The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S9E01

Episode Date: May 7, 2017

It's episode 01 - the premiere of Season 9. On this week's show we have six tales about medical malfeasance, absent adolescents, and wary woodlands."Containment Failure"‡ written by Rona Vaselaar and performed by Jessica McEvoy. (Story starts around 00:04:00)"Our Town Was Visited by an Ice Cream Truck"† written by Jacob Healey and performed by Mike DelGaudio & Nikolle Doolin & Eden & Corinne Sanders. (Story starts around 00:25:15)"My Childhood Memories"† written by Leo Harrison and performed by Dan Zappulla & Jeff Clement & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts around 00:47:30)"Don’t Be Seen By It"† written by Sawyer Brantford and performed by Matthew Bradford & Kyle Akers. (Story starts around 01:09:20)"I Call Them Twists"‡ written by Jon Grilz and performed by Peter Lewis & Alexis Bristowe & Elie Hirschman. (Story starts around 01:26:20)"Birch Faces"† written by J.P. Carver and performed by Atticus Jackson & Addison Peacock & Dan Zappulla & Mike DelGaudio. (Story starts around 01:51:45)Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast Click here to learn more about the new creepypasta podcast, "Creepy" from the creator of Small Town Horror Click here to learn more about Rona Vaselaar Click here to learn more about Jacob Healey Click here to learn more about Jon Grilz Click here to learn more about J.P. Carver Executive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon BooneAudio adaptations produced by: Phil Michalski† & Jeff Clement‡"Our Town Was Visited by an Ice Cream Truck" illustration courtesy of Lukasz GodlewskiAudio program ©2017 - Creative Reason Media Inc. - All Rights Reserved - No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a horror storytelling podcast. Our tales are dark and disturbing, intended to shake you up. Listen at your own risk. We are all around you. And tonight's there will be, brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. It's the No Sleep Podcast. I'm David Cummings. Thanks for joining us.

On this week's show, we have six tales about mental, medical malfeasance, absent adolescence, and wary woodlands. Welcome to Season 9 of the No Sleep Podcast. It's hard to believe we've come this far. In a couple of months, we'll be celebrating our sixth anniversary, and when I look back to see how far the podcast has come, it simply staggers my shriveled little brain. Over 225 episodes, likely over 400 hours of audio horror storytelling,

and so many great collaborators. I simply cannot be more grateful for the cast and crew who have joined me over the years to guess where we are today. Their involvement keeps making the show better and better. I'm so proud to be a part of the audio horror podcast community. And speaking of which, I want to mention a new podcast you will certainly enjoy. It's from John Grills, the creator of the great Small Town Horror Podcast. His new show is called Creepy, and it features audio adaptations of popular creepypasta stories like Russian Sleep Experiment and Ted the Caver.

The easiest way to find it is go to Twitter.com slash creepypod. It's a great way to hear those well-known creepy stories brought to life. Oh, and speaking of John, we have a story he wrote on this week's show. Great to have you back, John. And so here we are, season nine. I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to express my overwhelming gratitude and love for our listeners. Some of you are season past members, and we can't thank you enough for financially supporting what we do and keeping us operating.

But to everyone who listens, you mean the world to us. It's not about whether or not you pay us for what we do. What matters to us is that you listen to our episodes and hopefully enjoy what we produce. We are at heart, artists, and creators. Without people to hear the fruit of our labor, it would all be meaningless. We love that you're out there, spanning this planet, listening to our work each week. So to all of you who listen and make this worthwhile, we value you more than you can know. We thank you, and we promise to keep doing our level best to bring you the best audio horror to your ears every week. And now, dear listeners, it's

Time to launch season nine into orbit. And as I am oft heard saying, Brace yourself, because it's time for this week's show. In our first tale, we meet a woman who is documenting the strange happenings in her small Minnesota town. As we learn from author Rona Vassilar, an escalating series of illnesses and deaths prompts her to realize that her town is suffering from something far more serious than anyone is letting on. Performing this tale is Jessica McAvoy, so let's discover the horrific results of containment failure.

Although it's unlikely I'll be able to remain anonymous, I'll be operating under an alias for the moment. In the course of these events, I'll refer to myself as Nenim. It's nonsense, nothing that can be connected to me. I live in a small, rural town in southern Minnesota. We have a population of about 5,000 people. The town is about five square miles, located on a prairie and surrounded by farmland. To the west of the town is a lake, about half a mile in diameter. I will codename the town Little Creek to avoid detection.

It probably won't matter. anyway. I'm sure all online traces of it will have disappeared within the next few hours. I have lived in Little Creek for 23 years, excluding my time at college. I recently returned in order to take care of my mother, who has been sick. I have never noticed anything strange here. It's always been the definition of quiet country living. These are the definition of quiet country living. These developments happened quickly, and somebody needs to know about them before they continue. I have cataloged them here. I hope to God somebody sees this and understands.

April 12, 2017. I returned to Little Creek around four in the afternoon. There was road work being done on the interstate as I headed into town. Not unusual. There were also what appeared to be construction workers near the lake to the west of town. They were hauling in heavy-duty equipment for something. Once I arrived home, I asked my mother about it. She didn't know why they were there.

I settled in and moved my things back into my old room. April 13, 2017. I woke up at 6 a.m. My internet was down. I headed to the grocery store at 6.30, where I confirmed with other shoppers that they were experiencing internet problems as well. This is not uncommon where I live. Being out in such a rural area, there's only one internet service provider. At the store, I ran into a local man I'll refer to as Ben.

Ben is known throughout the town for his paranoid delusions. Many people believe he suffers from some kind of mental disorder, perhaps schizophrenia. He and I had a short interaction in which he claimed that the construction workers at the lake were government officials sent to destroy the evidence of illegal conduct extending back to the 1960s. As we spoke, he became increasingly distrust. Eventually, he left the store and I made my purchases and returned home. By noon, my internet was working again.

I searched our local news site for more information about the work being conducted at the lake. I found nothing. April 14, 2017. At 8 a.m., I took my mother to the doctor. While in the hospital waiting room, I encountered various local persons. I was familiar with. I asked them about the work being done at the lake. None of them knew what work was being done, but they all expressed a desire to know. At 2 p.m., I drove down to the lake. I parked my car on the side of the road and approached a group of construction workers to ask about

their work. I was stopped by a police officer. He wasn't a Little Creek police officer, and he wasn't a state trooper. He informed me that I was trespassing and that it was too dangerous for me to approach the site. He escorted me to my car and would not answer any questions regarding the lake. April 15, 2017. At 1 p.m., I had another interaction with Ben. He came to my mother's house and requested to speak with me. He handed me several documents, asked me to read through them, and left. He would not answer any questions and only stayed for about five minutes. I have been unable to scan the documents and upload them to my computer. Instead, I have transcribed them. He handed me three printed newspaper articles and one handwritten note. Article 1. Article 1.

Boy dies under mysterious circumstances. June 16, 1972. Daniel Thompson, child of Seamus and Elizabeth Thompson, died last week from an unfortunate and undiagnosed sickness. Daniel, aged 10, was admitted to the hospital after a period of severe nausea and vomiting. Over the course of the next few hours, Daniel suffered from faintness, dizziness, abdominal pain, and an erratic pulse. He died during the night from heart failure. Daniel is survived by his parents, as well as his older brother, Ben, and his younger sister, Christine. The cause of Daniel's sickness is as yet unknown.

Anyone with information pertaining to this illness is encouraged to come forward. At the bottom of this article, Ben had written in red ink, swimming at the lake, encircled it. Article 2. Death of 16-year-old linked to Little Creek Lake. August 4, 1978. 16-year-old Stephanie Wilson was found dead near Little Creek Lake two weeks ago by a local farmer. The cause of Stephanie's death is as yet unknown. However, locals claim that it may have had something to do with the lake where she had been swimming prior to her death.

That lake is bad news, said Timothy Lyset, owner of Little Creek's Good Foods grocery store. People who go in there don't come out right. Several locals expressed their agreement, but declined to be interviewed for official comment. An autopsy is pending to determine the cause of death for the young woman. Any information pertaining to her death should be brought to the police as soon as possible. There were no markings on this page. Article 3. Local child is granted wish. September 20, 2003.

Late last Thursday evening, Alex Tonnery was granted his lifelong wish to be the sheriff of the Little Creek Police Department. It's our honor to have to have to be the sheriff of the Little Creek Police Department. Have such a good officer join us for the day, said Officer Brandy, as she showed Alex her cruiser and gave him an in-depth tour of all its features. Alex, diagnosed last year with leukemia, has been given six weeks to live. However, his headstrong and positive spirit has shone through even during these tough times. I'll be sad to leave Mommy and Daddy, but I know I'll get to see them again someday. Alex told us.

He was provided with a police uniform in miniature, as well as his own badge. His parents looked on in the distance, taking pictures to commemorate the occasion. We just want these last weeks to be happy, Jennifer Tonnery said, as she watched her son become the new star of the police department. As long as he's happy, we know we. The page cut off here. In the bottom, written in red ink, Tonnery Farms, lived half a mile from the lake.

Included with the articles was this handwritten note. Nenum, you're the only person I can trust with this. You have to act quickly because there isn't much time. I know you went to the lake the other day. You must already know what's unintelligible. In the 1960s, this site was used for government testing. I told you the other day. They made a mistake.

They're back to try to clean it up before anyone finds out. It's only a matter of time before someone... Unintelligible. They are trying to block any and all information relating to the accident. They know that I know. I don't have much time either. We are all being watched. You especially find a way to stop them.

The note was left unsigned. April 16th, 2017. At noon, I went to look for Ben. He was not at his house. Nobody knew where he'd been. I did not look further. I didn't want to raise any suspicion. I assumed Ben was crazy, but I was also paranoid about what was being done down at the lake.

April 17, 2017. At 8 a.m., I was awoken by a scream from outside the house. Upon reaching the window, I saw a child laying outside on the sidewalk. She was covered in vomit. Her skin was red as though severely severe. sun burnt. Her mother was on her knees, screaming beside her. Before I was able to get my bearings and move towards the door, the mother stopped screaming and began convulsing. She began to vomit as well, her fingers clawing at her throat. After she vomited twice, she fainted next to her child.

My mother had come down the stairs at that point. She attempted to leave the house to help the woman and her child, but I held her back. Outside, a man stopped his car and left the vehicle to help the woman and child. He was on his phone, I believe, attempting to call for help, when he collapsed on the sidewalk, wringing his hand to his head as though it was in great pain. His skin also began to grow red. I pulled my mother away from the window and sat her down in the living room. I checked to make sure all the doors and windows in the house were sealed. We appeared to be safe in the house. I guessed that people had become sick because they stepped outside, leading me to believe that the virus, or whatever it was, was airborne. I attempted to

use the landline to call the hospital, but the phone was out. I then used my cell phone. The hospital line was busy, as was the police. line. I turned on the television, but none of the local stations were coming in. I was able to get stations from outside the county, which meant that whatever was happening was local. I decided the best course of action was to try to get my mother and myself out of the town. The garage door was closed, so I assumed it was reasonably safe for us to get to the car. I turned off the air vents and locked the doors. We attempted to leave on the interstate. We weren't the only ones. Several other town members were heading south on the interstate. However, there was a roadblock

set up just two miles outside of town. It was being manned by several people in hazmat suits. This confirmed my fear that the pathogen was airborne. They were holding guns. I am not certain what kind. They shot the windshield of the first car. I can't be sure, but I believe they killed the driver. The female passenger exited the car, screaming. They shot her as well. At this point, I turned the car around and went back the way we came. Several other cars followed suit.

The men continued to shoot at the retreating cars. I didn't look back to see if they killed anyone else. I saw two cars get into an accident in their attempts to flee. The drivers stumbled out of the wrecked cars and immediately began vomiting on the side of the road. They tried to flag me down to help them. I kept driving. We tried the other direction. I saw the roadblock before we got close enough to be shot.

I retreated back into town. By the time we returned to the house, the streets were littered with bodies. I had to drive over some of them to get home. Many of them had strange burns covering their skin. Most were covered in vomit. Many were still alive, but it was clear they would not live for very long. We returned to the garage and I shut the door. I instructed my mother to cover her mouth and close her eyes.

I got her into the house as soon as I could. Neither of us showed any symptoms of whatever was happening outside. I instructed my mother to lie down in her room. Once she had calmed down and was resting, I began to gather supplies. I realized that our most direct method of escape, the interstate, was not a viable option. We would need to reassess before we tried anything else. I figured that as long as we were in the house and the vents were closed, closed, which I double-checked as soon as we got home, we would be safe.

Once I'd gathered all the supplies I thought might be useful, I went online to do some research. The time was approximately 10 a.m. I began by trying to research the symptoms I'd observed in the people laying outside, the people who'd been contaminated. The first results that came up on Google were related to acute radio. radiation syndrome. When I attempted to access the sites related to radiation poisoning, however, they were blocked. This was consistent across four or five sites.

Eventually, I turned on my VPN and was able to access the sites. Not only did the symptoms match those of radiation poisoning, but the majority of the sites also mentioned nuclear fallout and nuclear testing sites as closely linked. to instances of radiation poisoning. Over the next several hours, until about noon, I did as much research into nuclear testing as I could. At 12.30, I went to check on my mother. When I entered her room, she was crouched over a garbage can.

She had vomited several times. The skin on her face was red. At this time, I also... began to notice that I was experiencing a headache. I believe we both have been contaminated. My mother was already very ill. Her body was not able to withstand the radiation poisoning. She is no longer conscious and will die in a few hours. At two o'clock, I will be leaving. I'm going to risk getting into my car and increasing my exposure to the radiation. I believe that if I can get to a hospital in another town, I may be able to survive this,

but I have to act quickly. There are dozens of tiny country roads leading out of this town. If I am careful, I may be able to find one that the government overlooked. Before I leave, I'm detailing what I've learned. here, what I think I know about Little Creek, Minnesota. In my research, I stumbled upon something called underground nuclear testing. It's the only testing currently permitted under the limited test ban treaty. Essentially, nuclear weapons can be tested by detonating them below the surface. If they are detonated far enough below ground, they will be completely contained in the Earth's

surface, and no nuclear fallout will spread into the atmosphere. Any harmful gases can be extracted and neutralized through controlled tunnel purging. But if the explosion is too close to the surface, it will cause a crater. This is known as containment failure. Radiation from the blast can escape into the atmosphere all at one time or at small increments over many years. A crater would be an obvious landmark. It would raise questions. But a lake? In the land of 10,000 lakes? Nobody would bat an eye at that. And nobody out here would notice the difference between a natural lake and a crater the government had filled with water. That's why the government sent workers to Little Creek Lake. The radiation and hazardous gases were seeping from the lake and

infecting the townspeople. The government was hoping to use a controlled tunnel purge to neutralize the gas and radiation. But something went wrong. Something went terribly, horribly wrong. Now they're trying to cover it up. They're going to take little creek off the map and all the inhabitants with it. Judging by the number of bodies outside, a number that is constantly growing, they've killed off about 90% of the town's inhabitants. But they haven't got me yet. I'm leaving.

I don't know how much time before I succumb to the radiation point. reasoning anyway. I might as well try to escape while I have the chance. If I can't, maybe they'll at least shoot me. I'm not stupid. I know I'm not likely to survive the next few hours, let alone the next few days. I'm going to try anyway. Whether young or old, most people fondly recall the joys of hearing the playful truck drive down their street to sell them frozen treats. But in this tale from author Jacob Healy, we learn of one town where such things no longer occur and why they never will again. Performing this tale are Mike Delgado, Nicole Doolin, Eden, and Corinne Sanders. So let's find out the significance of why, as the locals tell us, our town was visited by an ice cream truck.

Our town doesn't get many visitors. The roads leading through it don't come from anywhere important, and they don't go nowhere important either. Hell, I don't think we rate a drop of ink on most maps of the area. You never heard of it. I'm almost sure. But for 96 people on this planet, Bertrand, Montana, well, it's home. I once heard a rumor that Bertrand is the oldest city in America. Now, I don't mean we've been around the longest, of course, but if you add up the air, ages of all of our citizens and divide that number by the number of citizens we have,

well, let's just say you'd be hard-pressed to find another town in the homeland where the average age is 73 years old and counting. There are no children here, and there likely never will be again, not in Bertrand. The youngest among us, Tommy Bellwether, he's 62. When it happened, young Tommy was 13 years old, short for his age. and the most insolent little bastard you ever laid eyes on. Now he runs the laundromat in town, always armed with a bright smile, a kind word, and a Colt 45.

Don't ask me why he's stuck around, because I don't know. I'm not sure why any of us have. After everything that's happened, everything we went through, you might think we couldn't get out of here fast enough. Oh, some of us did, of course. but the rest of us, well, we stayed.

For we are Bertrand, and Bertrand is us, and it's all we know in this world. We're all still wounded, some of us pretty deep. But I suppose nothing can heal old scars like the familiarity and comfort of home. It all started in July of 1968. It was a bad time for America, but a good time for Bertrand. We were so small and insignificant that we always felt a bit removed from the rest of the country. Still, there were upwards of 400 living here in those days, and children too, plenty of children. Three of them, all under the age of eight, belonged to old Sandra Hill.

She was beautiful back then, a bona fide dime, although I'd never had told her that. Her husband was the deputy to the town marshal and more gung-holy. than any young lawman you ever heard of. And he was also very devoted to his wife, and she to him. And not even the most lustful fellow in town would even think are coming between those two. Anyway, Sandra was friendly in those days with my sweet Irene. God rest her soul. Our only child, Jody, was around the age of the oldest till child, and they had frequent playdates.

While the children, you know, gallivanted around, Sandra and Irene would sip tea out on the porch in the warm months and talk for hours on end. Irene would come home and ceaselessly regale me with the tales of Wendell and Sandra Hill, which bored me terribly, though I usually made an attempt to at least half listen. But on this particular night, Irene said something I found very interesting indeed. Say, have you heard of any ice cream trucks around town? I responded, of course, in the negative. Nobody and Bertrand owned an ice cream truck of that, I was sure.

And the idea of somebody driving clear out here to pedal frozen treats to our spa's population? That was frankly laughable. Why do you ask? Well, because little Polly Hill claims that she's seen one driving about. Sandra told me about it just this afternoon. She says Wendell isn't worried that nobody else has mentioned anything strange and something about children having imaginations, of course. But she did seem a bit frightened.

I agreed with Wendell that the likelihood of an ice cream truck in Bertrand was low, and that a child's daydream was a far more realistic explanation. But I still felt somewhat uneasy. If there was indeed somebody driving an ice cream truck around without anybody knowing, that could very well mean our children were in danger. We were removed from the world, as I said, but we weren't naive. Predators could come to our town as well as any other. This is the first time I'm hearing about it, sweetheart.

But I think we should warn Jody again about, you know, not taking things from strangers, just to be safe. Irene agreed, and the two of us walked into Jody's room. It was a short conversation. She hadn't seen an ice cream truck, and of course she wouldn't take anything from strangers, even if it was something as delicious as ice cream, she said. as she rolled her eyes. Satisfied, we left the matter alone, and there it rested, untouched for almost a week.

It was Jody who saw it first. She and I were walking out of the matinee at the town's cinema, our local one-screen movie joint. I don't recall what film we saw. We strolled leisurely down the bright sun-baked street, no, shielding our eyes with our hands in a funny sort of salute. After a couple of blocks, the crowd from the movie had dissipated, it was just she and I. As we walked and talked, her voice began to trail off.

I looked down at her and saw she was peering down a side alley at the end of which was another road, parallel to the one on which we stood. I asked her what she was looking at. I thought I saw that ice cream truck you told me about. There was a slight mystic tone in her voice. worried and a bit intrigued. I squinted my eyes into the shadowed alley, but I could see no vehicles on the other side. Are you sure? It doesn't look like anything's over. I paused, raising my hand to my forehead. I could suddenly feel a headache coming on, sharp and acute. It felt like it was

directly between my eyes, about an inch or two behind my skull. A strange sensation, to be sure, but that's all it was at the time. My daughter asked if I was okay. I responded in the affirmative. As we continued our march down the street, though, the headache grew more and more noticeable. I began to worry a bit. We turned a corner and I kept my eyes fixated on the ground, focused on the weeds growing from the cracks in the sidewalk until... Daddy, look, there it is! I jerked my head upward, and there, approaching us in the road from a distance of approximately

a hundred yards was an ice cream truck. My head exploded with pain, pain that seemed to course in waves through every inch of my body. I fell to the ground, trembling, unable to even scream. I saw my daughter through a wall of tears just standing limply, her head dangling slightly to the side as if in some kind of a trance. She seemed utterly unconcerned with me, though while I lay writhing beside her shoes on the concrete. Joe, Jody! The pain was exquisite, sharper and more real than any I've ever experienced. Still, my first thought was to get her away from the ice cream truck, which I could hear slowly creeping along the road.

Above the hum of the engine, I could hear a melody played in happy chimes. It was Pop Goes the Weasel. I forced myself to turn towards the truck. It was passing right beside us. I could only glance at its side long enough to see a caricature of a man's face, grinning widely on a baby blue background, mouth open and chewing on something, presumably some kind of frozen treat. Something was written in a little half circle below the image,

but in my awful state, I couldn't tell what it said. The pain, it was severe beyond words and unrelenting. And I could do nothing but slump, half-conscious, onto the curb. Jody was shaking me fiercely. I awoke in an instant and scrambled to my feet, grabbing hold of my daughter's wrists with both hands. Jody, the truck. Where's the truck? What truck?

She was either the world's greatest actress, or... Dead serious. She had no idea what truck I was talking about. The truck, the ice cream truck that was just here. I crouched my face down close to hers to illustrate the gravity of this situation. A dull ache was left in my head where the pain had been. I felt like someone had bored through my tear ducts with an all. Ice cream truck. Oh. A dawning realization mixed with a genuine, confused, innocent. crept over her face. Right.

I don't know where it went. What happened to you? I got a headache. Wait, what do you mean you don't know where it went? Didn't you see it go somewhere? No. Again, she seemed to almost be in a trance. Let's go home.

We're almost there. Two days later, Sandra and Irene sat out on our porch, rocking in the cushioned swing and talking so fast to make your head spin. Both were wearing sleeveless floral blouses and nursing iced teas and beads of sweat ran down each of their foreheads. It seemed to be actually hotter than hell outside. My wife called me outside and instructed me to tell Sandra what happened, how Jody and I had seen the ice cream truck. I wasn't keen on spreading such a bizarre tale, but the ladies persisted, so I spilled everything. The headache, the music, the translight state of my daughter in the aftermath.

Sandra listened intently, at one point spilling a bit of tea down her face during a distracted sip. She dabbed herself with a napkin almost absent-mindedly as she heard, and her eyes never left me. The second I finished speaking, Irene turned her attention to Sandra. All right, now tell him. Tell me what? Well, now this didn't sound good. Sandra took a deep breath. I think our children are in danger.

all of them. Polly saw the ice cream truck last week and you and Jody saw it too. But there's more. Two little boys came walking into Polly's class late yesterday. They were both holding ice cream bars. When the teacher asked them where they'd gotten them and why they were late,

they said they were talking to a man named Edward in an ice cream truck. Jesus Christ, how did you find out about this? Polly's teacher told me in a couple of the other moms, but it gets worse. Mary Sutherland's daughter, Jacqueline, always has some new imaginary friend. And apparently, the latest friend's name is Edward, and he's an ice cream man. Mary didn't think anything of it until we spoke to the teacher. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean.

Wait. I glanced over at my wife. She bit her lip, eyes fluttering wildly, nervously around. Last night, I asked all my children if they had recently met or heard of a man named Edward. Polly said no, but I could tell she was lying. Jack refused to answer entirely. And Victoria? Victoria was the youngest child, scarcely older than three.

Sandra looked down at her lap. She clapped her hands together and shouted, Ice cream, ice cream, over and over again. I stood up abruptly. Let's go talk to Jody. Sandra followed behind us. The three of us crowded around my only child's bedroom door. I gave it a light nod.

and called her name. She almost immediately opened it, clearly delighted to have company. We stepped into a room where she had a dollhouse and other toys spread out on the floor. She returned to her playthings as I began to question her, as casually as I could. Say, Jody, do you remember that ice cream truck we saw the other day? She glanced up at me briefly, but didn't respond. Within a few seconds, her toys had her attention again. Have you seen it around since? Again, no response. I wasn't one to push my child to speak when she didn't want to, but I tried one more question.

Do you know a man named Edward? At this, she set her toys down and fixated her eyes on mine. She looked at, what was it, surprised, scared? To this day, that expression, it haunts my dreams and a good deal of my waking thoughts, too. You're not supposed to know about him. I crouched down so my eyes were level with hers. Who is he? He's the ice cream man, but Dad, you're really not supposed to know about him.

That's why you made your brain hurt. She paused for a moment, then added almost as an afterthought. He'd be really mad if you heard you asking about him. Another week went by. I had just gotten home from work and I walked past my daughter's closed bedroom door. I could hear her playing in there, hear her singing, but I couldn't make it out. With a light smile on my face, I pressed my ear against her door to listen. As I did, the words became clear. Penny for a spool of thread, a penny for a needle. That's the way the money goes. Pop goes the

weasel. It was the last time I ever heard my daughter sing. The word gets around a little town like our. even back then in our heyday, and by this point, everyone knew something was wrong. None of the adults besides me had seen anything, though, nor heard the music. They simply had to take the word of practically every child in town that there was an ice cream truck nearby and that it was presumably driven by a man named Edward. There was an emergency town meeting in which Tommy Bellwether's father, Lionel, sheepishly suggested that this was nothing more than an elaborate joke on the part of the children. After all, his own son, then 13 years old, hadn't seen anything, nor had any of the youth older than he.

This notion was respectfully, but firmly shut down by many of the citizens, who found it difficult to believe that three-year-olds who barely learned to speak could be in on such a thing. And of course, there was the matter of my own eyewitness testimony. This truck was real, and everyone knew it. It was decided that children should be a couple of people. accompanied at all times, and everyone in the Marshal's department pulled extra shifts patrolling the streets, the most eager, of course, being Sandra's husband Wendell. These measures seemed appropriate, if not entirely adequate, to quell the town's worry.

But in the end, there was nothing more we could do. We could only watch in disbelieving horror only two nights later. The night that all went wrong. It was around one o'clock in the morning. Irene and I had recently moved Jody into the bedroom adjacent to ours as a safety precaution. The way our house was laid out, she literally couldn't get out of her bedroom without crossing through hours. The moon shone through the bedroom window, shades undrawn and cracked open to let in a bit of the summer night's air. My wife and I both awoke to the sound of Jody's bedroom door creaking open.

Irene got out of bed and began to walk toward Jody, who was standing in the shadow of her doorway. The moonlight reflected against her bare feet. I felt deeply uneasy, but it took my brain a moment to process why. A familiar melody was gently breezing in through the open window. Jody didn't even look at us. She just took a step forward and another, making her way toward our bedroom door. Irene made to step in front of her, then suddenly froze. She cannot move.

What the hell? Help! Sweetheart! Stop her! I was frozen, too. I could speak, move my eyes, swivel my head, but everything below my neck was stuck in place. I was powerless to do anything but watch as our daughter walked out of our bedroom,

her loose, blonde curls bouncing gently as she went. Oh, we screamed of, course. We heard her walk down the stairs and out the front door, and we screamed our throats raw. But we could do no more. And through the window, as the music grew, other screams from other houses, each sounding as anguished as ours poured in. I turned my head as far as I could. And as the ice cream truck passed our house, my wife and I watched together as Jody crossed the front lawn. Neither of us were screaming anymore. We only gazed on in horror as our daughter joined a throng of young children from all over the town, all trailing behind the slowly moving vehicle,

locked together in a haunted march. Some of the youngest children held the hands of older ones as they walked, and the infants were carried along in arms. The truck rolled along and I could see that It was the same one I had encountered before. This time, though, there was no blinding pain in my head, and my view was as clear as it could be. The picture of the man on its side remained, with an inhumanly wide smile that revealed a mouth full, not of frozen treats, but of tiny, bite-sized children. Below the face were painted in a sweeping half-circle the following words. All kids scream for Edwards ice cream. I was crying by this point.

I couldn't move my arms to wipe my eyes, struggling to blink away the tears I could barely make out one last horrifying detail as the truck crept farther away. A springy antenna stuck out from the roof, and around its base lay a puddle of dark liquid. The antenna waved gently back and forth with the motion of the truck. At the end of the antenna was the severed head of Sandra's husband, Wendell, the deputy marshal's hat still perched atop it.

About ten minutes later, me, Irene, and the other adults in town began to regain mobility, and you'd better believe we hunted high and low. But it was too long. late. Far too late. The ice cream truck and our children behind it already turned the corner, vanishing from view and from Bertrand forever. The music had trailed off, the screams had ceased to pour through the open window, and that summer night was still and silent once more. Growing up and living through strange events can make them seem like isolated incidents. But as we hear from author Leo Harrison. Only in hindsight can these events coalesce into a connected pattern

to reveal extremely unsettling realizations. Performing this tale are Dan Zapula, Jeff Clement, and Erica Sanderson. So let's hear one man share his tales as he tells us, My Childhood Memories. I've always debated with myself as to whether or not I should record my childhood memories. all those memories that keep me up so damn late at night. But today, for better or for worse, I've decided to at least try it, even if I find the process difficult.

Although I'm not going to name my hometown, I grew up in a rural North American city that's nondescript and obscure, apart from its involvement in one well-known story. During the 16 years that I spent living in this town, I had a few experiences that I would consider abnormal. I'm going to record these stories here, in chronological order. The first story didn't happen to me.

It's just something that I would frequently hear repeated around town for as long as I can remember living there. It's just one of those urban legends that you encounter when you're growing up. The legend I'm talking about is that relatively well-known story that I mentioned earlier. though it's not much of a legend at all, seeing as it actually happened. If you really have the time to kill, you can probably type in the details on a search engine and find the name of my hometown and the people involved. Regardless, I feel that it's an important one to share, if I'm going to tell you everything that I remember.

In the 1970s, a man living in my town disappeared. It'd always been in the habit of going on long walks through the forest with his dog. One evening, he embarked on one of these hikes and was never seen again. Search and rescue teams combed the wide expanse of forest that surrounded our city, but found nothing. There appeared to be no scent or trail. Several years later, a writer visited our town with the intention of gathering interviews for an article or book about the missing man. Ultimately, for whatever reason, the writer decided to start living in our city.

While he was staying in our town, his interest in the missing man persisted. Though I don't know if his writings can be found anywhere, this author continued to write and research about the lost man, while also running a small bookshop. Now, this routine went on for a few years, until one day the author himself closed the bookshop late one afternoon and walked into the forest. And like the subject of his book, the author was never seen again.

That last story happened decades before I was born. board. This next one, on the other hand, is the first that I can actually remember from my own experience. I grew up in a small farmhouse just outside my hometown. One of my very first childhood memories is of my mother and father talking about something. I think it was the perplexed, almost worried tone of their voices that impacted my recollection. I was watching them from the couch in our living room while they stood in the kitchen and debated. They were trying to figure out why every few weeks, all of the analog clocks in our home would simultaneously reset to completely random times. I don't remember if they ever found an answer. By the time that I was in

kindergarten, I'd made a friend named Daniel. Like myself, Daniel lived in a rural home that was a slight ways out from the city, although his was not a farm like mine. He lived with his parents, as well as a cousin named Aaron. I'm not sure what was wrong with Aaron. Daniel told me that his cousin had issues and had lived a lot of places, but had ultimately come to stay with him and his parents. Later, I did learn that Aaron's real parents were disadvantaged people, living across the country, both regularly in and out of jail for petty crimes.

I remember being sort of scared of Aaron. I hope that doesn't sound horrid. It's just that, as a kid, I didn't know what to make of the fact that Aaron often spoke to himself. I never learned about mental illness from my parents or teachers, so I'd only seen this kind of behavior in ghost movies, like the Amityville horror. One night I was sleeping over at Daniel's house with a few other friends. I very clearly remember suddenly waking up in the middle of the night. Everyone else in Daniel's bedroom was asleep, but I could hear movies.

movement throughout the house. This was very strange, as the clock above Daniel's dresser said that it was 2 a.m. Almost to my detriment, I wasn't a cautious or fearful child. I've always felt compelled to investigate unexplained things. Otherwise, my curiosity drives me insane. I mean, actually, to a point of mental discomfort. I think that this is why I now spend very much time reading about unexplained events in the occult. I remember lying awake in my sleeping bag, staring at the ceiling. My head inflamed and my throat closing up as I listened to the racket downstairs. I had to see what was going on.

So I got out of my sleeping bag, left Daniel's room, and walked into the hallway. As I was traveling downstairs in the dark, trying to be as quiet as possible, I heard the door to Daniel's kitchen, which led to the backyard, slammed shut. Once I'd tiptoed into the kitchen, I looked outside the window above the sink. For security reasons, Daniel's parents had several large lights installed on the edge of their property, where the backyard met the dense forest. And just beneath one of these lights, about 40 feet away from the house, I saw Aaron standing right at the forest's edge, his back turned to the house.

He was moving his hands around very slightly as if engaged in a conversation. Eventually he turned around and began to make his way back to the house very slowly as if he'd been sleepwalking. At the sight of this, I practically ran back to Daniel's room before Aaron could make it back to the kitchen. To this day, I'm not sure as to whether or not he saw me through the window. When I was in the first grade, we had a thing called Silent Hour. It was a period of time during our school day when our teacher would let us read, draw, play Game Boy, or, really do whatever we wanted, as long as we stayed within the schoolroom. I'd made friends with a lot of the quieter kids.

Many of us were lower income and could not afford the video games that most of the other kids like to play during this time. Therefore, we like to sit at a circular table in the far corner of the room that was loaded with crayons and paper. We would draw pictures and also make up crazy stories, just typical kid stuff. I don't really remember many specific examples of this. I just remember that it was something that I used to do when I was a kid. The only clear memory I have from that time is of my friend Sam,

and something that he drew during Silent Hour. Two other kids and I were playing something we called Adventure, which was kind of like Dungeons and Dragons without figurines, dice, or a rulebook. I just remembered noticing that Sam wasn't interacting with us during the entire game. Instead, he was sitting by himself. drawing something. When we were done with our game, I asked Sam what he had drawn. He showed me the picture. Now, Sam went on to be a painter in high school and college, so his drawing skills were pretty advanced at his age. I remember staring silently at his drawing, feeling a very

weird sensation that caused my eyes to water nearly to the point of tears. I don't know what affected me so deeply about his drawing. It depicted a forest scene, looking at a forest scene, looking at out on a clearing. In the clearing were two tall, smiling people. They were full-bodied, as in very strong-looking. Their hair was blonde, and their skin was very pale. Now that I think about it, they reminded me very much of Swiss or German natives. I would say they looked human if it weren't for their enormous stature, and the fact that their eyes were glowing, as if radiating. I really wanted to forget about this picture,

but I've never been able to do so. This next story is probably my strangest, and also my last. I'm going to try my best not to spend too much time writing about it. I've gone over it many times in therapy, to the point where I have every beat memorized. If I spend too much time dwelling on it, I began to feel very uncomfortable and strange,

almost to the point of nausea. But here goes. One time I went exploring in the forest behind Daniel's home. Although Aaron had moved out for some reason, I still always thought of him and that weird memory every time I went over to Daniel's place. Anyway, it was the middle of autumn, and I remember just walking through the forest,

stomping loudly and laughing at the sounds the leaves would make when they cracked. We were also telling a lot of dumb jokes and swearing a lot, because we never got the chance to swear, and thought it was hilarious to simply yell, damn, or fuck you, or whatever. I don't remember where Daniel's parents were, or if they'd even given us permission to go out in the woods by ourselves.

Daniel wanted to show me a creek he had found a few weeks before. After that, we were going to turn around and head home. The last thing that I remember from our hike was Daniel talking very excitedly about one of those toy circuit kits. You know, the sort that come with a big circuit board, and all these chips and wires that you can connect and create simple electrical contraptions. He wanted one of those very badly and would not stop talking about it.

And that's all I remember from our actual trip to the creek. Somehow, the next thing that I knew, I was alone, somewhere else in the forest. There's no gap in my memory. Literally, I was walking beside Daniel, and then, And one moment later, without blinking, I was somewhere completely different. I was only there long enough to think to myself, I'm lost, and it began sobbing helplessly. This didn't last long. I heard a rustling behind me.

In an instant, I was seized by something I had never experienced before. My tongue dried up. My legs felt immobilized. Sweat began to beat upon my skin. My spine tingled as if someone was running a feather along it. My heart raced. I remember so very distinctly as if it happened yesterday, the thoughts that I could not stop repeating. You're being watched.

Someone is watching you. Someone else is here. You're not alone. Slowly, shutting and then reopening my eyes, I turned to face the source of the rustling. A woman had emerged from behind some shrubs. She was not ordinary. Rather, she seemed to tower above me, even from her semi-concealed position some 15 feet away,

shrouded among the dead tree branches. It seemed as if she was seven feet tall. I remember feeling as if I wanted to scream, but feeling unable. I simply stared at the woman, her glassy eyes entrancing me. I noticed that white hair ran to her waist, and that she was dressed in strange clothing, clothing unlike any I had ever seen before. This woman and I stared at each other for what seemed like minutes. It was sort of like running into a grizzly bear or a deer or something,

and just being locked in a dead stall, like a staring contest. But the strangest part, it wasn't her appearance, no. Now the strangest detail in my memory is the noise that she made. It was some sort of soft cooing, so soft that you had to focus to hear it. God, the sound was there, buried beneath the howling October wind. And I had just enough time to catch it. The only other thing that I remember about this experience was that her eyes began to light up, as if they were radiating.

And then before I knew it, there was another anomaly in my memory. Just as it happened when I was walking with Daniel before, I simply switched locations. I was suddenly back at Daniel's house in his front yard, surrounded by emergency services, Daniel's family and my parents. It was dark outside now. My mother ran to me and hugged me

and started sobbing. I managed to see Aaron one more time, when I was much older, 15 to be exact. It was the Thanksgiving holiday, and I was on break from school. Aaron had come to visit Daniel's family. I think he was doing much better, and he had started going to college.

I went to Daniel's house the day after Thanksgiving. Toward evening time I sat down with his family to eat a dinner of leftovers. And the whole time, I remember catching Aaron staring at me. His face transfixed as if he was lost and thought. Every time I'd noticed him doing this, it'd snap out of it and shake his head quickly, smiling, as if trying to pass it off as a joke.

It seemed as if he couldn't help it. I wasn't scared of Aaron anymore, but I felt very unsettled by this behavior. I remembered the time that I'd seen him standing at the edge of the forest, talking to someone whom wasn't there. The next morning I woke up really early, having stayed at Daniel's house. I couldn't fall back asleep, so I decided just to take a quick walk around Daniel's backyard and play with his dogs. While I was walking around with the dogs, I ran into Aaron, who was smoking a cigarette by a tree. He asked if I wanted one.

I said no. We didn't really have a conversation. Instead, he just said something, man, really weird to me. You know, I've seen them too. They aren't here to hurt us. They have a special connection to us, like a big brother or sister. And then he said something, sort of like a warning. I've never forgotten it, and yet I've never known what to make of it either.

He took a drag from his cigarette, exhaled, and then said, slowly. Just don't go chasing after them. Right then, I heard Daniel calling my name. His mom was cooking breakfast and wanted me to come inside to eat with the rest of my friends. I looked back at Aaron for a second, and then just sort of walked away from him. Now, this last thing is just something else that I'm not even sure is even related to these other stories.

When I was 17, and had been living in Maine after moving away from my hometown with my family, I experienced one more abnormal event. So I've always had pretty long hair. I'd never get it cut much farther than shoulder length. During my senior year of high school, I needed a sports credit, so I joined a soccer team. My coach told me to cut my hair so that it wouldn't get in my eyes and ruin my playing, and so that cheaters wouldn't try to yank my hair and trip me. So I got a buzz cut.

When the barber was finished, she asked me how I'd hurt my hair. head. I had no idea what she was talking about, so I just ignored it at the time. When I got home, though, I remember what she'd said, and I used a hand mirror to look at the back of my head. There was a scar there, almost exactly aligned with my occipital lobe. I nearly yelled when I saw this. And upon closer inspection, it looked kind of as I'd been stabbed by something very small. small. Later that day, I showed my dad, and I asked him if he had any specific memories of me falling and hurting my head as a kid. He found the mark very strange and said that he didn't remember anything. He reassured me that I had probably just fallen during one of my many explorations of the woods

behind our house, or something like that. Since then, I've put a few things together. I don't know what they mean. I don't know what any of this means. I've always suffered from migraines, and since discovering my wound, I've noticed that I'm far more likely to suffer one if I turn the back of my head to any machine that emits radiation, such as a microwave cooker. In any event, I always get a slight headache if I do this. So I tend to avoid microwaves. I think those things are poison.

Every now and then, I break down because of all these memories and have to go to therapy or talk to a friend. I can't explain it. I'll just be going about my day when I'll suddenly think of the experiences I've had and feel this tingling, dreadful feeling of uncertainty about my life and whatever the truth is.

It overwhelms me, it depresses me, and frankly it causes a lot of problems in my day-to-day life. I also frequently, almost incessantly, experienced deja vu. I'm experiencing it right now. This strange feeling that I've been here before. That feeling is occurring right now as I gaze out from my kitchen window at the thick pinewood forest.

My dog, Spike, is pawing at the glass door beside me, begging to be let outside. I think he sees the same thing that I'm seeing. A pair of glowing red eyes buried deep within the darkness of the woods. staring back at me as I watch from my brightly lit home. And as I come closer and closer to opening the glass door and letting in the cool night air, I can't help but wonder if this nostalgic, intense feeling is the same one that motivated the vanished author all those years ago when he closed up his bookstore and walked out into the Midwestern forest, never to be seen again. had they visited him early in his life and later returned to take him with them.

These days, I think so. Only someone who has been visited by them could ever understand, I think. Only we can feel the weight of these unanswerable questions, suffocating and disorienting us with every waking moment. The sheer possibility of closure is irisorificing. resistably. So I'm going to step into the forest where I know that they await me. And no, I don't care where it is that I'm taken. I only want to know one thing, why it is that they chose me. And so another episode has drawn to a close and our nightmares dissolve into the ether.

If you would like to find out how you can hear the full-length versions of our audio program, please visit the no-sleeppodcast.com to learn about our season past program, 25 episodes, each over two hours long, and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 1999. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening. Join us again next week when our dark tales will envelop you in a nightmarish swirling. Bob. This audio production is copyright 2017 by Creative Reason Media, Inc.

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