The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S3E01

Episode Date: May 19, 2013

It's the third season premiere of The Nosleep Podcast! We're back and kicking off a new season with four tales, all featuring young kids and the frightening things they experience and sometimes cause. The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first tale. "In the Darkness of the Fields" written by Edward Warren and read by David Cummings. (Story starts at 00:03:45) "Poor Little Babysitter" written by Cliff Barlow and read by Travis Newton. (Story starts at 00:34:55) "The Soul Game" written by Christopher Bloodworth and read by Nina Jacobs. (Story starts at 00:50:00) "The House with Painted Doors" written by Leon Chan and read by David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:05:55) Click here to learn more about Cliff Barlow. Click here to learn more about Christopher Bloodworth. Click here to learn more about Leon Chan. Click here to hear more from Nina Jacobs. Podcast produced by: David Cummings Music by: David Cummings This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons License 2013.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the sunlight fades to darkness, the frightful tales creep into your mind. Brace yourself for the No Sleep podcast. It's episode one of season three. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, David Cummings. Well, we're back and kicking off a new season with Four Tales. all featuring young kids and the frightening things they experience and sometimes cause. Our four-week break in between seasons two and three just flew by as we launched our new Season Pass program. I am thrilled by the overwhelming response to the season pass and the way so many of you decided to support the podcast by purchasing one. For those of you who are new to the show, or perhaps are still undecided about joining up,

the season pass will always be available for purchase, so head on over to our website at the no sleeppodcast.com to find out all the details. While you're at the website, make sure to check out the links to our social networking sites. The start of a new season is a good time to remind people about all the ways you can support the show by helping us spread the word. Follow us on Twitter. Like us on Facebook. Write a review on iTunes.

All of these things help others discover the frightening tales we offer up to you. And as always, make sure you check out the show notes for this episode. You'll find links for many of the authors, and you can learn more about them and their excellent writing. It's great to be back, and I'm glad. glad you're along with us. So let's get season three started up with our first story. The rural countryside can be a peaceful respite for the city dweller, but the expanse of farmers' fields and the quietness can also be somewhat unnerving for those accustomed to

the bustle of city life. Author Edward Warren shares a tale from his childhood as he recalls a visit to his grandmother's country home. It was a visit that was anything but peaceful, and it was because of the things he saw in the darkness in the fields. Growing up as I did in a cozy college town in central Ohio, my childhood visits to my grandmother's home in the country were always a mixed blessing for me.

She lived in a small, one-story home along a country road nestled amongst the four, farms of Western Ohio. While I loved visiting my grandmother, the openness of the country and its seemingly endless fields had a way of making me feel isolated, especially in the autumn months. During the summer, the tall fern-green stalks of corn and the steamy soil gave the area an inviting vibrancy that helped fill this emptiness. The fall was much bleaker. Once the crops were harvested and the leaves had fallen off of the trees, the region took on an air of rot. That the remnants of the harvested stalks would dry and fade to the point where they finally resembled bleached bones did little to dispel this.

One October, I headed up with my mom and dad for a visit. Of course, as someone who's always had an overactive imagination, the fact that the truth is the truth. trip to her house was intermittently dotted with abandoned cemeteries did nothing to help my uneasiness. Apparently family plots, they would consist of a handful of sandstone grave markers eroding like wet sugar cubes into tangled grass. There was also the occasional ruined church amongst the stones. Unfortunately for me, besides these sightings and the unending farmland, there wasn't much to break up the drive. Reading in the car has always made me sick. Naturally, I was relieved when I felt the tires shift onto the rumbling gravel that covered my grandma's driveway.

After stretching my legs from the trip, I walked over to give my grandmother a hug. She was a short, blue-haired woman of about 70 at the time. We followed her into the house for dinner. My grandmother was an amazing cook, and I always made sure my mom got her recipes. That World War II generation really knew how to throw a stick of butter into mashed potatoes in a way that would blow your mind. There wasn't much to do at her house after dinner,

so I volunteered to burn her trash. Now solidly in my twines, I could be trusted with such responsibilities and took full advantage, since, like most boys at that age, I fancied myself a bit of a pyro expert. As I dragged the bag of garbage out of the house, I noticed that it was already getting dark, and gray flannel clouds had silently filled the sky. Having visited the area enough to know that rain was probably coming soon, I hurriedly dragged the bag to the metal drum my grandma used for burning trash and lawn waste. It was at the back corner of the lot, where the edges of her grass, faded and gloomy with the fall,

met the ragged dirt of the fields. I threw the bag in and lit it in a few places. I watched it for a while before the rain began to come down sprinkling. Deciding that the rain would be enough to keep the fire from spreading out of control, I went inside to the sound of rumbling thunder in the distance. Knowing that it was getting late, I began to get anxious with the thought of going to bed. I never slept well at my grandmas. As I said, I had an active imaginative.

and even in my secure suburban bedroom on the second floor of our home, I frequently had nightmares about what could be outside my home while I was in bed. My grandmother's home was a single-story bungalow. What was worse was that I usually slept in the breezeway, which I later discerned wasn't strictly a breezeway, but was more of a living room space between the garage and the house. It was was separated from the house where my parents and grandmother slept by a short flight of stairs and a door. There were three other doors leading to the garage and front and back lawns. The room also had windows on every side, except where it bordered the garage. Other than the couch I slept on and a sink, there was nothing else in the room. I always felt very alone and isolated sleeping in there.

I laid in bed for a couple of hours and listened to it rain outside. After a while, I heard a train rumble by on the track across the street from the front lawn. I got off the couch and walked over to the window to watch it go by. It always made me uncomfortable how flimsy those single pane windows were, like there was nothing separating you from the night. After the last car disappeared, I stood there looking out the window for a bit. At this point, it dawned on me that the rain had stopped. I was somewhat upset with myself, since I had missed my best chance of having that soothing sound lulled me to sleep.

However, I could still hear the rumbles and flashes of a storm and hoped that it was another one moving in, and not just the last one growing more distant. As my eyes continued to adjust, I noticed a flicker on the grass in the right side of my vision. Clearly, the fire hadn't gone out in the back of the lawn, and I went to the rear breezeway window to check on it. Looking through the back window, it quickly became apparent that there had been more unburned refuse

in that drum than I had thought, and the glow of the fire was casting spots of faint orange light along the lawn and fields. The light was reaching far into the night in that flat, dark country, and I noted with some dismay that the storm appeared to be moving south. As I watched the faint flashes of lightning exploding on the horizon, my eyes shifted back to the fields behind my grandmother's house. There was something moving on the edge of the light. My eyes were fairly well adjusted to the night at this point, and I gradually made it out.

It was the form of a woman dancing in the field. Her movements weren't frantic. They were closer to the way a ballerina moves, slowly dipping the torso, lifting the leg gracefully, bowing the arms over her head and so on. I stood there, petrified in silence. Her mere presence and peculiar movement would have been enough to frighten me. However, a distant flash of lightning consumed the entire field in a moment of pale white light,

revealing that she was also completely naked. My hands gripped the windowsill. She slowly danced along the edges of the fire's orange light, never stepping more than a foot or an arm directly into it. It made me even more uncomfortable when I noticed that she was facing the house and appeared to be closer than she was when I first saw her. There had only been the one lightning flash to illuminate the entire field, So it was difficult to tell it first, but as she drew nearer to the window from where I was watching,

I began to realize that her skin was incredibly wrinkled. Despite the grace and effortlessness of her movements, her skin appeared to be ancient as it sagged off of her limbs. Gradually, she quit etching around the borders of the light and reversed her dance movements back into the darkness. I pulled myself away from the window and buried my face in the couch. I spent the rest of the night trying to convince myself that it was a trick of shadows. I didn't get a wink of sleep that night, and I crashed around 6 or 7 a.m. when the sun came up. Even though I hadn't called for them the night before,

my family knew how hard it was for me to sleep at my grandmothers, and let me sleep in for a while. I was eventually woken up by my father, who informed me that my grandma's ladder was broken, and we would need to go borrow one from my uncle Harley, who was actually my great-uncle, though I never referred to him as such. I smiled and rolled off the couch.

I always enjoyed seeing my uncle Harley, and was quick to get ready to go, despite my lack of sleep. I recall being quiet on the ride over to Harley's farm. Looking out onto the fields, I realized even if footprints had been left by the woman in the wet dirt, they would be nearly impossible to find in such a large field with so much debris left over from the harvest. Undecided as to whether that made me feel better or worse, I continued to watch the ruins of the cornstalks fly.

by along the roadside until the buildings of my uncle's farm began to come into view. My uncle Harley was a pig farmer, and to this day it makes me smile when people invoke that profession derisively. My uncle was a successful businessman and farmer, owning a large factory-style farm. Though he didn't do any of the processing on site, he did own several large feed silos next to the long metal barns which held the pig pens. My uncle was a self-made man and veteran of both World War II and Korea, and reminded me a bit of Clint Eastwood. The man was tall and powerful, even in his advanced age,

and despite his stoic demeanor, he had a surprisingly sharp sense of humor. I could see him waving to us as we turned into his driveway. As I got out of the car, I noticed how strong the stench of the pigs was. It was a smell I was used to, and the surrounding area was permeated by it, along with the other scents that colored the air in farm country. I actually grew to be somewhat fond of the smell from a distance, as weird as that sounds, but it was overpowering up close. I flashed my uncle a smile, but covered my eyes.

nose with my shirt as soon as he and my dad turned away from me towards the workshed where my uncle kept his ladders. I went over to a tire swing hanging from a tree on the opposite side of his house and, more importantly, upwind of the barns. When my uncle came back around the house with my dad carrying the ladder under one arm, I was standing on the swing with one foot in the tire and my hands grasping the rope connecting it to the tree. You keep swinging around like that, you're just going to stir up the smell, he yelled to me as I hopped off the swing. I was mildly embarrassed that he had keyed in on my distaste for the smell, but felt better when he conceded that the rain had made it worse than usual.

We stayed a bit after picking up the ladder, but my dad wanted to get back to my grandmas before dark. We were only going to be there for the weekend, and he wanted to make sure we finished the work. When we got back, my dad had made me hold the ladder as he scooped brown muck out of the gutter. I was so lost in thought, looking out into the fields, that I nearly dropped the ladder after a piece of the muck falling shocked me back to reality. I was only able to offer a feeble apology afterward, as my mind was still on the previous night and the faded orange on the horizon that indicated that night was coming. Not wanting to give my parents a reason to doubt my maturity or sanity, I didn't tell them about the night before. The reward for my bravery was another night

in the breezeway. Unlike the night before, this one was completely clear. cloudless, with a bright moon casting pale rays through the windows. I didn't figure I was in for much sleep, and just laid on my back on the couch, staring at the ceiling. I could hardly believe it when I heard the grandfather clocks Westminster chimes from across the house, followed by the bells denoting the hour. How clearly those low tones made their way through the air made me realize how silent the night had been, and let me know that it was already two in the morning. The drowsy formation of this thought was shattered by another sound, a faint sound, rustling from outside. The noise sent a chill down my spine, and I immediately snapped up to see that the window over the sink was cracked open.

My mom or grandma must have opened it for ventilation during the day. Doing my best not to look out the window and to stay beneath the window line, above which someone could see me, I rolled off the couch and hugged closely to the sink. As my fingers crept up the wall, over the sill, and onto the window, I heard another rustle, louder from the backyard. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw movement and felt a tear of frustration and fear traced down my cheek. I pulled the window shut and, as I did so, looked out the window to my left into the backyard. The woman was there, standing not 15 feet from the house, and staring at me through the window.

I was frozen, partly out of fear and partly out of a hope she didn't see me. After all, I was closing a window on nearly the opposite side of the room in the dead of night. Her body was facing away from me, and the skin on her back was hanging like melted wax. Her head was turned, looking over her left shoulder to face the house, to face, me. Her arms were spread out and away from her body, and her palms were aimed in my direction. With the same grace that she had displayed the night before, she pivoted her body on one foot, turning to face the rear window. She slowly moved towards the house, her movements illuminated by the moonlight. It was then that I realized yet another whole.

horrible thing about this woman. Her skin wasn't just baggy. It was jointed. She looked like a rag doll that had been sewn together. It seemed like it was being held together from shedding in sections. The moon cast shadows over her eye sockets, which didn't quite seem to fit her face. As she crept closer, I noticed her lips looked thin and cracked, and her breasts were dry and shriveled. Slowly she placed her hands on the frame of the window, and I made out the glint of two eyes in the shadows of those ill-shaped sockets. They were peering right at me with an intensity that cut right through the space between us. The shock of her looking into the house was enough to turn the squeaks caught in my throat into screams.

I flopped onto the floor and scrambled backwards against the front door. I could hear my parents stirring in the house, and as their footsteps approached, the woman tilted her head back. Her face appeared to stretch into a howl, but it didn't seem like she could move her lips very far. apart. I couldn't hear if she made a sound. She pirouetted and disappeared back into the night. I threw up into my lab as my parents came into the room. The next morning, my parents didn't prod me to talk about what I had seen. I explained it to them in jabbering fashion the night before as they helped me clean up. Eventually, I fell asleep with my my mom sitting up next to me. I had had a handful of night terrors when I was younger, and my parents

chalked up my experience to that category. I said nothing to dispute this. Even though I didn't believe it, I hoped that I really had had a night terror, and that maybe that would explain what I had seen. My dad offered to let me stay at my grandmothers, as he returned the ladder he had borrowed from my uncle. Because I didn't want my family to worry about my state, I insisted on accompanying him. Besides, I figured getting out would help calm me down. However, as we drove, I imagined her behind every tree we passed, lurking in every drainage ditch.

For the most part, I just laid back with my seat reclined, staring into nothing until, we got to the farm. By the time we got there, I was feeling a bit better. Still, I decided to stay in the car as my dad went with my uncle to return the ladder to its shed. I didn't need the smell of those pigs upsetting my stomach further. As I was trying to put my thoughts elsewhere, I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw another vehicle coming down the driveway. It was a pickup. It pulled past me towards the barn.

As my uncle and dad came around the house, the truck stopped and the driver got out. I was relieved that my uncle didn't appear concerned, but he did have a stern look on his face. He made a couple of steps towards the pickup and pointed the driver to the barn. The driver then walked over to the barn, slid the door to the side, and picked up the leash to a pig that had been tied to one of the pens. As he led the pig towards the pickup, my uncle and father kept walking towards the car. I opened the door to say hi. That's Teddy, my uncle said.

He has a small farm, maybe a dozen pigs. Usually don't sell single hogs and sows. started doing it a while ago to help him get started and now it seems like he's coming by once every few weeks what's his problem my dad asked my uncle laughed with the pigs or with everything else not sure in any case

he eats some tries to breed others I suppose I don't talk with him much just sell him a pig every now and then He says he butchers his own meat. My dad looked over in the man's direction. Is he trying to be self-sufficient? I guess I try not to talk to him too much. Oh, God damn it, Ted!

I looked away from my uncle and dad to see the man opening the hog's throat with a long knife. He had his arm around its side and its legs kicked around like he. it was being electrocuted. I couldn't believe how much blood spilled out of its neck and onto the ground. Didn't I tell you not to do that here? The man smiled weirdly at my uncle and then slung the pig's limp body into the bed of the truck. It was amazing how effortlessly he did it. The hog must have weighed a few hundred pounds. He pulled a tarp over the body. He pulled a tarp over the body. before he closed the tailgate. The man turned and got into the driver's side of the car.

Blood was dripping onto the ground from under the tailgate. My uncle sighed and looked at the ground, visibly pissed. He doesn't have a proper trailer to move them around, so sometimes he does that here to make it easier. Smiling up at me, he added, or sometimes he hog-ties them. I laughed, even though it wasn't a great joke, or even a joke at all, really, since I'm sure that's exactly what he did.

The way my uncle said it put a smile on my face. He pinched the bridge of his nose as the pickup drove by and waved with his other hand without looking at the man. The man barely looked at us, but I caught a glimbing. imps of his eyes that made me shiver. We left for home fairly soon after getting back to my grandmother's, which was fine with me. I loved her, but I was ready to get out of there. I slept the whole ride home and tried to put the whole experience out of mind as best as I could.

For years after that, I visited my grandmas without incident. On one particular visit, I picked up the... local paper while I was in town. On the front page was the face of the man I had seen at the farm that day. Teddy. The memory of that story and the realization that came with it chills me even now as I recollect it. The man, who was apparently named Teddy Warden, had been in a car accident in his pickup. He was speeding through a stop sign on a country road and the the early morning when a semi crushed in the passenger side of his truck. The pickup was sent spinning across the intersection and flipped into a drainage ditch. By the time the driver of the

semi got out to check on the other vehicle, Warden had already crawled out of the cab and was tearing across the field. Perplexed, the driver continued towards the flipped pickup, then fled back to his semi to call for help. The tarp was draped out of the bed of the pickup, fully uncovering its spilled contents. Corpses, and the parts of corpses, were scattered in the mud. Later that day, the sheriff's office,

with backup from a larger nearby city's police department, showed up at the man's house. They reported an overpowering stent, from outside the building. Opening the garage, they found the butchered and rotting skeletons of hogs. One hog was hanging upside down, field dressed like a deer.

They noted that it appeared as if he was slaughtering them and feeding them to the other pigs as putrefying hog meat was found in the feed troughs. It was a matter they were forced to investigate in some detail after the horror they discovered inside. The officers were met by an intensified smell inside the house. The building was completely unlit,

and I can only imagine how horrible it was for them to comb that house. The source of the smell wasn't the pigs, or at least wasn't just the pigs. Hanging from the walls were remnants of human bodies in various stages of decomposition. They weren't just hung on the wall as trophies either. The paper likely spared many of the details, but noted that there were several overturned skulls

that appeared to be used as bowls. When the officers entered warden's room, they found him rocking in his bed, hands at his side. He had skulls on the bedposts. The floor was apparently littered with the remains of corpses, and even though he made no reported attempt to resist arrest, it was apparently difficult to get Warden out through the darkness and clutter. Warden only howled as they removed him from the house.

The writer noted that his home's distance from the road, and warden's known habit of transporting butchered animals in his truck, had kept the signs of his activities hidden. As of the date of that paper's printing, those involved had discerned that the body parts had come from at least 38 separate individuals, though they were still in the process of sorting and identifying the remains. Initially, this confused investigators. Such a high number of disappearances would have been noticed in such a small town.

However, the answers to their questions quickly became apparent through examination of the corpses and interviews with Warden. Many of the bodies were ancient, nearly fully decomposed. The investigators surmised that they had been stolen from graves, a conclusion that was later confirmed by Warden. While a few were identified as thefts from more recent burials, the majority of the bodies had been stolen from the abandoned cemeteries that sit by the country roads, the disturbed earth obscured by the long grass. They will likely never discover the identities of many of these older corpses. Though the thought of Warden quietly absconding in the dead of night to an abandoned graveyard and stealing the long decomposing bodies interred therein is certainly chilling to me. The most unsettling part of the story involves how they found Warden in his house before they arrested him.

When the officers discovered Warden in his bed, he was lying next to a woman's. suit, carefully sewn together from the skin of the fresher corpses he had exhumed. Through interviews, the police had discovered that warden would wear the suit and prowl the fields at night, using the seclusion afforded by the darkness and remoteness to live out his fantasy. The realization washed over me. All those years ago, I had seen him. He and I, alone in the darkness, separated by a flimsy window and a little bit of space. Your episode has come to an end.

Thank you for spending time with us at the No Sleep Podcast. If you would like to learn how you can hear the full-length version of this episode, featuring many more stories, please visit the no sleeppodcast.com and click on the Season Pass link. Purchasing a Season Pass will help support everyone who contributes to the podcast, and in return you'll get 25 full-length episodes and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 1999.

This is David Cummings. Thank you for listening, and join us again for the next episode of the No Sleep Podcast.