Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Our Shortie Halloween Spooktacular

Episode Date: October 30, 2019

Join us today as we read three short horror selections from Ambrose Bierce.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey friends when you're staying at an Airbnb you might be like me wondering could my place be an Airbnb and if it could what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home now The extra income helps pay her mortgage. So yeah, you might not realize it But you might have an Airbnb too find out what your place could be earning at air bnb.ca Hey and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck. There's Terry. Let's get reading Yeah, this year we decided to do a little shorty Halloween too Because you know, we did our short stuff on Ambrose beers Mm-hmm started poking around his short stories and he wrote some super short ones

That are kind of tailor-made for this. I think yeah It's almost like he was born in the 19th century thinking one day Josh and Chuck are gonna have short stuff I want to give them something to work with maybe so So to prepare everyone for a Halloween spooktacular, which will be out tomorrow We wanted to do this. That's right Chuck. You want to start? Yeah, what's um, we'll start with the story one summer night. This is a good one. This is a good one. Here we go One summer night by Ambrose beers The fact that Henry Armstrong was buried did not seem to him to prove that he was dead

He had always been a hard man to convince That he really was buried the testimony of his senses compelled him to admit His posture flat upon his back with his hands crossed upon his stomach and tied was something that he easily broke Without profitably altering the situation the strict confinement of his entire person the black darkness and profound silence made a body of evidence impossible to Controvert and he had accepted it without cavill Henry Cavill But dead no

He was only very very ill He had with all the invalid's apathy and did not greatly concern himself About the uncommon fate that had been allotted to him No philosopher was he just a plain commonplace person Gifted for the time being with a pathological indifference the organ that he feared consequences with was torpid So with no particular apprehension for his immediate future He fell asleep and all was peace with Henry Armstrong before we go on here check I just want to point out so this man has come to his senses in a coffin. Yes

Been like well, I guess I'm dead and I went to sleep. Yeah, but then then he went to sleep. Yeah, that's some mellow goal Totally, you want me to pick up here, please But something was going on overhead. It was a dark summer night shot through with Infrequent shimmers of lightning silently firing a cloud lying low in the west and pretending a storm These brief stammering illuminations brought out with ghastly distinctness the monuments and headstones of the cemetery and Seemed to set them dancing It was not a night in which any credible witness was likely to be straying about a cemetery So the three men who were there digging into the grave of Henry Armstrong felt reasonably secure

Two of them were young students from a medical college a few miles away The third was a gigantic man known as Jess For many years Jess had been employed about the cemetery as a man of all work And it was his favorite pleasantry that he knew every soul in the place From the nature of what he was now doing It was infurable that the place was not so populous as this register may have shown it to be Back to you Charles back to you Outside the wall at the part of the grounds farthest from the public road

Were a horse in a light wagon waiting The work of excavation was not difficult the earth with which the grave had been loosely filled a few hours before Offered little resistance and was soon thrown out So they're grave robbing here, right? Oh, yeah, it ties in very nice to do our episode on grave robbing. That's right Removal of the casket from its box was less easy But it was taken out for it was a prerequisite of Jess who carefully unscrewed the cover and laid it aside Exposing the body in black trousers and white shirt at that instant the air sprang to flame Cracking shock of thunder shook the stunned world and Henry Armstrong tranquilly set up

With inarticulate cries the men fled in terror each in a different direction For nothing on earth could two of them had been persuaded to return But Jess was of another breed in the gray of the morning the two students pallid and haggard from anxiety and with the terror of their adventure still beating tumultuously in their blood Met at the medical college. You saw it cried one. God. Yes. What are we to do? They went around to the rear of the building where they saw a horse attached to a light wagon Hitched to a gatepost near the door of the dissecting room Mechanically, they entered the room on a bench in the obscurity sat Jess. He rose grinning

I'm waiting for my pay. He said stretched naked on a long table lay the body of Henry Armstrong The head defiled with blood and clay from a blow with a spade Wow, so Jess took care of business, huh? He did. He said, are you gonna sit up right now? Well, I'm trying to make some money. No, we're not gonna have that. We're going to put you back in the grave Well, that was great, but we have more to come everyone We have one more short story from the great Ambrose beers that we will read after these commercial messages On the podcast pay dude the 90s called David Lacher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show

Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces We're gonna use hey dude as our jumping off point But we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it It's a podcast packed with interviews co-stars friends and non-stop references to the best decade ever Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy blowing on it and popping it back in As we take you back to the 90s listen to hey, dude The 90s called on the iHeart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, I'm Lance Bass host of the new iHeart podcast frosted tips with Lance Bass The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself? What advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh god

Seriously, I swear and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you Oh, man, and so my husband Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step Oh, not another one. Mm-hmm kids relationships life in general can get messy You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so tell everybody ya Everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye Listen to frosted tips with the Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts All right, so Chuck we're gonna do president of hanging. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. I'm gonna start this one. All right, take it away

An old man named Daniel Baker living near Lebanon, Iowa Was suspected by his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had obtained permission to pass the night at his house This was in 1853 when peddling was more common in the Western country than it is now and was attended with considerable danger The peddler with his pack traversed the country by all manner of lonely roads and was compelled to rely upon the country people for hospitality This brought him into relation with queer characters some of whom were not altogether Scrupulous in their methods of making a living murder being an acceptable means to that end It occasionally occurred that a peddler with diminished pack and swollen purse would be traced to the lonely dwelling of some rough character And never could be traced beyond

This was so in the case of old man Baker as he was always called Such names are given in the Western settlements only to elderly persons who are not esteemed To the general disrepute of social unworth has affixed this special reproach of age a peddler came to his house And none went away and that is all that anybody knew All right, so we're talking about Peddlers being murdered on the road. I have to say Ambrose Beers makes me look succinct Yeah, he can write a paragraph about like a lightning bolt flashing in the sky in parentheses All right, here we go

Seven years later the Reverend Mr. Cummings a Baptist minister well known in that part of the country was driving by Baker's farm one night It was not very dark. There was a bit of moon somewhere above the light veil of mist that lay along the earth Mr. Cummings who was at all times a cheerful person was whistling a tune Which he would occasionally interrupt to speak a word a friendly encouragement to his horse Get on boy like that That's friendly As he came to a little bridge across the dry ravine. He saw the figure of a man standing upon it

Clearly outlined against the gray background of a misty forest The man had something strapped on his back and carried a heavy stick Obviously an itinerant peddler His attitude had in it a suggestion of abstraction like that of a sleepwalker Mr. Cummings reigned in his horse when he arrived in front of him gave him a pleasant Salutation and invited him to a seat in his vehicle if you're going my way He added The man raised his head looked him full on the face

But neither answered nor made any further movement the minister with good-natured persistence Repeated his invitation at this the man threw his right hand forward from his side and pointed downward as he stood on the extreme edge of The bridge mr. Cummings looked past him over into the ravine saw nothing unusual and withdrew his eyes to address the man again He had disappeared Wow I Think you can take us home Okay, the horse which all this time had been uncommonly restless gave at the same moment a snored of terror and started to run away Before he had regained control of the animal the minister was at the crest of the hill a hundred yards along

It's like a football field. That's right He looked back and saw the figure again at the same place and in the same attitude as when he had first observed it on the 20-yard line then for the first time He was conscious of a sense of the supernatural and drove home as rapidly as his willing horse would go on Arriving at home. He related his adventure to his family and early the next morning Accompanied by two neighbors John white Corwell and Abner razor surprise. He didn't talk about those guys here He returned to the spot They found the body of old man baker hanging by the neck from one of the beams of the bridge

Immediately beneath the spot where the apparition had stood a thick coating of dust Slightly dampened by the mist covered the floor of the bridge But the only footprints were those of mr. Cummings horse In taking down the body the men disturbed the loose freeable earth of the slope below it Disclosing human bones already nearly uncovered by the action of water and frost They were identified as those of the lost peddler at the double inquest The coroner's jury found that Daniel Baker died by his own hand while suffering from temporary insanity and that Samuel Moritz was murdered by some person or persons to the jury

unknown The end One of the least satisfying endings of any short story Samuel Moritz. They didn't even name the guy until that point Oh, yeah, I thought that was great. I mean, I love Ambrose beers for some reasons But not for that reason, you know what I mean get the feeling that like at the end of that book He's just like face down in a Like a methadone torpor right and a trough of whiskey Well Chuck, I think that was short stuff, huh? That's right special super short Halloween edition

The point of this is to get your prime for tomorrow's spooktacular. So don't miss it everybody and Because I said don't miss it everybody that means short stuff is Yeah, stuff you should know is a production of I heart radios how stuff works for more podcasts from my heart radio Visit the I heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows?