The NoSleep Podcast - Nosleep Podcast S2E03

Episode Date: June 3, 2012

The second season of The Nosleep Podcast continues with the third episode. This batch of stories highlights frightening childhood memories, sleep-induced terrors, and unexplained and unwanted visitors. Featuring horror stories from the Reddit.com horror writing community, these stories are designed to afflict your night with no sleep.This episode features these stories:A Letter to My Future Self written by Rafael Marmol (Redditor Draulable) and read by Chris Eddleman (Redditor TalksAtYou).Grow Up written by Adam Azar (Redditor Raza1love) and read by David Cummings (Redditor MikeRowPhone).A Simple Photo written by Mark Copeland (Redditor XIIIm) and read by Jessica Prokuski.Rapid Eye Movements written by Seanna Hartbauer (Redditor slidewithme) and read by James Cleveland (Redditor tseotet).The WontThinkStraight Trilogy written by Eric Ponslee (Redditor WontThinkStraight) and read by David Cummings. This trilogy’s final story won the Nosleep Writing Contest for January 2012. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the sunlight fades to darkness and the frightful tales creep into your mind, it's time to give in to your fear because tonight there will be no sleep. Welcome to the No Sleep podcast. It's our third episode of Season 2, and I'm your host, David Cummings. We have five stories to keep you awake this time, including our final story, which is a trilogy of tales from an award-winning author. The award in question is the monthly writing contest on Reddit.com's No Sleep Forum. Each month, authors submit their stories for consideration, and the No Sleep community votes for the one they deem the best. One of the perks of winning the contest is the story gets included in the same. this podcast. Some of the previous winners to appear on the show include the epic penpal series from 1,000 vultures and another wonderful series called When You Wish Upon a Star, heard in episode

18 from last season. I'm a little behind with the other winning stories due to the recent break, but rest assured, all past and future winners will be included. There's no doubting the quality of storytelling displayed by the winners and many of the other authors from No Sleep. I would encourage you to check out the writing contest threads and catch up on the great stories you may have missed on No Sleep. Okay, let's get right into our first story. Imagine being 10 years old and being asked to write a letter to yourself that you would read 10 years later. What would you tell your 20-year-old self? Now imagine receiving that letter. as an adult, only to be reminded of certain events that were long buried in your memory.

Author Raphael Marmal stirs up memories from the past, and Chris Edelman opens the mail to read A Letter to My Future Self. Today, I received a letter in the mail. The return address was from the elementary school in the area, and it was addressed to me. I sat down at my kitchen table and opened the envelope. There was another letter inside with another sealed envelope. I took both of them out, glanced at the sealed envelope, and saw that it had my name written on it.

The penmanship was my own, but the letters seemed to be written clumsily. I unfolded the piece of paper that had been in the envelope and saw that it was a letter from my former elementary school teacher. It was strange, but in that moment I couldn't think of what the teacher looked like, and the name didn't sound familiar. My childhood always seemed a little blurry. I could never remember any outstanding events for my formative years, but I always thought most people don't remember those years.

I read over the letter from my elementary school teacher, and it said that the envelope was a writing assignment from the fourth grade. Everyone had to write a letter to their future selves, and the teacher would mail it after ten years had passed. I picked up the sealed envelope and tore it open, excited to find out what I had said to myself. Dear future me, hi, how are you? I'm doing okay here.

School is so boring. I cannot wait to go home and watch Spider-Man, Batman, and Superman on TV. Spider-Man's the best. I hate when Sailor Moon comes on, stupid girls' show. But that's okay, because we go outside and play until Superman comes on. I hope you're happy, and remember to keep the secret from Mommy, or she'll be really, really, really mad. She was so mad when she found the Batman treasure.

Daddy was really mad, too. Thank God I put them in different places. I don't want to go to the camp place, but Mommy and Daddy say it's only for the summer vacation. I think they are lying. I heard them at night talking about moving away because of the treasures. In case we move, I drew you a map of the backyards, so you can be like Batman and find the treasure when you can drive.

I love you. You. P.S. Don't beat anyone up anymore. I turned over the letter, and there was a map drawn on the back. It was a crude child's drawing, yet it had enough details and explanation to where I could decipher the locations. It seemed strange to me that I didn't remember ever digging in the backyard or having treasures as a child. The coolest thing I owned as a kid was a hollow foil Charzard Pokemon card.

I grabbed a shovel from the tool shed and followed the directions on the map. The first was buried right behind the tool shed. After digging around a little, I found a Spider-Man lunchbox. They held up surprisingly well despite being underground for several years. I wiped off the dirt and opened it up. My heart dropped when I saw the small potato-shaped skull and bones inside. I didn't remember ever having a pet when I was younger. I'm going to have to ask my mother and father about this.

I closed it up and put the lunchbox on the box on the box. patio table and moved on to the next location on the treasure map. The next location was in the farthest corner of the house by the tall wooden fence that separates the neighbor's yard from ours. I uncovered another lunch box, this time with Superman on the cover, and again I found the remains of another animal. This time the skull was small and flat with four large, sharp-looking teeth. I was beginning to get scared. I tried to chalk it up to childhood morbid curiosity, but I couldn't quite understand how all these pets ended up in these lunch boxes that I assume belonged to me. The map had one more location on it and it was marked off as the biggest, bestest treasure ever.

Following the map to the last location, I ended up underneath the big trampoline my parents had never bothered to dispose of. The shovel was too large to use there, so I started to dig with my hands. I was pulling up chunks of dirt and grass by the handful until I reached. the treasure. The first object I pulled from the dirt was a dog tag with the information for Becky who would belong to the Ramsey's two houses away from mine. Right next to the dog tag was another tag for a pet named Jelly Bean also from around my neighborhood. My hands and fingers were hurting by the time I reached another lunchbox. I wiped off the dirt from it and it was a Sailor Moon lunchbox. An overwhelming feeling of apprehension came over me but I had already come too far to

I opened it up and I found a bunch of Sailor Moon school supplies. I was beyond relieved it was only school supplies. I put the lunchbox to the side and decided I was done chasing around the crap my 10-year-old self wanted me to have. I was about to start placing the dirt back into the hole when I lost my balance. I reached out into the hole to break my fall and I found another object. In my rush to open the lunchbox, I hadn't noticed the small, human skull that was was now in my hand. I let out half a yell and backed away from it as if it was going to kill me. Panicking, I crawled backwards out from underneath the trampoline when I suddenly hit

something hard with my back. I fell onto my back and saw my father standing over me and looking down at me. I looked over at the patio table and saw my mother looking at the lunch boxes. My dad reached out and helped me out from the ground. I pointed towards the hole as tears swelled up in my eyes. My dad held his hand up to stop me from speaking and said, We need to have a talk. It's so easy to be a skeptic these days.

I mean, who really believes in ghosts and goblins and monsters? If the people around you started trying to convince you of those things, it would be understandable if you felt like the victim of a prank. There would be no real reason to fear, anything, right? Well, let me read for you a tale by Adam Azar about a man who is getting fed up with people trying to convince him of monsters. His message is quite clear. It's time to grow up. There is no such thing as monsters. My family's been trying hard lately to pull a practical joke on me and scare me enough to think that there are.

It's actually become quite the elaborate joke, but it won't work, because there is no such thing as monsters. It all started a few weeks ago. Yes, it has been happening for that long. At some point, it just shouldn't be that funny to keep going. When my estranged uncle passed away, he was actually hit by a car going high speeds in his front yard. The coroner didn't confirm this. It's just what I think. They only found pieces of him, after all.

My family took the opportunity of his death to start this sick joke. A few days later, I received a letter from some schmuck pretending to be a cousin, detailing my family's curse and that I needed to seek help. He was probably just some actor hired by my wife and kid. When I didn't respond, the man even had the audacity to show up to my house, pleading with me to listen to him. My wife even pretended to be on my side at first by scoffing at his ridiculous claims of monsters hunting my family. I was courteous enough to let him stay the night downstairs. He left the next morning promising to keep us safe, whatever that means. He never even

showed up again. At least commit to your role if you're getting paid for it. The next few days, my wife and kids started up with their shenanigans. It started with my wife complaining that she felt like she was being watched. I laughed her off that crazy feeling and put her mind at ease. The same night our kids started crying and like good parents we went in to see what was wrong. He said that a disembodied hand had reached out of the closet for him. We eased him back to sleep and went to bed. It started getting annoying when these episodes persisted, each night. The next night he said a hand and an arm reached out to get him. After that, it was the arm and a leg. Well, which is it? I swear, this monster grew with my kid's imagination. While it's understandable for a

child to have such problems, my wife eventually started up with it. She should know better. Four days after our kids started seeing monsters, she came home pale and a little panicked. She said she about a mile from the house when something ran at the car from the side and tried to claw its way in. I told her it was probably a deer and went out to inspect the damage. There were a number of scratches on the driver's side door, but there's nothing supernatural about that. That night, my family set up a few lights away from the house to try to scare me again. I'll admit, they did look just like eyes glowing in the dark, but come on. monsters. My family even added more lights each night and moved them just a little closer.

This continued for weeks, with my wife continuing to have incidents of hearing noises or seeing something out of the corner of her eye. She actually wants us to leave the house, if you can believe that. On top of that, our kids still crying for us at night. He's up to a whole body and the bottom half of a grinning, ghoulish face. He can't describe it himself, because he can't describe it himself, because although he has quite the imagination, he lacks the vocabulary to express it. I'm just trying to put words to his tearful sniffles. He needs to grow out of this stage. It's all quite ridiculous, really.

That's why I want to document this whole farce. I know we could use a good laugh at the next family reunion. There have been fewer and fewer of us at each one. Anyway, all this led up to tonight. While writing this, my kids started crying for us again. My wife frantically begged me to go into his room to save him. When I wouldn't go, she ran across the hall to his room and let out the most chilling scream I've ever heard. They've actually become quite the actors.

My kids crying and my wife's scream sounded so real. Now it's silent in the house. No, wait. I can hear someone. Probably my wife, walking heavy-footed down the hall. Now they're opening the door and creeping towards me. I wonder where the speakers are. It sounds like whoever's behind me's heavy breathing trails off into an echo of whispers surrounding me. I won't turn around though and give them any sort of satisfaction. Because there is no such thing as monsters. There are few things in life that can be so much fun and bittersweet at the same time as going through old family photographs.

Recalling events and people from the past usually brings some smiles and a few tears. But writer Mark Copeland reminds us that sometimes other emotions can come from photographs when we least expect them. Jessica Prokoski describes for us how much fear can come from a simple photo. Today I was asked by my grandmother to help organize some of her photo albums. It is a day off from school today, so I decided I had nothing better to do. I gathered up the tattered old albums, poured the pictures out on my bed, and began sorting them by the dates shown in yellow print at the corner of each photo. After two or three hours of diligent work, I reached the 2000s.

I was born in the 90s, so it was at this point that I began to recognize certain events, and sometimes the pictures were even taken by me. One particular photo stood out to me more than the others. It was of me, my sister, and my late father, all together in the reflection of our old bathroom mirror. In the photo, I was holding the camera. My sister was looking off at some unseen event outside the door, and my father was looking straight at the reflection.

There wasn't anything special about the scene. However, after minutes of staring at the picture, I looked down at the date in the corner. It read October 16, 2001. I looked back up at the picture in complete disbelief. I repeated aloud, October 16th, 2001. That's not possible. I began to shake in astonishment as I stared at my father's unmoving image. He wasn't staring at the mirror.

He was staring at me, right at. me through the mirror, through the picture, through the world itself, and right at me. The photo was taken October 16, 2001, but my father had died the night before. It might seem odd for a podcast called No Sleep to talk about the science of sleep itself. Most of us are familiar with REM sleep and the effect it has on dreams and sleep patterns. But when REM sleep begins to permeate our waking hours, the dreams can feel more like nightmares. Author Sienna Hartbauer shares with us a story read by our newest narrator, James Cleveland. It's a tale about a person who learns far more than expected about rapid eye

movements. Sleep cycles have always fascinated me, mostly in the way that the brain functions during certain moments of sleep. It's why I went to the library that day with my sister. I had a research paper due on REM or rapid eye movement sleep. We'd gone after dinner and the burger I'd eaten sat heavy in my stomach, weighing me down both physically and mentally. It was getting late and I was tired. My laptop softly hummed beside me and the glow of the library's muted lighting seemed to lull me into sleepiness. Yawning, I looked to the right down the row of desks to see my sister, 30 feet away, asleep on top of her bag with her head turned away from me. The book she'd been reading lay open in front of her, one page softly fluttering with her exhaling breaths.

I looked at my watch. Ten o'clock. I still had at least another hour of work to do and was silently grateful of the library's extended hours during midterms. I turned back to the massive tome in front of me and continued reading about parasomnias. One sleep disorder, somniloki, caught my attention. I didn't know there was such a fancy word for sleep talking. Remembering a time when we were little and my sister was asking for fried chicken in her sleep,

I looked down the row again with a smile on my face. My face froze mid-smirk when I was. I saw my sister, Michelle. She was facing me, but still hunched over her bag. Her body seemed asleep. I could see the slow rise and fall of her back as she breathed. What struck me was uncanny, was that her eyes were now open, blankly staring at me. From my readings that night, I could plainly tell that she was in R.E.M. sleep.

Her eyes were moving rapidly around in small motions like she was following a tiny fly in front of her face. I hadn't read anything about this happening when someone's eyes are open, however. The vision was quietly disturbing, and I got out of my chair to go and check on her. Her open eyes did not follow me as I moved. As I approached her, I saw her knuckles standing out white against her hands and realized that her fists were clenched hard. Her arms looked otherwise relaxed, and this, combined with her eerie blue eyes moving so quickly, sent to chill up my spine.

I reached down and place my hand lightly on her face, softly moving her eyelids to cover the movements and, with that, her hands relaxed somewhat. I had decided to let her sleep while I finished up my paper and moved back to my own desk. I looked back at her one more time to make sure she was okay, and her whole body appeared slumped in exhaustion. I wondered if she'd been having problems sleeping. Once more, I turned back to my paper. reading so much about sleeping and the cycles was making me feel even more tired as I pressed on.

After a solid 40 minutes of typing on my laptop next to me, I felt like I needed a good stretch and a bathroom break before I completed the conclusion to my paper. As I arched my back and raised my arms to ease my aching muscles, I saw in the corner of my eye that someone was standing about 20 feet to my right. I jumped, slightly startled, because I hadn't heard anyone move toward me. I saw that it was Michelle and I stood up slowly. She was standing facing me, her eyes open again, but it was obvious she was still asleep. The creepy little jerking movements were still in her open eyes and her mouth was set in a thin line.

Before I could even call out to her, she turned and ran into the stacks beside her. Shocked, I moved quickly forward trying to follow her. The library is huge and by the time I reached the break in the racks where she'd gone to, through, I couldn't see her anymore. There were at least ten different ways she could have gone, so I stopped in the middle row and called out to her. Michelle? I tentatively whispered. It's hard to suppress the instinct to be quiet in a library. When I got no response, I called out more loudly. Where are you? I yelled. Michelle! I heard rapid footsteps behind me, and I whipped around just in time to see her running flat-footed across a large section of clear

floor around the desks I had come from. She disappeared to the right, toward the entrance doors, and I momentarily hoped that she'd run into the girl at the front desk and be woken up. I got a few steps toward her direction before the lights went out, and pitch darkness immediately covered everything. I put my right hand on the shelves next to me, and noticed I couldn't even see my own arm. I used a shelf to guide myself toward the bay of desks. When I reached the end of the row, I could barely see faint glowing from my laptop. That blue light was usually so bright it kept me awake if it wasn't covered. I automatically moved towards a little light, then suddenly a body collided with my right

side and its momentum took both of us down to the floor. I landed hard on my back and got the wind knocked out of me. A hand clamped down hard on my mouth. My line of sight was abruptly filled with the face of my sister, barely viewable in the darkness. Her pale skin picked up a faint blue tint from the power light on my laptop, and her blue eyes were huge and glassy, inches from my own. They no longer jerked around in their sockets. We made eye contact and I could see her terror there like black ink on white paper. Her body trembled against me and I tried to slow my breathing.

She moved her head a little toward my ear and barely more than whispering, she said. Her hand was still over my mouth, so I didn't get to ask the obvious question. Before I could even form the word what in my head, I heard heavy footsteps after the side. Michelle heard them too. She pressed more firmly across my mouth, beseeching me without words to be quiet. I held still as best I could with her half on top of me, and held my breath. After several long moments, the footsteps died away as if the person or it had walked away. I could feel Michelle's warm breath on my ear as she spoke, whispering again.

Move slowly. She lifted herself off me slowly and pulled me up in turn. We were both upright again and I could feel the fear in my stomach sour and royal. My skin felt like it had been covered in ice and I shivered. Michelle backed away from me, pulling me by the hand. She stopped short and turned to put her mouth close to my ear again. She gripped my chest. She gripped my hand firmly again and pulled me forward.

I followed as best I could, my grip on her hand so hard I thought I was hurting her. She squeezed back with equal pressure, and we silently stalked forward towards the entrance doors. After perhaps a full minute, my eyes started to feel gritty, and I tried to blink away the feeling. Michelle stopped again abruptly, and I softly bumped into her. She was shaking, both from fear. and the cold. I realized the gritty feeling was water around my eyes freezing into tiny crystals. My knees felt like they were going to give out, and adrenaline spiked through my blood. I saw stars. I closed my eyes and willed the fear to let loose of my legs so I could get out

of here with my sister, and that's when I heard it. Breathing, soft on the inhale and heavy on the exhale. My ears told me it was about five feet to our left, which would be in the direction of the front desk. I wondered where the attendant was. A girl of about 20, the breathing sounded too heavy for her tiny frame, and I worried for her safety. I squeezed Michelle's hand and got no response. I let go of her hand and reached forward to grip her shoulders. In the nanosecond that my skin left contact with hers, she was gone. my hands groped at cold, empty air for a moment.

I began to panic. I stepped forward to see if she had moved that way and still found nothing. Tears welled in my eyes and I noticed a gritty feeling was gone. I moved forward as quickly but as quietly as I could, shaking with horror at the loss of my sister and made my way to the front doors. I tripped over the leg of a chair on my way there and knew I'd given my position away. Even cautioned to the wind I ran full bore toward the doors, slapping at the light switches.

To my surprise, they were simply off. I ran my hand down the line and the library was once again illuminated in low soothing light. A moment later the attendant girl walked back through the doors. Are you okay? You look awful, she said, concerned thick in her voice. I looked wildly around the room. My... my sister. She was here and then it got dark.

I trailed off, still shaking. The attendant looked surprised. I thought everyone had gone. So I was going to lock up. I turned the lights off. I'm sorry. I didn't see you or your sister. Where is she?

I screamed, half mad with terror. I ran back into the room toward the desks and saw her bag and book lying there. The attendant was right. behind me, but Michelle was nowhere. I spun back to the girl and tried to calm myself, but my sister was gone. Are you sure you're okay? She asked me, and reached out as if to console me. No, I yelled and jerked away. My voice was high and shrill. No, I'm not okay. I need to find my sister. She was just here, and then the lights went out. She said, she said some, someone was here. She was afraid, and we tried to get out.

I stopped talking and my brain started kicking me in the skull. I remembered her words. She had said, it can see in this dark. This dark. As if it was different from any other dark. I grabbed the girl's hand and took her with me back to the doors where the switches were located. Turn them off, I said, and then amended. Please.

I motioned to them and she looked at me worriedly. Please, just do it. I turned to face the room at large. She flicked the switches off and the room was dark, but not pitch black. The shelves all had a soft amber glow from mounted portrait lights, and moonlight crept in through the high windows. It was dark, but I could see almost everything clearly. The blue light on my laptop nearly 50 feet away was like a tiny star.

My heart crumpled, and I began to cry. Whatever had been in the room with us had brought its own darkness, and when it had gone, it had taken my sister with it. The librarian's assistant was talking, but I didn't hear her. I saw her mouth move, but the world became suddenly muddled. I don't remember a lot for a while after that. It's been a year, but I'm still looking for Michelle. She's in that dark somewhere, in that cold. I will find her.

To my last breath, I will search. I won't let her be alone with that thing. It wasn't human, and I know that now. I denied it for a long time, but the truth has a way of seeping in. I will find her. I love you, Michelle. Our final entry is the aforementioned trilogy from author Eric Ponsley. You may know him as Redditor won't think straight.

His series of stories asks us to consider how we deal with and accept the world around us and how we discern reality from fiction. He shares with us legends from distant cultures, disturbing childhood recollections, and reminds us that so often in life, the things that are real are usually the most unsettling of all. I present to you the Won't Think Straight trilogy. A curious mind is a terrible curse. A curious mind is a terrible curse. That's the way it's always been for me. Some of my earliest memories are of secretly listening to my dad swapping ghost stories with his buddies while I sat wrapped in the room next door. I can't help it. I have a yearning to know the great

unknown. In some macabre way, I've always wanted to experience something paranormal for myself, just so I can know the truth. Over time, I never did encounter anything that reason and logic could not explain. The adult world was ultimately very rational. The childhood wonder and possibilities dissolves quickly into the reality of serious jobs and mortgages. But all that changed recently. The house I grew up in was a small wooden building in the middle of suburbia. It was, without question, the oldest house in the street, which was how we could afford to live in it. I'd always wondered if it was haunted.

Anything that old must have had some dark history to it. But it was always uneventful. There was some constant scratching noises above my bedroom at night, but it turned out to be just pigeons roosting in the ceiling. Once when I was ten, I was playing alone on the floor of my bedroom. My heart suddenly froze when I could distinctly hear the sound of snoring coming from my bed. I could hear the sound growing louder and louder. I stared at my bed but saw nothing there.

Mustering what little courage I had, I yelled out, Hello? Who's there? All I got back was a loud, horrible snore. I grabbed an umbrella and gingerly walked towards my bed, heart pounding furiously. There wasn't anything moving as I poked my blanket and pillow. It was then I noticed the window above my bed was slightly open. The moment I closed it, the snoring stopped. It was nothing more than the wind a whisperer. through the cracks. Another experience was the nightly terrors that would strike me in my sleep. I would often awake to the sensation of my blanket being ripped away and my body held down, while a dark, angry entity strangled my throat so hard that the bed would rattle.

The first time I thought it was just a vivid, but terrible nightmare. But when it happened again and again, night after night, I started to panic. Whatever it was, it was relentless. As I seemed to always survive each attack, though, I thought I was just going crazy. Thankfully, I learned about sleep paralysis a few months later. Changing my sleep patterns stopped it from happening again. So everything paranormal that I've ever experienced was ultimately very rational. Like the famous poster in Fox Mulder's office, I want to believe, but ultimately found the evidence lacking.

But I found no explanation for what's happened to me recently. I had decided to take a break and spent a few weeks backpacking in Vietnam. Starting from Ho Chi Minh City, we took a winding journey northwards through the muddy roads along the coast. It was miles and miles of mostly untouched wilderness broken by the occasional village and some of the best pristine beaches in the world. It was in one particular stretch that we spent a full day soaking in the sun and surf, the worries of the world a thousand miles away. As day made way to twilight, we feasted on some amazing seafood we had caught earlier.

Sleeping under an open sky is an amazing experience. especially far away from the polluting lights of civilization. It was to this glorious view of the heavens that I awoke around 3 a.m. Feeling the less glorious call of nature, urging me to the nearest toilet. It was a humid night with the sound of insects chirping their nightly symphony. I grogly made my way through the path to the basic facilities set up for campers. It was in a clearing with,

male toilets lined up along one side of a 30-foot-wide crude concrete floor, facing another row of female toilets. Between the rows in the center was a waiting area, with a makeshift lamp hanging above to light the yard. As I approached, I saw an old man standing under the lamp with his back towards me. All I could see was his scraggy, long white hair that reached past his shoulders, and a thin, old, bony body jutting up from his thick. thin clothing rags.

Slightly freaked out. I wasn't expecting anyone to be around at this time of night. I coughed politely to make him aware of my approach. I didn't want an old man's heart attack from fright weighing on my conscience. He was probably a local villager waiting on his wife, since electricity and running water was scarce in the scattered collection of homes in the area. He didn't seem to notice me, so I let him be, and made my way to the nearest male stall.

As I closed the door, I could still see him in my line of sight. Though I was now 90 degrees from where I first saw him, he still had his back to me. It was definitely odd, but certainly far from threatening. Besides, I had more urgent pressing matters, particularly against my bowels. The toilet was barely more than a hole in the floor, with a flimsy undersized door that was all that stood between you and your dignity.

The overwhelming stench of human waste filled my senses as I dropped my pants and squatted to make my own deposit. After a few moments, my thoughts lazily drifted back to the old man in the yard. There was something definitely odd, and my subconscious was screaming that something was very out of place. With rapidly rising horror, my mind clicked the pieces into place. Though the old man was standing near a bright light, he didn't cast a shadow. The possibility it could have been an optical illusion vanished when I suddenly saw his shadowless feet inches away through the gaps under the toilet door. I was almost thankful I was squatting with my pants down,

since I emptied my bowel simultaneously with my lungs, emptying a scream through the other end. I jumped up and pulled my pants up as I backed into the back wall. From my now standing position, I had lost sight of what was under the door. With no shadow, I couldn't tell if it was still waiting there. My mind furiously ran through what scarce options I had. I realized I didn't have much of a choice but to escape this stall. This flimsy door would provide no protection for me, and there was certainly nothing left of my dignity. If I was to die, I decided it would not be in this literal shit hole.

I peeked under the door, but couldn't see anything on the other side. Deciding it was now or never I kicked open the door to nothing but an empty courtyard. I rushed out but could see no sign of the old man. nothing but the incessant sound of crickets. It was then I made the fatal mistake of looking at the stall I had just escaped from. He was there, that dreaded, white-haired and bony body standing where I was mere seconds ago. For the second time that night I was thankful as I had nothing left to brown my pants as I let out another scream. Now, running on pure instinct, I sprinted back to the beach like I was being chased by demons.

For all I knew, I actually was. Making it back to the camp, I spent the next few hours wide awake. Crouching and staring at the trail, I was ready to wake everyone at the merest sign of the old man. When morning finally broke, my campmates lazily woke and wondered why I looked like death itself. I was too afraid to tell them what I saw and simply explain that I was struck with insomnia that night. Nothing as eventful happened for the remainder of the trip, but I had to share my experience with our local tour guide on the last day. I had to know the truth. When I finished my story, he only looked at me gravely and asked just one question.

Did you see its face? He explained that in Vietnam, lonely ghosts often haunt sites where travelers can be found. Those who see their face are doomed to a grisly gruesome death in the near future. It's been almost two months since that fateful encounter. To this day, I still don't know if I really saw its face. It's a blur that still haunts me, and I'm not sure I want to know. Maybe there are some things in life that are better left unknown. I think I'm already cursed enough.

Gurgles and Bugman After my last experience, my parents reminded me of another story from my childhood. When you're five, your mind lacks the experience to make informed judgments or connect things which aren't obvious. Over the years, the details get fuzzy. and forgotten. Speaking with my parents the other day, they cleared the cobwebs burying this story.

I remember now much too clearly, the story of gurgles and bugman. I had just started kindergarten that year. Everyone's a friend when you're five, so I had no shortage of classmates. But coming from a poor family, I didn't get to see much of them outside of school. My parents spent all their waking hours trying to make ends meet

and didn't have time to ferry me from house to house. So I spent my early years mostly keeping to myself, playing with the random assortment of knick-knacks from the shelf in my room. Being short of money gave my family a habit of hoarding, so they hated to throw anything out. One particular item on the shelf was a small, old-fashioned television set. A wooden veneer box, about two feet wide by a foot tall. It had a curved glass screen that took up half the front panel.

Beside the screen was a large chrome dial used to switch channels. At the top sat an antenna formed by two terribly twisted wires. When my boredom made me turn it on, I'd usually just get static and snow on that glowing black and white screen. I'd twist the heavy clicking dial hoping to pick up some local broadcasts. Mostly it would be some ghostly images and incoherent sound fragments, but one channel was always crystal clear. It was the Gurgles and Bugman show.

Gurgles was a clown, but not a common one. He wore a thin black suit that draped his tall, skinny body, with a matching tie and oversized novelty clown shoes to complete his distinctive outfit. His pupils were completely black, like polished ebony marbles, with no trace of white around them. Black face paint around those eyes and across his cheeks and mouth made him look like a manic, grinning skeleton. It was only the crazy crop of curly hair sprouting off the sides of his head that gave him a more, human look. As much as gurgles freaked me out, bugman scared me more. He was short and round, like a hunched-backed dwarf with a dark cape. He had prosthetics covering his eyes to make him look

like a fly and a mouth that was rotated 90 degrees and opened from side to side. The show itself was like candid camera, with pranks played on unsuspective. people. It would always start with gurgles and bugman hidden away at someone's home. Gurgles would face the camera, staring at you, his bony finger touching his lips. When the unsuspecting star of the show came into view, a laugh track would begin to play. You would see them go about their nightly routines, oblivious to the conspiracy that Gurgles and Bugman had involved us in. We'd see them making dinner. or on the lounge watching TV with their family, or quietly doing their homework.

Then watch as gurgles and bug man stole their pen or moved their glass or made things disappear behind their backs. The camera angles would change as gurgles and bug man shifted their hiding place, from the dark corners of a room to the cupboards, to the ceiling or under the furniture. all the while looking back at you and winking. The closer they got, the louder and more laughter from the soundtrack. Eventually, when everyone went to sleep, a victim would be chosen for their prank. Waiting in the closets or under the bed, once their victim fell asleep,

Bugman would crawl out and gently climb in beside them. His jaw would open sideways and out would come. a sharp straw that he'd stick in the person's neck. This always paralyzed their victim, because sometimes you could see them struggle if they woke up and saw gurgles and bugman on top of them. The laugh track would then be extra loud and uproarious those few times the victims awoke. Gurgles would make faces at the camera while the audience laughed, and bugman would use his straw to drink from the person's neck. When the victim stopped struggling after a few minutes, the laughter would turn to claps and cheer.

With Bugman finished, Gurgle's face would fill the whole screen with his impossibly wide, sharp-toothed grin. Then he'd whisper, See you again? The way those all-black eyes pierced through the screen always gave me chills. I hated the show, but would be always too afraid to go near the TV while it was running. One day, the TV mysteriously disappeared from my room. My parents told my five-year-old self that they sold it to pay some bills. I accepted that without question.

I was kind of glad it was gone. But yesterday, when I asked them about that TV again, they exchanged nervous glances, then filled in some of the TV. some missing gaps from my childhood. Halfway through that year, Derek, a classmate I didn't know very well, had died in horrific circumstances. He was murdered in his bed with a stab wound to the neck. No evidence of a break-in was ever found, so his distraught parents were taken into custody

as the prime suspects. They denied all the allegations against them. At the time Mrs. Nolan, my teacher, told our class, I had apparently explained to her that Derek couldn't be dead because I saw him and his family on the gurgles and bugman show the day before. When Mrs. Nolan mentioned to my parents what I'd said, they had immediately taken the TV from my room, driven it to a junkyard,

and had it burnt to nothing but ashes and molten metal. That TV was in my room because it had always been broken. It was never plugged in the whole time it sat on my shelf. Whatever I saw on that screen, it wasn't from a station. So that's my story of gurgles and bugman. But I'm not sure if that's really the end, though. After all, do gurgles and bugmen still perform their nightly show for some unsuspecting viewer somewhere in this world? And if so, who will be their next star?

Reality can be creepier than fiction. Reality can be creepier than fiction. What's truly terrifying aren't the things that go bump in the night, but the macabre twists of fate. in life, especially when they get more horrifying the deeper you pry into them. Such is the story of Old Aunt Mary. Mary wasn't my aunt's, but a friend of mine's. He's told me this story since I've shared my own childhood tale of gurgles and bugmen. Old Aunt Mary was the eldest of four children. She was unmarried for the first 40-odd years of her life, so she was always spoiling her nieces and nephews with indulgent gifts. She was everyone's favorite aunt.

However, deep down, she was very lonely. Always being the spinster whilst everyone around her got married with children took a mental toll on her. When both her parents eventually died, they left a sprawling house for her inheritance. but the void in her life became as cavernous as the empty rooms of her mansion. Shortly after her 46th birthday, she surprised everyone by announcing her sudden wedding to Stanley, a man she'd known for only two months. It was clear, though, that they were deeply in love with each other. He was only slightly younger, 39 years old, but as charming, fit, and generous a soul as Mary was.

Whilst no one knew much about Stanley, they all loved and welcomed him into the family. They were also secretly relieved that Mary had found happiness after all those years of solitude. A month after the wedding, they took a honeymoon of a lifetime, spending a year to travel across the world. Every few weeks a postcard would arrive from various exotic locations, exclaiming how much fun they were having. Everything seemed perfect until the couple returned from their trip. Living together at the mansion, Mary started to change. She stopped sleeping in the same bed as Stanley, then insisted that they have separate rooms. Before long, she was claiming to hear strange noises throughout the house. Her name being called out during the night, furious, scratchy,

sounds echoing in the hallways, or mournful whales that seem to come from the walls themselves. The more Stanley tried to comfort her, the more terrified she became. She would yell and scream at him to stay away and to not touch her. She would spend days barricading herself up in a room crying and babbling, slowly going insane from the filth that would accumulate, and the mental isolation. Eventually, the family got her to a psychiatrist who diagnosed her with a type of paranoid schizophrenia

known as Capgras syndrome. It's a rare condition where the victim believes that someone close has been replaced with an identical imposter. She claimed that Stanley was not her husband, but something that looked, acted, and pretended to be Stanley. Her family was faced with the difficult choice of either committing Mary to a mental institution to get the care she needed, or have her sedated and looked after at home. They chose to keep her

sedated. Throughout all this time, Stanley was clearly distraught, but still loved Mary with all his heart. He never wavered in caring for her at the bedside, feeding her and talking to her as a loving husband. Over the following year, the family spent a lot of time getting to know Stanley better as they took turns caring for Mary and felt incredibly fortunate that he was around. So it was a total shock when they arrived at the house one day to be greeted by a squad of police cars. The front door was plastered with police tape and they weren't allowed to enter. After proving that they were related to the occupants, the officer in charge relayed what happened. That morning, Aunt Mary's body was found at the base of an ocean cliff about a half-hour's drive away.

A passing jogger had seen her car drive right up to the edge of the cliff, and a woman pulling a body from the back of the car. After calling the police, he then witnessed Mary stabbing a male body several times with a large kitchen knife. She then rolled the body off the cliff into the waters below and started to laugh uncontrollably for minutes on end. When the police arrived, she had simply turned and smiled, then jumped off the cliff to her death. They managed to recover her body, but no trace of Stanle's was found. In all likelihood, it was already washed out to sea. The license plate of the car led them back to the house where the investigation was now focused.

They found some spat out medication near Mary's bed and a broken lamp on the floor with blood spatter on the walls. Aunt Mary had pretended to take her pills, then knocked Stanley out with the bedside lamp while his head was turned. She then had dragged the unconscious and bleeding body to the kitchen where she stabbed. Stanley with a knife before dragging him to the car and driving to the cliff. However, it was what they found next that puts a chill through my bones. In searching the house that day, the police uncovered a secret cellar under a large rug. Upon opening it, they were greeted with the anguished face of a desiccated corpse on the steps, clawing at the cellar door.

The room was covered in the stench of dried human waste and deep gouges in the woodwork where someone had desperately tried to scratch their way out of this prison. When the DNA analysis and dental records came back, the corpse was a 99% match with Stanley. He'd been dead for months, most likely of starvation. His long fingernails were broken and strong. scratched from clawing in his futile attempts to get out.

Stanley was the thing that went bump in the night. It was his pleas and desperate attempts to escape that echoed through the halls of the mansion at night. But solving that mystery only created a deeper one. Who then was that person caring for Mary, spending time with her family, and whom ultimately was murdered and thrown off a cliff if Stanley was already dead. Was it a twin brother?

A doppelganger? Whatever it was, Aunt Mary took that secret with her to the grave. What haunts me most, though, is the thought that maybe she was perfectly sane throughout it all, and it was the world itself that was truly crazy. Reality is indeed creepier than fiction. Our time together is drawing to a close. Thanks for listening to this episode. Join us again next time when we unleash more disturbing tales

designed to afflict your night with no sleep.