Shadowing Practice: 3 Scary True Dead of Night Horror Stories Animated - Learn English Speaking with Video
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331 sentences
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I work at a retail store and I detest my job with all my heart.
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And because I was a dumb shit and said I was always available, they routinely screw me over and put me on nights.
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But I whine, bitch, and moan.
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I digress.
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I'm okay with working nights actually since I get to see my boyfriend when he picks me up.
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My boyfriend usually gets off at 10 .30
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but he doesn't leave until 11 so most nights I'd have to wait for him.
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On top of that he has to make a 10 minute drive
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so I'd have to wait an hour and 40 to 45 minutes which didn't bother me much.
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He'd call me to tell me he was coming and make sure I was still alive.
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Earlier in the week an uber driver kept asking me if I was somebody named Lenore.
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I told him no and he did it again but this time he kept asking if I was sure.
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How the heck am I not going to be sure of my name dude?
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Fortunately my boyfriend pulled in and honked at me causing the uber creep to speed away.
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I'm a paranoid person so this made me wonder if he'd been watching me and knew my boyfriend always came late.
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Then I freaked out since I kept getting these weird phone calls from some telemarketing agency
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but when I answer nobody is there and they hang up.
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Is it connected?
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Is the government watching me?
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Do I have seven days left?
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All jokes aside.
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Fast forward three days later
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and I'm standing there listening to some music waiting for him to pick me up and call me.
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He finally does and he starts cracking a joke about how he's glad creepy
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Uber didn't answer.
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As we start shooting the shit and joking, this Indian lady comes up.
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I don't hear her at first since I have noise cancelling headphones.
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She gets closer and keeps calling to me.
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Finally, she yells, hey.
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I look over at her and smile then go back to talking to my boyfriend.
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She does it again and I excuse myself.
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Hi, can I help you?
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Do you need a ride? she asks and she looks nice enough but something just doesn't settle with me.
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Her car is parked at the stop sign and there's somebody else in it.
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No, my friend is coming for me.
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Thank you.
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I notice there's a man in the driver's seat and
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that she isn't wearing a uniform from either of the stores near us.
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She begins to ask again.
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Are you sure?
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I can give you a ride.
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Do you need one?
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Get in.
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Are you sure you don't need a ride?
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I begin to feel a little bit uncomfortable
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and my preschool don't get in a stranger's car training kicks in
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so I politely decline and go back to talking to my boyfriend.
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So are you close?
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Just pulled out.
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I'll get there.
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Just stay on the line.
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Is that woman gone?
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No. No she wasn't gone.
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In fact she was standing six feet away watching me and she looked annoyed.
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I told him in code that no she has not left
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and she has in fact remained there leaning on the car just watching me.
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She is looking angrier with each passing second.
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Out of the corner of my eye, I see the man tell her something and she looks at me and begins interrogating me.
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Friend's not here.
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Do you need a ride?
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Where is your friend?
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He probably forgot about you, so that's okay.
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We'll give you a ride.
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It's very cold.
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Get in.
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Tell us where you live and we'll drop you off.
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Do you need a ride?
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At this point, she begins to get closer to me.
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I try to avoid her by moving to the farther end of the plaza strip.
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Honey?
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Yeah, so about my sister.
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Well, she's gotten closer, but I'm pretty scared she's too far away from home.
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Something might happen.
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Hurry, so I can tell you.
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I say on code as the car drives up.
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Now she looks mad.
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Get in the car.
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We'll give you a ride right now.
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At this point, she opens the car and begins trying to get me inside.
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Pulling me, yanking out my jacket it.
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She's a taller and bigger woman so she tries to pick me up even.
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At this point my bowels threaten to release and I'm screaming and kicking and wiggling.
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Meanwhile I can hear him yelling at me that he's coming and that he's calling the police.
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Now my mind is running a thousand miles an hour
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and I'm panicking thinking I'm going to get salted
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or be some weird present for her husband since he looks content with her effort to kidnap me.
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Get in and shut up.
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I will hit you.
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You need a ride so be quiet you come with us and
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if you want to see her house that's very nice
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you need a ride
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i start crying as she manages to get my torso on
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the car my right hand is locked in my phone
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and she begins trying to take it
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and my boyfriend is panicking telling me the police are sending an officer
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she shoves my face into her leather seat now my airway is obstructed
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and she is not letting me go she is much bigger than me
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and stronger and she knows it her whole weight is on me.
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I try not to panic so I don't black out from lack of oxygen
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and all of a sudden I start getting mad as shit.
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Her husband says something in a different language and she lifts up one hand and leans down, trying to get something from the front.
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I immediately use the arms I've been using to push myself off the seat to stab her stomach.
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She recoils, letting me go a little bit and I headbutt her, tossing my melon back as I scream.
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Fear stricken and adrenaline hazed.
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That's my purse.
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I don't know you.
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Finally, my boyfriend pulls in.
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I bolt to his car as the Indian woman is sitting on the ground.
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After I shut the door, he speeds off towards his house.
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When we get inside, I break down, babbling about how scared and terrifying it all was and how if I hadn't had that opportunity,
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she might have taken me to her house and done who knows what.
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After this incident, the police officer they dispatched got here 20 minutes after and didn't find anybody.
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My boyfriend talked to his boss and was granted the ability to leave early for me.
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I'm still weirded out by cars stalling in the plaza.
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I was also a little bit upset that my war cry was a line from King of the Hill.
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I'm 34 and I work as a carpenter.
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I live alone out in the country about 40 minutes from the nearest town in a house
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that used to be my grandfather's.
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It's over 150 years old, and honestly, way too big for one guy.
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Forty acres, mostly woods and open field, and the closest neighbor is an old guy named Henderson, who's about as deaf as a post,
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and lives a mile down the road.
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My wife Maggie passed away about three years ago, and I've been out here by myself ever since, aside from my dog
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Bear, a big black mutt who's usually pretty calm and doesn't bark at much.
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I've got this habit where every night at 10 .30 I make a cup of coffee, black, and drink it out on the back porch.
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It's not really about the coffee, it's just something to do before I try to sleep.
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I've kept that routine for three years straight.
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There's a room at the end of the hall I keep shut.
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It was Maggie's.
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Still has all her stuff in there, her books, her sewing basket, a quilt she never finished.
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I don't go in there.
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I guess I just leave it the way it was.
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This whole thing started one evening.
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I was at the kitchen sink washing out my mug and I looked out the window toward the tree line.
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The moon was out, half full, enough light to see the edge of the woods, and there was something standing there.
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Just a shape, but it looked like a person, standing completely still at the edge of the trees.
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I stood there staring at it for a good 30 seconds, and then I blinked, and it was gone.
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I told myself it was probably just a stump or a trick of the shadows.
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I'm not usually the jumpy type, so it kind of annoyed me that I let it get to me.
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I checked the locks, went to bed.
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Bear paced around for a bit before he settled down at the foot of the bed.
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The next night, I woke up because Bear was growling, not barking, just this low,
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steady rumble, standing at the bedroom door with his hackles up.
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I looked at the clock.
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It was 3 .08 in the morning.
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I figured it was probably a raccoon or a deer outside, but I got up anyway.
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Turned on every light in the house and did a full walkthrough with a shotgun I keep by the bed.
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Didn't find anything.
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Maggie's door was still shut like always.
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I felt kind of dumb for getting worked up over nothing, but I still couldn't shake the feeling that something was off.
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The third night is when I figured out it wasn't an animal.
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I'd been working on this little bird carving out in the barn
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and left it sitting on the workbench when I finished up for the night.
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I went out the next morning and it was just gone.
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Nothing else in the barn was touched.
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My tools were exactly where I left them, but the carving wasn't there.
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I looked everywhere for it, even convinced myself for a minute I'd moved it and forgot.
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But I hadn't.
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That was the first real proof that something had actually been on my property.
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That made me angry more than scared, if I'm honest.
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I called the sheriff's office and a young deputy came out, walked the property, said he didn't see any footprints,
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and figured a fox or a coyote probably dragged it off somewhere.
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He had this look on his face, like he thought I was just a lonely old guy who'd lost a piece of wood.
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and was making it into something bigger, told me to get some rest and left.
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The day after that is when it got serious.
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I came home from a job in town and Maggie's door was open.
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Just a crack, maybe an inch or two, but I never leave that door open.
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Ever.
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I stood at the end of the hallway for a second, just staring at it, before I made myself walk over and push it open.
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Everything looked the same at first.
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Dust everywhere, sheets still on the bed.
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Then I saw her jewelry box knocked onto the floor, the lid open, her necklaces and bracelets scattered all over the carpet.
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That wasn't a fox.
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A fox doesn't open a door and go through a jewelry box.
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Somebody had been inside my house, inside her room, and gone through her things.
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I didn't sleep well that night.
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I was exhausted from the day's work, and I'd been running on anxiety for days.
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Eventually, I must have drifted off on the couch, because I woke up around one in the morning needing to use the bathroom.
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I was still half asleep, stumbling through the dark house with Bear following close behind me, like he always did.
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I was at the bathroom door when I glanced down the hallway toward the front of the house.
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That's when I saw her.
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She was standing in the living room, just standing there, not moving, looking at the pictures on the wall,
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the ones of me and Maggie from before she got sick.
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She had on some kind of long, pale dress, the kind that seemed to catch what little light there was coming through the curtains.
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My blood went cold, every bit of sleep left me in an instant.
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I couldn't move, couldn't breathe.
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She was just standing there, her back to me, examining my wife's photos like she had every right to be there.
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Bear let out this low growl I felt more than heard.
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It snapped me out of it.
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I reached for the shotgun I kept propped in the corner of the hallway, but she must have heard the movement because she turned her head.
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I only got a look at her face for a second.
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Pale skin, dark hair, something wrong with her eyes, like there wasn't anything actually behind them.
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It wasn't Maggie.
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I want to be clear about that because for half a second some part of me wondered.
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It wasn't her.
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She turned and moved toward the front door.
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By the time I had the gun up and the safety off, she was out the door and gone.
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I ran to the porch and fired a shot into the air.
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I saw her crossing the yard toward the old well, and then she was into the trees and gone.
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When I got over to the well myself, there was nothing.
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No footprints in the dirt, no broken branches, nothing.
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After that, I basically shut the house down, boarded up the first floor windows,
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started sleeping in shifts with Bear next to me and the gun within reach.
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Every little sound had me wide awake.
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I didn't bother calling the sheriff again.
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I already knew how that conversation would go.
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The horror was far from finished though.
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About a month later, I was out cutting firewood near the back fence line and I got that feeling of being watched.
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I turned around, and there she was again, standing at the edge of the woods about 50 yards off.
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Same dress, same look.
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I didn't think.
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I just raised the shotgun and fired at the ground near her feet.
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Dirt kicked up everywhere, and she didn't even flinch.
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I was already racking another shell and yelling and running at her at the same time.
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I wasn't thinking straight.
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I just wanted her gone.
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She finally turned and walked back into the trees and was gone again.
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I stood out there for a while, just trying to catch my breath, guns still smoking.
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I don't know if I actually scared her off or if she just decided to leave on her own.
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I haven't seen her since, but it's been a few weeks and I still don't feel like it's over.
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I still lock every door, still keep the gun close, still check the tree line before I go outside at night.
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I don't know who she was or what she wanted.
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Part of me wondered if she was just some homeless woman passing through, lost and confused.
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Maggie's jewelry box is still on the floor of that room.
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I haven't cleaned it up.
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Some part of me doesn't want to touch it like maybe it's better left exactly how she left it.
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I've told a couple guys at work about it.
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They mostly just laugh it off, say I've been out on the property alone too long.
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Maybe they're right, but bears still won't sleep in that hallway anymore, and dogs don't usually get spooked over nothing.
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I used to think Halloween was the safest holiday of the year.
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You know exactly what's coming.
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Costumes, candy, a couple of jump scares from your friends, and you're home by nine.
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That's what I believed until the year I turned 27.
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When the three of us decided, we were bored handing out candy so we decided to go trick
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or treating on Queen Street like a bunch of overgrown kids.
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We went there because word was going around our group chat
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that houses there gave out full -size candy bars instead of the fun -size junk,
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and honestly, we just wanted an excuse to feel young again for one night.
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Queen Street sat at the edge of our town, past the last streetlight, where the sidewalk just kind of gives up and turns into gravel.
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My friends Dara and Colton were with me.
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We've been friends since college.
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The type of friends to dare each other to do dumb stuff, to just see who would back out first.
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That night, Colton was the one who brought up the empty house at the end of the block.
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It's not empty, Dara said.
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There's a light on.
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She was right.
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Every other house on that street was dark.
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Porches bare, like the whole block had given up on the holiday.
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But the last house is a narrow two -story house with peeling white paint.
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It had a single orange light glowing behind a curtain on the second floor.
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There was an old man on the porch, sitting in a rocking chair, as if he had been waiting there all night.
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The old man was wearing a grey plain sweater with no custom or any decorations, just a bowl of candy resting on his knees.
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We should have kept walking, but we were grown adults playing pretend for the night.
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We didn't think.
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Dara actually paused for a second at the bottom of the steps, chewing on her lip, and I remember her saying something like,
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this feels like the start of a horror movie, and then Colton laughed and called her dramatic, and that was that.
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We walked up the cracked up path and then the old man smiled before we even said trick or treat.
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You're the first ones tonight, he said.
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His voice was soft, almost gentle, but it didn't match his eyes.
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His eyes tracked us as if he was counting something.
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Been waiting a long while for company, he said as he held out the bowl.
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Inside were candy bars, the good kind, still wrapped in fresh.
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Colton grabbed two without thinking, and Dara grabbed one.
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I hesitated, and that hesitation is probably the only reason I am alive to tell you this.
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Go on, the old man said to me, tilting the bowl closer.
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wouldn't want to feel left out.
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Something about the way he said left out made the hair on my arms stand up.
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I took one just to be polite and then shoved it in my pocket without eating it.
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Right before we left, the old man said one more thing
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that none of us mentioned to each other until much later
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because at that time it just seemed like a weird old man thing to say.
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He looked directly at Colton, not me or Dara, and said, Sweet dreams tonight.
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Then he went back to rocking in his chair, staring out at the dark street like he was waiting for the next group to show up.
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We said thanks and walked off the porch.
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That's when Colton noticed something weird.
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He pointed at the mailbox by the road.
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The paint was faded, but you could still make out a name carved into the wood, underneath the peeling metal numbers.
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The name was Harris Family.
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Under that, someone had scratched four more words, jagged, like they had been in a hurry.
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The four words were, don't eat the candy.
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We laughed at it.
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Kids messing around, we said.
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Probably some prank from a past Halloween.
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We kept walking down
284
Queen Street, hitting a couple more houses, and slowly the night went back to normal.
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Except for one thing.
286
Colton wasn't acting himself.
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He got quiet, real quiet, which wasn't like him at all.
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By the time we reached the corner store to split up and head home, Colton was sweating, even though it was barely 50 degrees out.
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Dara asked if he was okay, and he just nodded, staring at nothing.
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I ate the candy bar.
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He finally said.
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Both of them on the way here.
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None of us thought much of it at the time.
294
Adults being nostalgic and eating candy on Halloween, that was the whole point of the night.
295
We said goodnight and went our separate ways.
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I didn't think much about Queen Street again until the next morning.
297
When Dara called me before I was even out of bed, her voice was shaking so bad I could barely understand her.
298
Colton hadn't shown up for their usual morning coffee run.
299
She went to his apartment to check, and his roommate answered the door, pale and shaking.
300
Colton was in the hospital.
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He woke up in the middle of the night screaming that something was inside of him clawing to get out,
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and by the time paramedics got there, he stopped breathing for almost two full minutes before they brought him back.
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I called out of work that day and couldn't sit still.
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I kept thinking about the carved warning on the mailbox, and I kept thinking about the candy bar still sitting untouched in my jacket pocket.
305
At one point, I actually pulled it out and set it on my desk, just staring at the wrapper,
306
half expecting it to move on its own.
307
It obviously wasn't, but I still couldn't bring myself to throw it in the trash.
308
Around noon that day, my curiosity won over my fear, and I did something I still regret.
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I looked up the name on that mailbox, Harris.
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It took about 10 minutes of digging through old local news archives before I found it.
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16 years earlier, a man named Walter Harris had been arrested and later died in custody before ever facing a trial.
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The article was short, vague on details, in the way of an old small -town paper when nobody wants to say the ugly part out loud,
313
but it mentioned he had been under investigation connected to several missing teenagers from our town, all seen around last Halloween.
314
His body, the article said, had never actually been confirmed.
315
He was declared dead based on the fire in his holding cell, but no clear remains were ever recovered.
316
I stared at the sentence for a long time.
317
No clear remains were ever recovered.
318
That night, Dara and I went back to Queen Street, mostly because we didn't know what else to do,
319
and we were desperate for an explanation that wasn't one in our heads.
320
The house at the end of the block was dark, not just the porch but every window.
321
No orange lights, no rocking chair.
322
When we got close, we saw the front door half open, swinging slightly because of the wind,
323
and the porch was covered in thick layers of dust and dead leaves, like nobody had swept in years,
324
like nobody had been sitting there the night before it happened.
325
We never told anyone what we saw.
326
Who would have believed us?
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Colton eventually woke up from the hospital, but he doesn't remember much from that night, and he flinches now whenever anyone mentions a candy bar.
328
I still have the one from my pocket.
329
It's in a freezer bag in the back of my closet, and every year around this time I think about throwing it out,
330
but I don't because some part of me is scared
331
that getting rid of it will finally invite whatever was watching us from behind that curtain to finish what had started.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “3 Scary True Dead of Night Horror Stories Animated”. This video has 331 sentences and 3930 words to shadow. The speech runs for 23:36. The speaker talks at a natural 166 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| candy noun | /ˈkæn.di/ | Crystallized sugar formed by boiling down sugar syrup. |
| porch noun | /pɔɹt͡ʃ/ | A covered entrance to a building, whether taken from the interior, and forming a sort of vestibule within the main wall, or projecting without and with a… |
| stare verb | /stɛɚ/ | To look fixedly (at something). |
| hallway noun | /ˈhɔlˌweɪ/ | A corridor in a building that connects rooms. |
| pocket noun | /ˈpɑ.kɪt/ | A bag stitched to an item of clothing, used for carrying small items. |
| trick noun | /ˈtɹɪk/ | Something designed to fool, dupe, outsmart, mislead or swindle. |
| crack noun | /kɹæk/ | A thin and usually jagged space opened in a previously solid material. |
| shake verb | /ˈʃeɪk/ | To cause (something) to move rapidly in opposite directions alternatingly. |
| panic noun | /ˈpænɪk/ | Overwhelming fear or fright, often affecting groups of people or animals; (countable) an instance of this; a fright, a scare. |
| scream verb | /skɹiːm/ | To cry out with a shrill voice; to utter a sudden, sharp outcry, or shrill, loud cry, as in fright or extreme pain; to screech, to shriek. |
| pale adjective | /peɪl/ | Light in color. |
| uber adjective | /ˈuːbəɹ/ | Super; high-level; high-ranking. |
| curtain noun | /ˈkɜɹt(ə)n/ | A piece of cloth covering a window, bed, etc. to offer privacy and keep out light. |
| shotgun noun | /ˈʃɑtɡʌn/ | A gun which fires loads typically consisting of small metal balls, called shot, from a cartridge. |
| jewellery noun | /ˈd͡ʒʊ-/ | Collectively, personal ornamentation such as rings, necklaces, brooches and bracelets, made of precious metals and sometimes set with gemstones. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| leave out verb | To omit, to not include, to neglect to mention. | |
| wake up verb | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | To stop sleeping; to awake. |
| back out verb | To reverse (a vehicle) from a confined space. | |
| break down verb | To stop functioning. | |
| bring up verb | To mention. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Is the government watching me?
- Do I have seven days left?
- Hi, can I help you?
- Do you need a ride?
- Are you sure you don't need a ride?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to be · used to think |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is parked · is locked · is obstructed |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has not left · I've been · I've kept |
| Past continuous was/were + -ing — an action in progress at a moment in the past | was coming · was standing · was growling |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 89 contractions and reduced forms, such as didn't, don't, wasn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: bother /ˈbɑðɚ/, breathe /bɹiːð/, thick /θɪk/, leather /ˈlɛðɚ/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: shake /ˈʃeɪk/, shotgun /ˈʃɑtɡʌn/, wash /wɑʃ/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/
- Long words — get the stress right: anxiety /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, establishment /ɪˈstæb.lɪʃ.mənt/, uncomfortable /ʌnˈkʌm.fɚ.tə.bl̩/, curiosity /ˌkjʊɹ.iˈɑ.sə.ti/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like candy, porch, stare.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.