Stuff You Should Know - SYSK The Podcast: Special Halloween Bonus Episode 2016, The Sequel – From Hell

Episode Date: October 31, 2016

Lock your doors and grab something heavy to defend yourself, like a candlestick or something, because Josh and Chuck are going to scare the wits out of you, courtesy of a story from The Grabster and listeners who submitted two-sentence horror. Scary! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher 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. 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. 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. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. 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 Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast from hell. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry's over there.

So that makes the Stuff You Should Know, the podcast special Halloween bonus episode 2016, the sequel. I think we've called this something different every year from spooktober to spooktacular, spooktacular. That was a good one. I think you're gonna probably title this one, so I just, I can't wait to see myself.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to give it some real thought. How about live from hell? From hell. Speak for yourself. You feeling good about this one? I always feel good. I've got my traditional Halloween hot toddy. Oh, nice.

Put me with candy corn sprinkle on top. Candy corn and corn whiskey. It goes well together. Oh man, heated up. Yeah, you heated up with some margarine. Oh man, you're making me cry here. And some pine nuts, it's delicious. It's straight out of a Georgia mom's kitchen.

I wish. Man, you would get arrested if you tried to give that out to trick or treaters. Yeah. Rightfully. Yeah. So Chuck, we have, as we usually do, this is a special bonus episode.

It's an extra episode. Yeah. So it can come out on Halloween, it's beautiful. It's a gift from us, I guess you could say, as we do every year. And what we like to do is read a couple of short stories, scary stories, classic horror fiction usually. But this year, we're doing something different.

We're doing something contemporary, like your story last year. And the other little land yap to that is that this year's first story comes from the Grabster. Yeah, the great Ed Grabinowski who has written many, many of the House of Works articles over the years that we've based our episodes on and we've met Ed, he's in Buffalo, right?

Yeah, he's in Buffalo. And he wrote a great story and I just wanna warn, I feel like we need to warn this year, parents, this one is pretty legit, scary and creepy. So maybe you might wanna listen before you round your kids around the fire. To enjoy a Halloween hot toddy. Yeah, it's a pretty good one.

Again, I think the Department of Family and Children's Services should come to your house if you're giving your kids Halloween hot toddy. Yes, and just as a preview too, after this we did something else a little different. We sourced some two sentence horror stories from listeners the other day. And it was the thing that I found is a thing,

like the two sentence story, how creative can you be? Right. Creepy can you be in two sentences? And we picked out 20 of the best ones. And so big thanks already to everyone who contributed and sorry to the ones who did not get picked because a lot of more jokes. We appreciated those, but we tried to keep it real and creepy. Yeah, like we wanna scare the pants off

of people this Halloween. Yeah, so that's the plan for the next, what, 40 minutes? Something like that. Probably not even. Yeah, around there. We make no time promises. Right. So without further ado,

we're gonna start with the first story by Ed Grabinowski. It's called Extraneous Invocat. None of these little incidents meant anything to me at first. I drew no connections. It started in the middle of a fall afternoon, sunny and crisp. We were packing up the apartment to move.

After two years in the same tiny space, we were making a little more money and moving to a slightly nicer neighborhood. The living room was a maze of cardboard boxes stacked and taped and labeled or hanging open, half filled with the bits and pieces of life we'd collected over our few years together. I walked in from one of the two bedrooms

with an arm load of winter scarves and hats. Should we keep these out or do you think we'll manage to find them before it gets too cold out? I looked at Laura who has been over a box with her back to me, sunshone through the wide front windows onto her long, dark hair.

She shuddered then. Not a physical shudder, not like a seizure, more like the twitch you see when the film is about to break at a movie theater. She flickered. I blinked, thinking something was in my eye, but she was silent and oddly still, crouching low over the box.

Then I noticed her hair. Just a second ago, it had been swept sleekly across her neck and shoulders, soft and curled, but now it hung in thick, wet strings, hiding her face from my view entirely. It was all so strange and happened so quickly I don't really remember what I was thinking.

Mostly I was mildly irritated that she hadn't answered my question, but a numbness crept up my spine as I realized something was not right. Laura, louder this time. Perhaps she moved slightly, I wasn't sure, but she remained silent and my vague feelings of strangeness escalated quickly.

A note of panic crept into my voice, is something wrong? She let out a sound that I hesitate even to think about. The closest I can come to describing it is a sort of clicking sigh. At that moment, she shuttered twitched again and it seemed as though the room brightened. Without realizing there had been a change,

I saw that her hair looked as it had before and she was busily wrapping glasses and tissue paper and lining them up in a cardboard carton. My rising wave of dread crested then and when I called her name again, she mistook the note of urgency for anger. She turned frowning and snapped, what? I think I just stood there blinking stupidly at her

for a moment and already my mind had rejected the entire experience. I just zoned out there for a minute, sorry, I said. Should we pack these? A few days later, I called her at work. One of the other women in the office answered, no, Laura wasn't in. Yes, she was a little late coming back from lunch.

No, they didn't know where she'd gone. She didn't usually leave the office for lunch and she was hardly ever late for anything, but I didn't think twice about it at the time. Later that week, I happened to thumb through a local newspaper and a small article in the city news section caught my eye. Witness claims, stranger walks downtown streets.

Ha, ha, ha, ha. A homeless man was attacked on the city's west side yesterday afternoon, although police are having trouble getting a description of the attacker. Hale Thomas Donovan, 52, of No Permanent Address, reported the attack at 1.30 p.m., after passersby found him huddled on Dearborn Street

near the Cray Island Railroad Bridge. He was yelling incoherently and was, quote, visibly terrified, end quote, according to the police report. He was treated for trauma and release from Sisters of Mercy Medical Center, although witnesses believed the man was not physically injured. In his statement to police,

Donovan only said that he, quote, met a stranger, end quote, under the bridge. Police confirmed that they received two other reports that day of a, quote, strange person, end quote, on the city's west side. Nice. Thank you. The apartment was mostly packed up at that point.

We were living on frozen pizza, eaten off of paper plates for the next few days. Every night, we went to bed exhausted from packing and lugging boxes around. That night, I read in bed for a short while as Laura fell asleep beside me. She lay on her side or back to me. When I sat down on my book and turned out the light,

I leaned forward to kiss her good night. She made a soft, happy sound and snuggled back into me briefly. I was soon as sound asleep as she was. When I awoke, I had no idea what time it was. Our alarm clock had long since been packed and Laura was using her watch alarm to wake up for work in the morning.

It was still extremely dark. The only light of feeble blue glow from the streetlight outside filtered through shade and curtains. Guessing it was about 3 a.m., I stretched sleep-stiff muscles and turned over to face Laura. She still had her back to me,

sound asleep on her side. In the dim light, I could see the slow, shallow rising and falling of her breath. I reached out to gently stroke her hair until I fell back asleep. It was ice cold and soaking wet. Oh boy. I froze in place.

My body instantly rigid as the memory of the afternoon packing incident flooded me with terror. My throat was tight and dry. Adrenaline surging through me as I tried to keep my hands still, plotting how to withdraw without letting her know I was awake. I pulled my hand from that clammy mass

as slowly as I could, fighting the urge to recoil in a panic. My fingers were tingling from fear and another stronger numbness that spread down my arm as I tried to pull it back beneath the cover silently. Just then she made that chittering sound again. At this time I realized what it was.

She was laughing. I pressed myself hard against the wall on my side of the bed, heart slamming and skittering, arms pressed tight to my sides. My eyes were wide open, glaring into the darkness, watching the shape in the bed beside me for any kind of movement.

I didn't know what was lying less than two feet from me. I remained that way rigid with terror for quite some time. I didn't sleep. I don't think I even blinked. I never noticed a change, but at some point I heard a soft snoring, a familiar Laura sound. I relaxed somewhat,

but a few minutes later, when she stirred and rolled over, my every muscle pulled taut with apprehension. But it was just Laura, peaceful and sleep. My fear ebbed away and in the absence of adrenaline, my eyes refused to stay open. Although I slept soundly,

I woke with stiff, sore muscles. My shoulders ached and I remembered vaguely that I dreamt of being chased through my childhood neighborhood, desperately hopping fences and cutting through yards to escape some unseen pursuer. Laura came back into the bedroom

just before she left for work. She looked down at me with a look of concern. Did you sleep okay? She asked. You look pale. She reached out a hand to touch my cheek and I flinched. Looking confused and hurt, Laura stepped back. What?

She smelled the sleeve of her shirt. Do I smell bad? What's wrong? The unconscious jolt of fear brought the previous night's encounter back to the forefront of my mind. But already the defensive mechanisms of the human psyche were at work.

Diffusing the memory as I convinced myself it was part of my dream. No, it's not you. I think I was having a nightmare when I woke up and I'm still a little foggy. She gave a half smile and leaned down to kiss me goodbye. I reached up to give her a quick hug,

feeling the warmth of her body and her soft skin against my face. And she was gone. On the podcast, Hey Dude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the co-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. Oh, my husband, Michael. Hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander

each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. 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, yeah, 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 Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, bad things are happening in this relationship. Starting to pick up, isn't it? Yeah, it's every man's worst nightmare. The wife becomes a shapeshifting ghoul. Right, with wet hair.

That you can't get your hand out of. They don't call Ed the Grabster comma master of terror for nothing. All right, here we go. That night Laura left for a two-day conference in Memphis. I dropped her off at the airport and got back to the apartment around nine at night. There wasn't much to do since most of the packing was finished

and we were just waiting for the occupants of our new apartment to move out. I had a TV and a couch. Everything else was sealed in boxes. I ordered a pizza and settled in to watch a baseball game. At about 1 a.m. I woke up with a stiff neck. I'd fallen asleep at an odd angle on the couch. The game was long over.

An infomercial bathed the room in flickering bluish light. But I turned the volume very low so I couldn't hear what they were selling. Some kind of exercise equipment. It wasn't the infomercial or sore neck that awakened me, however. It was the early autumn chill that pervaded the apartment. Puzzled and still groggy, I sat up and realized

that the door to the apartment was open. Not good. No. At that moment I also noticed a foul odor like rotted meat. Very bad. Yeah, who wants that? I walked to the door seeing that the outer door

was also hanging a jar. It was gusty out and the night air was blowing straight down the hall. I closed both doors, certain that I hadn't forgotten to latch them shut earlier, but I could come up with no other explanation. Neither could I find any source for the smell, which was fading quickly.

There was literally no other food in the house and the garbage was outside in the dumpster. My 2 a.m. sleuthing skills exhausted. I gave up and went to bed. The night's sleep was uneventful. Maybe he farted. I think that's the subtext of the whole story. I think so.

They're both just farting on each other. On Saturday morning I picked Laura up at the airport. That night was to be our last at the apartment, but we were still in limbo. Everything packed, nothing to do but wait. Even the cable had been shut off. We spent the afternoon and evening seeing a movie and having dinner at a nearby restaurant.

The televisions over the bar, usually tuned to a ballgame, were buzzing with news about a recent murder. An old woman had been found mutilated in her home. They kept showing footage of a man in a suit, a detective, I guess, walking out of the house with his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide with shock. Our spirits were subdued when we got back home and before long we went to bed.

That night, that unbearable, unthinkable night started out much like before. Something woke me in the deepest hours. I had no sense of time, but it was very dark. I immediately knew something was wrong. I'd been having tense and disturbing dreams, partly from the news stories about the murder. Faceless men in suits knocking at my door,

walking around the house, peering into the windows, but something other than a nightmare was contributing to my malaise. She made the sound, that laughter, that hideous mind-wrenching sound no human could make. My body went numb with terror and I gasped out loud. Again, I shrunk to the far wall, pressed against it, my eyes frantically scanning the blackness for movement.

I couldn't imagine passing another night like that, straining to hear, praying that nothing happened, but I felt the bed shift. A gout of cold air reeking of rot bathed my face. The shape in the bed beside me rolled over. Ooh. Yeah, this guy's good. Yeah.

If I live for a thousand years, I will never forget that face. It was my wife's face, but corrupted, as though my wife was being worn by something that was not the same shape as her. The mouth was stretched in a wide rictus, literally from ear to ear, an inner set of black, oily lips

curled back in a manic smile, uncovering a row of impossibly large teeth. I could see things caught in those teeth. The eyes were huge, glistening black, no iris or pupil that nose was distorted in a thin ridge bone with narrow slits. The scalp and hair seemed to hang loosely as if partially detached from the skull beneath,

and yet the model gray skin of a thin neck disappeared into my wife's pale blue night shirt. It was an obscenity. It crawled across the bed toward me, unnaturally agile. Those eyes widened, the grin somehow stretching, the jaw working at a bizarre speed. Still that sound issued from its throat.

I tried to scream, but my throat was clenched in terror. A hand gripped my shoulder, terrifyingly strong and cold as ice. Its face was inches from mine now, the mouth opening wide. It screamed, there was a shrill screeching roar of deafening volume, so loud it made my eyes hurt, as it screamed it shook violently.

The cold red hair slailed and fell in thick ropes across the face, but the cold black eyes stayed focused on mine. Boy, Ed really paints a picture. It's gonna take a lot of corn whiskey and candy corn to wipe this one from everybody's mind. Wow. But we can try, can't we?

We met Ed's, was it wife or girlfriend? A wife. Lovely woman. Yes. Good luck to you. My hair's totally dry and of a normal temperature. And my husband's crazy, crazy talented. All right, here we go.

When I awoke, the room was flooded with sun. I have no idea what happened. I can only assume that I passed out from sheer terror. Laura was already up showering. I went to the other bathroom to wash a strange chemical taste out of my mouth. In the mirror, I noticed that thin trails of blood had seeped from the corners of my eyes, then dried.

Somehow I got through that day. I stayed busy with loading the moving van, unloading at the new apartment, unpacking. I avoided Laura. I didn't know what to think or what to do. I finally convinced myself that whatever had happened was probably related to the apartment itself. Since we were moving, I was escaping whatever it was.

But I woke up in the middle of the night again. We were sleeping on the mattress on the floor, surrounded by boxes. My heart was slamming in my chest as I looked at Laura. She seemed to be sleeping peacefully, lying on her side, facing away from me. That made it even more of a shock when I heard the sound, the laughter again.

It seemed so loud though. I tried to get up, get out of bed and away, but I could not move my limbs. The clicking laugh sound came again. This time I felt it. I felt it come from my own throat. Oh. My limbs began moving then, but I was not in control.

I was a passenger. I put my hand on Laura's shoulder, squeezing hard. It was my hand, but not my hand. Gray skinned and clawed. It woke her up. Hey, ow! As she rolled over and I began to pull out her shoulder, opened her eyes and screamed,

just as her arm tore free. I could see clearly. Her eyes had gone glassy with terror and pain, and her scream was soon cut short. I can only hope she went into shock before most of what came next. I was not in control, but I watched it all happen. Wow!

The end. All right. That is extraneous invo-cott by the great Ed Grabinowski. And chill bumps literally on my arms. Yeah, that was... I wonder what that thing's gonna do with the rest of its day. I don't know. What comes after that?

By the way, Mr. Protagonist, it's not the apartment. Right, yeah, that was wishful thinking. This is moving with you to the new apartment. He's like, it's fine. We'll just stay. The pure dark evil will just stay behind in this apartment for the next tenant to deal with. I'm sure it's just this crappy studio.

This two bedroom we're moving into will be great. Right. And what is the spear that stabbed Jesus Christ in the ribs doing under the bed? So, by the way, we're gonna get into our two sentence horror stories, but something jumped out at me if you're into this two sentence thing.

An inner set of black oily lips curled back in a manic smile and covering a row of impossibly large teeth. I could see things caught in those teeth. That's how you do it. Yeah, I thought it might even be unfair to be like Grabster, you got a two sentence story. He'd say pick out any two sentences of anything ever written.

And light a cigar. Oh, wow, boy, that was a good one. That was a good one. Man, I'm pretty psyched we used that one, Chuck. Does he have a lot of these? Yeah, he's one of the things he does is write horror. Oh, well, he might just become our guy. Next year, I'm not sure if it's gonna work,

but I found out that Stephen King has something called his dollar babies. Have you heard of this? No. He has a list of stories, short stories, like probably 20 of them on his website called his dollar babies that have not ever been optioned for anything.

And if you submit, and apparently it takes like a month to get responded to, so we didn't have time, but if you submit and say like, hey, I'm a student filmmaker, I'd like to make this as a project, and he'll say, fine, give me a dollar and have at it. That's awesome. So I might see if we can do a legit Stephen King one

next year for a buck. That is really cool, man. And we'll see, that's just neat that he does that now. Yeah. Dollar babies. Yeah, that's pretty cool. It's like Weird Al Yankovic tweeting the phone number, the payphone he's standing by.

You know, it's along the same vein. When did he do that in the 80s? No, no, not too long ago. He tweeted it and then whoever called first, he just sat and talked to us for like 20 minutes while he was waiting for a flight. That's pretty cool. Yeah, he's a cool guy.

If there's one thing that everybody knows about Weird Al, it's that he is deeply cool. Yeah. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher 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.

And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step.

Oh, not another one. 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, yeah, 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 Lance Bass

on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right. So like we said, we're going to finish up today with 20 two sentence stories that people sent in. And we appreciate the creativity. These are, we're probably going to critique them as we go because we're us.

Sure. But I think everyone left the name for the most part. I don't know where they were from, but some are abbreviated. Yeah, sure. Some have the pronunciation even. Yeah. And we tried to, I read a bunch of these on subreddits and I tried to weed out the ones that were plagiarized.

So if any of these turn out to be plagiarized, then shame on you. And I'm sorry to the original authors. Yeah, nice check. How's that? That's pretty good. A little shaming. Yeah, pre-shaming.

And I believe you've not been found out yet, but shame on you. So I believe we're also going to have a little creepy bed of ambient sounds here as well. If there's one thing Jerry does, it's horror. Yeah, it's here in the corner now. She's cranking up the ambient horror sound machine. Right.

There's a monkey with the symbols, but it's a real monkey. But it's dead. It's weird. All right, you can go ahead and take the first one there. OK. This one comes from Jamie Clark. No relation as far as I know. From only Texas.

Not related to that town either. Jenny walked into her home to see flowers on the dinner table with the note, I love to watch you sleep. She called to thank her husband, but was interrupted by the masked man's reflection in the base. Pretty good. Boom. I just thought it was creepy enough

that her husband would say I love to watch you sleep. Yeah, apparently they're into that kind of thing, though. They've got that, and they're like a whole fetish of pretending you're sleeping or dead. And then you're revived by the person who you're having conjugation with. I'm sure that's a thing. Conjugation.

Fetish is what it's called. All right, this one is from Canem Truex, or Truaw. Truaw. TRU-AX, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Truaw. That's a great name. Canem Truaw. And this one is wonderful, because it's nice and concise.

Only part of my wife came back. I wish I hadn't stopped payment on the check. Boom. Not bad. A lot of violence against women in horror. Have you ever noticed that? Yeah, it's a thing. Don't support it.

Yeah, let's kill some husbands. How about it? All right. You ready? Sure. This one comes from Murph, a buddy. Tyler Murphy from Rapid City, South Dakota. Murph.

Great guy, by the way, who we also met at the Denver show. Yeah, he gave me a ride home from the Denver show. Man. Drove me all the way to Atlanta. And then took a left and went up to South Dakota. OK, you ready for Murph's? Yeah. As I sat there feasting upon my freshly made ham sandwich,

it struck me as odd that I had no other name for it. I mean, it tastes like ham. But by what other name would I refer to the flesh of my mother? Woman, violence against woman. That's right. Tyler Murphy, school teacher. Putt-putt golf worker. For now.

All right, this one is from Sophie Court in Waterford, Ireland. And here we go, Sophie. She's been sitting in the same spot for three years. I dress her up, and we mourn her anniversary together. Nice. So far, that one's my favorite. It's pretty good. All of them have been great.

You did a good job curating these. That one's a good one. I appreciate that. Well, I didn't write it. Sophie appreciates that. This one comes from Donovan Stone from Sydney, Australia. But he includes the caveat that he wrote this while on holiday in Kyoto.

And then we should add the caveat that holiday means vacation. Right. And that on holiday means hopped up on sake in Tokyo or Kyoto. Kyoto, sake and tofu. You ready? Yep. Mom, what's that noise? Your mother's not coming home.

The voice replied. Thought of that on vacation. Man, dark days. Demented. All right, this one is from Scott W. of Unknown Origin. Who may or may not exist, frankly. Yeah. The creepy clown eagerly fulfilled my request

to make me a balloon animal. Then suddenly his face broadened with a sinister grin and did a swift motion. His razor-like teeth burst my latex skin. Nice. You are the balloon animal. Right. Managed to insert a joke in there, but it remains scary still.

I don't know what was the joke. Yeah, he wanted to be made a balloon animal. And it made him into a balloon animal. Find that funny. That's jokey, sure. OK. OK, this one comes from Raimi Fights from Indiana. Great name.

Nowhere in particular in Indiana, just Indiana. They are reproducing faster than anticipated, with teeth fully formed. Unusual indeed. Great one, yeah. Sounds like a lab notebook. All right, this is from Mary Abel in Houston, Texas. I woke with a start and my eyes scanned the room

for the source of the crash. A man crouched in the corner, and although his mouth was stitched close, I clearly heard him hiss. Run. Mm, indeed. That was good voice acting, too, Chuck. Appreciate that. This one is from Krista Korivo.

We got the pronunciation included. From Montreal, Quebec, Canada, currently occupied. Kneeling on the platform before my family and friends, I heard the sound of the guillotine descending, and I closed my eyes, bracing for impact. I feel no pain and am relieved there was a malfunction. However, as I breathe a sigh of relief, I slowly open my eyes and see the bloody stump of a neck

where my head used to be. Reference art podcast on that. Sure, very topic. What was it, do you stay conscious after decapitation? Yeah, apparently Krista thinks so. A lot of commas in that one. Yeah. Managed to extend it quite a bit.

That's right. Way to go, Krista. All right, this is from Andrew Butler of Unknown Origin. I'm so sorry, he said, as he released pressure from her neck wound. Thanks to the blood loss, she was gone before the stake entered her heart. I like how you made him sound almost sarcastic.

Oh, did I? Yeah, so sorry. OK, I'm up. This is from Thomas Burdino from Hutchinson, Kansas. After singing Happy Birthday, I told my five-year-old daughter to blow out the candles and make a wish. She sat frozen, unblinking as she stared emotionally at the candle flames.

And finally, she whispered, I wish for gasoline. I don't like that kid. Oh, you do? Sure. Fire starter. All right, Lauren Hellman from Montgomeryville, Pennsylvania. Her eyes fluttered, and the smell of earth pulled her further into consciousness.

A scream welled in her throat as she realized that her arms were pinned beside her in the blackness, and the air would not last. Man, nothing like a good buried alive story. Nope. And it was a her. I like that one. Do you ever see that they remade Alfred Hitchcock

presents in the 80s? Did you watch it? No. Oh, man, it was great. It was fantastic, right? And one of the ones that I remember more than any other was one where these two prisoners had this deal where one of them would pretend like he was dead.

No, he was going to climb into the casket of a dead prisoner. That's a great idea. Get transferred out of the prison, buried, and then the other prisoner who was in charge of yard keeping or whatever would come dig him up like a half hour later, and then he would be set free, right? Well, the plan goes according to everything's going according to plan.

The guy crawls into the casket and encloses it, and then he gets buried, and he's got one match or something. And when he lights the match, he sees that he's in the casket with the man who's supposed to dig him up. Yeah. Love it. That old trick.

Yeah. All right, now you're up. And I think I just used a turn with that anecdote, don't you? Not enough, go ahead. OK, this one's from Dan Louisel from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Jones' heart was still racing, but as she jolted back to consciousness, she became aware that her feeling of sickening dread,

of trying to get away from an evil unseen force, was nothing but a terrible dream. She was relieved for a full second before she realized the sound that jarred her awake was the sound a car makes as it breaks through a rickety guard reel before she drove off the side of the cliff. Sleep driving. Quite a twist.

Yeah, I didn't see that coming. I didn't either. Well done on Louise's action. I've never seen that movie, is it good? Yeah, it's terrific. OK, I'll check it out. Talk about ahead of its time. Sure.

It's a feminist fantasy. Nice. All right, moving on. This is from, oh, this is from Hillary Lozar, our buddy Loes in Montana. Oh, yeah. Of the Flathead Lake cheese lozes. Man, the cheese.

And the Mike Lozar's. The whole Lozar clan. Fine people, also a teacher with a dark side. Nice. Here we go. With a horrible feeling of dread and a wretched, lighthearted tinkling sound, I fumbled for what seemed to be an eternity,

finally dropping the primitive key I'd worked so hard for weeks to fabricate, outside my cell door to be snatched and dragged down the drain by the hordes of rats waiting below. My execution is tomorrow at dawn. Bit of a run on, Loes, but well crafted. Plus, I appreciated her word tinkling. Yeah, yeah.

Gives the brain going. Sure does. That's one of those words that does that. Did you know that? Oh, that literally has an effect on your brain? Well, in my opinion. Oh, OK. This is from Brian Koh of Lake Stevens, Washington.

The monster hunter stared in shock as the swarm of ghouls raced past him, each bearing a look of horror. As they vanished into the murky night, he slowly turned to face what had terrified them. I like that one. Yeah, that's good stuff. The scary things are scared of something else?

Yeah, that's not good. Not good. That's not one of those situations where the enemy of your enemy is your friend. I think it's your toast is the ultimate outcome. You know what my brother used to do to me? We always hear great stories about Scott. This was how he tormented me.

I think he still does this occasionally when he remembers. I would be like, our bedrooms were upstairs. We had a Jack and Jill scene up there. And when I, you know, Jack and Jill bathroom bedroom situation. Right, right, but the scene was like that. And I would, when I would be going up the stairs, he would like be at the top of the stairs

and he would look in horror at something behind me. And I would bolt so fast up the stairs scared out of my mind and I wouldn't even look back. And he did that to me a lot. And you never caught on, huh? Or you just weren't willing to take the risk? No. One time it was true.

As a kid, it scared me. That's hilarious. Man. Man, Scott is the bomb. Yeah, it makes you like him even more. Where are we here? Matt Saylor, Salier. Is it mine?

Yes. OK. Yes, Matt Salier from Southwest Kansas. Doesn't matter where you are in Southwest Kansas. That's all the same. One giant town. They get it wrong, you know. The greatest trick I, the devil ever really pulled,

was convincing the world that God exists. The undulating amoeba of despair and madness made what amounted to a cackle before it reached forward. And I succumbed to the dark. Nice. OK, I'm up. I'm up. This is Taylor from Iowa, as generic as it comes.

It wasn't the fact that he ate the meat that surprised Harold, who knew that any other man would upon finding himself in such a sorry state of affairs, also find himself thusly tempted. No, it was the fact that he enjoyed it that surprised him that moonless winter night behind the medical lab. Yeah. That's where you get meat if you're a sicko.

Jess G in Pittsburgh. And I think Pittsburgh had a, I deleted it, but it had a exclamation point even. You deleted it. It's from Pittsburgh. A lot of might ruin the vibe, but we've already done that. Oh, yeah, long ago. All right, here we go.

It didn't matter how fast or how far he ran. He always woke up in the same place, in the same skin, and the same night bear. Good one, Jess. It's appropriately vague. Nice. This is from Jacob Riley Graves, who is either an author or a serial killer, from Wellsville, New York.

Another day, my pockmarked teenage face behind a faint blue monitor, reveling in the joys of the internet, safe and unaffected. In my periphery, the wall warps and lets out a pain scream. My sense of reality is torn asunder, and I am broken. That's a clever use of colons there instead of periods. It's like, don't put a period. Just put another dot ahead of it, and it's not a period.

That was good. I like it. Yeah. Way to go, JR. All right. We're going to wrap it up here with Michael McGuire in Northampton, Massachusetts. Every year on the day, the whole town

would gather to hear the song and the well. And every year on the day, the song would grow shorter, the girl's voice fainter. Boom! Sad. That is an amazing two-setting story. I think Michael McGuire, did you purposely end with what is arguably the best of all?

That was rando. That was really good. Nice choice. Yeah, very sad, too. And I agree with you, Josh. Too many women and girls getting punished here. Let's work on that and start cutting off arms of men. Yeah, it's true.

The thing is, though, is like it is a recurring theme in horror, violence against women. Usually, though, you can make the case that it is only a woman that survives any given horror movie, too. True. You know? Look what happened to Kevin Bacon.

Skewered. True. And what was that, Friday the 13th, Part 3? Yeah. And let's not even talk about what they do in minorities in horror movies. That's almost, it's not almost. That's a trope, beyond tropes at this point.

Right, exactly. So we should say the white woman survives. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah, well, if you have an explanation for this, we want to hear it. You can tweet to us at SOSK Podcast. You can hang out with me at Josh O'Clarke.

And you can hang out with Chuck on Facebook at Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can hang out with stuff you should know on Facebook, at facebook.com. And send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And I guess before we sign off, Chuck, we should say happy Halloween, right? Yeah.

Have a safe Halloween. Be careful out there. And can't wait to do this again next year. Yep. We'll see you out there on Halloween at our luxurious home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. Oh. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

visit howstuffworks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher 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 going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

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