailed the man, not when he carried groceries, nor when he stood under the street lamp in front of his house at dusk.

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The absence was unnatural, a tear in reality's fabric.

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But Portland's overcast skies made it easy to overlook.

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She began timing her errands to catch his movements, peering from her porch or behind her curtains, her mind wrestling with connections.

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Was he linked to the shadow she had seen?

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Was he the source?

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The wrongness clung to her, disrupting her sleep, her routines, and her sense of the world's order.

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The new neighbor from across the street began walking, walking the neighborhood every evening.

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Jane noted he would leave his house shortly before dusk and not return for several hours.

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She wanted to follow him, to see what he was doing, but thoughts of the shadow kept her home behind locked doors.

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The neighborhood's unraveling accelerated.

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Mr.

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Callahan, a gruff retiree two houses down, was found dead in his bed.

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The house was locked up tight, and with no evidence of forced entry or a struggle, the police classified the death as natural causes, pending the coroner's report.

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But Jane wasn't so sure.

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She had been Callahan's neighbor for decades, and while not close friends, they were friendly.

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She knew he was in good health, exercising regularly and eating healthy.

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Standing among the murmuring neighbors, she felt the shadow's presence like a cold hand on her spine.

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She turned quickly, catching a glimpse of the shadow as it slipped through the slats in a wooden fence and vanished.

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She could feel its malevolence, as if it were becoming emboldened.

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Days later, Lily, a quiet barista from down the street, vanished.

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Her apartment was untouched and locked.

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Her bike was still chained to the porch, and her phone lay on the kitchen counter.

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The police wrote another report, but without any signs of violence.

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They didn't devote any time to an investigation.

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The shadow grew bolder.

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It slithered through the neighborhood each night, its form sharpening into something almost human.

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Jane was convinced her new neighbor was the shadow, but couldn't formulate a theory on how it was possible.

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One morning, the Hartz family terrier, yappy and fierce, was found dead in their backyard, its body dismembered.

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Neighbors grew alarmed, whispering about cults and psychotic transients.

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But Jane had seen the shadow leave the hart's backyard.

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Its form had been denser, as if it were growing stronger.

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Then came old Mrs.

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Whitaker, found slumped in her wheelchair at the street's end, her face frozen in a silent scream of horror.

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Jane approached the police after Mrs.

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Whitaker's death, her voice trembling as she described the man across the street.

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His missing shadow and the dark shape terrorizing the neighborhood.

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The officer, young and skeptical, scribbled a note, but she never heard from the detectives, walked to doors and windows, and the absence of any signs of a struggle resulted in another ruling of natural causes.

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She tried warning her neighbors, but they avoided her gaze.

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Their pity stung, and Jane retreated back to her bungalow, her conviction unshaken, but her heart heavy with isolation.

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A week later, the Garcia's tabby cat disappeared.

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Then the teenage son of the Thompsons left for a late night walk and never returned.

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His backpack was found in an alley, untouched, as if he had dissolved into the rain.

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The shadows prowling grew relentless, weaving between houses, pausing at windows.

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Jane couldn't sleep.

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Her nights were spent peering through curtains, watching the shadow's nocturnal hunts.

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Sometimes it seemed to be staring back at her, though it never approached her window.

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Still, she felt marked, cold dread, a living thing that curled in her chest.

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That night, as rain drummed on the roof, Jane woke to a stillness that choked the air.

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The house was too dark.

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The street lamps outside dimmed to a faint glow.

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Her heart thudded as she sat up.

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And there, pooling on her bedroom floor, was the shadow, darker than the night, its edges curling like smoke.

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It wasn't cast by any light.

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It was alive, sliding toward her bed with a slow, deliberate malice.

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Jane's breath hitched, her body frozen as the shadow rose, its form stretching into a vague silhouette.

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It had come for her.

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She stumbled from her bed and fled.

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In the living room, she grabbed the fireplace poker before retreating to the kitchen and slamming the door shut.

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The shadow followed, silent, rippling along the walls and slipping through the cracks of the door.

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Jane backed against a window, the poker trembling in her hands as the shadow filled the room, swallowing the faint glow of a night light.

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Its touch, cold as frozen iron, brushed her skin as she swung the poker.

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It whistled harmlessly through the air, meeting no resistance.

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The shadow surged, enveloping her, and Jane tried to scream, but a tendril of darkness snaked down her throat, silencing her.

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She felt the evil, knew she was going to die a horrible death.

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Then a blinding light erupted.

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The man from across the street stood in the doorway from her living room, his gray coat hanging loose and open, his body radiating a brilliance that seared the air.

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The shadow writhed in pain and released her.

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Its form tore under the light's assault, tendrils of darkness shredding into nothing.

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Jane cried out and threw up an arm to shield her eyes.

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The shadow let out a single tortured scream before vanishing.

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The light faded, leaving Jane momentarily blinded.

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When she could see, the man was gone.

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Jane's mind reeled, her assumptions unraveling.

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She'd been wrong.

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This hadn't been the man's shadow.

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He wasn't its master.

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He was a hunter, a sentinel who had come to Portland in pursuit of this malevolent force.

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He'd come to stop its rampage.

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Jane sank to the floor, her heart pounding.

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But she smiled.

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An evil weight had been lifted.

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The air was lighter, sweeter.

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Dawn broke gray and wet, and the community stirred, unaware of the battle that had taken place inside her home.

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She crossed the street and found a For Rent sign staked in the man's yard.

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The house was dark and empty, but thanks to a sentinel who had left as unceremoniously as he had arrived, the weight of evil had been lifted from the neighborhood.

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New episodes of the When Reality Phrase podcast are released every Monday and Thursday.

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If you're enjoying the journey into the strange, the mysterious, and the unexplained, be sure to press that Follow or Subscribe button and turn on all reminders so you're alerted whenever an episode drops.

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Until next time, thank you for listening to When Reality Phrase.

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About the Podcast

When Reality Frays
Stories of the strange, mysterious and unexplained
We produce stories inspired by actual events that are paranormal, mysterious, involve fringe science and are unexplained. If you're a fan of the Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The X Files or Fringe, you're in the right place!
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About your host

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Dirk Patton

Dirk Patton is a best selling author with 30 novels and several screenplays to his credit. His passion for telling stories about strange, mysterious and unexplained "things" has drawn him to create the When Reality Frays podcast.