The NoSleep Podcast - Nosleep Podcast #7

Episode Date: September 4, 2011

Our seventh episode of The Nosleep Podcast keeps the macbre tales stalking your sleepless hours. Featuring stories from the No Sleep forum at Reddit.com, these stories will make the dark hours of the night creep slowly past.This episode features these stories:Cologne written by Allie Brosh (Redditor Tubemonster) and read by Faith Sayers (Redditor Fajita21).Never Talk to Strangers written by Isaac Faraday (Redditor moveoverem) and read by James Lewis (Redditor EdibleBrains).We Don’t Talk About Sarah written by William Dalphin (Redditor Bellemaus) and read by Wendy Corrigan (Redditor EchoWind).They’re Not Smiling written by Vittorio Romeo (Redditor SuperV1234) and read by Chris Holland (Redditor slamgauge).Silly Boy written by Nicole Garrison (Redditor booger_butt) and read by Jinny Sanders (Redditor Spookykittens).She Found Her Way Into My Home written by William Dalphin (Redditor wdalphin) and read by David Cummings (Redditor MikeRowPhone). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the dark hours when you dare not close your eyes. No sleep. It's the No Sleep podcast. No Sleep. Featuring stories from Reddit.com's No Sleep Forum. No sleep. Join us as the sleepless hours. Our first tale is entitled Cologne, written by Ali Brosh and read by Faith Sayers.

At first I was annoyed by the shitty dollar store knock-off fragrance that lingered in my entryway. I've never worn perfumes, especially not cheap cologne. I hate the stuff. It smells like desperation and it irritates my skin. As those two thoughts slowly juxtapose themselves, my annoyance turned to sickening apprehension. I often fear that my house will be broken into. The fear stems from an experience I have. had as a child where I awoke to find a man in a cowboy hat and a trench coat staring at me from across the room.

He carried a bowie knife and a plastic garbage bag. My parents rode it off as a night terror, but it continued to haunt me well into my adult life. So I check everything. Doors, windows, crawl space. It's so routine that it's almost automated. I even do it in a particular order to make sure I don't miss anything. I mean, you don't want to spend your final seconds wishing that you would remember to check the locks on your bedroom window. I locked the front door behind me and quickly made the rounds.

Doors, windows, crawl space. Everything seemed secure, but I decided to do it again, just in case. I must have pulled a little harder on my back door the second time around, because it jerked open even though it was locked. The lock hadn't latched properly. I tried not to panic. I grabbed a butcher knife and got started on my second level of safety checks. Closets, showers, pantry, intake vent, cupboards, crawl space, behind curtains, under bed.

Nothing. However, my portable CD player was missing and my computer was on. I was embarrassed to report such a small theft, but I reasoned that if the police poked around, and didn't find anything. I could feel safe and actually get some sleep. The responding officer did a thorough job of reassuring me, but I still pushed my dresser in front of my bedroom door before going to sleep, just in case. Unsurprisingly, sleeping was difficult. That awful cologne seemed almost stronger than it had when I first walked into the house,

and its cloying sweetness was starting to give me a headache. I'd probably have to air out the whole place in the morning. I finally fell asleep around 2 a.m. with my face nestled into the neck of my shirt. A burst of static woke me up several hours later, gasping and clamming, my shirt still covering my face. The static faded into those little clicks and pops that sometimes preceded live recordings. It sounded obscured somehow, or far away, muffled. Then a man's voice. I've never done one like this.

They're usually much more obvious. They know what's going to happen as soon as they walk in the door. But I'm excited for this one. Consciousness came on slowly. I opened my eyes and looked around the room. A little orange light blinked near the corner of my ceiling. I've been watching you for months. You're always so good, so careful.

It was my CD player. Someone had hidden it in the ceiling vent. I never checked the ceiling vent because it was far too small to conceal anything threatening. The whole thing was probably a practical joke. One of my asshole friends exploiting my paranoia. There's no way that a person could fit inside my ceiling vent. They had broken in, recorded a creepy CD on my computer, and then set the alarm on my CD player to go off in the middle of the night.

I didn't know whether to feel angry or relieved. I listened closely, trying to pick out whose voice it was. It's exciting to think that you might find me before I can do it. I didn't recognize the speaker. But you probably won't. I spent all day making sure I close it up properly after I got inside. The last shred of my relief drained away as bed slowly. shifted underneath me.

No one ever thinks to check inside the mattress. Our next tale is entitled, Never Talk to Strangers, written by Isaac Faraday, and read by James Lewis. A pleasant days while I was attending college, I would walk to classes from my dumpy little apartment about a mile away from campus.

There were several routes I would take, but my favorite was a small paved path through a park that followed the river. This park was very nice. It had benches every few hundred feet facing the water, and so many trees that you couldn't even see that the busiest street in town was only a few hundred yards away.

This path was out of the way, so on the only real traffic on it in the middle of the day was the occasional jogger or a bicyclist. I used this path maybe two or three times a month, and every time on the same bench there would be this little old man in a nice suit facing the water, just staring down at the shore. He seemed

to be in his mid to late 80s, and I just assumed he came there every day because he had nothing else to occupy his time. I felt sorry for him. He seemed so lonely, just sitting on the bench all alone, all day. I decided I would be a good person and sit down and talk with him. I thought maybe that the old man

came there every day, hoping somebody would sit down next to him and talk. On a very nice day at the beginning of spring, I was walking down the path and saw the old man sitting on the bench. I walked up to the bench and sat down next to him and said hello. The old man didn't look up from the river. He kept his eyes right on the spot he had always been staring at. I said a hello a little louder, thinking he may not have heard me the first time. This time he replies, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see you there. I was busy watching the boys play down in the water. I was very thrown off by this. I thought this

paroled man must have Alzheimer's and comes here every day reliving his past. I ask him if they are his sons. He frowns and says, No, but it's my responsibility to watch them. I didn't want to play along with his delusions too much, but he obviously cared

a lot about these imaginary boys, so he asked him why it was his responsibility. He gets a very sullen look on his face, almost as if he was going to cry at any moment. And he says in a voice I can barely hear over the moving water. I threw them in there. And I need to be damn sure none of them ever tried to get back out. I promptly said goodbye, walked away, and never used the river path again.

Our next tale is entitled, We Don't Talk About Sarah, written by William Delphin, and read by Wendy Corrigan. I always wanted a little sister. I would beg my parents, please, please, and they'd roll their eyes and tell me that it wasn't as simple as I thought. That didn't stop me from talking about it every chance I got, though. When they brought Sarah home, it was the happiest day of my life. She was so cute. I couldn't wait to share my toys with her. I started going through them, deciding which ones were hers and which ones were mine.

I borrowed my daddy's label maker and started putting our names on each thing so we wouldn't get them confused. She cried a lot at first. I'd ask my parents why she cried so much, and they told me it was natural. They said when she got used to us and our house, she would calm down and not cry all the time. Sometimes, though, she'd cry so loud that Daddy would have to take her into the basement where it was soundproof so the neighbors wouldn't complain. She slept in Mommy and Daddy's bed for the first month. Sometimes I'd tried to join them, but they'd always locked the door. Mommy said their bed wasn't big enough for all of us to sleep in.

I was patient. I knew the new bed with the bars that they'd set up in my room would eventually be hers. When they felt it was safe to let her sleep on her own, they started putting her in it. She wasn't crying so much anymore by then, and I would lie in my bed, and watch her sleep from across the room. They'd take her into their bedroom first and lay with her until she fell asleep, then move her to our room.

Some nights after she was moved, I'd see her lying there with her eyes open, just staring at the ceiling, so I'd go over and give her toys through the bars. A lot of the time she'd just throw the toy and then start crying, and I'd have to hide under my covers before Daddy came in to deal with her.

Eventually they started letting Sarah sit with me in the playroom. I was told that I wasn't allowed to give her anything too small or sharp that she could hurt herself with. I was so happy. I would sit behind her and brush her hair and tell her she was the best little sister in the world. I showed her which toys were hers and which were mine, but she didn't seem to care. Sometimes we'd sit on the window seat and she'd bang on her. the window while I drew on it with special crayons. School started back up at Sugar Creek Elementary, and I went, but Sarah had to stay home.

Mommy said she wasn't ready for school yet. I'd come home and tell Sarah all the stuff I'd learned. I drew pictures of us playing together. When I showed them to Daddy, he'd tell me thank you and take them to keep in his office. Then came the really bad day. I'll never forget it. I came home from school and Mommy was just sitting at the table smoking. She looked real sad.

I went to play with Sarah but couldn't find her. When I went to ask Mommy where she was, she started crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said that Sarah was gone. I didn't understand totally, but I started crying too and told her, we need to find her. She just shook her head and said she was gone somewhere we couldn't go. Daddy took her bed apart. He threw away all of my drawings with her in them.

He took my name tags off all the toys. Sometimes I'd find one he'd missed, and it'd make me cry. I started collecting them and hiding them, but he found where I hid them one day, by accident, and got really mad. We weren't allowed to talk about her. It was like she never existed. I didn't think it was fair. I told Mommy that Daddy was mean to make us not talk about Sarah,

but she said it was better that way, and I would understand when I was older. I saw Sarah again. It was just one time, but I'll never forget it. I was with Mommy doing some errands. We went grocery shopping, then went to a fabric store in Thornton, so Mommy could look at material to make some new curtains out of. She remembered that she had letters to mail,

so we stopped at the post office, to buy some stamps. I was humming to myself and reading posters while Mommy talked to the lady behind the counter, and that's when I saw Sarah. She was as cute as I remembered.

I walked over and looked at the poster with her picture, but they'd gotten her name wrong. Somebody had written her name down as Shannon. I rushed over to Mommy and tugged on her sleeve and told her that Sarah was up on the wall

with the other pictures of children, but she got all flustered and apologized to the lady before dragging me out of the post office. I had to shout because she kept trying to talk over me instead of listening. I saw Sarah. They got her picture on the wall in there. Finally, Mommy slapped me and told me it wasn't Sarah and that it may have looked like Sarah, but I was mistaken, and if I didn't stop, I'd get in real trouble with Daddy when he got home. I cried and promised to be good. but even after I promised I wasn't allowed to have dinner

and had to sit in my room that night. I heard Mommy and Daddy talking in the kitchen, and they got kind of loud. Somebody started banging open the kitchen drawers, and then Daddy's feet stomped up the stairs, but I heard Mommy scream, Don't you dare, and he stopped outside my room,

then went back downstairs. We never went back to that post office, and I never saw Sarah again. This is the first time I've talked about Sarah since that day. Our next tale is entitled, They're Not Smiling, written by Vittorio Romeo, and read by Chris Holland.

I've had this strange problem since I was a child. It may sound completely ridiculous, but they stare at me. They smile at me most of the times. I'm talking about inanimate objects, dolls, stuffed animals, holy pictures, and paintings. When I look at them, they look back at me right in the eyes, and they smile most of the time. The first time I experienced this, I thought it was normal. I remember trying to speak with them, but they didn't reply.

They just stared at me and smiled most of the times. When I told my mom about this, she thought I was just kidding. I tried to make her understand. I was serious, and I definitely got her worried. Her diagnosis was that it was some kind of brain tumor that I was experiencing hallucinations. She brought me to several clinics, but all the tests were negative. My family has a very strong faith in God, and we all started to believe that it was some sign from the heavens that maybe God wanted to tell me something,

but I don't believe in God. I can't explain why they smile at me most of the time. I recall a very special day when they stopped smiling at me. They had a very strong frown and they look sad. My dad... My dad died in a car accident. Right after my dad's death, I wanted to get rid of them. No matter how hard I wanted to,

I couldn't. They were smiling at me again. They were happy, and I couldn't get rid of them. Today, my mom was supposed to get back home. She took a flight to New York last week for business reasons. When I woke up this morning, they weren't smiling anymore. They were sad and depressed, avoiding eye contact. They were crying.

I just received a phone call. My mom's plane crashed. Now I'm crying. They're crying. I have a gun in my hands. They look angry at me now. I think they know what I'm going to do. Our next tale is entitled,

Silly Boy, written by Nicole Garrison, and read by Ginny Sanders. Although I have plenty of stories of my own, today I'd like to share the story of a former friend of mine from a few years ago. A little bit of background on her. She was your typical young white woman being raised in a middle-class family. She lived in the last house of a cul-de-sac on an otherwise undeveloped hill.

Her house had essentially burned down once before, and after they rebuilt and renovated, they were rewarded with a splendid house of six bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a large circular staircase that curved about a chandelier in the foyer. She lived with her parents and her brother, Jerry. Her other brother and his family lived just down the street, and she often watched his two children. She was in the kitchen cooking one day, talking to her mother who was lounging in the dining room, when they heard her three-year-old nephew laughing hysterically from the foyer. Now her nephew has always been an uncharacteristically silent child,

and to hear him laughing so jovially had their curiosity peaked. Her mother was the one to lean back in her chair so she could see him down the hallway. He apparently had a marble in his time. tiny hands and had rolled it under Uncle Jerry's bedroom door. The door was locked and Jerry wasn't home at the time, according to my friend. She goes on to tell me that her mother was in the process of standing to retrieve the marble when she promptly sat back down, a shocked look on her face. The marble apparently rolled back from under the door right into her nephew's hands.

When this happened, he erupted into giggles. This happened a few times and neither might be able to be able to. friend nor her mother were courageous enough to broach the topic until the next day. They approached her nephew and asked him what he was doing the other day. He replied, Oh, I was just playing with my friend. But there couldn't have been anyone there. As previously stated, the room was locked up and unoccupied.

They pried, asking who his friend was. His name is silly boy and he lives on the hill. Having had previous situations involving homeless on the hill, and fearing someone had invaded their home, they continued their questions. The nephew, I'm assuming, became tired of the conversation because he simply replied, He's my age, but he doesn't have a name anymore, so I call him Silly Boy, because he looks so silly. My friend asked him why he would say such a thing about his new friend. Her nephew responded,

Auntie, he looks silly because he has no face. Our final tale is entitled. She found her way into my home, written by William Delfan and read by David Cummings. There is something stalking me. I don't know what it wants, but almost every night since I started seeing it, it has terrorized me. It doesn't touch me. It doesn't communicate in any sort of way. It just fills me with horror.

If I seem to ramble, please forgive me. I haven't slept in several days. We live in the second floor of a duplex with stairs down the back of the house to the basement where the laundry machines are. There's a door at the bottom of the stairs that looks out onto our back porch and into the backyard. Six days ago, I was going down to the basement to bring up some laundry and I glanced out the door as I passed. There was a figure standing at the far edge of our yard. Her back was to me, and she was just standing there, looking into the woods beyond our yard. She was dressed in nothing but a light gown.

It had lots of flowing material coming off it that was whipping around in the air slowly. The whole scene creeped me out instantly, but I thought she might be a friend of our downstairs neighbor, so I continued to the basement. When I came back up, she wasn't there. The next night I went down again, and as I passed the back door, I looked outside. The woman was back. She was exactly like she was the night before, facing away, not moving. The hair on my arms and neck stood up straight when I saw her.

I was even more creeped out when I realized she was in the same clothes as the night. night before. That's when I did something I shouldn't have. I opened the back door. Leaning out, I called to her to see if she was okay. She didn't respond. She didn't make any sort of indication that she'd heard me. It was freezing cold, so I shut the door and locked it. Coming back upstairs afterward, I looked out the window and she was gone again. Later that same night, I was in the bedroom getting ready to go to sleep. Everything was dark because my wife had gone to bed before me. Our bedroom looks out over the backyard, and my side of the bed faces the windows,

so I have to go past them to get in. As I was doing so, I suddenly got that same deep dread feeling in my stomach that I had gotten the first time I saw the figure in the backyard. Something compelled me to hesitate by the windows. My hands were shaking as I pulled the curtain back a bit and peeked through the shades into the backyard. It was a clear night, so the backyard wasn't shrouded in darkness. The woman was standing in the middle of the backyard, no longer at the edge of the woods, facing the house with her head tilted up to look directly at the window I was peeking from.

I jerked away instantly, afraid she had seen me. Her face was covered in shadow and hair, but I saw her chin and nose. A sharp nose and a thin chin. Gray, her skin looks gray, I think. Her hair was black and long. I was so scared I jumped into bed and covered myself with the covers. The next day, I played outside in the snow with my four-year-old daughter. She wanted me to pull her on her sled in the backyard, but just the thought of going back there made me scared again, so I talked her into digging holes in the snow in the front yard.

That night, things went from bad to worse. Somehow, I had managed to forget about the woman. Then, in the middle of the night, my daughter started crying. Our bedroom is just across the hall from hers. I thought she might need to use the bathroom or just be having a bad dream, so I went into her room to see if she was okay. She was uncovered, curled into a ball on her mattress. I pulled her covers over her, and that's when she whispered to me, Instant goose bumps.

I turned my head slowly toward the closet door at the end of her bed. Normally, the closet is shut, but now it's. It was open. The woman was standing in my daughter's closet. Not even when it was clear that I saw her, did she move or make a sound. Just stood there and looked at me through the cracked open door. My blood ran cold when I saw her. Get up, I told my daughter.

Get in my arms quickly. Quickly! She scrambled up and hugged me tightly and I walked. backward out of the room watching the closet the entire time in my mind I imagined her throwing the closet door open and running at us arms outstretched I just hugged my daughter and walked backward into my room the woman never appeared in the doorway I heard no movement from my daughter's room I tucked her into my bed and stood there watching the doorway to her bedroom I didn't go back in I just stood

there and watched and listened. When I finally got the courage to climb into bed, I didn't sleep. Sunday, I told my wife everything. I told her about the first time I saw this woman. I told her about calling out to her and seeing her from the window. I told her that she had appeared in our daughter's closet. She told me it wasn't funny that it was my fault for our daughter's bad dreams. and that I shouldn't encourage her to be afraid of her closet.

Sunday night, my daughter called to me from her room again. Call me a coward, but I couldn't go back into that room. I called her quietly to come get in our bed, but she cried and said she was scared. I wanted to go and get her, but I was scared too. I told her to pull her blankets up and cover herself. Just cover yourself, honey, and you'll be okay. I prayed that it was true.

I lay there, peeking over the sleeping form of my wife and out into the hallway at the closed door of my daughter's room and just kept praying. I heard her cry a while longer. Then she went quiet, and I hoped that she was asleep. Monday, I piled toys in front of the door to her closet. By that time, there was no doubt in my mind that this was some sort of ghost or apparition, but I piled things in front of the closet anyway. Like a pile of toys could stop a ghost. Monday night, my daughter did not cry, but I didn't sleep.

I lay there looking at the ceiling, tense. Around 2 a.m., I heard her bedroom door creak open, and I knew something was wrong. She must be scared, I thought, so I called to her like before. Just come to me and you could sleep in our bed, sweetie. But she didn't come. I peeked over my wife. The woman was standing there in the doorway to my daughter's room. Her arms hung at her sides, her shoulders slouched down.

Her gown was dirty like it hadn't been washed in years. and hung off her like torn rags. I wasn't breathing. I wasn't blinking. I just looked at her and she looked at me and I thought, this is it. I'm going to die. She never moved, never made a sound.

I whispered, please go away. Please leave me alone. Please, I'm sorry. I couldn't look away. If I look away, she will get closer, I was sure of it. If I close my eyes, when I open them, she'll be standing over me, looking at me. At some point, she was gone.

It's like I fell asleep with my eyes open. I don't remember her disappearing, just that I was looking at the doorway, and she wasn't there anymore. Last night I lay awake, waiting. I asked my wife to shut our bedroom door because the nightlight in the hallway was keeping me awake. It was stupid. I don't know what I was thinking. Like clockwork, I heard my daughter's bedroom door creak open. I held my breath. Then I heard the floorboards in the hallway creaking and I started shaking uncontrollably.

I heard our bedroom door open, and I knew she was standing there in the doorway, not moving, just looking at me. I didn't look. I couldn't. I did what I had told my daughter to do and pulled the covers over my head. I am a complete mess. A zombie at work. I don't want to go home anymore. I think I see the woman in other places. A glance while driving and I think she's sitting in the passenger seat of the truck behind me

or standing down the street as I drive off. Just sitting here at my desk, someone passes by behind me and I jump. I'm afraid that if I turn around, she'll be there waiting for me to look at her. And what if I saw her face? I don't want to see it. I don't want to see her anymore, but I don't know what to do. The only hope I feel is that, for unrelated reasons, my wife is talking about moving, but our lease isn't up until May. I don't know if I can hold out that long.

Sleepless tales have come to an end. Close your eyes. Drift off. And the No Sleep podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons license, 2011. Some rights reserved.