Camp Monsters - The Curse

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

A pair of film buffs stumble upon an old western movie set hidden deep in the desert outside Los Angeles. But as they explore the abandoned remains, strange noises start to echo through the empty set...This episode is sponsored by Columbia. Shop Columbia's amazing products in store or at REI.com. Take the Camp Monsters Listeners Survey.

REI Co-op Studios You're in the desert. You can smell it. You can't see anything, but you smell desert. Night desert. That dusty, cooling smell. You reach up and try to touch your eyes. And you find that you're wearing glasses.

When you take them off, you realize they must have been dark glasses, because now you can see some stars. Stars, that's all. And why would you be wearing dark glasses at night, standing in the middle of the desert? You blink, and you try hard to remember what you're doing here. And then you see something. You begin to see something. Light and darkness all in a pattern, all in a row. Like a row of... a row of skulls? No, no. The light keeps rising all the time, rising quickly from somewhere behind you. It's already bright enough now that you can see that what you're looking at is a row of buildings.

The colorful main street of an old western town, but a strange, flat, forlorn-looking town. Vacant doorways, black, lightless windows. The row of buildings sits at the foot of a barren desert mountain looking out across a flat and lifeless plain. You're standing out on that plain, and the light keeps rising behind you. Strange light, very bright now. Suddenly bright, like the sun has skipped dawn and jumped right up into the edge of the sky, getting brighter and brighter and brighter. But this light is emptier than sunlight somehow, flatter. You see your own shadow etched long and stark across the sand, stretching out toward those empty, eerie buildings. You turn around to look at the light and...

It's so beautiful. You can't believe how beautiful it is. You know right away what must be causing it. You've seen films of this before, but nothing you've ever seen comes close to capturing what it really looks like. A rainbow sun. A half-orb swirling rapidly up and down the scales of every color imaginable. It looks like it's rising and setting all at once, not behind the flat, vast waste of the desert, but out of the desert floor itself,

blasting up a low halo of dust that dances into changing colors and races away from the glowing semicircle of light. Already it's too bright to look at. You close your eyes, and in a moment even the inside of your eyelids are too bright to bear, and you turn your head away. You can feel the first heat then like a sudden sunburn across your face. Your mouth tingles with a metallic taste in it but then the light begins to fade as quickly as it grew and in a moment you can open your eyes again. The half orb is still there, but definitely setting now, cooling down rapidly through shades of orange and red until it evaporates completely, leaving a deep

red glowing column of dust and smoke that rises and rises into a cloud, rises delicately where the orb has vanished, rising until the top of the column slows and spreads gently, silently out of the top. Spreads into the shape of a mushroom. And you wonder again what you're doing out here, how you got here, and most importantly, whether you're far enough away. You see the first shockwave racing across the flat desert floor toward you, raising a speeding circle of sand and dust as it comes. You know it's moving faster than the sound of the explosion that created it, so you can't help but wonder.

When it hits you, what will it sound like? And will it sound anything like the Camp Monsters podcast? Here we are again. Back out here around the campfire. Oh, normally we wouldn't risk a fire in a desert as dry as this one, but... Well, there's no fire danger here. Nothing to burn. Nothing around us but rocks and sand. Nothing can grow. It's that hot. That dry out here on this desert on the border of California and Nevada. Or are we closer to the border of Nevada and Utah? Well, it doesn't matter. This desert

doesn't care what state we say it's in Or the names that we give different parts of it Mojave, Sonoran, Chihuahuan, Great Basin The desert just goes on and on Stretching right across our imaginary lines and borders Heedless of human history and hotter than Well, just about anywhere else on earth. During the day, anyway. At night, temperatures can plunge drastically out here. Like they have tonight.

So come on in, a little closer to the fire. Here, you can take my spot because you won't catch me shivering. Not in this Pike Lake hooded jacket by Columbia. Its omni-heat thermal reflective breathable lining retains warmth using these little silver dots that reflect body heat, so I stay warm and comfortable even as the temps drop. I mean, who wants to hear a story through chattering teeth, right? As long as I'm wrapped up snug inside Columbia's 100% recycled polyester insulation, I can tell my tales even in the coldest weather. And another great thing about the Pike Lake series of jackets and vests by Columbia is that they come in a range of styles for women, men, girls, boys.

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Of course, just because this desert landscape is so hostile to humans doesn't mean people haven't interacted with it for centuries. Crossing it or eking out existences on the edge of it. Mining it. Building railroads through it. When humans couldn't find anything else to do with it, we tried blowing it up. The old Nevada test site is out there, not far from here. It's where some of the most famous nuclear bomb tests were carried out. and while those tests were still taking place Hollywood tried its hand at making films out here Westerns mostly in the daytime you can see one of the old film sets across the valley below us hugging the side of a craggy desolate hill right on the edge of the salt flats. It was abandoned out here decades ago. It's done up like an old west main street.

You know, flat-faced building facades painted different colors that were once bright, with signs and shingle boards hanging out front that still have faintly legible words painted on them, like saddlery and dry goods, saloon. If you've seen any old western movies, you know the drill. A man named Pablo found himself out here not long ago, wandering around that old film set. It was built back in the 50s for a western that had never been released. A film that some people say was cursed. Strolling down the warped old boardwalk,

Pablo could understand why anything filmed out here would get a cursed reputation. The whole set had a funny, silent feeling. Something like it was listening. It was so hot and so lifeless that the usual sounds of bugs and birds were absent, and there wasn't any wind. Just intense heat, and silence, and the smell of scalded sand. Every time the old lumber of the sets creaked in the sun, Pablo would spin his head in that direction, as if expecting to see someone there. And once there was a sound, sudden, like something falling over onto a wood floor or a shutter, slamming against the side of a house in a breeze.

But there wasn't any hint of a breeze. Of course, there were a thousand other possible explanations, but the noise made Pablo jump through the nearest doorway. It happened to be the only door on that set that actually had a room built behind it. The old saloon facade. Maybe they'd filmed some interiors in there. The old-fashioned swinging doors were still on their hinges, and Pablo winced at the loud creak they made as they swung to and fro behind him. It didn't seem right to break the sun-baked silence of the place. The inside of the room was dim in contrast to the blazing sun out front.

Pablo took his sunglasses off, put them in his pocket, and looked around the bare space. Vacant old windows with shreds of faded fabric hanging in them, probably the remains of backdrops, and an empty doorway leading out the back to some narrow space between the room and the hill behind. The floor was mounded with fine, wind-blown sand that rippled in arcs outward from the entrance door in a pattern unbroken except... except for there were footprints in it. Footprints? Huh.

These footprints were the first sign Pablo had seen of any other visitors to this lonely, oppressive place. He leaned over to study the marks in the sand, but he couldn't make much out of them. Sand doesn't hold impressions well. There was no telling how old the footprints were. They could have been made the minute before or a month ago. But it was easy to see where they led. Out through that empty back doorway. Pablo's curiosity warred with

his... his what? Caution? No, it was something more than that. An instinct. A feeling that something was very wrong here. That something terrible was coming. A feeling of impending doom. Pablo tried to ignore it, but then... Did you see that? Pablo looked up from the footprints, toward the empty doorway at the back of the room. Had something... had someone just walked past it?

Someone. A shadow, moving fast and silent. Pablo listened hard, but there was nothing to hear. He'd imagined it. He was seeing things. He tried to tell himself that, anyway, but... Pablo moved slowly across the room, toward the doorway, staring at it as he went. Sand squeaking under his feet was the only sound. As he drew closer, he saw that the doorway was lower than he'd expected, or the sand on the floor was higher.

He had to duck his head to pass through the arch. And just as he did, he sensed something moving on the other side of the door. Moving from one side, fast, toward him. He started up and back, smacked his head on the doorframe, stumbled backward into the sand-blown room. And before he could get up, before he could make another move, the thing was through the door and on him. And the thing was Jack, Pablo's friend who'd convinced him to come out here in the first place.

Jack was always going on and on about how old film sets like this were treasures. Remote time capsules of the movie industry, abandoned in locations where it had been too expensive to break them down and truck them out. Anyway, now Jack was even more excited than he had been before. Look at this, Jack said, thrusting some small object at Pablo. I found them right back there on the ground. Check it out. When Pablo didn't check it out, but just stood there rubbing the back of his head and muttering, Jack eventually had the sensitivity to ask him if he was okay. Pablo didn't answer, but snatched out of Jack's hand the thing that he'd found.

It was just a pair of disposable sunglasses. The cardboard kind with the flexible cellophane lenses. Pablo glanced at this little piece of uninteresting old trash and then back up at Jack. Oh, Pablo said, giving Jack a withering look. Wow. He tried to hand them back, but Jack was still all excited. "'No, no,' Jack said. "'Try them on.' Pablo skeptically obeyed,

but when he put the glasses on, he couldn't see a thing. "'Oh, the lenses must have gotten darker with age or something.' "'Nuh-uh. They're supposed to be that dark,' Jack said. "'Those are the kind of glasses they gave out to people watching bomb tests back in the 50s. That proves the rumors that the cast and crew out here were close enough to watch a test explosion. They had to have been exposed to some of that fallout. That's got to be why so many of them got sick, even died so soon after the production. Pablo smiled patiently. Okay, sure. What a discovery.

You can write an article for some film magazine about it. Now, can we get through the rest of this place and then get back to some kind of civilization before sundown? And then there was a crash and a clatter from some near distance that turned both their heads. It sounded like several long pieces of lumber tumbling over onto something metal. crash and a clatter from some near distance that turned both their heads. It sounded like several long pieces of lumber tumbling over onto something metal. You can blame wind and wild animals for some noises, but there was no wind, and they'd seen no animals. Pablo didn't like it one bit, but Jack gave a scared, excited little grin, and he moved away toward the sound. Pablo watched him go, then shook his head and shambled to keep up.

The only thing in the direction the sound had come from was an old set, made up to look like a Spanish mission. One half of the mission's large wooden gate leaned open, seemingly broken at its hinges, so it was easy to walk into the courtyard. Inside they found a jumble. Parts of the inner wall finished in convincing detail, while other places were bared at the gray ribs of the two-by-four framing. There were some piles of sun-bleached old junk here and there, but nothing obvious that

would have made the crashing sound they had heard. Well, that was more than enough investigation for Pablo. He didn't know and he didn't care what made that sound. The heat and silence of the whole place made him feel stretched and thin, like a dried-up husk that would roll away on the next hot breeze, if only one would blow. He kept glancing back at the big gates of the mission, trying to reassure himself that one of the gates was broken, that there was no way for it to close, to close and trap them in here. Jack started to say something, and it was a sweet relief to have the silence broken by a human voice, but he didn't get two words out before he stopped abruptly as if listening to something, and silence reigned again.

Or was it silence? No. Papa began to hear it now. He thought. There was a sound, like a voice, but maybe a recording? Maybe a recording of a quiet, teeny little voice with something furtive and detached about it, playing somewhere within these walls. Jack started moving toward the sound, and Pablo decided he'd rather follow than stay anywhere in this place alone through one of the doors

on the inside of the courtyard they crept then into a strange labyrinth of darkness and light unfinished hallways open to the sky leading to empty old sets leading to unfinished rooms leading on and on until it seemed impossible that all this could fit

inside the mission building as it had appeared from the outside. And all the time that voice kept droning softly on, louder and louder, nearer and nearer, but never quite intelligible until... Jack rounded a corner and gave an involuntary shout, then fell back a step or two, staring through an archway. Pablo stood poised, frankly hoping to turn and run, but when Jack didn't run but stayed staring through the archway, Pablo reluctantly edged up beside him. There was a little room in there,

finished with plaster walls that had been painted to look old long before the years had made them so. A window let some light into it. It was done up like a section of cowboy bunkhouse. Worn wooden bunks with cheap old blankets, a black pot-bellied stove, a plain wooden rocking chair with one arm wiggled off, and leaning against the farthest corner of the room was a terribly realistic mannequin, like a waxwork. It was a life-sized figure of a man, a short, wiry,

very old man, dressed in the dusty colorless clothes and the sweat-stained hat of an extra in a Western movie. Above a ragged, patchy beard, the figure's eyes were open, staring glassly at the two of them. Prepared as he was by Jack's shocked cry, Pablo still shrank away from the strangeness of the scene. Nah, nah, nah, come on, that's it, Pablo said, taking hold of Jack's arm and giving it a tug. Come on, come on, let's get out of here. That's enough. That's too creepy. Haven't we... But he never finished his thought, because at that moment Pablo noticed the mannequin's lips. They hung open a little, showing the gaps among chipped brown teeth, but now they began opening wider, wider, and wider, and wider.

The mouth opened, and the eyes began doing the same, and the body began to squirm and shift back into the corner where the figure leaned until Pablo was forced to the difficult conclusion that what he'd taken for a mannequin at first glance was the real thing. An actual old man in dirty old clothes trying to hide in the corner of this forgotten room. The old man looked like he was just on the point of an enormous scream when Jack lifted his hands apologetically and spoke. It's all right. It's all right. It's all right. No trouble. We just wanted... We were just exploring. The old man's mouth snapped shut, but his eyes stayed wide.

They had the strangest look in them. There was terror there. The terror of a hermit in the presence of strangers. But there was something else, too. Some look that Pablo recognized, but he couldn't make sense of. Jack was still trying to calm the old hermit. It's all right. We just wanted to look around. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry if we startled you. But, you know, abandoned old film sets like this, they're... And with that, Jack was off on another of his gushing monologues about the cultural significance of these relics of film's golden age, etc., etc. The old man squirmed in the far corner, and his eyes kept jumping from the two strangers to the room's exit. He obviously wanted to edge to the door and bolt, but something kept jumping from the two strangers to the room's exit. He obviously wanted to edge to the door and bolt, but something kept him from doing it. Either rudimentary politeness or a fear of getting any closer to the pair. Then Jack stopped abruptly, squinted his eyes, and raised a finger toward the old man, and he said, But you, sir, you were in that movie, weren't you?

I swear, of course you were much younger, but I'm sure I recognize you. The old man looked nervous and shook his head, and his creaky voice said, What? Me? Oh, no, no, no. I was just a sound tech on that picture. Set the mics and things like that. Run cable.

Errands, too, whatever anyone needed. Oh, I was young. Yeah, sure, you know, I'd do anything to help. But the mics, though, that was the main thing. I don't remember how touchy they were in those old days. He went on talking in a quiet, nervous rush, but it was difficult to catch more than the odd word here and there. His voice had fallen back into the muttering that had led them to him.

But what are you doing out here? Jack interrupted him when he got the chance. The old man's eyes flashed as he jarred out of his memories into the present, and he shot Jack a look. Well, what are you doing out here? You and Pablo. It jarred Pablo to hear the old man use his name, but of course Jack must have mentioned their names in his big introductory spiel.

The old man was still talking. You know how working on that film was. It was cursed, wasn't it? Even when I got back to Hollywood All the other people from that movie Dying off, losing their minds Cancer, diseases, accidents I figured maybe coming back out here was the trick, you know

Maybe out here I'd fool that curse, I'd slip it And it worked, didn't it? Hmm? Didn't it? I'm still here, ain't I? More than I can say for a lot of them others. Stars, extras, directors, techs, you know. All gone too soon.

Too soon, one way or the other. The curse got them. That's what I'd say, the curse. You know, that whole film was cursed. As the old man's talk had drawn him deeper into his own mind again, Jack and Pablo had drifted further into the room. Pablo was getting a closer look at the details of the old set. The care that had been taken in staining and distressing the furniture.

The selection of the pictures that hung on the walls. It was one picture in particular that stood out from the others. Pablo leaned in to look closer. Jack sat attentively on the edge of the old rocking chair, just nodding and listening to the hermit's muttering. And when there was a moment's pause, Jack pulled the old cardboard and cellophane nuclear viewing glasses out of his pocket. He showed them to the old man and asked,

Hey, speaking of that curse that you mentioned, is it true you could see the atomic bomb tests from here? Did they really throw a party one night during the production to watch one of the explosions? The old man fell silent. A strange look quivered in his eyes, and the bottom of his eyelid suddenly shone with moisture. When he spoke again, he spoke softly. Yeah.

Yeah. I for sure didn't know about that. I don't like to think about it. Of course, there was that accident that night, you know. I guess it was an accident. Recklessness. I tried to stop it. You know that. You...

Two fellas went out on the desert and I got too close somehow. They hushed all that up, of course, but I... Well, I figured you'd know all about it. That was when everything started, when everything really went wrong. More than bad luck, you know, just a... It was a curse, that's all you could call it.

A curse. A curse. Pablo didn't hear any of this. Jack's last question or the old man's answer. He hadn't been listening. Hey, Jack, look at this. Pablo said, but Jack didn't answer. Hey, Jack, look at this old picture.

Pablo said again, and he turned his eyes into the room. But Jack wasn't there. The old man was still in the corner, mumbling to himself, and the rocking chair where Jack had been was rocking back and forth, but no Jack. Hey, where did Jack go? Pablo asked the old man. The old man looked at Pablo, and Pablo finally realized what had been behind the fear in the old man's eyes since he'd first seen them. Recognition. The old man was looking at Pablo like he knew him, but how was that? Pablo asked the question again, weakly, in a fading voice. Where'd Jack go?

The old man flared up at that. Jack went out on the desert. Out on the desert with you, the fool. You both went. That night, just before the blast, the big test. I told you not to. I told you both I couldn't stop you. So why do you keep coming back?

Why do you keep coming back to me? Why? Why? I couldn't stop you. I tried. I tried. You know I tried. The old man kept muttering to the empty little room,

and his eyes kept looking so deep inside himself, it was impossible to tell what he saw. But there was no one else in the room with him anymore no jack no pablo except except in that old black and white photo on the wall the one the film crew had taken at the start of the production way back when pablo and jack grinned out of that photo. Not far from a wiry kid who had no idea back then that he'd live out his days as a hermit on this harsh desert, trying and failing to escape the curse. To be continued... memories reappearing to him. Or something else. Maybe it was this desert itself. When so used to being left alone, maybe it prefers things that way.

Maybe what seems like a curse to us is just the desert's way of keeping its secrets. There may be ancient things at work out here that are more powerful than we're meant to understand. But then again, maybe it was a time slip or something like that. And I'll tell you what, if I could go back in time, back to when I was a kid, I know exactly what I'd pick to take back there with me. You probably already guessed it. Yes, yes, that's right. A Mighty Mogul jacket by Columbia, of course. Columbia designed the Mighty Mogul series specifically for active outdoor kids like

I was. And they built in those extra layers of warmth, dryness, and durability that being a kid outdoors demands. Plus, I was always outgrowing my jackets but the mighty mogul features the incredible outgrown system that lets you extend the sleeve by an inch and a half whenever you want and suddenly your favorite jacket that was almost too small fits you perfectly again and of course Columbia's mighty mogul jackets have all the top quality features you've come to expect from Columbia warmth wear Om. OmniHeat Infinity Lining that uses an expanded pattern of thermoreflective gold dots to keep you extra warm in cold conditions. Omnitech critically sealed seams that prevent moisture from seeping into essential areas while

using waterproof breathable fabric so you stay dry and comfy in the rain. And reflective details to increase low light visibility. The list goes on and on. Go try on a Columbia Mighty Mobile or any other great Columbia gear at your local REI or online at rei.com. Anyway, I'm not sure if the curse is real or not, but I know I'll be cursing if I don't get in my sleeping bag soon. If you happen to wake up later in the night and you see one faint light shining from a window down there at the base of that mountain where that old abandoned film set is, well, there are enough mysteries on this desert to keep anyone awake at night. Some people are bound to serve science,

and from their command bunker deep underground, our executive producers Paolo Motola and Joe Crosby are gathering valuable data about the shockwaves that each Camp Monsters episode creates when it drops. Our producer Jenny Barber and senior producer Hannah Boyd are high overhead in an observation plane, recording the whole thing for posterity. Our sound designer Nick Patri is in charge of the detonation itself, making sure it sounds just right. And standing out there on the salt flats, with only some dark glasses for protection, is yours truly, writer and host Weston Davis. T-minus three seconds?

Yee-haw! Wahoo! This is the part of the show where we remind you that the tales we tell on Camp Monsters are just tales. Sure, some of them may be based on the rumors that swirl around certain 1950s movie flops but it's up to you to decide what may be a curse and what's just a case of terrible casting join us next week when we go down to a riverbank on the kind of day where the wind blows your hair in your face and the sun wrestles with

the clouds and we'll see something up ahead right on the edge of the water right where the rushing river meets the shore and maybe we'll make the mistake of going down there if we do then it won't just be the sun wrestling the clouds that day it It'll be us, wrestling for our lives with the river itself, or with something in it. Join us again around the campfire, won't you? Until then, please subscribe, and take a moment to rate, review, and share Camp Monsters with your friends. Or your enemies, even, if you think they need a good scare. It's your spreading the word that's kept us recording.

Thank you.