Creepy - Day 32 - The 32nd of October & The Tell-Tale Heart

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

The 32nd of October***Written by: Thomas Mavroudis***The Tell-Tale Heart***Written by: Edgar Allan Poe***Tickets for the "Creepy" live show can be purchased at: https://bit.ly/BloodyFM***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Pacific Obadiah***Title music by Alex Aldea***Intro/Outro Narration by Joe Stofko Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the bloody disgusting network. Fine, but just one more. No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous, chilling, and disturbing creepy pastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Creepy presents the 31 Days of Horror. Day 32. The 32nd of October. Written by Thomas Mavrodis. On the 32nd day of October, we take the Halloween decorations down in the reverse. order of how we put them up. If you want to get to November 1st, that's how it has to be done. Naturally, the first thing we do is remove the jack lanterns.

Our homemade candles last roughly six hours, so rarely do we need to snuff them out. We take the pumpkins out back, line them up along the brick wall adjacent to the incinerator. The incinerator is fragrant with the year's mold, leaves, and other leftovers. Walking back over the crisp frosted ground, we can sometimes hear the worms wriggle down from the sky and bite into the already decaying vegetable flesh. Then we disassemble our tableaus in the front yard. We undress the porch scarecrowes, collect their insides in a garbage bag to be incinerated later. We wipe clean the insides of their heads, fold them nicely with their dusty clothes, and tape them back into their boxes. We take the vampire from his coffin, re-wrapped the sun.

silver chains around him so his free arm is tucked back secure against his desicuted chest. We cut down the corpses hanging from the trees and pull up all the bones from the empty flower planters. We lay these remains alongside the vampire back in the coffin so it won't be alone. After that, someone, not me, pulls the layers of spider webs off the fence and shrubs. The spiders go about the rest of their business for the year. A few of them make their way back inside the house. Finally, we shake the ghost free from the sheets dancing and shuddering on the lawn. Next, the inside of the house.

The bats are anxious to come down, but they can't yet. First, we walk the witch away from the bedroom window. She isn't ready to go back to the attic. She never is. She bribes us with wishes. Then she threatens us. Then she begs. We hear her weeping till Martian Ma.

We gather the mice and rats and crows from the dining room and kitchen and feed them to the cat before we send them back into the walls. We take the rotting arms out from between the couch cushions and put them back into the deep freezer. We unplug the zombie that rise throughout the house, growling and screaming. We wipe it down with disinfectant and return it to the crypt in the basement. We clean the blood. So, so much blood. Blood splashed on every window and mirror. Bloody handprints on the doors and hand railing.

Bloody footprints up the stairs. Blood staining the sinks. Streaks of blood across the shower curtain. Even drops of blood on the toilet seat. Finally, we can take down the bats pinned and dangling from the ceiling. But the bats are already gone. Someone's in trouble now. Someone's going to pay for this.

We gather in the living room, point fingers at each other. One of us is lying. for the first time any of us can recall the witch up in the attic is snickering. And where are the bats, we wonder. Let's fix this, one of us says. What do we do? One of us cries. We shout together at once, a nonsensical voice of chaos and futility. All of us are right and all of us are wrong.

One of us slaps another. One of us spits in the other's face. We try to calm the household down, and then we scatter, frustrated and scared. One of us is joyful. One of us annoys themselves with an oil from the pantry, takes a legal pad from the junk drawer, draws a magic circle, crosses it out, and starts again. One of us takes the bowl of guacamole from the refrigerator

and stuffs their throat with chips and dip. One of us takes a cheese knife from the kitchen sink and plunges it into their left eye. Another one of us squeezes behind the couch and cowers. Outside, the ghosts have come back already. They stare at us through the windows. Their moans are winter storm winds. The fireplace erupts in flame and smoke.

A black thing unfolds and stretches out from beneath the grate, striding to the front door and out. We follow it outside. The ground roils with one. worms and centipedes and crunches under our boots. In the sky are the bats. All of them. From all of history.

The black sky is slated with bats and we can barely make out the new moon beyond, clotted in its trajectory. The black figure, shivering like static, looks down the street one way, then the other, and disappears. A blast of cold air disturbs the yard. It smells sweetly of fermentation at first, then sours with animal decomposition. A howl, part human, part Lupin, part something else, tears through the flutter of leathery wings overhead. Knowing exactly what we will see, we turn to the house and look at the witch up in the bedroom window.

She's smiling so big. Her toothless mouth is as dark as the stuck moon. She points to the neighbors on either side of us, to the houses across the street. They're not there. We are beyond the veil. It's over, one of us sobs when we go back inside. The cat is sitting in one of the parlor chairs,

one leg crossed over the other. He lights a briarwood pipe and the room fills with a scent of sulfur. He takes a pair of glasses from his face and says, You're quite right. It is over. And it's just begun. It's exactly what you wanted. We look at each other. Who is he speaking to? I'm speaking to you, of course, he answers. His voice is soft and velvety like fine dirt. His teeth are larger and sharper than we remembered from earlier. From when he was arched in the bay window, fur raised, a silent yell frozen in his mom.

A hand caresses the back of our heads and snatches a hair. The witch limps over to the cat, gives him a single strand from her crabbed clutch. Which one, he asks. The witch points. The cat smiles. Oh, very nice. He rolls the hair into a ball and puts it in his pipe. Very nice indeed.

Now, let's have some four. fun, shall we? When the lights go out in the house like a candle blown out, we fall. We fall forever in the darkness of the new moon, tickled by the fur of bats.

Maybe this really is what we wanted, after all, for your bonus episode. Creepy presents The Tell-Tale Heart, written by Edgar Allan Poe. True. Nervous. Very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am. Why will you say that I'm mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of

hearing acute. I heard all things in heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then? Am I mad? Hocken and observe how healthily, how calmly I can tell you the whole story. It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain. Well, once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object? There was none. Passion? There was none.

I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold, I had no desire. I think it was his eye. Yes, it was this. One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture, a pale blue eye with a film over it.

Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold, and so by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man and thus rid myself of the eye forever. Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. Seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded, with what caution, with what foresight, With what dissimulation I went to work. I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it. Oh, so gently.

And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern. All closed, closed, so that no light shone out. And then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in, but it slowly, very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. Hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed.

Would a madman have been so wise as this? Well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously. Oh, so cautiously, cautiously, for the hinges creaked. I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. This eye did for seven long nights. every night, just at midnight. But I found the eye always closed, and so it was impossible to do the work,

for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his evil eye. And every morning when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name and a hearty tone, and inquiring how he had passed. the night. So you see, he would have been a very profound old man indeed to suspect that every

night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept. Upon the eighth night, I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch his minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my own power. of my sagacity, I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph, to think that there I was, opening the door little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea, and perhaps he heard me, before he moved on a bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I drew back, but no. His room was black as pitch with the thick darkness, for the shutters were closed, fastened

through fear of rubbers. And so I knew he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily. Steadily. I had my head in and was about to open the lantern when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening and the old man sprang up in the bed crying out, who's there? I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle,

and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bat, listening. Just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall. Presently, I heard a slight groan and knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief, oh no. It was the low, stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe.

I knew this sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it was welled up from my own bosom, deepening with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him.

He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself, It is nothing but the wind in the chimney. It is only a mouse crossing the floor. Or it is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp. Yes, he has been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions, but he had found all in vain. All in vain because death, in approaching him,

had stalked with his black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. dumb, and it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel, although he neither saw nor heard, to feel the presence of my head within the room. When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little, a very, very little crevice in the lantern. so I opened it. You cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily!

Until, at length, a single dim ray like the thread of the spider shot from out the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye. It was open, wide, wide open, and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I sighed with perfect distinctness, all the dull blue with the hideous veil over it that chilled the very morrow in my bones. But I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person, for I had directed the ray as if by instinct precisely upon the damned spot. And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses? Now I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch-mix when enveloped in cotton.

I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldiers into courage. But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime, the hellish tattoo of the heart increased.

It grew quicker and quicker and louder and louder every instant. Two men's terror must have been extreme. It grew louder, I say louder every moment. Do you mark me well? I have told you that I am nervous, so I am. And now at the dead hour of the night, I'm the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange and noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. If for some minutes longer I refrained and stood still.

But the beating grew louder, louder. I thought the heart must burst, and now a new anxiety seized me, the sound would be heard by a neighbor. The old man's hour had come. With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leapt into the room. He shrieked once, only once. In an instant, I dragged him to the floor, I pulled a heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily to find the deed so far done.

But for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me. It would not be heard through the wall. At length, it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone. Stone dead.

I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. his eye would trouble me no more. If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily but in silence. First of all, I dismembered the corpse.

I cut off the head and the arms and the legs. I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the board so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye, not even his, could have detected anything wrong. There was nothing to wash out, no stain of any kind, no blood-spot, whatever. I had been too wary for that, that tub had caught all. When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o'clock, still dark as midnight.

As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbor during the night, suspicion of how a play had been aroused. Information had been lodged at the police office, and nay, the officers, have been deputed to search the premises. I smiled. For what had I to fear? I bade the gentleman welcome.

The shriek I said was my own in a dream. The old man I mentioned was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search, search well. I led them at length to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room and desired them here to rest from their fatigues while I myself,

in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim. The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears, and still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct. It continued and became more distinct.

I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling. feeling, but it continued and gained infinitiveness, until it liked I found that the noise was not within my ears. No doubt I now grew very pale, but I talked more fluently and with a heightened voice, and yet the sound increased and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound. Much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath, and yet the officers heard it not.

I talked more quickly, more vehemently, but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles in a high key and with violent gesticulations, but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides as if excited to fury by the observations of the men, but the noise steadily increased. Oh, God, what could I do? I foamed, I raved, I swore.

I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting and grated upon the boards, but the noise arose overall and continually increased. Louder, louder, louder. And still the men chatted pleasantly and smiled. Was it possibly they heard not? Almighty God, no, no, they heard, they suspected they knew. They were making a mockery of my horror. This I thought and this I think. But anything was better than this agony.

Anything was more tolerable than this derision. I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer. I felt that I must scream or die. And now, again, hark, louder, louder, louder, louder, louder. Villains! I shrieked. Dissemble no more. I admit that de-tear up the planks.

Here! Here is the beating of his hideous heart! From everyone here at Creepy. Happy Halloween. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit Creepypod.com. You can also follow us at Creepypod on social media,

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