The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S12E06

Episode Date: January 20, 2019

It's episode 06 of Season 12. On this week's show we have tales about those unseen things which seem all too real. "Black Pines Park"† written by Leo Harrison and performed by Mike DelGaudio & Nikolle Doolin & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts around 00:03:14) "How To Summon the Butter Street Hitchhiker"† written by Chris Hicks and performed by Atticus Jackson & Mark Berry. (Story starts around 00:29:17) "A Sense of Dread"‡ written by Mark Towse and performed by David Ault & Jeff Clement & Erin Lillis. (Story starts around 00:51:40) "Moonshadow Friends"† written by C. I. I. Jones and performed by Graham Rowat & Sarah Thomas & Erin Lillis. (Story starts around 01:06:09) "Prom Dresses"¤ written by Amanda Isenberg and performed by Jessica McEvoy & Nichole Goodnight & Jesse Cornett & Erika Sanderson & Atticus Jackson & Kyle Akers. (Story starts around 01:30:58) Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast   Click here to learn more about Chris Hicks   Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone Audio adaptations produced by: Phil Michalski† & Jeff Clement‡ & Jesse Cornett¤ "Black Pines Park" illustration courtesy of Jen Tracy Audio program ©2018-2019 - Creative Reason Media Inc. - All Rights Reserved - No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our sleepless sanctuary. You enter at your own risk and choose to be entertained with dark and disturbing horror stories. You have been warned for the dark hours when you dare not clitails of horror to frighten and disturbed. As the sleepless hours tick. Brace yourself for the no sleep. podcast. Welcome to the No Sleep Podcast Sanctuary. I'm David Cummings. Our service this week features tales about those unseen things which seem all too real. It's my pleasure to introduce two new voice actors to our show. The first is Sarah Thomas. Sarah is a voice actor

based out of Texas with over 15 years of musical and theatrical experience. She has worked in audio dramas, video games, original animation, radio and television commercials, and educational content. We're thrilled she's joining our team. Thanks for sharing your talent with us, Sarah. The second actor joining us is Mark Berry. Mark is based in Los Angeles and has a long list of TV and film acting credits to his name. His rich baritone voice is unmistakable, and it was my pleasure to work with him. with Mark on the Deadly Manor's Audio Drama Project. I'm glad Mark is sharing his voice with us here at

No Sleep. Thanks for bringing us your wonderful voice, Mark. So we have our stories and our two new voices. Now it's time for our service to begin. Bow your heads and hear our words. In our first tale, we meet a writer for an outdoor magazine who is tasked with writing about a park with a creepy reputation. It seems like a great idea for their Halloween edition. However, as we learn from author Leo Harrison, the stories about the park and the bizarre disappearances which take place there make the story much less fun and far more disturbing. Performing this tale are Mike Delgado, Nicole Doolin,

and Erica Sanderson. So be very careful if you ever find yourself in Black Pines Park. In November 2009, on a web forum dedicated to outdoors exploration, a frequent poster began a very unusual thread. The thread's title was, Some Weird Figurines found in Black Pines Community Park. Upon viewing the thread, viewers were met with a series of grainy, poorly framed photographs. The photos portrayed an expanse of overgrown grass and weeds. in a rural locale amid bleak, overcast weather conditions. The first of these photographs showed only weeds, grass, shrubs, and rocks.

It seemed to lack a clear focal point. However, astute observers could notice that peculiar objects were hidden within the shaded grass. The subsequent photos offered a much closer view of the mysterious forms. They were little dolls made from clay. The dolls varied in height and width, but they all shared a particular quality in common. That is, they all had similar facial expressions. Eyes wide, mouths agape, brows lifted, each face expressed revulsion and terror. The Threads uploader explained that he and a friend had found these dolls

while hiking to a destitute mental asylum hidden in Black Pines Park. Amused, he'd taken some pictures, but out of sanitary precaution had left the dolls where he found them. Another forum user soon dared the OP to return to Black Pines and collect the dolls, In an obscenely worded reply, the uploader accepted the dare. Four hours later, they updated the thread, posting a time-stamped set of pictures that revealed the dolls had vanished overnight. Less obscure than the story of the clay dolls is the story of Tyler Becker, who, of course, went missing in Black Pines Park.

If you're at all familiar with the details of Becker's vanishing, then you know that his was an especially baffling and inconclusive case. He was last seen at 1132 p.m. on June 3, 2009, captured on CCTV loitering at an all-night convenience store not far from Black Pines. As can be seen in the video, Becker did not make a purchase, but instead wandered around the aisles of the store for eight minutes. Eventually, he came to a stop near the store's front door. Leaning his head against the glass, he seemed to be searching for someone or something. The convenience store's teenage clerk was too nervous. to interrogate Becker, and at 11.40 p.m., Becker finally exited the store,

crating his neck at an unusual angle as he did so. At 12.56 a.m., almost three hours after Becker had been expected home, his wife Cindy received a voice message from his number. Though anyone who's heard the message can attest to the distinctly inhuman, unfamiliar quality of the voice, the widow Becker insists it was her husband's. Tyler Becker was fond of visiting Black Pines Park to relax in the wilderness and work on his self-published fantasy novels. In searching for him, authorities followed his usual path through the woods, a gravel road that split off from the main trail, about a quarter of a mile into the 900-acre expanse of Black Pines Park.

In the gravel, the search party found a calico button that had evidently been torn from Becker's plaid workshirt. Further investigation revealed a series of footprints matching his shoe size, leading several miles from the trail, before finally ending at a glade in the woods. The footprints and the button were the last discovered traces of Tyler Becker. Nowadays, among the local children and teenagers, legend holds that the path where he vanished is, of course, haunted. If one travels there at night, a dry, guttural moan can be heard emanating from the pitch darkness that surrounds either side of the path.

Imagine that. Being alone out there in black pines, you and the road. The gravel beneath your feet. feet. No light except maybe your phone screen. The sound of your breath. Steady, repetitive. And then that sound, that moan. The unfinished manuscript of Becker's last novel is strange and serves as evidence for those investigators who believe Becker was suffering from some kind of derangement. The manuscript, written in the style of a fairy tale, describes a so-called bad man, who, quote, lives in the forest and is made of shadows and tears, end quote.

According to Becker's manuscript, quote, The bad man gives all the good boys and girls very, very bad dreams so he can steal their souls, end quote. His manuscript goes on to describe the bad man as having very smooth skin. Becker emphasizes at this point over and over again,

the smoothness. He sometimes uses the term doll-likeness. In a radio interview, Cindy Becker offered the uncanny observation that Tyler would have been writing his manuscript when he was alone in the woods on weekends, often at night. On October 4, 2008 at 11.51 p.m., Anton Douglas, a student, posted an image to MySpace. It showed a crowd of drunken youths posing in a forested part of Black Pines, their smiling faces lit up by the flash of Douglas's camera.

Douglas, who was very drunk at the time, failed to notice that his friend Anissa Stevens was barely visible in the background of the picture. She stood a fair distance from the group, near the edge of the forest. She was positioned roughly 30 feet from Douglas and the rest of his friends, who hadn't realized that she'd split off from the group. Despite the darkness and graininess of Douglas's photo, viewers have noted Anissa's unusual body language, cross-eyed, mouth drooping, her posture rigid, contorted, unnatural. Some have compared it to the maladrot postures of children who spend their formative years

in immense isolation and deprivation. Chained to furniture, never walking a single time until the fifth or sixth or seventh year of their lives. Anissa's odd posture and behavior is even more bizarre when one considers that, unlike her friends, Anissa had not imbibed any alcohol that night. Anton Douglas, having fallen asleep inebriated in the bed of his nearby pickup truck, never noticed that Anissa had disappeared. He awoke at around 2 o'clock in the morning to a text from her. The message contained a selfie, shot with her cell phones flash enabled.

Judging from the branches and leaves that were also lit up by the flash, it was clear she'd taken the photos somewhere in the nearby forest. Her expression was similar to that previous picture, frowning and cross-eyed and entirely wrong. Just wrong. This time, however, tears were streaming from her eyes. Douglas roused his friends who quickly recognized that Anissa had vanished. The group fanned out and called her name to no avail at all. They lost hope and contacted the police. Like Tyler Becker before her, Anissa Stevens was never found.

Anton Douglas later dropped out of school and has taken to running an online blog about paranormal topics such as UFOs, demons, cryptozoology, etc. Despite the fact that he was once an honor student, his blog writing style is scattered, cryptic, littered with misspellings and usage errors. Many believe this to be a sign of a deteriorating mental state. When his site's About section, he provides a long narrative of his personal experiences at Black Pines Community Park. He claims that whenever he's attempted to return there, he's felt a painful sensation in his chest before suffering headaches for many days thereafter. He attributes such ill symptoms to something he calls ectoplasmic drift. It's a term he neglects to define. Although Black Pines only earned national infamy after the vanishings of Tyler Becker and Anissa Stevens,

the park had long been notorious among locals. Becker, Douglas, Stevens, these rational and level-headed city dwellers had traversed the park with no respect for many odd, tall tales and rumors passed on through whispered murmurs by the inhabitants of local backwaters. One such quiet rumor held that those who visited the abandoned asylum at three o'clock in the morning would hear the rattling of chains that once constricted the limbs of Missouri's mentally insane. Then, if the trespasser remained longer in the ruins of the asylum, cries and moans would arise from the darkness, the cries and moans of all those lost and tortured souls drifting in the night. A more credible story, however, comes from the declassified federal document written by Eileen Norris of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in December 1971.

While investigating a chemical spill from a nearby plastics manufacturing plant, Norris jotted a strange note in her journal. At around 2100, I spotted three violet-colored lights moving a ways off up in the sky. Out of curiosity, I left my campsite for a moment and climbed a nearby tree to take a closer look. The lights were rotating slowly. This continued for approximately five more minutes. Then the lights sped eastward until they could no longer be seen. She'd scarcely had any time to prepare her camera, and so her pictures turned out under-exposed. They were dubious at best, grainy monochrome photos of little white dots against a black background.

Skeptics have long attacked her as a fraud, or maybe a lunatic who mistook helicopters for something else. But Norris, a federal agent with a reputation at stake, surely saw something. Otherwise, she wouldn't have staked her credibility on such an ambiguous claim. Sadly, she died just one year after making her observation, having suffered from a brain tumor. By the time her report was declassified, no one could question her about what she'd seen that night in 1971. Among the long list of unusual vanishings that have occurred at Black Pines Park, only one of these disappearances ever yielded something like a definite sense of closure.

That was the case of Ernie Sampson, Janet Keller, and Elaine McKenna. Their vanishing predated the death of Eileen Norris by about four decades. It was during July of 1935. Samson, Keller and McKenna, all graduate students from Missouri State, hiked through Black Pines Park to conduct research for an ecology project. They were last seen at a rest stop about 30 miles down Sequoia Trail, the central footpath that leads through the park. The witnesses, that is, a couple of old women and a young boy,

didn't notice anything strange about the students. Each testimony concurred that the three friends had visited a rest stop, tossed a football around in a nearby glade, ate at a picnic table, then resumed their hike, never to be seen alive again. At first, investigators were perhaps most impressed and most disturbed by the vast distances that separated each student's corpse from one another. The three friends had already been missing for two weeks when Inspector John LaVale found Samson's corpse at the base of a ditch, several. miles off Sequoia Trail. LaVale initially guessed that a mountain lion had been responsible, seeing as something had gored and eviscerated Samson. The rotten, crusted abdomen, baking in the summer sun, was split open haphazardly, largely cleaned out by maggots and flies. It looked like claws and mandibles had done most of the damage. The other bodies were found miles away.

Keller was found bloated and washed up on the shore of a ravine, her corpse's downstream trajectory, halted by a bed of tall boulders. Not much later they found McKenna, just beyond the mouth of a small cave with wounds similar to Samson's. Upon closer inspection, investigators were amazed to find that these wounds, these supposed claw marks, were actually the work of something with five prehensal fingers, an anthropoid culprit, they assumed. But this conclusion was challenged by the bruises and fractures discovered on all three corpses during autopsy. It was as if the students had had fallen from a height of 20 or 30 feet and then landed upon cement. If the culprit had indeed been human, the intensity of these impact wounds made no sense.

Either the killer had used some sort of powerful instrument, or the students had been mulled by an anthropoid as strong as a mountain lion or a black bear. At one point in the investigation, Laval even went so far as to have some deputies checked the nearest zoo to see if any large animals had escaped. None had. If you look on YouTube, you can find a pretty good interview with John LaVale, shot in 1983 by some amateur filmmaker, a paranoid type full of hypotheses about UFOs and cryptids, and all the other topics that places like Black Pines Park excite in our imaginations. I still remember the way I felt when we found that camera there in the middle of the woods out there at Black Pines Park. I felt something real awful.

I wouldn't have told you back then. Would have been too skeptical. But you know how it is sometimes? You get a sense about something, a foreboding, real ominous. And you don't think much of it until later on, when you realize you've... Well, it feels like you've predicted something. Like a backwards deja vu.

Well, that's how I felt when me and the boys found that camera about a mile away, you know, from where we'd found that Samson kid or, God, what was left of him anyways? I had this strong intuition, kind of like at the end of a dream, when you realize you're dreaming. Laval and his crew took the camera back to the station in Lebanon, Missouri, and had the footage developed by a local photographer. The images all seem rather mundane at first glance.

You can find some of them online if you can find some of them online, go looking. There's Samson, Keller, McKenna, all three of them posing for a timed shot, their camera on a tripod, big smiles. Keller's giving Samson a kiss on the cheek, happy kids. Then there are some shots of wildlife, shots of various insects, animals, birds. That's it, according to mainstream sources. But LaValle, in his old age, admitted that there was one more photo, which for reasons he wasn't sure of remained unpublished. You can find some books on the topic that contain interviews with LaValle, wherein he describes the lost photograph in great detail.

But in the video from 1983, LaValle never describes the picture. He never quite gets to it. Instead, when the interviewer asks about it, LaValle tries to speak, tries some more, but nothing comes out. He puts his head in his hands, clasps his eyes, and starts sobbing. The camera rolls on. The interviewer gets up after a minute or so, and puts his hand on LaValle's shoulder.

Some off-screen assistant stops the camera, the footage cuts, and that's that. Of course, in some strange corners of the internet, you can find the alleged photograph. It's a hoax, though. That's what most people say. The photo resembles many of the others that LaValle and his team first discovered back in August 1983. In broad daylight, in some remote clearing, three friends sit cross-legged on a picnic blanket, their camera once more mounted on a tripod. Keller, seated in the middle, holds up rabbit ears behind Samson and McKenna's heads. Research instruments have eaten meals, field books, and unzipped backpacks litter their immediate surroundings.

If you examine the photo for a decent amount of time, however, you can make out a humanoid form standing behind some thin shrubs, maybe 20 or 30 feet from the picnic site. At first glance, the figure resembles some ordinary person, some other hiker maybe, who stumbled across the research party. yet that's simply not what it is. For if you study the figure's countenance, you can tell that its skin is unnaturally smooth and seemingly without blemish. The various facial features are perfect yet average, yet somehow lacking in definition.

Anyone who's seen the photograph will agree that these distortions aren't merely the result of distance and aperture. There's something intrinsic to the figure's essence, something false, mannequin-like. offensive, that makes it seem non-human. Most agree that the picture's a hoax, that Laval's a fraud,

and that with the advent of Photoshop, some internet troll simply capitalized on the old inspector's tall tail. Though I know it would be unreasonable to disagree with this very rational explanation, I can't help but wonder why no one's found the original, untampered photo of the picnic.

Back when I was writing for an outdoor exploration magazine, Nothing you've heard of. Been out of circulation since 2015. One of the last articles I ever had to write was a feature on Black Pines Park, commissioned for our October edition as sort of a Halloween special. I combed through all the strange stories, all the deaths and vanishings which I've now relayed to you. Tyler Becker, Anissa Stevens, Eileen Norris, Samson, Keller, McKenna, everyone. I typed up the feature. You know, I hit all the right notes, stirred up all the right questions, made it all seem very

mysterious and whatnot. But off hours actually went a bit further. I started reading alternative sources, supernatural theories. Just for fun, you know. But that's how I found the Black Pines page, the blog run by Anton Douglas. Douglas, that kid who most people figure was so deeply traumatized by his friend's fate that he dove headlong into paranormal research. It was his blog that directed my attention toward the clay dolls. I still remember the first time I saw the picture. I still remember the first time I saw the picture of those little dolls. Douglas had uploaded each photo to a tacky web page that looked like it had been designed in 1998. At first, I figured the pictures were just part of an alternate reality game, or maybe someone's attempt at inventing a legend as effective as Ted the Caver,

or any one of those weird stories from the early era of the internet. Those stories that seem so unnervingly authentic in their use of faux evidence that they still disturb gullible readers to this day? Well, I stayed up way too late that chilly night in October. 2014, reading deep into Anton Douglas' paranoid, esoteric ramblings. As I sifted through the pages and pages of nonsensical claims about things he called psychophotographic parasites and holographic manipulations, I eventually stumbled across a photo I'd never seen before. It wasn't anything unusual, just a composite image made up of all the various persons

who'd ever vanished from Black Pines. Becker, Stevens, Keller, Samson, all of them, arranged in a, sort of grid or gallery of faces. I have to admit, it was unsettling to see all those smiling faces, while knowing also that they belonged to people who were either confirmed dead or else mysteriously lost to the benighted chasms of unrecorded history. What I'm about to tell you now is most likely nothing more than a memory twisted by sleep deprivation and amphetamine withdrawal. Yet, my fear has never relented enough for me to revisit them. went page to look one more time, just to see whether I hallucinated or saw something real.

Even if the truth is just a click away, I don't think I ever want to find it. After staring for some time at all the photos of those people who'd vanished in black pines, I found myself retracing my steps, back to the photos of the clay dolls. And I thought I saw in the crude, terrified expressions of these figurines, the likenesses of all those lost people. What then had made those dolls? What had manifested them? A person? Some sick, morbid person? Or something else? Long after the magazine had published my piece, I found myself recalling those faces. Often it was at night that the smiling faces of Becker, Stevens, Keller, and Samson would appear in my mind's eye, and then the dolls.

I'd see the dolls, their tormented faces. That winter, I began to feel afraid of people. I began to avoid friends and colleagues. On late nights, whenever I would venture out to the all-night corner store, I would swear I could hear things, whispers and murmurs sounding from empty corners. People began to frighten me, and I began to frighten them. Children, I could tell, they in between. particular despised me. I can see now that it was trying to isolate me, to weaken me. I became more

and more fascinated with Anton's blog. This led me to other webpages, incomprehensible screeds of occult writing. The more I read, the less I understood, and yet I had the feeling that I was drawing closer to something. Then, one night, as I lay halfway between consciousness and sloth. I somehow began to descend down my throat to my chest. My vision darkened and I was drowned in a mass of low, guttural whispering. I awoke in a frigid sweat. This was the beginning of my insomnia. The whispers soon began to follow me wherever I went.

On my walk home, I would hear the faintest of voices murmuring from a dark alleyway. Joshua. I would hear tapping at my window. Joshua. They would find me at the office whenever I was alone. Joshua. I became more and more irritable. I began lashing out at coworkers in subtle ways,

trying to make up for the loss of control, the loss of friendship, the feelings of isolation and deprivation. I told myself the voices would go away soon. I tried to quit reading Anton's blog, but I caved in after just two nights. I typed the phrase, hearing voices into the search engine, and several articles appeared. Anton suggested aluminum foil, mantras, and certain herbs to block demonic transmissions. Joshua.

None of it worked. The dreams became worse and worse. One night, I awoke suddenly from my transnational. Undone induced sleep. I couldn't move my limbs. The room was dark. I glanced at the window, then the clock on the wall, then the open doorway. Through the doorway, down the hall, I could see a figure barely outlined in a sliver of moonlight. I could see its jagged shape, maciated, skeletal, its yellow eyes, its smooth skin. Not only in my dreams, but also in waking life in supermarket aisles and storefront window displays and hotel corridors. I see it at least once a week,

always, always whispering. In the shower, I sometimes catch its black form moving just outside the curtain. Whenever I procure enough pills to fall asleep, I dream of Black Pines Park. I'm always staring at it a distance, watching a hideous, lumbering form emerge from the forest. In the waking life, the voices often whisper commands. They tell me over and over that they'll spare me. If only I'll spread the word. If only I'll help the park seep into the minds of more people. If only I'll help it annihilate other souls. Then I'll be free. If you're listening to this, just know. It wasn't my choice. I'm so, so sorry for what I've led into your mind.

We've all heard about those urban legends which give you a series of instructions you can follow if you want to summon a demon or make a ghost appear. But in this tale from author Chris Hicks, we meet a man attempting to encounter a roadside phantom, not just for the experience, but to see if the specter will answer a very important. important question. Performing this tale are Atticus Jackson and Mark Berry. So do yourself a favor and ignore the instructions about how to summon the Butter Street hitchhiker. There's an urban legend in my hometown about a hitchhiker on Butter Street who will appear if you follow a series of instructions. Once summoned, you drive him to his destination, and if you play the game right, you will answer an unknowable question for you.

If you play it wrong, well, just don't play it wrong. There's an old gravel pit at the end of Butter Street. The water there is the deepest blue. It's almost like staring into the ocean. That's how deep it is. An alarmingly high number of cars have been dredged up from the depths there over the years. Officially, these drivers all fell asleep at the wheel. But unofficially, the deaths from cars' car's

careening off the road into the gravel pit during the wee hours of the night only add more veracity to the urban legend. They were the poor souls who broke the hitchhiker's rules. So far, no one has pinpointed the origins of the legend. I've reached out to the local historical society and searched through newspaper archives in the local library and haven't found any mentions of the hitchhiker. It's a modern piece of folklore passed around coffee shops and diners in the early morning hours until it eventually made its way to high school cafeterias. It wasn't until someone posted about the hitchhiker on a local Facebook group that people began sharing their experiences and the rules of how to summon him. As more people shared their

experiences, the details about the hitchhiker began to vary from person to person. His clothes have switched up over the years, growing more modern. His speech doesn't reflect any particular time period either. No mannerisms or 23 Skidoo phrases to help date him. Sometimes he's in his late teens. Sometimes he's much older. Even with these differences, everyone who claimed to have summoned the hitchhiker swears that he's real. The only common thread in all of the stories of the hitchhiker is that he's always wet when he enters the car, followed by what are always his first words to the driver. It's a bad night for rain. To which you're supposed to give a specific Is there ever a good night?

He laughs, and that's when you know you're playing the game. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I should go back to how I got him in the car. The game starts by turning your car on exactly at midnight. Where doesn't matter, only when. And once the car is on, you can't get out. Nor can you let anyone else in. Just you in your car at midnight.

What comes next is a lot. of waiting, because you have to be at the pickup point on Butter Street at exactly 3 a.m. That's right, three hours in the car. Those are the rules. With three hours to kill, a lot of people show up early and just cruise the roads so they can time get into the pickup spot at exactly 3 a.m. But as the urban legend has grown in popularity, the local police will pull you over if they see your car circle back down Butter Street more than once. The local cops all know the rules, so if they pull you over, they'll have you turn off your car and get out of the vehicle, thus ending the game.

On the night I decided to summon him, I filled up my car at the gas station at 1145, then went in and took advantage of the facilities to ensure I wouldn't need to make any pit stops before 3 a.m. Then I waited in the parking lot until it was exactly midnight and started my car. I should add that it doesn't matter what type of car you drive, but a four-door car is preferred over a two-door or a pickup. You don't want to look directly at the hitchhiker, not until the end of the trip. That's much easier to do if he's sitting in the backseat versus sitting beside you. I drove in a big loop around the county until it was time to head to the pickup,

avoiding any of the known police traps to keep from having to try again another night. I kept my maps program running on my phone, so I knew exactly what time I had to make my way to Butter Street. I can't imagine how difficult it was to be an urban legend hunter before real-time GPS maps. Side note, you can play with the radio on or off. It has no impact on the hitchhiker. Radio on is preferred if you choose not to engage him. He can get quite loud and belligerent if you won't talk to him. I pulled up to the pickup spot, stopped the car, and then followed the summoning instructions. The rules posted online had small variations, but attempts that contained the pickup.

following actions had the highest rate of success. Leave the car on and then drive but engage the emergency brake. Turn off everything but the car, lights, air conditioning, radio, phone. Unlock the car doors three times. Roll down all the windows. Press the brake pedal three times. Turn the headlights back on. Wait three minutes. If he's not there by 303 a.m., then you did something wrong. With the lights off, I noticed a fog rolling in. Whether it was part of the ritual or not, I didn't know, but it added a creepy aesthetic to waiting on a dark road at 3 a.m. for a ghostly hitchhiker.

Other than the idling of my Subaru, the road was still and quiet. I had even shallowed my breathing so I could listen for footsteps, giggling teenagers, other cars, but there was nothing. It's a bad night for rain. I felt every hair on my body stand up as a chill ran up the back of my neck. Over my studded breathing, I could hear the steady drip of water from his pant leg hitting his shoe. I didn't turn around, but I stole a peek in the rearview mirror. He wasn't a big guy, maybe my height.

He was dressed in a white Dr. Dre, the chronic T-shirt, a red windbreaker in what looked like dark denim jeans. The rules said the mirror was fine as long as you didn't turn the lights on in the car. But never look him directly in the face, not until he's out of the car and ready to answer your question. I gathered up my courage to reply back, but the word stuck in my throat. I cleared and tried again. Is there ever a good night? A pause as I stared back in the mirror at the shape in my back seat.

I held my breath, waiting. Then after what felt like ages, I saw his hands slap against his wet knee as he laughed. I let out the breath I was holding as I disengaged the parking break. Hold up. Put your wipers on, champ. With all that rain, you won't see the road. This was a scripted reply, part of the game. Right, sorry. Also a scripted response. Despite his insistence on the rain, it was bone dry outside. Per the rules, I turned on my windshield wipers, setting them to their fastest setting.

He settled back against the seat, laying his arm across the back window. Mind if I turn on the radio? This wasn't part of the game, but I figured it was best to ask and be polite. It's your ride. One request. No country, please. Sure thing. I pulled back onto the road just as the clock hit 303. I stole looks in the rearview mirror as often as I felt comfortable while still keeping the car on the road.

Luckily, this part of Butter Street was pretty straight with not a lot of traffic. From his voice and the hand tapping against the wet knee in the back seat, I could tell he was a black man, maybe mid-20s, and dressed like he came straight from 1996. Nothing like any of the descriptions I read on the Facebook post about the hitchhiker. Where you headed? This was a scripted part of the game. I'm headed to see my girl. I worked a late shift tonight.

Thought I'd pop in and surprise her. His response to this question was always different. That, coupled with the fact that the appearance of the hitchhiker seemed to shift, led many to believe that it's not the same spirit every time. I pulled up to the stop sign at the end of Butter Street. Yeah, you want to make it right here. I obeyed. Other than following them, the destination.

and directions were irrelevant. The ride goes until 3.33 a.m. when he tells you to pull over. So what's your story, man? A scripted prompt, but how you reply is completely up to you. Some have ignored talking to him altogether, which apparently is not recommended. Some have shared a little out of politeness. Others have talked right up until drop-off time, filling the air with their own words. The more you talk to him, the more he talks back.

It doesn't impact the game, it just makes the journey a little more interesting. Even though I'm driving a ghost, his voice is disarming, making him easy to talk to. I have a day job that pays the bills, just boring office stuff. But in my spare time, I like to explore urban legends and haunted places. Go out looking for proof of life after death. Oh, for real? Damn, that sounds spooky as hell. unscripted reply he leaned forward and putting his elbows on his knees in the rearview mirror i could see the sleeves of his windbreaker were shredded what's the scariest thing you've seen take a ride up here unscripted i wanted to say besides this but i held my tongue all indications from everyone who has played the hitchhiker's game say that he was unaware of his situation he's just a passenger getting a ride

his destination. Attempts to get him to recognize his ghostly predicament do not go well, so I do not advise bringing it to his attention. I took the next ride as I continued my story. About two years ago, I was on an overnight ghost hunt at the Ohio State Reformatory. It's an old prison up in Mansfield, where they filmed Shawshank Redemption. I figured if he was from the 90s, he might remember the movie. So there's a group of six of us on the tour, and we're over in the administration. administration wing, and I felt this hand press into my back like it was guiding me forward. Oh, hell no, my ass would be gone up out of there. I ain't even planned. Unscripted response. It's about this time that I realized that all the street lights were off. Not just the lights on the

streets. Everything was dark. Granted, it was the middle of the night, but we drove past a Taco Bell that was open 20 minutes ago when I passed by on my way to Butter Street. Now, it was completely dark, not a single car in the parking lot. And that's the second thing I noticed. No cars. We had driven 15 minutes without passing a single car. Not only were there no cars on the road, there weren't any cars in any driveways or parking lots. As we rolled by a Ford dealership, the entire lot was empty.

It's like we'd stepped completely out of reality into a different one. So what'd you do? Unscripted. I'd got his interest, apparently. I'd turn and look and no one is behind me, but I can smell rose-scented perfume. Apparently one of the ghosts there is the wife of the warden. She was killed when the warden's gun went off by accident.

It fell out of the closet, went off, and shot her in the lung. That is crazy, man. But I can feel while she might be hanging around still. You know what I'm saying? Like she's got some unfinished business and shit, because her life was cut short like that. We rode in silence for a bit. I don't know for how long.

I tried looking back at him in the mirror, but he hung to the shadows. Then I felt his cold breath against my neck, sending shivers of my spine. Could you imagine what that's like? Unscripted. What do you mean? Also unscripted. Having your life cut short like that due to the careless act of another human being? That's pretty fine.

fuck now. Un scripted. My heart thudded against my chest. Did I mess up? Did I not follow the rules? Did he? I'm just playing, man. You need to relax. I felt his hands, cold as ice, gripping my shoulders encouragingly. He gave them a pat and sat back. I felt a trickle of water go down my back from the cold, wet spots on my shoulder where he grabbed me. Oh, this right coming up. He leaned forward, pointing at the road. His skin was ashy, and his thumbnail was split to the nail bed. The smell of wet loam wafted into the front of the cabin. I made the turn.

I peaked at the clock on my dashboard and saw it was 3.29. Only four minutes to go. You got any family? I felt my heart leave my throat and dropped back into my chest. We were back on script. I used to. Just me now That's tough, I know

Before my girl I was all alone I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have her Life would just be empty Unscripted A quiet stillness followed Like he was hit by a pang of remorse For a moment it was so quiet I wasn't sure if he was still back there

But then I felt his wet cold hand clap me on my shoulder But don't worry man You seem like old kid Hey dude, going out of your way to help a young man like myself on a rainy night like this, I'm sure you'll find someone. Just takes time. Unscripted. We rode in silence as I stole glances down at the clock on the dash.

As soon as the time flipped to 3.33 a.m., I heard his weight shift as he leaned forward. Oh, this is me up here. He pointed to a spot up the road. There was nothing there. No house or driveway, not even a place. to pull off. I pulled the car onto the shoulder and eased to a stop. Just like when picking him up, I turned off the lights, radio, and engaged the parking brake, leaving the car and drive. You don't have to bother with the locking and unlocking three times or the business with the brake pedal. Just unlock. Also, and this was very important, don't watch him get out.

Don't look at him in the rearview mirror. Don't do anything but look down at your hands on the steering. wheel. Keep them on the wheel, 10 and 2, and wait. I wanted to look up, but I managed to fight the urge by counting the seams on the steering wheel. Thanks for the ride. Do you have a question for me? Scripted. Once you complete the ride, you're allowed to ask him a question. It has to be something personal, but unknowable. You can't ask for lottery numbers or things like that. People have supposedly asked about locations of lost heirlooms, the exact date and time of their death, the fate of long-lost relatives, all sorts of personal questions they'd have no other way of knowing. For a second time that night, the words failed to leave my throat. I took a deep breath

and swallowed. Is she at peace? Does she blame me? After you ask, then and only then are you allowed to look directly at him. So I did. I felt all the color drained from my face as I looked up. The hitchhiker had no face at all. Only two shiny black spots where his eyes should be. He had no mouth, no nose, nothing else. Just two quarter-sized black pools of what looked like liquid ink where his eyes should be.

And they reflected every star in the sky. I couldn't look away from those eyes, even though I very much wanted to. That's two questions, my friend. Unscripted. My heart jumped back into my throat. I broke the rules. I fucked up. I asked two questions.

I was paralyzed staring up into his face. Time passed. It felt like hours. Eventually, he moved his hands up to the sides of his face just under his ears. I pulled back a little, scared for a moment that he might rip off his false face and reveal another more terrifying one. He didn't remove his face. Instead, he pulled his hoodie up over his head, returning his empty face to the shadows. Since you were kind enough to save me from walking all this way in the rain, I'll answer you.

Unscripted. Before I could exhale a sigh of relief, he gripped the doorframe and leaned down so I was staring to directly into his empty eyes. Even with the hood up, I could still see every last star in the night sky in those inky black pools. It was like staring at both vast infiniteness and vast emptiness. They held everything and nothing at the same time. His eyes. They were like staring into eternity.

She's not at peace, and she does blame you. As he stood up from the world. window, I let out the breath I was holding. My hands shook as I pulled them off the steering wheel. Drive safe. Scripted reply. The last thing he says before he leaves. You can watch him walk in the rearview mirror, but don't turn around or get out or try to follow him. I watched until he disappeared into the darkness and waited until I could no longer hear his footsteps against the gravel. When I turned on my Headlights, I realized I was back on Butter Street, parked on the side of the road next to the drop-off

for the gravel pit. This was always where you ended up after the hitchhiker leaves. All I had to do was release the parking brake, and the car would roll towards the drop-off, gaining speed until it launched off the cliff into the deep blue water waiting below. I don't know how long I sat there with my hand on the parking brake release, contemplating his answer to my question. But then I saw them. Headlights. A car was coming up the road towards me. The cars were back, as were the streetlights and houselights.

I was back from wherever the hitchhiker took me. I locked eyes with the driver as they drove by. Having one of those weird moments where time seems to slow down, it was enough to jolt me back to reality. I aimed my wheels back towards the road and released the parking brake. I got home a little after 5 a.m. I tried to sleep, but was too worked up for my adventure, so I called in sick. I laid in bed all day thinking about the hitchhiker, his words, and all those cars that end up in the gravel pit on Butter Street.

Maybe those cars aren't from people who played the game wrong. Maybe they all played it right, but couldn't handle his response to their question. It's been three days since I picked up the game wrong. hitchhiker, I can still smell the wet loam in my car, and his muddy footprints are still there on the floorboard of the back seat. As I sit here, I look up from my monitor and look at the photo of my Abigail, taken two weeks before she died. She's beautiful, smiling, and happy. She's not at peace, and she does blame you. It's my favorite photo of her. I think I'll take it with me.

when I take a drive later tonight. I'm going back to see the hitchhiker. I have a hunch, and I don't know if it's relevant, but I feel it's important to share with anyone hearing this that I'm wearing a gray Adidas hoodie in jeans. If somebody out there reading this picks up the hitchhiker later on and see someone similar get in their back seat, well then, I guess we've solved part of the mystery.

If you do pick up the hitchhiker, I hope you get the answer you're searching for. As I look outside, the skies are cloudy, but I hope the weather holds up for a drive later. It's a bad night for rain. As our service concludes, we send you away with our blessings. If you would like to find out how you can hear the full-length versions of our audio program, please visit the no-sleeppodcast.com to learn about our season. Pass program. Over 60 hours of content for only 1999. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep

Podcast, we thank you for listening. Join us again next week in our sleepless sanctuary. is copyright 2018, 2019 by Creative Reason Media, Inc. All blessed rights reserved. The copyrights for each story

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