The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S3E19

Episode Date: February 16, 2014

It's episode 19 of Season 3. We have seven tales for you in this episode featuring stories about the horrors within ourselves and the disturbing aspects of our family life. The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first two tales.  "The Melody" written by Rio Hererra and read by Otis Jiry. (Story starts at 00:04:05) "My Basement" written by Cliff Barlow and read by David Cummings. (Story starts at 00:17:40) "Footsteps" written by The Claverhouse Email Series and read by Kyle Akers. Music by Brandon Boone. (Story starts at 00:40:30) "Betsy the Doll" written by C.K.Walker and read by Jessica Prokuski. (Story starts at 00:51:30) "Scenes from a Road Trip" written by Richard Jones and read by Gary Etchingham. Music by Brandon Boone. (Story starts at 01:03:55) "Won't You Invite Me Inside?" written by Chance Patrick and read by David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:16:40) "Locked In" written by Kelsey Donald and read by Jenni Higginbotham. (Story starts at 01:36:40) Click here to learn more about Otis Jiry and how you can help. Click here to learn more about Cliff Barlow Click here to learn more about Claverhouse Emails Click here to learn more about Chance Patrick Click here to learn more about Kelsey Donald Podcast produced by: David Cummings Music & Sound Design by: David Cummings, unless otherwise noted The NoSleep Podcast uses the PSE Hybrid Library exclusively for its sound design. This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons License 2014. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the sunlight fades to darkness, the frightful tales creep into your mind. There will be no sleep. And now I was listening. There's little boys who die. To the window. Brace yourself for the no sleep podcast. It's episode 19 of season three. Welcome to the show.

I'm your host, David Cummings. We have seven tales for you in this episode, featuring stories about the horrors within ourselves and the disturbing aspects of our family life. I want to introduce you to a new narrator joining us this episode. Otis Jiry joins us, courtesy of our friends over at Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. Otis is a veteran radio broadcaster who has transitioned, into voice acting. You'll hear Otis in our first tale, and I'm sure you'll be able to tell

right away that he brings a great deal of experience and talent to his craft. As Otis shares his talent with us, I want to make our listeners aware of a way that they can help Otis through a very difficult time. You see, Otis has recently gone through a very troubling time in his personal life. I won't go into too many details here, but Otis has recently found himself without a home and estranged from his family. He's struggling to get himself re-established and back to his love of voice acting. Otis, along with Chilling Tales for Dark Nights executive producer Craig Groschick, have put together a video giving some background into Otis's life and his current predicament. Craig has also established a crowdsourced fundraising campaign at giveforward.com.

With a goal of only $15,000, it's our hope that many people who enjoy Otis' talent will consider giving even a few dollars to help him get back on his feet. I'll post a link in the show notes to that video and to the fundraising effort that Craig has started for Otis. I'm proud to be a team member of the fundraising effort, and I hope many of you will take the time to find out more about this worthy man and help his cause. When a large group of people each give a little, a great deal of good can happen. So I welcome Otis to the show. I'm quite certain he'll be back with us for many

stories to come. And now let's get things started and let Otis share his talent with us. This story is about a man who had an eerie experience as a child, an experience that ended up altering the path of his entire life. As author Rio Herrera writes, this boy encountered some music that remained fixed yet elusive in his mind. Otis Jiry recounts the story for us about how haunting it was to hear the melody. I haven't thought of this in a really long time, but something happened to me last night that brought back everything like it was. Well, happening again right now.

That night from 20 years ago has been playing over in my mind all day. Every icy detail. When I was young, my parents would send me to live with my grandparents over the summer, so that I could get a taste of nature, a change of life. pace from the big city, or maybe they were just too busy and needed a break. I would always make a fuss about the four-hour drive into the countryside just to sit in a boring old house all day with boring. By the end of the summer, I wouldn't want to leave, at least until the summer when I was nine, after which I never went back. The days ran into each other in those young summers,

sprinting through the woods with whittled sticks, playing with the dogs, breathlessly hitting lunch on the front porches. Luckily, a few of the neighbors had children my age who would romp with me. We would explore and stage wars and fight over who was dead. There was a time of great imagination. My grandmother would fret over me, pinching my ear when I came home covered in mud, while my grandpa mowed the lawn or rocked on the front porch. The house itself was old.

and dark, but it was made homey by the decades that my grandparents had lived there, creaky floor boards and all. It was picturesque, really, and I would be more nostalgic for it if it wasn't so tainted by the night that my grandpa died. I remember waking up in the middle of the night because it was so cold. The thin sheet I had over me was suitable for the normally stifling August, but not for the chill that had crept so supernatural. even into the darkest corners of my bedroom. I shivered and turned over, glancing around the room for another blanket,

but knowing it was in vain. All hope for sleep that night had already vanished, though I didn't quite realize it at that moment. I was a bit frightened, but tried to rationalize things for myself. I needed to get up and get another blanket, or at least to get a bit of comfort for my grandma, but the floor was opaque beneath my feet

as if it were obscured by a black fog. Fear prevailed, so I was stubbornly resolved to tough it out under my inadequate sheet and put my feet on that coal-wooden floor. Until I heard the music. That haunting melody came slithering out of the darkness and wrapped its pale fingers around my heart and squeezed, shooting through my body icy chills far colder than the air in the room. I listened for a few moments.

hypnotized by that harp sound as it grew louder. It overcame my fear of the dark, or perhaps more accurately, it encompassed my fear, and with a horrible fascination I took a few steps and turned the knob on my door without opening it. Dread-filled me. I knew that I had to look, but looking was the last thing I wanted to do. I was as condemned as a prisoner marching to his execution. I opened the door. There, in the open window, at the end of the hallway,

illuminated by a perfect shaft of moonlight, sat a pale, vaguely human figure, plucking with its long, delicate fingers, the song that would haunt my dreams and memories for years. It looked like a woman with long-flowing hair wearing all white. It looked translucent. She was the most beautiful, thing I had ever seen and have ever seen since. She paid no attention to me, but appeared as sad

as her song as she stared into the darkness outside the window. My body moved compulsively towards her slow step after slow step on the creaky wooden floors. Each step made me cringe as I had interrupted the silence of a sleeping house with a scream, but I couldn't stop. I still had the same feeling of dread. As her song wove its way around me, I began to feel a sorrow but quickly surpassed the capacity of normal human emotion. It was as if my heart was in my feet, and I was treading on it with every step. My ability to even comprehend hope was replaced by a resigned anxiety for whatever was to come. She still didn't notice my presence, despite my choked sobs and intrusive footsteps drawing ever closer.

She continued to play. As I passed my grandparents' bedroom just steps from the window, the door flung open, and I felt someone grabbed my arm. It snapped me out of my days, and I shouted out in surprise, but it was only my grandma, looking very afraid. I turned to look again at the pale woman in the window. She hadn't moved, but she was staring directly at me with huge lunar eyes burning. with malice.

It was only then that I realized the music had stopped. I felt her rage. I felt her hatred. I swear I felt my soul straining against the confines of my body with that stare. And then she was gone with a supernatural shriek that I still can't be sure wasn't my own as I buried my face against my grandma's leg. I could only ask my grandma, did you hear it? as she stroked my head sadly outside that open door and empty hallway.

I got up to look out the window. There was ice on the open window pane, and I saw my breath one time in the quiet night. My grandma was still kneeling on the floor. What's wrong, darling? She asked me. Did you see the woman? There was a woman. She looked at me.

There wasn't any woman, honey. I think you were having a nightmare. No, I saw her. She was playing a song. Did you hear it, Grandma? No, sweetie. It was just a dream. She swallowed back a sob.

I need to tell you something, okay? She took me by the hand and led me into the bedroom that my grandparents had shared for 39 years and showed me my grandfather lying on his back with his eyes open. I took his cold hand, but I was too young to understand. the permanence of death. I felt sad, but it could not compare with the sorrow just a few minutes ago, so I was blank searching for expression. It already seemed like my supernatural experience was very over. It seemed like maybe it was just a dream after all. But then I heard the music again coming from far away. And his hand grew colder and seemed to inflict my own with its

chill. I dropped it and collapsed, sobbing. The sorrow had returned, and with the concrete direction this time. I saw my grandpa rocking on the porch with a smile on his face as he watched me play, and I understood each aching corner of that old heart until I felt my own would burst. The music had stopped, and my grandma rocked me in her arms, but I did not feel normal again for a long time. I had reached such depth then that it was a long way for me to climb back out. My parents just thought I was taking my grandfather's death particularly hard, but it was more than that. Some mornings I couldn't get out of bed, and my parents had to pull me out of school for the semester, because it just had no appeal to me.

Neither threats nor incentives seemed to register. The music, haunting. me. I started to try to reproduce it on the old piano in my parents' apartment, clunking out minor tones with no guidance. The melody played in my dreams almost every night so vivid and sad, but it eluded me each monotonous hour. I thought that maybe I needed to train my ear, so I practiced scales and intervals. I learned to pick out subtle variations in chord tones, and I adapted new rhythms to keep myself entertained. My parents were relieved, but they didn't know that I was obsessed.

I studied Beethoven to pass the time in Chopin for a challenge. After a while, I could play everything I saw in sheet music or heard on the radio. Only that cursed song escaped me. I would wake up humming the melody, but when I reached for a pen to transcribe it, my memory was blank. Years passed this way, and my misery became less acute. I grew to love what I had gotten so good at and redoubled my efforts, and my parents were proud of me. They sent me to a conservatory because I had missed so much school that it would hinder my piano studies to try to catch up. They said words like prodigy.

Soon I was caught up in a world of studying and performing, which eventually became just performing. The critics caught wind of me, and I was elevated to a lifestyle of performing and partying that the almost famous engage in to try to emulate the actually famous. But the rave reviews of my potential stopped coming, when the critics noticed what would turn out to be an impassable barrier for me? I emphasized the tragedy in romanticism. I tinged the most joyful songs with a ghastly nostalgia, and the harshest that my abundant technical skill masked a grave emptiness of emotion.

I was relegated to the pool of almost world-class musicians, whose names you have never heard. Only the party was left, but that soon faded into nights of lonely drinking, as all my friends moved on. I've played in bars, at funerals, and for various bands for the past many years. I had forgotten what hit got me started,

that music, until last night when I heard it again. How haunting! How beautiful and how damning it is, that melody. Last night, I sat down at the old piano I inherited from my parents and played the melody that I've come to think is just for me. The most beautiful song I've ever heard, the loneliest song of all time, letting it spin out for over an hour, transforming and adapting to the rhythm. The theme ever present.

In its dozens of variations the most masterful song ever composed, and I played it. It was just as enticing as the first time. Honestly, I only stopped playing when my fingers became too stiff with cold to reach the keys. The melody has not stopped running through my mind, but I know now that I can never write it down. When I stood up from the piano, I felt vacant. turned around and looked at the pale, unblinking face staring at me from outside of my window. Nothing happened. I went outside and looked up because the windows in my building were all sealed after someone jumped out of one.

But there was nothing there. I've been awake since then. That song won't let me sleep. I just feel very sad. to encountering the terrifying elements in our own homes. It's often the tops and bottoms of our houses that cause the most problems. Attics have their ghostly footsteps and dark corners, but then there are the foreboding stairs that lead us to the dark, dank underbelly of our warm, cozy homes. Author Cliff Barlow shares his story with us that was originally posted to Thought

catalog at thought catalog.com. He shares an experience of what kept him in constant fear of that mysterious room and why he refused for many years to go down to the place that he calls my basement. I remember seeing the house for the first time. I was a child of seven. My young parents had just bought their first home. I remember I used to see the house for the first time. I remember I to hate living in the cramped, dingy apartment we previously inhabited, and opened the door to our new home with wide-eyed wonder. It blew my young mind how spacious this house was. I went upstairs to scope out my bedroom. I was so excited that I was getting my own room and did not have to share it with my infant brother. On my grand tour of my name,

digs, I finally made it down to our basement. The basement was nothing like the rest of the house. The upstairs was elegant and classy. The basement was cold, metallic, sterile, and stinky. The ceiling was lined with ancient pipes winding in grotesque angles, the floor covered in rough cement. I recall taking a look at the stairs for the first time and being immediately struck with how odd they were. The stairs were surrounded by drywall, which clashed with the rest of the basement. One particular section of the wall was colored differently than the rest. It stood out like a sore

thumb. I inched close to it and felt the texture of it. It felt. It felt. It felt. very strange. I then knocked on it. A hollow sound pervaded the empty air of the basement. Something about that sound immediately put me ill at ease. I walked up the stairs as I could hear that same hollow sound echo in the emptiness of the basement. As we settled into our new home, I began to get comfortable with my surroundings. The house began to feel familiar, everywhere that is, except for the basement. It just always put me off,

and I avoided going down there as best as I could. Our family couldn't be happier. My loving father and mother doted over me and my little brother. My life was perfect. It began. I would hear errant noises. When I pointed it out to my parents, they told me the old standby that the house was settling in. One night in particular indicated that something wasn't right. I snuck downstairs to the kitchen for a late-night snack. As I closed the refrigerator, I heard a tapping sound cut through the silence of the night.

I craned my head to see if I could pinpoint where the sound was coming from. Dread began to wash over me as I realized that tapping was coming from the basement. I inched my way over to the basement door. I opened it to see the blackness of the depths below. My ears perked up. There it was again. That hollow tapping sound. The same sound I had heard on my initial visit to the basement from hitting the drywall.

I turned on the lights, stealing myself to go down the stairs and investigate. The tapping continued as I took the first step. Fear overtook me. I ran back to my room and hid under my covers until the morning light gave way to a new day. I remember walking down the stairs. Being the first one up and about, I ran to the living room to play Nintendo. On my way, I passed the door to the basement. It was shut.

Though I was in a state of near panic when I ran from it the previous night, I distinctly remember leaving the door open and not turning off the lights. I rationalized that my mother or father must have gone down. there for some reason and I lost myself in Super Mario Brothers 3. Later I mentioned the incident to my parents and they just assured me that what I heard was the sound of the hot water heater clicking in the night. I knew better but welcomed a logical explanation. About a month after the move my mother asked me to run downstairs and grab a load of socks out of the dryer in the basement. I reluctantly told her I would. It was the middle of the day and enough time had

passed to dull the fear I had felt a week prior. I turned on the lights. I ran down the stairs, hearing the hollow sound echo with my footsteps, a cold sweat started to form on me. The smell hit my nose as I reached the last step. My parents had mentioned that a mouse, a mouse, must have died and assured me that they would find it. I made my way to the dryer and grabbed a basket. I pulled the socks out hastily and shoved them into the basket. After I shut the door to the dryer, I surveyed my surroundings. The stillness of the basement was so eerie.

Then a faintly audible whisper. At first, I thought it was somebody calling. from upstairs, their voice scarcely making it down into the basement. However, this was not the case. That sound was coming from the basement, specifically from under the stairs. As I stood, frozen with fear, it began to increase in volume, but still remained barely above the threshold of human perception. What was being said incomprehensible to my young ears? Then it stopped as quickly as it began. I moved toward the stairs, keeping my eye on the oddly colored portion of the drywall. As I took my first step to escape this ever-growing nightmare, the most profoundly terrifying moment of

My life occurred. A loud, hollow, bang, shook the stairs, almost knocking me to the ground. I ran up the stairs as fast as my legs would carry me. Through tears and shaking uncontrollably, I told my parents what happened. They tried their best to calm me, but nothing they said could ease my mind. I told them in no uncertain terms that I would never go down to the basement again. They must have been convinced of how terrified I was, because they honored my request and never sent me down there again. After another three months in the house, things returned to normalcy for me, and honestly, there was about a two-week period where I was happy again.

This would be the last time happiness would exist in my life, or my families for that matter. One moment in particular comes to mind. I remember lifting up little Jonathan above my head, lovingly as his pacifier fell out of his mouth and brushed against my nose. I pulled him in for a big bear hug and remember how he smelled. That wonderful smell that only babies emit, I was so content. It all came crashing down for me and my parents the night of July 2, 1991. That's the day Jonathan went missing. A ransom note was scrawled in barely legible English and left in his bed,

demanding $20,000 cash. It informed my parents that if they contacted the police, they would kill Jonathan. My mother and father took to their room and argued loudly and emotionally over whether or not to call the police as I listened with tears streaming down my face. My mother eventually wore down my father and the police were called. Seeing as the location of the drop and the time were indicated on the note, the police set up a wiretap just in case the kidnapper decided to call. I asked my parents and the police if they had thoroughly searched through the house in case he was still here.

They assured me they had, and that Jonathan would be fine after the drop. But the seed of an idea was already growing in my mind. It would blossom throughout the rest of my life. My parents followed the instructions to a tea. They dropped off the money and then waited in the location that they were supposed to pick up Jonathan. He never came. Needless to say, this tore my family apart. As the weeks passed and there was no news about Jonathan,

my young, vibrant parents became husks of their former selves, my mother especially. She blamed herself for getting the police involved and believed that to be the reason Jonathan was not returned. One night as she was sobbing alone in shambles, clutching a bottle of wine, I finally decided to divulge to her the theory that had been brewing inside my skull. I told her that I thought it was whoever, or whatever, for that matter, was under the stairs that had gotten Jonathan and maybe he's still alive. She slapped me across my face so hard that I saw stars. She screamed at me, the guilt expressing itself as rage. She told me to stop the childish bullshit and just accept that Jonathan was taken out of her. the house by some sick fuck and is dead. My childhood died that day. I remember contemplating

taking a hammer and exposing whatever was under the stairs myself, but the fear of childhood was just too overwhelming for me to actually do it, let alone step one stair down into that basement. My family moved shortly after this incident. I remember looking to the few. I remember looking to the future with what might resemble optimism only to have it come crashing down yet again. My parents divorced. Oh, the grief was too much to share, and not a year after that, my mother killed herself. The guilt must have just overwhelmed her. My father did his best to raise me, but Jonathan's long-jured.

shadow always hung over our lives. Twenty years later, I began to think long and hard about my little brother's disappearance, and how angry it made me. My family had a chance at a normal and fulfilling life, and it was snuffed out in an instant by whoever took him. I wasn't just robbed of a little brother. I was robbed of any chance of happiness. As I was robbed of any chance of happiness. As I grew up, I accepted the official story of what happened. But lately, curiosity began to get the better of me. I began driving past the old house. Seeing that it was currently vacant, ideas began to swell in my head.

So I broke into the house, bolstered by alcohol. I decided to do it, knowing I was. would likely find nothing under the basement stairs, but hoping that this would close a too long chapter in my life and allow me to finally move on. To my dismay, the stairs sounded exactly the same as I remember they did, a hollow sound pervading the emptiness of the basement. I stared at the spot in the drywall, still discolored, still just as ominous as it was when I was child. However, fear was not going to stop me. In fact, I was feeling the opposite. I was feeling a courage I hadn't felt in a long time. The moment of truth was upon me. With all the force

within me emboldened by years of pent-up rage, I ran toward the wall shoulder first. The drywall came crashing down around me. I opened my eyes as my bravery was immediately eroded and turned into absolute horror. Bones! Bones! My horror increased to unimaginable heights as I surveyed the tight space, seeing the myriad skeletons strewn about, the light playing menacingly on their tiny frames. tattered pieces of paper were strewn about with God only knows what written on them.

There must have been the remains of 20 to 30 children. My fright reached a crescendo when I realized with no exceptions that they were all missing their skulls. One particularly tiny one begged for my attention. I became weak in the knees and fell backwards when I saw when I saw what were unmistakably bite marks up and down the tiny forearm. As I hit the ground, I expected to hear a dull thud as I landed on the concrete. Instead, I heard a hollow sound. I looked to see what I had landed on,

Finding new courage, summoning strength I didn't know I had, I opened it. Below me lay a dark tunnel, a crawl space that could barely fit a person lying on their stomach. The dank smell wafting upward made me reluctant, but I knew what I had to do. Before I was conscious of what my muscles were doing, I found myself crawling through the darkness, toward whatever lay on the other side. As I reached the end of the tunnel, I looked up to see a sliver of light cutting through the darkness.

With trepidation, I pushed upwards. Cautiously, I poked my head up. To my surprise, the tunnel had led to the other side of the stairs. I crawled out to find myself in the corner of the basement facing the stairs. Behind a dryer covered in years of dust. The implications of all this sent my mind reeling, but before I could form a coherent thought,

the lights turned off in the basement. Heart caught in my throat as I began to hear someone descending the stairs. Slow but sure steps announcing I was no longer alone. With every thud, my heart skipped a beat. I began to hear that incomprehensible whispering, the familiarity reigniting the fear and woe of my lost childhood. Worrying the darkness would not adequately hide me. I sought cover by ducking behind the dryer, not willing to take the risk of catching a glimpse, though every fiber of my being screamed to do so.

Panic began to set in. What am I going to do when he, or it, discovers his lair, has been revealed? While I was mulling over my options, the screaming began. I say scream as a frame of reference, but there is no way to truly describe the guttural noises I heard. The sounds smashing the silence of the basement were still. so bone-chilling, so surreal as to defy description. He clearly had discovered his perverse sanctuary had been disturbed. Before I knew it, I was up the stairs running for my life. I made it to my car, too scared to turn around. With all muscles working in concert, I opened the door and put the key in the

ignition in one swift movement. As my car sprang to life under the streetlight, a shadow fell over my car. I gunned it, never once looking back, flooring the accelerator to the local police precinct. I breathlessly tried to explain to the attending officer what had occurred and collapsed to the floor mid-sentence. It is a month later. The next day after my discovery, the police launched an investigation and quickly made the same gruesome discovery. I was thanked profusely by the police and the community for what I had found, telling me they were going to be able to close the books on multiple missing person cases. However, they were not able to find the perpetrator of these heinous crimes. They began to test the DNA of the bodies.

A profound sense of relief overcame me when I received the call, informing me that one of the tiny skeletons belonged to Jonathan. I shared the news with my father. The look of relief on his face tugged at my heart. The burden he had carried for so many years was lifted. We hugged as tears filled both of our eyes. However, the relief has been short-lived. The thing that keeps me up at night is that whoever or whatever did this is still out there.

The question that plagues my mind is whether or not this monster is literal or figurative. Either way, I hope I never find it. out. 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.