The NoSleep Podcast - Nosleep Podcast #16

Episode Date: January 8, 2012

Our 16th episode of The Nosleep Podcast rings in the new year with tales of unsettling smiles, graveyard stalkings, and creep cadavers. Featuring horror stories from the Reddit.com horror writing community, these stories will keep you awake as the darkness of the night surrounds you. We are proud to welcome a new producer to the podcast. Cornelius de Groot (Redditor xebraphone) brings his audio engineering skills to the show to make the dark tales even more frightening. This episode features these stories: You Never Smile written by Thomas Burr (Redditor xdsxoblivious) and read by Max Glaspey (Redditor MonthlyMarmot).My Friend’s Mother written by Erik Hessmann (Redditor erikda777) and read by David Cummings (Redditor MikeRowPhone).Strangers in a Graveyard written by Matt Dymerski (Redditor M59Gar) and read by Max Glaspey.A Debt to the Dead written by Douglas Bramlett (Redditor writermonk) and read by David Cummings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Through the murky darkness of the night, when fear banishes sleep. It's the No Sleep podcast. Born from the nightmares of Reddit.com's No Sleep Forum, and featuring tales from Reddit's authors of horror, we present you with tales intended to frighten and disturb, and keep you awake as the night slowly creeps. passed. Her first tale is entitled, You Never Smile. The disciplined routine of a military academy is not easy to disrupt until a dark presence shows it's not there to follow orders. This tale

was written by Thomas Burr and is read by Max Glasby. It all started when I was 20 years old, living in suburban North Carolina. I was an officer in my ROTC unit and got offered the chance to participate as a cadre at a summer leadership class for high school students at the Citadel Military Academy. Of course, trying to prove myself to the colonel, I obliged and took the job.

We packed up all of our things, took a truck trailer combo down to the academy, and began to move in. That's when it started getting strange for me. I was on my room, room around 2 a.m. in my barracks when I heard footsteps outside. I knew I was the only one on that floor and looked at my doorway, only to see the light from the opposite room disappear. Confused and thinking that someone had gotten the wrong assignment, I decided to go see who was there, forgetting

about the footsteps. Knocking on the door, I heard nothing. No one was in the room, or no one was answering. Quickly, I retreated back to my bunk, grabbed my moonbeam, and my master key to unlock the door. Upon unlocking it, I swung the door open hard. No one was there. Only two dusty bunks, a pair of closets, and a pair of desks for the cadets to use for studies. Not being one to believe in ghosts and usually being able to trust my senses, I shrugged it off, thinking that fatigue was catching up with me. I walked back to my room, only to find that my door was wide open

and my bunk unmade, sheets folded in the corner of my room. Again, footsteps. The hairs on my neck began to stand up and I felt the malevolent presence nearby. Like any self-preserving person would do, I decided not to run and face what moved my things around my barracks.

Turning and shining my moonbeam out the door, it looked like a man was standing across the balcony in front of the room I had just checked. Just the shape of a man, with no defining features. I called out to him, asking why he was out past curfew. He smiled. I'll never forget what it looked like. I hate to use references, but it's impossible to explain exactly what it looked like. It's like the split-faced woman with the smile stretching ear to ear and then beyond the,

that. He had crooked, pointed teeth. I assumed it was a he because of the lack of curves he would find in a woman. He kept smiling at me for what seemed like hours, just a sinister, twisted smile that made me want to shit my pants. Suddenly, I blinked and he was gone from the balcony. I quickly barricaded myself in my room and began to look for my cell phone to call the colonel and let him know that someone was on the grounds. The lights died. All that I could see was that smile, grinning at me from the corner of my room.

I wanted to scream, to run, but I felt rooted to the spot. It got larger and larger until it seemed he was right in front of me, staring down and smiling. Such a brave young man, willing to look upon someone that everyone else fears.

I finally found the will to speak and all I could sputter was... Who are you? His smile grew larger and larger. I'm just a visitor. You with a friend. You'll know him when you see him. His head snapped back like he was called from afar and he disappeared from the room. I was shaken and all that came to mind was sleep.

I awoke the next morning with no recollection of the night before his conversation and began my morning duties of waking cadets, getting everyone out of their rooms, and making sure they all got to the chow hall on time. Everything went normally for a few days until one morning, while doing a headcount, I found that one person was missing, from the room directly across from mine. Going up to berate the cadet and run him downstairs, I pounded on the door to awaken him. No answer. We'll call him Gretch for preserving his memory.

Gretch, you have five fucking seconds to get on the quad before I come in there and stomp your ass down there from the fifth story. Again, no answer. Usually that would send cadets scrambling for their gear, trying not to face the wrath of an upset instructor. Stomping back to my room, I grabbed my keys and went to unlock his door. And smile, and smile. For some reason, that was all I could think about as I made my way back.

I'm coming in, Gretch, and your ass is mine. Kicking open the door, hoping to scare the cadet, I found that I was the one who was knocked flat on the floor. Hanging from a bedpost by his shoelaces with a metal bar laying at his feet, it was Gretch. His cheeks torn from ear to ear and a twisted smile. A voice suddenly filled my head and filled me with fear. I told you I was here with a friend.

You never smile enough. We can change that. The next tale is entitled, My Friend's Mother. When times are tough at home, a friend's family can offer support and comfort. But it can be rather uncomfortable if Mom isn't quite herself. This tale was written by Eric Hessman. and is read by David Cummings. Back in school, I had a good friend named Ryan,

and, well, he was my only friend. After school, we always went to his house to hang out. His house sat almost in the middle of a big grazing field, which mostly worked in our advantage, as it gave us a lot of room for playing outside. Since the house was in the middle of the field, you would have to follow a long driveway to get there. It was around 8 p.m., and a huge fight broke out between my parents and me.

I was frustrated and couldn't stand it any longer, so I called Ryan's house as I needed to break away from this mess. He picked up the phone and was surprised hearing from me at such a late hour. We were kids back then. But after hearing my story, he said I could come over, although he said he was going to be away at football practice until nine, so I would have to wait for him. I agreed. A mistake.

It was night and it was dark. I didn't mind the dark, but I never liked the road that led to his house. Its wavy pattern would sometimes make me sick, especially if I was traveling in a car. But now that was not the case. I was on my bike. The disturbing part of this story will not happen on this road, though. Parking my bike by the side of their empty garage, I walked up their front porch and, reaching the door, rang the bell.

The door opened almost as soon as my finger let go of the button, giving me a jump. There was no weight. It literally opened up almost instantaneously. It was his mother. I always liked his mother. She was kind, sweet, and always offered her support whenever I felt down. But I could tell something was wrong with her. Her usually bright eyes seemed darker. Her hair was not neatly tied in a bun behind her head. It fell upon her shoulders. Before I had the chance to examine her further, something much more unsettling caught my eye. She was smiling.

She did not greet me or start talking, just kept smiling and stared right at me. Feeling very uncomfortable, I asked if everything was all right. Come inside and have some tea with me, was her answer. Before I had the chance to answer, she went back into the house. It was then that I noticed that she was wearing her bathroom robe. Having neither the disrespect to decline her offer nor the guts to stay outside in the night, I entered the home and closed the door behind me. Heading towards the kitchen, I could hear her humming a strange tune.

The moment I entered, she stopped humming and an overwhelming silence took over. Without waiting for a conversation to start, I took a seat at the kitchen table. She was standing in front of me, with her back turned in my direction. I tried not to look at her and started awkwardly looking around the room until the tea was ready. I was thinking, Ryan's mom would always seem warm and loving and eager to talk about anything concerning my school, family life, and anything else. Now she was just silent, saying nothing. I spent the next five minutes in this deep thought. And then it occurred to me.

She hadn't moved at all during the whole time I was in the kitchen. With her back towards me, I could see that her hands were hanging down her shoulders. Her head was tilted to the left. Thinking something was wrong, I saw. stood from the chair and approached her from behind. Making an awful lot of noise while doing so, she did not move a single bit. Carefully, I approached her from the right side to look at her face to see if she was all right. The following sight still haunts me to this very day.

Her eyes were wide open, and she was smiling. Being as unsettled as I was, I decided it'd be best to give you. get back home. I think I'd better be off now. I have a lot of schoolwork for tomorrow. I lied, and receiving no answer in return, I headed towards the front door and stepped outside onto the porch. I wasn't scared. Well, maybe just a little bit, but mostly I was just weirded the fuck out. As I was moving down the porch towards my bike, I caught a glimpse of two lights at the far end of the wavy road. It was a car. Finally, I thought.

Ryan was around ten minutes late. However, as the car was nearing the house, I began wondering who was driving Ryan back from football practice. His dad was on a business trip and wouldn't be back for another two weeks. Ryan himself was too young to drive a car, so who else? I was getting more and more anxious as the car was nearing the house. Who was driving Ryan back? The car pulled into the garage and stopped. Ryan was the first one to get out, giving me a...

What's up, man? But the person who came out of the car next was his mother. She noticed me and asked, how everything was. Next tale is entitled Strangers in a Graveyard. A couple's late night visit to a cemetery is meant to provide

some cheap and harmless thrills. But the spirits of the deceased turn out to be the least of their worries. This tale was written by Matt Dimmerski and is read by Max Glasby. A girl I'd been seeing suggested that for our third date, we took a bottle of wine, a laptop, and a scary movie to the most remote graveyard we could possibly find. As horror movie aficionados, we both felt jaded and immune to fear.

So putting ourselves into the ideal situation for terror sounded like an exciting adventure. The proposed night came, and she drove us an hour out into the deep back country, heading for a graveyard that we had found in an ancient public record, but which was not on any map. When we finally found its supposed location, we ended up having to park three miles away behind some large undergrowth. There had been no other place to turn off along the forested country road. The night air was cool, though, so the walk wasn't bad. We walked down a kind of raised ridge of dirt towards the unmarked graveyard, trying not to slip off into the pools of sludge. and undergrowth on either side.

The trees ringed an open double hill that led up into darkness, and the century-old gravestones sat about in silence. We set up our laptop on a blanket, unafraid, and started the movie. The atmosphere was powerfully creepy, but I still felt nothing, until the unexpected happened. Less than ten minutes into the movie, we saw a pickup truck go by on the country road outside the grave, graveyard. We could see its lights through the trees as it passed, the only vehicle we'd seen that

night. We shrugged, thinking nothing of it, until it came back the other way. Its headlights were distinctive. It was definitely the same truck. When it approached the dirt ridge to the graveyard, moving very slowly, I closed the laptop, and we froze as its headlights fell on us for a moment. The truck backed up, apparently turning around, and then proceeded to park right outside the entrance. We couldn't be sure if they had seen us, and we certainly had no idea what they were doing. I suggested we pack up, and my date agreed. We had just gathered all of our things when the truck went dark. We stood there in the pitch black for a few moments, confused. Who was in the truck? Had they seen us? Were they coming this way?

There was no other way out of this graveyard. The hill was surrounded by what amounted to impassable swamp. I started imagining how we might escape through it, regardless, but I realized that the attempt would make far too much noise. We'd never make it. We had no choice. Carrying our stuff, I grabbed her free hand with mine. We crept forward along the dirt ridge,

wincing at every dried leaf that our shoes crumpled. I could see the truck's dark outline parked in our path, but I heard nothing. There was nothing else to do but creep past the truck, which we did slowly, one silent and carefully placed step at a time. I kept trying to discern shapes inside the truck, but saw nothing but darkness. I looked around constantly, but heard and saw nothing. Still, in the pitch black night, I could hardly see the girl I was with, let a look at a little. alone somebody creeping about or following us. We made it past the truck, but the lack of any incident only increased our fear.

Where were the truck's occupants? What were they doing? We had to be out here somewhere, meaning we were out here in the middle of the night and nowhere, playing a potentially deadly game of height and seek. My heart pounded even harder as I led her down the road toward our car. Where the hell were they? We were maybe half a mile down the road when we heard a scream in the woods and a distant gunshot. In that moment, we both immediately realized what was happening. The truck's occupants hadn't been here for us at all,

but they would never let us leave if they knew we were here. We both started running in total panic and actually made it another mile or two before we saw the truck's distinctive headlights coming up on us. I grabbed her, jumped off of the road. and dove into the undergrowth and sludge between the trees. We peered through the bushes, waist deep in mud, and watched the truck go by. To our horror, the truck began to slow. I dropped the blanket.

They'd seen it on the side of the road. The truck stopped there, only a few feet away for what seemed like an hour. At any moment, I expected its occupants to get out and come for us. Instead, finally, amazingly, it pulled away and sped on down the road. I tried to see its license plate, but couldn't see anything through the glare of its lights. When I was convinced it was gone, we slogged out and started walking toward our car again. It was then that I had a horrible thought. What if they had found her car?

What if they were waiting there? I talked it over with her, and we decided to find a good. hiding spot in the muddy undergrowth and literally weighed the entire night. We had heard a gunshot. This was serious. Neither of our cell phones had reception. There was no choice. The hours passed, and the longer we felt safe, the sillier we started to think ourselves.

There had to have been another explanation, right? Even if there was something horrible going on in the woods, the truck's occupants couldn't have found our car. or even if they did, they wouldn't wait so long, would they? After two hours, we almost talked ourselves out of our cold, horrid hiding place until they heard a slight sound, like shifting gravel. I peered intensely at the road. It was the same truck. Lights off, engine off, rolling ever so slowly along in the night,

waiting, looking and listening. for the fools that almost gave themselves up. It was noon the next day before we felt safe enough to leave our hiding spot and begin the confused and terrified walk back to civilization. For final tale is entitled, A Debt to the Dead. The medical study of cadavers can be an unsettling but fascinating learning experience until one student starts to discover more than expected from the body. This tale was written by Douglas Bramlett and is read by David Cummings.

Back before I dropped out of pre-med, I had to take an advanced biology class and being a little interested in the subject. I took gross anatomy. If you didn't know, this is a class whose lab work consists of dissecting a cadaver, or several. There's lots of classwork that goes along with it. Lots of studying. Our professor had worked out some deal so that we could have multiple cadavers in the class, but we had to partner up and then cycle through the available cadavers each week towards the end of the semester. The guy I was partnered up with for lab times, Cliff, was apparently horrible at the classwork. Admittedly, it was a difficult class with a difficult professor.

at a difficult and prestigious school, but he was just horrible at the classwork. But in the lab, he was a genius. At least it seemed that way at first. As a part of the course, maybe to make it more interesting, maybe due to the source of the bodies, part of the labs involved determining cause of death

as if we were criminal forensic investigators or some such. It was kind of cool sounding in case, class, but during lab time it was a different story. Each of the dozen corpses had been killed in a different way. Some of them were hard to look at. Oh, there were one or two who had an obvious cause of death, or at least so it seemed. A broken neck for one, a bullet hole in the head for the other. Alice, the one with the bullet hole, was our first cadaver. I thought it was even. I thought it was I mean, there's a bullet hole, there's a partially shattered skull. Shot, right?

I was already writing it up when Cliff looks up from the body. Broken heart, he says. I don't think I said anything. I just stared at him, at the bullet hole, back at Cliff. He ran his hand over her lips, her throat, down between her breasts. She argued with him. had been drinking. He left, she fell, hit her head. He pointed to a discoloration on her temple. Her head was pounding. She felt like her heart was breaking. She shot herself, but by that

point she thought of herself as dead. She died of a broken heart. I dropped my clipboard and notes. Cliff jumped, startled. We had this argument about his conclusions and how. he was jumping to them. Cliff asserted he was right. He wound up storming out. He got an A on the lab. I got a C. The next lab we had, I let Cliff have the first go.

He touched the body like a lover, caressing it, lifting the cadaver's hand, smelling its fingernails, prodding its chest. He said that it was a car accident, that the guy had been smoking had dropped hot ash in his lap, swerved. His chest was crushed by the steering wheel. This time I wrote down every word, Cliff said.

Or at least I tried. I had to fudge part of it, fill in what I remembered later, then find evidence on the body to support the claims. We both got A's. On and on it went. cadaver after cadaver, week after week. Cliff was like some modern day, totally creepy Sherlock Holmes of dead bodies. He'd spend five minutes with one and then tell me everything that happened to the body in its last moments.

It was strange, but we were totally acing our lab portion. Halfway through, though, the professor brought us in for a conference. asked us if we'd been talking to someone at the city morgue or the police station. I think he thought that we were cheating somehow. But I backed up all of our work. After all, I'd found evidence on all the bodies to back up everything we'd put down in our lab reports. Cliff didn't say a word, just stared at the floor the whole time, like he was angry or embarrassed or something.

afterwards I confronted him he wouldn't tell me anything at first wouldn't tell me how he figured these things out only said something about it being a duty a debt to the dead he had to make sure their stories were true because most of them would never get to speak for themselves again at the time I thought all of that was metaphor

a way of rationalizing things a noble sounding excuse. As the semester started winding to a close, Cliff was in worse and worse shape. He was practically bombing out of most of his classes, or so I heard. In class, he'd seem listless, staring at the board or listening to the lecture and fidgeting in his seat. In lab, though, he'd come alive. He'd spent more time looking over each of the cadavers. He tell me things about them as if they were former friends of his.

Like the guy with the two broken legs? Cliff told me about the time when the guy was 15 and stole his dad's boat to go fishing with a friend of his. How the two of them had spent the day drinking and then fell asleep in the boat, only to wake up after the thing had drifted and grounded itself the next state over. But the corpse was clearly an old man and there was no way that clearly. had been his boating friend. It got creepy, but at the same time, Cliff was so suddenly open and friendly, talkative, and extroverted that it was hard to ignore him.

Then, the week before our exams, we were on to our last cadaver. The man with the broken neck. Again, for some reason, I thought it would be easy. Cliff spent a long time with the body, so long that I started to start. to get nervous. Had his creepy gift given up the ghost? I stepped out of the lab room to... I don't know.

Get a drink, take a leak, walk off some steam. When I got back, Cliff was standing by the shuttered windows. He was crying. Hell, he looked like someone who had been drinking for hours and then been punched in the crotch. His skin was sallow. He had dark circles on. his eyes and he was sweating profusely. There was the smell of stale vomit coming from one of the trash bins.

I asked Cliff what was up. I mean, something was obviously amiss. First week students puke up in the cadaver room, not end of the semester ones. Cliff pointed to our last lab project, the guy with the hangman's neck. He... He's a monster, Cliff. sobbed. I looked at the body. I mean, I took some time and really looked at it. The neck was broken, obvious. There were multiple lacerations on the sides where the skin was torn. Not cut,

the edges weren't even, but they were all small, grouped in sets of two to four. The lower extremities were discolored, probably from post-mortem pooling of the blood. His penis, however, well, his whole crotch area was slightly disfigured. A botched circumcision as an infant, perhaps, some sort of accident as a child, maybe. I thought I was starting to piece something together when suddenly Cliff spoke from right behind me. He was a monster, a molester, a predator. He hung himself rather than let the cops catch him, but he regretted it. He wanted to be famous, more than the power or the thrill. Cliff stopped, retching again, then wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

More than those things, he wanted to be famous. What about his victims? I asked. Cliff's eyes were wild, terrified, awful. He whispered. He was shaking, trembling. He clenched his teeth and shut his eyes. You told me you owe the dead a debt, I said to Cliff, putting my hands on his shoulders. That you have to tell their stories?

You have to be a voice for them when they can't. He nodded, sobbing. Then maybe, in this case, you should keep silent. Silence his voice. I jerked my head towards the body behind me, so that his victim's voices fade away as well. Cliff nodded, tears and snotting down his face. He started sobbing again. Then he slumped to the floor.

I can't, he wailed. I can't keep quiet. I owe them. It's a duty. A debt. I nodded. turning away from him. I couldn't watch him any longer.

I crushed his skull with a metal tray, made it look like he'd slipped and hit his head on the dissecting table, got rid of the evidence. That's his story. My debt is paid. This concludes this episode of the No Sleep podcast.

Thank you for listening, and for letting us share the blackness of the night with you. To learn more about the podcast and the ways you can help us make more episodes, please visit nosleepaio.reddit.com.