Hey, it's Michelle, and this week's two calls include a towel that appeared with no one home to deliver it, and two flights separated by years featuring men who should not have existed.
Larissa from Texas calls in with her mother's story, one her mom still denies to this day. Home alone in the shower, expecting her kids back from school, her mother called out twice for someone to bring her a towel. She heard the front door open and close, and when she got out, a towel had been left for her. Except neither of her children had been home. Both were accounted for elsewhere, and every family member who might have stopped by confirmed they hadn't. Around the same time, Larissa had been telling her mother she kept seeing a little girl in the house, dismissed as an overactive imagination, until her mother had her own encounter, waking up to the top of a small head peering over the edge of the bed. The family blessed the house and agreed never to speak of it again.
Gary D. from Southern Ontario returns with a story that goes beyond a typical haunting. Passing through an airport parking garage decades ago, he encountered an elderly man in a tight tan suit who turned his head slowly as he passed, flashing an unnervingly wide, perfectly white smile. Minutes later, he saw an identical man in the same suit, same build, but a different face, then a third at his gate. Two of them boarded his flight and stared at him the entire trip, only to vanish from their seats mid-flight. A flight attendant confirmed those seats had been empty the entire time. Years later, on a different flight, two more men in matching gray suits approached him directly. One said, "Nice to see you again; it's been some time." The other said, "We will be seeing you later." Neither has appeared since.
This one sent me down a research rabbit hole. What Gary describes maps almost perfectly onto a strain of folklore that predates the internet and has only gotten more documented since. There's the Smiling Man, a modern urban legend that started in 2012 on Reddit's r/nosleep, a tall figure in an old, ill-fitting suit with a frozen, exaggerated grin. There's Indrid Cold, sometimes called the Grinning Man, documented back in 1970 and tied to the Mothman phenomenon: a tall, deeply tanned man in a strange, glossy suit who appears out of nowhere and stares in total silence. And there's the broader Men in Black tradition, entities in slightly wrong suits who seem to be mimicking human behavior without fully understanding it, which is exactly the uncanny, hypnotic wrongness Gary described.
Two real callers. Two true ghost stories.
If you have a real ghost story of your own, a haunting experience, something you heard, something you cannot explain, I want to hear it. Call 1 (701) 484-2666 or visit tellmeaghoststory.com to share your story.
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Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.
Production by Newman Media.
[00:00:06] Welcome to Tell Me A Ghost Story, the late-night call-in podcast where we delve into the world of the supernatural and explore the eerie and unexplained. I'm your host, Michelle Newman. This podcast features true stories from our callers that will send shivers down your spine and leave you questioning the existence of the afterlife.
[00:00:33] So grab a cozy blanket, turn down the lights. Hey Michelle, it's Larissa again from Texas. I thought I'd tell you about my mom's experience whenever we were younger. So my mom, if you'll ask her to say she'll deny it. She doesn't really like to think about that stuff or, you know, really, it's not that she doesn't believe, I just think out of sight, out of mind kind of thing.
[00:01:02] And so this is whenever I think I was in middle school, my little brother was in elementary school. And so what would happen, she would work overnight. And so by the time we were on our way to school, she was just getting off. So usually we'd come home and she would wake up and we'd get home. Well, a little bit about my mom.
[00:01:26] She's one of those people that you kind of, like if she asks you a question, she expects her back not like a nod or anything like that. So, you know, if we didn't answer her back, you know, it's a little irritating to her. But that will play into something later. So this one particular day, I needed to stay after school to finish a test or something. And me and my brother rode the same bus. And then he would come home earlier than me so he would wait.
[00:01:56] He would either wait or he would be at his grandma's already. So I told one of my friends who's around the same bus stop, like, hey, if you see, you know, my brother waiting for me, just tell him I'm staying after school. I'll see him later. And they said, OK. So then my mom said that she had got up and she was going to go take a shower. And so she gets in the shower and she thinks she hears the front door open. And so she thinks it's us.
[00:02:23] So she yells out, hey, I need you to get me a towel. I forgot my towel. And she doesn't hear anything. And so she kind of finishes up what she's doing. And or I think she's still taking a shower. She's about to finish. And she yells out again, hey, I need a towel. Like, come give it to me. And so she says she hears the door open and close. And she's like, Rudy, you didn't say anything.
[00:02:53] Like, how's your day, mom or whatever. And so then so she gets out and she puts the towel on and and everything. And she does her stuff and she comes out and she says she's looking for me. She's like nowhere in the house. You're not there. Your brother's not there. So so my brother that day ended up going to his grandma's house. And so then I come in a little bit later and she kind of has a look on her face like, where'd you go?
[00:03:22] And I said, well, mom, I haven't been here. I had to stay after school. I got a ride from so and so. And she goes, no, you're messing with me. You brought me the towel. I said, what are you talking about? And she goes, somebody brought me a towel. And I was like, I don't know. And she's like, did your other brother stop by? Did you know your grandma stop by? And I'm like, I don't think so. So we called them. We called both my grandmothers.
[00:03:52] None of them came by. We asked my little brother, like, hey, like, did you, you know, come in real quick? And, you know, my mom, my grandma didn't drive the one he was with, but his grandpa would drive them. And he's like, no, I never came back. And so she was just kind of like, OK, whatever. Like, she did not want to talk about it or anything.
[00:04:16] Around the same time that this was all happening, my mom was like, she would get mad because I would tell her like, hey, mom, I see a little girl sometimes. And she goes, no, it's just your imagination. You're not. Oh, whatever. And I would tell her like, hey, mom, like, literally, I've been seeing stuff. And that's why I haven't been sleeping a lot. And she's like, no, I really think you're just watching scary movies or you're just doing this or that.
[00:04:42] So then later on, a couple of weeks later, and again, she's not going to tell you anything. Like, she's not going to admit that she saw it. But she did tell me. She goes one day. She was like, I think I believe you because I it was another time when she was working overnight. And she said that she felt like somebody came into her room and she had like a California king. So it was a little bit like higher.
[00:05:12] And she said she kind of woke up and she was looking and she saw the top of someone's head. And it was like, maybe like she was saying, maybe it was a little girl go around. And she was just looking and she was like, oh, my gosh. And so she said she closed her eyes, started praying. And like it was almost to the point where they were coming around to her side of the bed. She said she just covered her head and like turned around and just just forgot about it.
[00:05:39] And so she told me, you know what, we're going to bless the house and we're going to we're going to just not talk about this. So, yeah, that's my ghost story. Have a good day, Michelle. Bye. Thank you, Larissa, for calling in again. Oh, man, this is one of those stories that I actually hope it was a little girl spirit,
[00:06:06] because otherwise a strange person came into your house, gave your mom a towel and left. And that's so much more unsettling than a ghost. Hi there. My name's Gary D and I'm up in southern Ontario, Canada.
[00:06:29] And this experience I had or actually two experiences that are kind of connected are, yeah, kind of, kind of beyond strange. And like, so let's start off. My whole career or whole life have been a salesman, a sales and marketing rep for a number of companies and have traveled quite a bit.
[00:06:58] So I'm on the road seeing customers face to face. So I've taken literally hundreds of flights. I sat down, tried to figure out how many flights I've been on. I'm guessing well over 400, somewhere between 400 and 450 flights, mostly in North America, also to Europe and some other locations, mostly for business, a little bit for pleasure.
[00:07:20] And obviously, having been on that many flights, you're going to have some strange occurrences, usually things like having to deal with people that are drunk on the flight or on drugs or rowdy. What happened to me here was, this is probably over 20 years ago or so. I remember clearly it was a flight from Toronto Peterson Airport here in southern Ontario going to Atlanta, Georgia.
[00:07:51] And, you know, I got ready for the flight and it was a business flight. So I got everything ready, drove to the airport, went into the multi-level parking lot, parked my vehicle, grabbed my luggage out of the vehicle and went over to the elevator. Got on the elevator, went up a few floors to go to the departure level. And when you get off the elevator, there's kind of a walkway, which is kind of open air in the parking structure.
[00:08:19] You have to kind of go across about, probably about, I don't know, 50 or 60 feet. And then you go back into a main area where you go on a pedway, which takes you to the airport. But as I go through this little open air area, it was cold because it was, I think it was like, I believe it was around February of the year. So here in Canada, it's quite cold then, snowy and cold. So as I'm walking through that open air area, there's nobody around.
[00:08:45] And I just see one guy with his back up against a wall, nicely dressed. The guy, I just remember clear as day, he was wearing a tan colored suit. Very tight fitting, leather shoes, pointy leather shoes, and a very skinny black tie. And it was an elderly gentleman, I'm guessing probably somewhere around 65 to 70 years old.
[00:09:15] A thin, gaunt face, gray hair. So he's standing, I figure, okay, he's a businessman. He's heading off somewhere, going to a meeting or a show or whatever he was doing, seeing customers. He's just standing there waiting for someone. So as I walk towards him, he notices I'm there. And he kind of pivots his head around. Pivots his head around and he looks at me. And he just suddenly produces this creepy ass smile. This really creepy smile.
[00:09:43] All teeth, perfectly white teeth. I may add, it was kind of strange for a guy that age having bright white teeth. But he's just staring me right in the eyes, like glaring at me with these, I don't know, almost hypnotic eyes. But the creepy smile on his face makes me think of that movie that was released, Smile. And I guess there's Smile 2. But he just had this creepy, creepy smile. Big open mouth showing all of his white teeth.
[00:10:13] And just staring at me. Not moving his body an inch, just standing there. And as I walked by him and looked at him, he just did not move at all. His body didn't move, but his head slowly spun around as I passed him with that strange Cheshire cat, whatever you want to call it, this creepy smile on his face. And I walked by him. I almost said something, but I didn't. And then I went in the Pedway.
[00:10:38] I went to the check-in area, checked in my suitcase, and then kind of forgot about that, what had happened. I just thought it was some weirdo. So I go over to my gate, where my flight's going to be taking off from. So I go to my gate.
[00:10:56] And as I'm walking down the hallway, getting down towards my gate, it was mostly carpeting, but there was a stretch, which was all, I don't know if it was kind of a stone floor. But as you went through there, you could hear your footsteps echoing off of the tiled walls.
[00:11:16] And as I'm going through there, I see a skinny guy in a tan suit with a skinny black tie, leather shoes, well-dressed businessman. And I'm thinking, how the hell did this guy get down here in front of me? He was behind me in that garage. How did he get down here?
[00:11:36] But then as I get closer, I realize it's exactly the same body build and exactly the same clothing, but it's a different guy because his face was different. This guy's had a different, you know, facial feature structure. His cheekbones were different. His nose was different. His eyes were more sunken in. And he also had gray hair, but it was a different guy. But I'm thinking, why the hell would this guy have the exact same suit?
[00:12:03] Is there some kind of a convention with these guys, like from a clothing store or something? But why would he? So he's just standing there. And again, exactly like the guy, when I got off the elevator and saw that guy, he spins his head around, looks at me, and then suddenly pulls up this creepy, creepy smile like the other guy. Same thing. Bright white teeth.
[00:12:30] Eyeballs that are just kind of just, you know, going right into the depths of my soul, basically. He's just staring at me. And, you know, like laser beams. And it's almost hypnotic as I'm looking at him. I almost felt dizzy, almost like vertigo. And it reminded me of like when you go to an amusement park and you go into that funhouse thing and you go through that tube that spins with kind of a spiral. Where you try to walk through it straight, but you start to go sideways. And that's almost what it felt like. It was a bizarre feeling.
[00:12:59] And so I passed by this guy. And my, you know, shoes are echoing in there. And the same thing as I walked by him, he slowly pivots his head around with that creepy ass smile, stares at me. And I kind of wrench my head around as I go by looking at him. And I'm thinking, that is so weird. So I go down to the gate. I find a seat. It's fully crowded. And wouldn't you know it. There's a third guy.
[00:13:29] Tanned suit, skinny black tie, leather shoes, gray hair, same age around 65 to 70, thin build. But again, different facial features. And that same creepy smile. This is just too much. Too much of a coincidence. There's three guys dressed identical. Identical clothing. And exactly the same build.
[00:13:54] The only thing being different is the look of their face and the facial bone structure. Size of nose and things like that. And I noticed there's not actually just the one guy sitting there, but there's two guys sitting. One closer to where you go on to the plane and one kind of in the back area. And both of them, everybody else is just on their phones, on their laptops, talking to their families. But these two guys are glaring at me.
[00:14:22] They are like glaring right into my face. Creepy smiles. Beyond bizarre. And the decades and decades of all of these hundreds of flights, I've never had anything quite that creepy and that strange. I've had weird things happen where people, of course, stare at you, stare back. But these guys were beyond, beyond bizarre. So I walk at these guys. And then I, you know, finally they do the boarding call.
[00:14:50] I show them my passport. I get on the plane. I sit down. I'm like, I don't know, seventh row down. And I sit down. And then I'm kind of sitting there. I'm going, what if these guys are going to get on this flight? So I look up and sure enough, I see one of the guys come on the plane. And he's sitting a few seats ahead of me. And he kind of smiles at me.
[00:15:14] And as he's putting his carry on bag up above, he's doing it while he's staring at me smiling. And gets down into a seat and keep continues to stare at me through the seats. And then I see the second guy get on the plane. Same tan suit guy walking down, walks by me again, pivoting heading around his head around, staring at me with that same smile. And he sits down, I don't know, 10 rows or so behind me.
[00:15:44] And again, I'm watching him. He does the same thing. The overhead storage bins are open. So he goes up there, throws his bag up there, sits down and he has like an aisle seat. And he just continues to stare at me and I'm feeling dizzy and nauseous. So I am trying to forget about it. I'm going to look away. And we finally take off. And the fast seatbelt sign comes off.
[00:16:13] So I'm just sitting there and I'm looking at, and again, I sneak a peek. I look up front. That same creepy bugger is still looking at me, smiling at me. And the guy behind me, same thing. The rest of the plane, nobody's looking at me. I mean, just these two damn guys are staring at me. And I'm thinking I'm in the twilight zone. This is not happening. This has got to be a dream. This is a nightmare. You know, I want to pinch myself. It just, this cannot be real.
[00:16:40] It is just beyond, beyond strange. How can this be? And then I'm thinking maybe someone's pulling a prank on me, a trick. Because some other salespeople I know, some other people I know, we kind of play tricks on each other, but nothing to this degree. This is like next level. So I see these guys continue to stare and I'm trying to just forget about it.
[00:17:02] So I, I, I basically, I order a couple of drinks and I just want to nap a bit before arriving down in Atlanta. So I forgot about them. I, I kind of dozed off, kind of going in and out of sleep. And finally I hear this dinging and we're getting close to landing. And I hear the pilot saying, okay, we're, we're approaching Atlanta. Uh, we're going to be landing in the next 10 minutes, blah, blah, blah.
[00:17:31] So when that happens, I, I, I look up and there's nobody like those two guys, those two guys in the suits are no longer sitting in their seats. And I'm thinking that's strange. Uh, are they both in the bathroom at the same time? Or do they both go up to the cockpit to see the pilot or something? And so I would keep watching for the next 10 minutes up until, well, we're about to land.
[00:18:01] And again, they never went back to their seats. So we land and we're going back to, to, you know, disembark from the plane. And as we're going along, we finally pull in there and then there's a, one of the flight attendants comes by and I, I kind of flag her down. I said, you know, this sounds kind of strange, but I got a question for you. The person that was sitting up here, the aisle seat up here, a few seats ahead of me and back there, that aisle seat over there. And I'm not sure what number it is.
[00:18:30] Might be 17 D or whatever. Where are those two guys? They had tan suits, these elderly gentlemen, really well-dressed. Where, where are they? And she looked at me like I had two heads. And she said, well, the two seats you're pointing at, those are vacant. Where, you know, this plane isn't completely full. And those were vacant. There's nobody sitting there. There was nobody, you know, on the, on the flight plan for, and there's nobody sitting there basically.
[00:18:59] And she kind of shook her head and walked away. And I'm thinking, did I just dream all of this? I, I just cannot believe that happened. I'm, to this day, I'm just baffled how that could have even happened. So I, I, I get off the plane, confused. And, you know, basically fast forward. I thought about this many times over the years and thought this is a very, very odd.
[00:19:23] And then many years later, and again, many, many flights later, many years later, I, I was on a flight from LAX to Fresno, California. Just a very short commuter flight. Probably an hour or less. Like it's a very short flight. I haven't taken that flight in a long time. But I remember I had a rental car in Fresno waiting for me.
[00:19:50] And when I got on LAX, I got to the airport, checked in my luggage, went to my gate. And I go to my gate and I see two guys sitting in the waiting area to get on the plane.
[00:20:14] And, both guys are thin build in tight fitting, but not tan colored suits. But they were gray suits, identical gray suits, both with slim red ties and pointy leather shoes.
[00:20:34] And both of them, again, same as many years ago on that other flight, both of them are staring at me with that exact same Cheshire cat, creepy, demented, weirdo, lunatic smile, bright white teeth, hypnotizing eyes, just staring into my soul, searing into my brain. And I felt nauseous when I saw that. And I was just so mad I had it.
[00:21:04] I ended up getting up. I walked over to the first guy who was closest to me. I walked over to him. And I just was, I just said to him, you know, excuse me, why are you staring at me? Do you know me or do I know you? Like, why are you staring at me? What's going on? Nothing. He just continues to stare at me. So I kind of said, why are you staring at me?
[00:21:28] And finally, slowly, in a robotic voice, he says something like, nice to see you again. It's been some time. And I kind of jumped back and said, what the hell are you talking about? It's been some time. Nice to see you again. And that made me think, is this one of the same guys from so many years ago that was on that flight? I didn't recognize him, but maybe he was one of those guys.
[00:21:58] So then he just sat there smiling. Didn't say anything else. So I walked over to the other guy and said the same thing. I said, you know, why are you and your friend over there staring at me? Who put you up to this? Like, why are you doing this? Do I know you? Do you know me? What is going on? And then he says, hello. We will be seeing you later. Nice to see you. And that's all.
[00:22:29] That's all he said. And as neither of these guys, their bodies would not move or twitch or move or anything. Just their heads kind of swiveling around with that creepy smile, big white teeth, mouth wide open and the eyes just wide open glaring at you. So what am I supposed to do? I get on the plane. I get to my seat. I see these two guys get on, go into their seats, kept staring at me.
[00:22:55] And this time, because it's a short flight, I stayed awake the whole time and I just glared at them, right back at them. So finally, when the plane was about to land and we finally, you know, being told, okay, we're going to land in the next five, 10 minutes. As we're landing, I see these guys kind of look at each other for the first time. And then all of a sudden they're the big smiles just turned to a, just a normal face.
[00:23:24] No emotion at all. And then when we land, suddenly I see them look at each other again. They kind of nod. And when we landed and they were starting to disembark, starting to get off the plane, the first guy gets off. And then the guy that was behind me kind of runs by me with kind of a pissed off look on his face, squeezes by me, squeezes by all the other people that had no decency to wait. He squeezes by, walks off the flight.
[00:23:52] So as I got off the plane, I look for these guys. I figure these guys are going to jump me or something. I get off the plane, look around, didn't see them. Went over to get my rental car, didn't see them. And that was the last time I ever saw them. Nothing like that's happened since. But what are the odds on two completely different flights to have guys that looked identical in every
[00:24:18] way except their faces to act that way, to stare at me that way? What, you know, my brain keeps spinning thinking, what was the explanation? Was it a practical joke that was a fantastic practical joke that someone pulled off and they had to buy these guys tickets and everything to be on the flights and whatnot? Or was it something else? And that's, I'm, you know, I believe there's life on other planets.
[00:24:45] And as to whether there's aliens on, on earth right now walking amongst us, that's possible. Or whether we were seeded here, planted here, you know, millennia ago, and they come back to check on us, who knows. But these guys had a plan for me, it seemed. They wanted to do something. And maybe on that first flight, when I flew from, from Toronto to Atlanta and I was asleep, maybe they were able to carry, carry out some kind of experimentation or do something. I don't know.
[00:25:16] I'm just grasping at straws, but bottom line, it was a bizarre, bizarre event. Uh, I'm kind of shaking now, you know, remembering it, but I just don't have an explanation. I'm just curious as to whether there are any other listeners out there, uh, that have had a similar event, a similar thing happen. Anyways, thank you for listening to my story. Um, I'm still rattled by it. I'm like, you know, it's bizarre. I know it sounds strange.
[00:25:45] I know what happened. I know what happened. So that's, that's all that matters. Thank you, Gary D., for another great story. I did some research on the entities you described, and they've popped up a few different times with a few different flavors. The first is a modern urban legend, and it's a near exact match.
[00:26:14] Back in 2012, a Reddit user named Blue Title posted a story to the No Sleep and Let's Not Meet Reddit boards about something called the Smiling Man. Tall, lanky, wearing an old fashioned, ill-fitting suit with wide, wild eyes and a painfully exaggerated grin. Witnesses describe him as moving strangely, almost like a slow waltz down the empty streets. And when he notices someone watching, he locks in with them.
[00:26:42] That's the Smiling Man archetype almost to the letter. But before the internet ever had a name for it, these figures already existed in classic cryptid lore. Back in 1970, investigator John Keel documented an entity tied to the broader Mothman phenomenon called Indrid Cold, sometimes called the Greening Man. Witnesses, including a salesman named Woodrow Durenberger, who claimed to have encountered him on a dark road,
[00:27:09] described a very tall man with an unusually deep tan, slicked back hair, and a strange glossy suit, sometimes green, sometimes blue. He would appear out of nowhere, stand completely still, and stare with the same ear-to-ear unmoving grin. Some accounts even claim he communicated telepathically rather than speaking out loud. And then there's the broader men in black tradition, which doesn't always mean men in black suits.
[00:27:36] There's a whole documented strain of these accounts describing tan, beige, gray suits, slightly out of style, on figures that look almost human. But not quite. No eyebrows, rare blinking, a complexion that's either too tan or too pale. The theory that researchers in the space keep coming back to is that these are aliens or entities that are trying to mimic human social behavior without fully understanding it.
[00:28:06] So they lock eyes, hold a grin to seem friendly, and it lands as deeply, deeply wrong. That's the uncanny valley effect you were describing when you said it felt hypnotic, almost like vertigo. And then, it happens again years later. Nice to see you again. We'll be seeing you later. I don't have a tidy explanation. But given everything out of what you've described out of your experience, I don't think you're the only one they've ever smiled at. Listeners,
[00:28:37] have you ever encountered something like this? A man who smiled just a little too long, dressed a little too wrong, standing a little too still? I want to hear about it. That's all we have this week, folks. Do you have a ghost story? Call 701-484-2666.
[00:29:05] That's 701-484-2666. Or, go to tellmeaghoststory.com and leave your story there. Thank you to all the callers who left messages this week. I'm your host, Michelle Newman, signing off. See you next week.
[00:29:32] What the demon? I'm Harvey Guillen and this is Killer Stories. Every Monday, I'm cutting the lights. Bedtime story. Except these stories are all real. We're talking brazen heists, devastating cons, serial murders, and cases that defy tidy categories.
[00:30:00] So join me for new episodes of Killer Stories with Harvey Guillen every Monday. This is the main subject. I'm happy. I know. I'm happy.