The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S13E21

Episode Date: November 17, 2019

It's episode 21 of Season 13. On this week's show we have tales about the creepy people who share our living spaces. "Bookworm" written by Meredith Katz (Story starts around 00:04:17) Produced by: Phil Michalski Cast: Claudia – Erin Lillis, Roommate – Mary Murphy "Just My Luck" written by Holloway Green (Story starts around 00:19:40) Produced by: Jeff Clement Cast: Narrator – Atticus Jackson, Sharon – Sarah Thomas, Doppelganger – Atticus Jackson "The House on Campground Road" written by Whitley O’Brien (Story starts around 00:44:50) TRIGGER WARNING! Produced by: Phil Michalski Cast: Narrator – Jessica McEvoy "The Thing in the Bell Tower" written by Alex Taylor (Story starts around 01:08:08) TRIGGER WARNING! Produced by: Jesse Cornett Cast: Stephen Andrews – Dan Zappulla, Stephen’s Dad – David Cummings, Cleanup Man – Jesse Cornett, Jack – twelve years old – Elie Hirschman, Young Girl – Nichole Goodnight, Diary Writer – David Ault "My Love, in Pieces" written by Tiffany Michelle Brown (Story starts around 01:53:37) Produced by: Phil Michalski Cast: Dan – Mike DelGaudio, Twin daughters – Nichole Goodnight, Hospital Admin – Nikolle Doolin, Doctor – Jeff Clement Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast   Click here to learn more about the Euro 2020 Live Tour   Click here to learn more about Meredith Katz   Click here to learn more about Alex Taylor   Click here to learn more about Tiffany Michelle Brown   Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone "My Love, in Pieces" illustration courtesy of Krys Hookuh Audio program ©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

Dark tales when we dare not close our eyes. Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. Welcome to the No Sleep Podcast video store. I'm David Cummings. Our VCR is ready to play stories about the creepy people who share our living spaces. Well, life returns to abnormal at No Sleep Headquarters. The tour is over. Halloween is done for another year.

And season 13 resumes its steady march into madness. I want to express my sincere thanks to the No Sleep Home Team who looked after the show while the Halloween tour was in full swing. To that rascal Peter Lewis and all the voice actors who, well, who did what they did hosting the show while we were away. Thanks for keeping us entertained in your own diabolical ways. To our admin team who kept things running smoothly, Olivia White, Phil Mikulski, and Kristen Neubert. fantastic as always and of course Jeff Clement and Jesse Cornett

who along with Phil kept our stories sounding great you are all such a fantastic team you have my undying gratitude and of course I have to send out sincere thanks to our tour team Jessica David Nicole and Brandon along with the many guest actors

who joined us on stage for the tour you made the live tour a simply wonderful time for all and to those who came out to the live shows Thank you. We have such amazingly supportive fans, and it was such a pleasure to perform for you and meet many of you after the shows. And as I like to remind our European listeners, don't forget that your tour is coming soon. Visit the no sleeppodcast.com slash tour to get your tickets to our Euro 2020 tour in January. Time is running out, so act fast.

Now we move forward. Forward towards the end of season 13. towards the Christmas season and towards the new year. Most of all, forward towards this week's stories. So, turn down the lights and grab the remote because it's time for our feature presentation. In our first tale, we meet a... We meet a writer... No, sorry, it's no good.

I can't think of what to say here. I've been struggling with writers' block, you see. And that's a struggle that the writer we meet in this tale can relate to, shared with us by author Meredith Katz. However, when she meets a woman at a library sale, she gains a new roommate and finds the woman's company much appreciated while the writing doesn't come. Performing this tale are Aaron Lillis and Mary Murphy.

So don't worry if you don't know what to say. I'm sure inspiration will strike you, especially when you're in the presence of the bookworm. I first met the person who was to become my new roommate at the library's biannual book sale. We bumped into each other as we both reached for the same book. I don't remember what it was, not by now. What I do remember is how dry her hand felt when it brushed over mine. I jerked my face up to hers in shock as her touch lingered longer than was polite.

You're right. I did write and had been utterly confused how she knew. I don't much resemble my author photo, made in ideal lighting with my makeup done. I didn't say anything in response, but my expression must have shown my thoughts because she laughed. Writers, callous. I pulled my hand away, realizing her fingers were still resting on mine. You probably outline in a journal. Yeah, good call.

I was a little impressed, despite my sense. and flustered by her attention. She took the book we'd both wanted, her prize for her detective work, and waved it at me with a wink before returning to browsing. I tried to keep sight of her amid the crowd that threatened to swallow her in its tight press, and it looked to me as though she were doing the same,

glancing back my way, wandering closer every so often. But before we could meet again, my roommate Carl caught up to me with his own finds, a stack of reference books. I stopped trying to spot her as we discussed which ones we thought would be useful to our writing and which ones would not,

and I didn't see her again before Carl and I headed out together. Still, I thought about her often, though in the abstract. I forgot the specifics of her face almost as soon as I'd first looked away, beyond the fact that she had long brown hair, an ordinary nose, ordinary mouth.

She had been taller than me, though as a short woman myself that wasn't unusual. A soft body, neither on the thicker side nor the thinner. Unremarkable. Her eyes, though, those were an odd, pale tan, light enough I'd almost thought she was wearing colored contacts. It wasn't exactly that she was my type. To this day, I'm not entirely sure whether or not I'm attracted to her.

But regardless, something about her made it different. to get her out of my mind. I wrote her into a half-dozen love interests in my first drafts. Then, having to admit I knew nothing about her except what I had imagined from our brief interaction, I slowly weeded her out of the second draft, as I pushed my characters into more interesting forms on revision. Garrell made fun of me for this trend.

We both edited each other's works for submission, so he read those first drafts in painful detail. tale. But the teasing didn't last long. Shortly after I'd begun this embarrassing tendency, he got a girlfriend, and the time he spent with her took his attention away from writing. I never met her, which was just as well. I preferred that things were quiet in the apartment we shared, and out of respect to that, he only had her over when I was already out. It had been her suggestion, he told me, to not disturb his roommate. I approved of her on that much alone, especially compared to his previous relationships.

Yet, even when he was home and in the rare mood to look at someone else's work, he was distracted. He had fewer and fewer suggestions and often seemed to have missed information I'd already made clear as little as a sentence earlier. I stopped going to him for edits. It was mutual. He stopped asking me to edit his work also, but I think that was largely because he stopped writing.

He never wanted to even brainstorm ideas, and when I brought it up first, he grew sullen and snappish. Riders Block will do that to a person. But the situation lasted, and our living situation quickly began to change, from a fond companionship which fed on our similar interests, to a strange tolerance of each other's presence. And eventually, he just moved out, gone to be with his girlfriend. It was almost a relief by then, though I wish he'd given me more notice to find a replacement and had been somewhat hurt by how he immediately fell out of contact. The only real solace I had was that his other friends were complaining of his absence also.

It left me in a tight spot. I didn't know anyone else in town who was looking for a new place, and despite my reluctance, I put out an ad. I did my best to make it friendly, while still saying. sliding in the details that would hopefully turn away people with too incompatible a lifestyle. Single queer woman writer seeks roommate, female and or queer preferred but negotiable. Pets okay. Looking for a voracious reader whose idea of a fun afternoon is to sit around devouring one of the many books I have here.

I immediately got a few hits. The first didn't call back. The second was a guy whose loud, aggressive enthusiasm made him, an immediate pass. And the third, the third was the girl from the book sale. I recognized her eyes instantly, and with those smiling down at me, the rest of her features fell into place. Oh, it's you. It's you. For a moment, I couldn't bring myself to step away from the doorway. It felt surreal, unnatural. This city was too big to be this small. But then, the sort of person who'd identify a rider by a callous, was also the sort of person who'd be drawn to the ad I'd placed. That discomfort

settled again, and I stepped aside. Let me show you around. She wandered after me, eyeing the apartment with a sort of strange fondness, as if she saw things she'd recognized and liked what she saw. With the number of books strewn around, that was no surprise. Eventually, as I led her away from the second bedroom and back into the living room, she stopped in front of my bookcase next to the desk and pondered the duplicates of the romance novels there, my author copies. Claudia Prisco? That's me. I tried not to make excuses, tried not to let myself show the embarrassment I could feel

squeezing my chest. I was proud of my work, but it's impossible not to be aware of how romance was perceived by the general public. I've read some of your work. I hope that doesn't disqualify me. I know fans can get a little weird. Something inside me relaxed at those words. I was smiling at her laughter, helpless to it.

No, of course not. I'm always glad to have a fan. And if you like reading, this is the place for you. I'm a total bookworm. Your ad was really appealing, promising me free reads and all, especially since I already know I can trust your taste. She smiled again, and I caged. entirely. She didn't seem like she'd be one of those fans who put pressure on an author to

constantly write what they wanted to read, but simply a fellow reader. Perhaps things could go back to how they had been before, a quiet writer's retreat where I could bounce ideas off someone near to hand. But life changes always distract you from your ability to focus, and this was no exception. Instead of writing, I was dealing with the landlord, getting the lease switched around. Instead of writing, I was adjusting to a new person's behaviors and life schedule. And as nice as her company was, her habits were at least a little odd. She never ate in the apartment. She couldn't cook, or so she claimed, and didn't like most prepackaged food,

so she was never at home for meals. She stayed away for long hours of the day at her job at the University Library, leaving the place distractingly silent. Still, she came back in the evenings, jokingly. that she was a nocturnal creature. And in order to feel as if I had some company, I began to adjust my schedule to fit hers. After a while, in an attempt to inspire myself to push through the writer's block I was struggling with, I asked her if I could run some ideas by her. She brightened visibly at the offer. Claudia, I would like nothing more. So I explained the basic

plot of the story I was working on, the characters, their motivations. She listened with rapt attention, eagerly taking the story in as I fed it to her. She made some suggestions along the way, and I made a note to write them down. Tomorrow, though, I remember thinking that. After I'd spent so much time working out the details with her, the night had grown late, and I was tired. But in the morning, I could no longer remember the conclusion I'd come to from talking to her, or any of the details she'd suggested. I remembered that we'd talked about it, but not.

nothing more. Embarrassing, but sometimes it was like that. You promised yourself you'd remember later, but there were always other things to crowd the words right out of your head. I didn't want her to think I hadn't paid attention to her, so I put that story aside for a time and decided to work on another one I had in progress. Again, the writer's block came over me, worse than before, likely from me trying to switch gears between stories, but I couldn't seem to remember the plot at all for this other one. It had happened to me before. Usually I hadn't finalized things enough before putting it aside.

Still, it was a frustrating day, thinking through possibility after possibility, none of them feeling like they really worked, like they fit. Again, that night, I bounced details off her. Maybe you can help me come up with a plot, plot if I explained the characters. She sat attentive as I did so. Again, she made suggestions, and by the end, I felt like a solution was in reach if I just gave it a little more thought and attention. I didn't want to make the same mistake as I had before, and so even though it was

late and I felt deeply drained, I went looking for my journals, only to find that I had misplaced them. I remembered having taken them out from their usual slot on my shelf, but I didn't remember where I'd left them, and they didn't turn up in any of the usual places I checked. Defeated, I scribbled down a few bullet point notes on an envelope and went to bed. This time, I would remember, I was sure, and I would find the journals in the morning. I did not. I went out and bought a new journal and went to write up what I recalled, but my memory was. was blank. The bullet points didn't help.

It was like reading notes on a completely unfamiliar story. How they were meant to fit together to make a solid through line must have made sense to the tired me of the night before, but they did not make sense to the me of today. This was to set the standard for how things would go from then on. My writer's block has not improved with time. If anything, it's only worsened. The idea of plotting out an entire story seems ludicrous by now.

The characters I come up with feel flat and two-dimensional. Occasionally I write down some images or turns of phrase that I like, but when I reread them, I realize they're taken directly from my other works. During this time, my roommate has been my only salvation. What little I've managed to jot down has been largely based on her. Her appearance, the things I've heard her say, strange little habits she has, the way she picks up a book to read it and runs her finger over each word as if she could take the text in better that way.

And every evening we talk writing. I hope that these creative discussions will bring that creative spark back, but if anything, I feel more drained. A part of me wants to give up entirely. Maybe, maybe I need some time away from all this, to rest and recover from whatever's caused all these holes in my memory. But every evening, she smiles expectantly, hungry for our chats, and I can't let her down. If the state I'm in right now continues, she might be the only fan I'll have left, but at least I'll have her. So I do my best to find whatever plots or characters or even just fragments of ideas I still have inside me.

As long as she has faith in my writing, I'm sure there's meaning in my continuing, because she knows books inside and out. Whatever I'm creating must have value if she still wants me to share it with her. After all, she's a real bookworm. Our next story is coming right up. But first, a word from Mint Mobile. If you're still using one of the big wireless providers in 2019, have you asked yourself what you're paying for?

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That's mintmobile.com slash no sleep. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash no sleep. And now, back to the show. Sometimes a fresh start is exactly what's needed. And that's the case for the man in our next tale who moves out of his hometown to get away from his parents. But he soon learns that while you can escape the past,

you can never escape yourself. In this tale, shared with us by author Holloway Green, we discover that this sentiment can be very literal. Performing this tale are Atticus Jackson and Sarah Thomas. You see, because a doppelganger can be a portent of doom and disaster, and according to our main character, that would be just my luck. I'd been down on my luck for months now. First, stress and anxiety got to me and I dropped out of school.

Because of that, my parents cut me off financially and ceased all communications. I finally just gave up and gathered what was left of my savings to start over. On a whim, I picked up my meager belongings and fled my hometown. I had no friends to really say goodbye to, no siblings to miss, no girlfriend to beg to come with me. Just two disappointed parents and a few fruitless semesters into a useless degree. I took a bus to a new city, one I had picked somewhat arbitrarily. It had the closest ratio of employment rates and cost of living, at the expense of being a bit higher on the crime rate. I wasn't too worried.

Worst case scenario, if I wound up not. being able to find a job, maybe it would be easy to find someone to put me out of my misery. The bus dropped me off at a motel I would be staying at while looking for a job, in a more stable place to live. It was a bit dingy, but honestly not as bad as I was expecting. It was right by an airport and some fast food restaurants on a pretty busy street just off of the main thoroughfare. It was well lit and populated. I took in a long breath, and for the first time in a long time, felt some sense of relief. I was away from college pursuing a degree in something I clearly did not excel at. Away from my parents, who for my whole life only showed

disapproval and coldness towards me. Away from the loneliness, the prying eyes of everyone around me, as if they could sense that something was wrong with me. That I was defective, that I would amount to nothing, that I was nobody. I was a new person here. No one knew who I was. I could be somebody. That was exhilarating. I picked up my two luggage bags and walked to the motel entrance.

Inside, there were a few people roaming around, most either checking out to catch their flight or checking in, jet-lagged and cranky. When I turned my attention to the woman behind the front desk, Middle-aged, bony, with red hair the color of candy apples, and wearing ample blush in relatively the same shade. She raised her eyebrows expectantly at me, and I shuffled over. Her name tag read Sharon.

Hey there, checking in. Uh, yes, I didn't make a reservation or anything, though. She smiled in a polite customer service way, not a warm way. No worry, sugar. We have rooms available. May I see some ID, please? I reached into my pocket and withdrew the only form of ID I had available. My student one.

I had never gotten a driver's license. Sharon accepted it at first, but then looked back at me and raised an eyebrow. Sorry, we can't accept this form of ID. I need one that shows your birthday on it. You need to be over 18 to rent a room. I'm 22. Don't I look it? I cracked a half a half a day. hearted smile, which Sharon did not return.

Sorry. She held out my ID back to me. I just gawked at it, stupidly. I was tired from the bus ride and clinging to the small amount of hope I had built up. Please, I have plenty of cash. Isn't that enough? I removed a few crumpled hundreds. My entire life's worth, and showed them to her.

Sharon, to my even deeper disappointment, looked not swayed but rather disgusted. We don't room your kind around here. What is my kind? No ID and just cash? We don't cater to drifters and dealers. This is a nice part of town, lots of families coming in from the airport.

This is a family-run joint, not a chain. We can't afford to rent based on faith of goodwill. Her eyes drifted to my ID And you don't even really look like this photo Like a fawned and didn't care how desperate I sounded I dropped my volume to match hers Look Sharon I'm having a real tough time

Please I just got here from out of town I'm trying to make a new life for myself I'm not a druggie And I took the ID back This is a few years old. She eyed me suspiciously, but the pathetic look I must have had on my face finally softened her. She took the ID back with a sigh and typed up my name into the computer.

Fine. But if you get up to trouble, may God himself have mercy on me for what I will do to you. I cracked a little smile at that, relieved and admittedly a little bit charmed. Thank you. Uh-huh. She handed me my ID back.

And honey, you are a hard 22. It was a few days later when I was walking in the city that I saw him. In a place hundreds of miles from your home, it would be very coincidental to see someone you knew, especially if they had no business being there. It must be even more coincidental to see yourself. I was walking in a thriftedal. wrong of people while crossing a crosswalk, hands in my pockets, on my way to the Salvation

Army to look for some interview clothes. I glanced up, and he seemed to do the same thing at the exact same time, and our eyes met. He looked exactly like me, down to the minutia, same scruffy brown hair, same dull green eyes, seen scar on his cheek from a childhood dog bite. He wasn't wearing the same clothes as me, nor one. I even owned, but definitely ones that I would have picked out. We passed each other, and I turned and looked over my shoulder to try and comprehend what I just saw. He in turn did the same, and we stared, still walking in opposite directions.

His face was only slightly nonplussed and wide-eyed, less so than the baffled confusion I felt like I was wearing. He suddenly turned around and hurried across the crosswalk. Then, like a wave receding back into the sea, it disappeared into a group of people. I was dumbfounded. I mean, it's not outside the realm of possibility to see people who look sort of like you. There are only so many ways the features of a human face can be arranged. But he was a spitting image of me. Every detail, even the way he walked and carried himself.

It wasn't someone who looked. like me or a long-lost twin or anything like that it was me I abandoned my plans that day and went straight back to the motel locking myself in my room I felt dazed and like I was in a dream constantly second-guessing whether I had just experienced what I indeed had definitely just experienced my hyperventilated and felt like I was losing my mind Maybe he wasn't even real. Maybe I had just imagined him. That made sense.

That was the most likely scenario, right? I was stressed out, probably more than I realized, and simply mistook a similar-looking stranger for my twin. I sat on the floor of my motel room and buried my face in my hands, half laughing and half letting out a cry of frustration. I slept fitfully. My dreams haunted by a familiar face in the expansive landscape of an unfamiliar place. The next day I saw him again and almost screamed in public.

He was sitting at the bus stop outside the motel, the very same one I had arrived at. I was returning from a grocery shopping trip and saw him across the street. He hadn't yet noticed me. His face was buried in his phone and he tapped his foot impatiently on the ground. Shit, I had that exact same habit. I hid behind the corner of a building and spied on him. A cold dread washing over me inch by inch, as though I were waiting into ice water. He was so normal.

He acted just like a normal human, just like how I would act. And with every passing second, I realized with abject terror that I wasn't crazy. that I wasn't stressed out. He was me. I was looking at myself. I clutched my grocery bag to my chest and tried to breathe, though my chest felt tight and my throat was sandpapery. I could feel the clammy sweat beginning to rise on my skin.

It was so close to where I was staying. Had he followed me here? How did he know where I was? What did he want? That question hung in the air around me, and it reminded me of something I read when I was younger. It was a children's book of old folk tales from around the world, and one story in particular felt woefully familiar.

The English referred to it as a fetch. The ancient Egyptians, the Ka, the Finnish Etienne, is loosely related. But I knew it by one. One word, doppelganger. And what did it want? Well, I had remembered that part of the story very well, because the image of being stalked by your double haunted me for years. If you see a doppelganger, it is always a harbinger of doom and bad luck, and ultimately,

death. I bit my lip and felt my heart be quick into an almost painful pace. Maybe this creature had been following me for much longer than I knew, given the stream of unfortunate circumstances that had plagued me recently. Maybe only now it was making itself visible to me, in order to collect on what it wanted most from me. Suddenly, as though sensing my fear, as though he could smell it, he looked up at me, and our eyes met again.

This time, his narrowed. He stood up, backpack slung over his shoulder, phone in hand, and glanced both ways down the street. Oh, God, he was going to come for me. My muscles tense and I prepared to run. But before he could even step off the curb, a bus approach the stop he was at, obscuring the line of sight between us. I took the opportunity and scrambled away and didn't return to the motel until late that night. I didn't sleep I saw his face when I closed my eyes

Things only got worse from then on I saw him everywhere On the street At various bus and subway stops At the library at the park Hell he was even shopping at the grocery store I was turning an application into There was always distance between us

Several yards at least Every time I tried to slip away, his eyes would always catch mine, and his expression grew angrier and angrier every time we met. His eyes looked more and more like a predator's, and I felt myself feeling more and more like prey. I'm sure he was frustrated with me, frustrated that I was constantly fleeing and depriving him of his meal wherever he saw me. peace he needed to finally be whole? I had no idea, but with every passing day my paranoia deepened, and I eventually sequestered myself away in my motel room. I left only to run to the gas station or one of the airport restaurants for food, and always in the cover of night with a small Salvation Army pocket knife clutched in my fist. Sharon, who I considered my only lifeline at this point,

began to notice how haggard and distressed I was becoming. Apparently, she was the only front desk person, so she always saw my comings and goings. One night, after coming back with the dinner of Pepsi and Doritos in my arms, she waved me over and looked at me sternly. Honey, you doing okay? I felt a lump in my throat. I could reach out to her.

I could tell her the truth. Maybe she could help me. But in her, I saw a tiny fragmented piece of my mother, the one who always promised to listen to me and then brushed off my problems like there were nothing. Like I was nothing. I'm fine. Tired from the job, hunt, you know? Sharon clearly picked up on my lie and crossed her hands in front of her. I can tell you're tired. Real tired. Try to get some rest, okay? Never knew a guy to forget his own room number and lose a key in the same day.

By the way, if that turns up, do bring it back to me. We've only got the one spare, and they cost 150 to duplicate. I tilted my head a little and frowned. What? I didn't lose the key. Sharon led out a short, hesitant laugh, as though testing the waters to see if I was joking with her. Uh, the key you told me you lost about 20 minutes ago. I gave you the duplicate.

You even asked me what room you were staying in again. Her unsure smile turned into a concerned look. You ever had memory loss before? Do you need me to call a doctor? No. I felt that all familiar ice water feeling hit my skin. God, it even had the same name as me. Sorry about the key.

I'll look for it. Thanks. Each word struggled to escape my mouth, and I felt like I was struggling to even make coherent syllables. Sharon looked like she was going to say something else, but I turned and rushed to my room, juggling my snacks, my key in the pocket knife. A sudden surge of adrenaline struck me,

and I realized I was done with running. I had been running from my problems, my whole life. I mean, I literally ran away to this city. And this thing was trying to take that life I was trying so hard to build. It wanted to destroy me, use me to complete something in it that was incomplete. If death was inevitable, then I would at least go down fighting. I slid the key into my motel room lock and turned. Despite the pure energy rushing through my veins, I was terrified. My thoughts were racing with conflicting messages. Run in and kill the fucking thing. No, no, run away, skip town, go to another new city.

No, don't let it take what is truly yours. I opened the door slowly. The lights were on, despite me having turning them off when I left. So I knew he was in there. I stepped in and saw that he was sitting at the foot of my bed, hands on his lap, totally calm and collected. He looked up when I entered, and I quickly dropped my groceries and closed the door behind me. It was shaking.

He wasn't. You're here. My heart dropped. He had my voice. Why are you here? I meant it to sound like a command, but my voice didn't sound nearly as confident and collected as his. He stood up, and I took a step back, now flush against the door. My confidence deflated.

To finish this, you've been following me. I want to know why. Who are you? I felt strangely offended. You've been following me. I'm the real me. and you're a monster. I fumbled with the pocket knife,

but managed to flick the blade open and pointed at him. My voice and hands both equally shook, and every fight-or-flight response in my body was firing at once. I won't let you kill me. I won't give you the satisfaction. Nice try. He rushed me. I tried to swing the knife at him,

but it was abysmally small to begin with. And he had the upper hand and easily dodged it. He slammed me against the door, hands around my throat, and then pushed me down to the ground. I gagged and struggled. The pressure on my neck made it hard to think. And I knew I only had seconds to act before I lost consciousness. I still gripped a pocket knife in my hand. But it was slippery from my sweat and I didn't have full range of motion in my arms.

Plus, he was strong as strong as me. With one swing that used up all the energy I had at that moment, I brought up my arm and slashed his tricep. He instinctively loosened his grip at the pain, and I took my opportunity. I pressed my feet to his pelvis and kicked him back. Then I was the one who was on top of him. He let out a gasp. But it was futile, as I cut him off by plunging the knife into his knife.

neck. I don't really know how many times I stabbed him. I stabbed and stabbed and stabbed, trying to compensate for the short length of the blade with pure force. Right red blood leaked out of his neck like a punctured kitty pool, and I was sickened and in awe. The exact same red as the rest of us. They're perfect. I stabbed and stabbed until his body relaxed and his eyelids drifted halfway down over his eyes. It was only then that I realized I had been holding my breath almost the entire time, and that my arm was aching from the exertion. I let out the breath I had been holding,

and pulled back and sat down on the floor next to the doppelganger's corpse. I panted and looked down at my hands and shirt, both saturated and sticky with its blood. I smiled to myself. I had won. I had beaten him. Now there was nothing standing in my way. Nothing to stop me from living the life I knew I deserved. But despite my elation, an odd feeling crept over me. As I reflected back on my life before the city, the life I was glad to leave behind, I realized how much of it was missing. How much I had to have. just never thought about before.

What was the name of my hometown? What was the name of my college? What had I even majored in? What were my parents' names? Fuck. What was my name? Every memory before stepping off that bus felt hazy and blurry, like trying to recall a dream a few days after you had it.

You're not sure which parts you made up or which parts. you actually experienced. I looked over to the corpse next to me, as if he could help. I heard why I had come here in the first place, to this city, from a town that didn't exist, from a life that didn't exist. I had come here to be somebody. An unseen force guided my eyes to the corpse's front pocket where a wallet was poking out. This was one of the few things that differed between us.

I didn't have much to carry. Curious, I grabbed it and opened it up. He had a student ID as well, but one from a prestigious university in the city. There were photos of him and a girl, his girlfriend, I assumed. One of him and two smiling parents, a handful of younger siblings, lots of credit cards. ticket stoves, receipts, a life worth living. I grinned by life worth living. It looked like my luck was finally turning around.

Horror fiction can be fun and safe. And in this story, we meet a family who move into a new house. Soon, one of the children begins talking about a girl she's met in the house. Imaginary friend? Well, the family seems to think so. But in this tale, shared by author Whitley O'Brien, when the family opens a sealed door to the attic, a malevolent presence begins to manifest. And this story really happened to Whitley and her family. Yes, this nightmare is decidedly non-fiction. Performing this tale is Jessica McAvoy. So skeptics and believers come together and make up your own mind, but we're reliably informed that what you're about to hear is the truth.

And these things really happened in the house on Campground Road. To give you a little background on my family, the sister in question is named Haley. She's the youngest of my mother's four children, and by all accounts, the baby. She was a whiny kid, very attached to my mother and no one else. I'm the oldest, so I was saddled with babysitting often. At the time of these events, I was 15. My brother, Ted, was 10. My middle sister, Anna, was six, and Haley was four.

Our family had just moved into a new house, and though it had its fair share of flaws, looking at you, lack of AC, it was large enough for our family, and the price was right. The only weird thing about it was the short staircase in the case, kitchen that culminated in a locked door. The landlord said that it went to the attic and was kept locked because the flooring wasn't safe. Kind of weird, but whatever, we had plenty of room in the lower part of the house. We shared a tiny dead-end street with four other houses, only two of which

were currently occupied. The yard was enormous, and it was within walking distance of a small park. For the most part, we were happy there. Around the time that we moved in, Haley started to tell us about her friend, Jella. She went everywhere with us, and Haley made sure we saved her a seat. She described her as a little girl with blonde hair like her own, and said that she always wore a dress. This was odd because Haley herself loathed wearing dresses or skirts or anything vaguely feminine. To contrast, Anna was the priciest princess that ever set foot on this earth,

so we just assumed that Haley had pulled inspiration from her big sister for her new friend. In the following months, it wasn't unusual to find Haley chatting away in an empty room or playing alone more often. Everyone chalked it up to her being lonely while all the other kids were at school. It wasn't until the heat of summer threatened to boil us alive, that we realized something more was going on. The first incident was almost put down to weird coincidence. We had a routine of cleaning house every Sunday.

Everyone was assigned a room, in addition to their bedroom, and was expected to clean it. Haley and Anna usually got easy jobs like the laundry room. Me and Ted fought over who had to clean the kitchen, and who got the relatively easy tasks of tidying up the bathroom or living room. On this particular day, I lucked out and got the living room. I had just finished putting away the vacuum and was ready to settle down on the couch and watch some TV when I was annoyed to see a square of white paper lying in the middle of the floor. I'd like to clarify that it was lying in the middle of the floor. It wasn't close enough to any furniture or shelves for it to have fallen off of anything.

I was sure that someone had come through and dropped trash on my clean floor, but when I bent to pick it up, I was surprised to see that it was a photo. It was about four inches by four inches, and it had the slightly faded, milky quality of an old photograph. It was in color, so it couldn't have been too ancient, but it was clear to see that it wasn't taken in my lifetime. The subject of the photo was a little girl. She looked to be about four or five, wearing a white dress with pink bows and white dress shoes with frilly white socks. She was small and slim, but her face looked older than her years. She was smiling, but she didn't look happy.

It was the sort of smile you give when someone tells you to smile. She was standing in front of a chain-link fence, overgrown with ivy, and nothing else was visible in the frame. I immediately took it to my mom and asked her who it was and where it had come from. She flipped it over to the back, which was, of course, blank. She assumed it was a child of an old friend, or maybe a distant cousin, and while she couldn't think of any reason it would have ended up on the living room floor, she didn't think twice about it,

until Haley popped in and asked where we got a picture of Jella. My blood ran cold at her words. Upon closer inspection of the photo, the fence and ivy looked extremely similar to the fence in our backyard. We were all more than a little freaking. out, well, except Haley. From then on, we paid more attention to her when she talked about Jella. It was complete coincidence when we figured out that she was trying to say Angela, but her four-year-old mind came up with Jella instead. The next incident involved me,

home alone with a migraine, during a thunderstorm. The rest of the family had gone to the store, but seeing as my head felt like it was in danger of exploding, I decided to sit that one out. I was sleeping on the couch in the living room, with my back to the room. It was late afternoon, so the room was dimly lit. A particularly loud crack of thunder woke me, and I flipped over to face the room and opened my eyes. My heart dropped instantly.

Standing no more than three feet in front of me was Angela. She looked almost exactly as she had in the photo, except she looked scared and she had her arm outstretched in my direction. I couldn't speak or move. She couldn't have been there for more than five seconds, but it felt like ten minutes. Finally, I squeezed my eyes shut, and when I opened them, she was gone. She hadn't looked threatening at all. To be honest, she looked terrified herself.

As a mother myself now, I can't help but think. that she must have been scared of the storm and seeking comfort from the only person she could. But as a teenager, I was scared out of my mind. I immediately called my mom and demanded that they come home as quickly as possible. After that incident, I was leery of being left home alone. This probably delighted my mom, as it meant I would go places with the family more often, rather than staying home being an antisocial teen. Other odd things happened here and there,

but nothing that couldn't be explained away rationally, and definitely nothing that felt scary or threatening. It even became something of a joke to everyone in the house to talk to Angela. Hey, Angela, get me a soda. Aw man, Angela must have let the dog out. I didn't pinch you. Must have been Angela. Spoiler alert.

it wasn't Angela. The next time I saw Angela for myself was in broad daylight, and I was with my brother, Ted. We were all buckled into my mom's hideous astrovan and ready to go out to dinner when the inevitable happened. Anna had to pee. It never failed that at least one person would need to go to the bathroom after we were already out of the house.

So my exasperated mother took her back into the house. Not even a minute passed before Haley decided that she also had to pee. I unbuckled her from her car seat and let her out the door, instructing her to go ahead and go back into the house before mom came back out. I watched her as she ran across the driveway, chubby legs pumping and blonde hair flying. Then I sat back and waited for her to come back out. Being the oldest of four, I had a strong maternal instinct already,

so I was subconsciously watching from the corner of my eye for her to come back out of the door to make sure she didn't run into the road as she came back around the van. I should point out that, at her height, all I could see of Haley if she was right alongside the van would be the very top of her head. So when not even a minute had passed and I saw a shiny, blonde head bounce alongside the van, I instinctively turned to look out the back window to track her progress and make sure she didn't end up in the road. All I saw out the back window was the empty driveway.

My heart sped up and I turned my head left and right, trying to see where she had gone. But there were no little girls in the road or otherwise. Just as I was about to get out of the van, the door opened and my mom came out of the house, followed by both of my sisters. Of course, I asked if Haley had left the house earlier, but I already knew the answer. There was no way her little legs could have taken her from the van to the house in seconds and without me seeing her. I wasn't comforted in the least when Haley insisted on sitting in the back with me since that was where Angela was sitting. For whatever reason, Angela seemed to be more connected to me than any of the others, excluding Haley, of course.

I don't know if it was because I was more open to that sort of stuff. I had always enjoyed the paranormal, or if she simply wanted an older sister. Either way, me and Haley were the only ones to see her for most of the summer. That's not to say we were the only ones to witness her actions, though. For the most part, she became just a part of the house, quiet and unobtrusive, even helpful at times. Like the time we had locked the keys in the house, tried every door and window there was, and found them all locked. Just before we broke a window to get in,

I jokingly called out to Angela, asking her to open the door. To everyone's shock, the next time we tried the back door, the knob turned effortlessly. Towards the end of the summer, my brother and I had invited some friends over, one of whom was generally a troublemaker named Justin.

Being who he was, he quickly latched onto the idea of opening the locked door to the attic. We had all been curious when we first moved in, but after living in the house a while, we just kind of forgot about it. I had a bad feeling when I thought about opening it up, but not wanting to be a party pooper,

I went along with it. After obtaining reluctant permission from my mom, Justin set about popping the lock with a steak knife. In no time at all, the door swung open and a gust of cold air wafted over us, where we stood on the stairs. After glancing at each other nervously, my other friends and I urged Justin forward.

It was his idea, after all, and if anyone was going to be possessed, it was only fair that it be him. He disappeared into the pitch black doorway, and seconds later, a light poured from the room. There was a moment of silence before he poked his head back out and told us to come up. Stepping inside, the first thing I noticed

was the bare bulb hanging from the center of the room. The switch was attached to a long string, dangling almost to the floor. As I looked around, it became clear why the string was so long. This was a child's room. There was a tiny wooden table and chair against one wall, and childish stickers on the walls.

The room was barely bigger than a large closet and had a wooden floor, unlike the downstairs, which was carpet and linoleum. At the far side of the room, two small doors were set in the wall. Upon further inspection, we found that these opened up to the rest of the attic. That part was unfinished, and there was no stable flooring, so my mom put her foot down as far as us exploring that area. We were able to see, with the help of a flashlight, that there was all kinds of junk stored in there, from previous tenants most likely. At this point, the entire family and all of our friends had crowded into the small house.

space. We were all pretty creeped out, but it was interesting. I know I wasn't the only one wondering if Angela had ever sat in the tiny chair, or if she was the one to put the stickers on the walls. And if so, what had become of her that she should still be hanging around here? We should have known better than to let Haley come up there, but there's no way we could have known what a bad decision this turned out to be. She immediately became interested in the small doors that opened into the rest of the attic. She peered inside and immediately started talking to someone. She wanted to go in, but was pulled back by my mom. She was fighting mad, yelling at us that she wanted to see scary. She described him as a little black boy who was crying and scared. Now, I don't know about you,

but I don't want to be in the vicinity of anyone named Scary that lives in an attic that only a little girl can see. We all made a break for the stairs, my mom carrying the screaming Haley like a football. Once we got downstairs, safely locking the door behind us, we were able to get Haley settled and talk to her more about what she'd seen. We were relieved to find out that she had been trying to tell us

that his name was Gary, not scary. But we were still pretty, He freaked out that we had another ghostly child in our house. At least we could shut the attic door and keep him out, right? Wrong. That night, after we had all gone to bed, I got a text from my mom. She simply said to come into her room. I hadn't been asleep yet, so I got up and went in to find my mom in tears.

It seems that after she and Haley had laid down in the bed, as they did every night, Haley had started to pat the bed beside her and tell Gary he could sleep with them. My mom asked her to stop, but Haley insisted that Gary was sad, and couldn't he sleep with them? My mom was terrified. She's a bit of a scaredy cat, and sharing her bed with a ghost was not something she was okay with, even if he was a little boy. I told her she was being silly, but inside I knew Haley wasn't making up stories. It wasn't long before we deeply regretted opening the locked door.

The activity cranked up, and it no longer felt innocuous. There was a presence to the place now, and it didn't feel like a little girl anymore. It didn't feel like a little boy either. It felt like something malevolent. The first thing we noticed were the maggots. We didn't have air conditioning, but I don't think hot weather can again for maggots forming on food within less than an hour. The first time this happened, we had just made hamburgers for dinner. We got what we wanted and placed the rest in the oven,

just in case anyone wanted seconds before putting them in the refrigerator. We ate and watched some TV, and when it became apparent that no one was going to be eating more, my mom told me to go put them away. I opened the oven door and pulled the pan out halfway before screaming and slamming the door shut again. There was a mass of maggots roiling on the surface of the burgers. They were the biggest maggots I had ever seen before or since. And they had shown up within the hour. I'm no entomologist, but from my research on the subject,

it generally takes, at the very least, eight hours for maggots to hatch, much less grow to that size. My mom threw the food away, pan and all, and we tried to pretend it was the hot weather that caused it. Things were moved. Important things usually moved to places we would never find them until after the need for the item had gone. Some things we just never found.

Footsteps were heard in the other rooms when no one was there. On more than one occasion, when I would be asleep in my room, something that looked like me would walk through the living room, or my brother would see me in the bathroom when I was clearly sitting in the living room. Something I didn't notice until after the whole ordeal was over was that Angela was strangely absent. Haley didn't talk about her or Gary much anymore.

Now, I think they must have been as scared of what had been unleashed from the attic as we pretended not to be. My pets began dying. I lost two guinea pigs and two kittens in the span of a month. Granted, the kittens were newborns, much too young to be away from their mother. A friend's brother had found them and given them to meet a raise. But the bigger kitten had been doing well, up until the day he was left alone for the first time when school started back. The guinea pigs seemed to just stop breathing in their cage overnight.

First one, then the other. The sadness and oppressive feeling of the house were weighing me down. I was moody and irritable and jumping at every little sound or movement. We all began finding reasons to stay out of the house more. On one such night, we went to visit a friend of my mom's, all of us but Ted. He was new to being allowed to stay home alone, and he was the only one who seemed oblivious to all that was going on in the house. Against my mom's better judgment, we left him there and had a nice few hours away. It was getting dark when we pulled onto the street, but we could just make out Ted walking up and down the driveway.

As soon as he saw us, he broke into a run and jumped into the van, almost before my mom could stop it. His face was pure white and tears stood in his eyes. He begged my mom to turn around and leave. He didn't care where we went to, but he didn't want to go back into that house ever again. He actually screamed when my mom. My mom moved the van forward. We were all terrified at this point, unsure of what had happened to make him so afraid. My mom reversed down the street and pulled back onto the main road.

Once the house was out of sight, he had calmed down enough to tell us what happened. He said that he was in his room, playing PlayStation with the sound up when he heard what sounded like crying from the other room. At first he assumed that we had just come back for something and one of the girls were was crying. But the longer it went on, the more he started to think something else was going on. So he paused his game, which made the crying sound even louder. At this point, he could tell it wasn't one of us. It didn't sound like us. I'll never understand why he decided to leave his room, but he did. He found that the noise was coming from the living room, and when he peeked around the doorway,

he saw a female figure sitting on the floor in the corner beside the couch. She had her knees drawn up to her chin and her head bowed so that her long, dark hair hung down, obscuring her face. He was in shock and thought some crazy person had broken in. The cordless phone was lying on the couch. This was before people had cell phones in elementary school. He was trying to figure out what to do when it was as if she sensed him staying. standing there and stopped crying, whipping her head around to look at him.

He said that it was clear by the way she moved that she was not a real, live person. Her movements were lightning fast. When she saw him cowering behind the door jam, she threw her head back and started to cackle. He was frozen in place until she stopped laughing and looked at him again, with savage hate in her eyes. He said the last thing he saw was her springing forward in a disjointed crawl before he turned and ran from the house, slamming the door behind him. He stayed outside pacing the driveway and being eaten up by mosquitoes until we got home. He point-blank refused to ever enter that house again.

We ended up staying the night with the same friend we had visited earlier. It was a little awkward to explain that we were scared to go home because of our house was haunted, but there was no way any of us wanted to sleep there that night. The next morning, my mother and I went back to the house alone. We believed my brother, but we wanted to be sure there were no signs of the house being broken into. All of the doors and windows were locked and intact. There was no sign anyone had even been in the house until we entered the bathroom. At first glance, everything looked normal. Then we pulled the shift.

shower curtain back. In the bathtub were six eviscerated mice. They were quite literally ripped limb from limb. Blood was splattered all over the tub and fingerprints dotted the walls. The only way to tell there had been six mice was to count the tails. Unlike every family in every horror movie, we did the smart thing. We left. We moved in with the previously mentioned friend until we could find another place. My mom took the hit to her credit for breaking the lease, but it was worth it in all of our minds. Before we left, we made sure that we had Angela's picture, and we invited her and Gary to come with us. No child should be left alone with whatever my brother saw, living or dead. From time to time for years after we moved, a neighbor or friend

would comment on the little blonde girl in the white dress in our house, asking who she was and telling us she had smiled at them and was just as pretty as a picture. Then, of course, we would pull out her picture and delve into the story, and they would usually not visit again. Several years later, we had a fire in our apartment, and Angela's picture was lost. We haven't had any more sightings of her since. We like to believe that she was finally released. from this world and has been reunited with her loved ones. Now, we can look back on our experience in the house on Campground Road as a unique experience that not many get to have.

But I know for a fact that we never want to experience anything like it again. As the lights come back on, our stories come to an end. Please remember to be kind and rewind. 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 past program. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening. Join us at the video store next week. Our door is always open.

This audio production is copyright 2019 by Creative Reason Media Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media, Inc.