Ad Nauseam | CreepCast

[BLANK_AUDIO] Here we go. All right, here we go, the Sally House. [BLANK_AUDIO] What's this mold smell like? >> It's spongy. It's spongy. >> Yeah, I'm telling you. >> There's little, like, facts on the wall. >> Yeah, there it is. Okay, turn the light on, I'm scared. >> Oh, I'm tempted, don't like that, holy. All right, come in here, look at this. >> Is that Sally's briefcase? >> That's the doctor's bag, or she died, this would be the table. >> Is that Sally? >> That's the picture they have of Sally? >> [LAUGH] >> What are you talking about? >> Sally began a writhing with pay, so he began writhing with pay, her fears increasing after either Dr. surgical instruments as he carefully laid them out for the surgery. >> This is a nice fucking fridge, look at this. >> Sally's Pizza Hut Classic Range here. [MUSIC] >> Welcome back to Creepcast. Today we are in an actual haunted house. This is in Atchetson, Kansas, the Sally house. And we decided that this time around when Isaiah came out to do some recordings that we're going to actually read a ghost story, and a haunted house where I suppose was like a little girl. >> Yeah, I get here, and Harry picks me up this time, a hunter, Harry picks me up from the airport. And they're like, hey, we're going to a haunted house, I'm like, great, which one. And here's the name, and I look it up, and it's like, yeah, it's a place where a child was killed in a botched surgery. >> It's supposedly, there's a demon in here, there's all kinds of stuff. And not only that, there's a tornado warring, it's fucking thundering outside. We might get stuck here. So we're recording a couple episodes here. This is our first one that we're recording for the night, and it is a ghost story called ad nauseam, ad mortem, ad infinitum, by who's this by? >> This is by our good friend Imperial Invective. >> Okay. >> Yeah, so we've covered their stuff a lot. I have to shout out a story that Harry told me when Harry reached out and asked if we could cover this. We could, but he thinks that he's got enough attention and we should give other authors attention. So that's the kind of guy this dude is. >> No. >> But I also don't care, because this is a cool story that's come highly recommended. And most importantly, I want to read it. >> Yeah, I mean, that was one thing that we were talking about before we started was you were like, this is one that actually I've been wanting to read for a while. Which seems perfect for like an actual spooky setting. And I will say, a little jittery, the lights are all off in the house. I will say, luckily there's other people here, but I'm ready to actually get actually. >> If you can see the room around us. So this room, according to the legend, there's a young girl named Sally that came to this house back when the family that lived here had a medical clinic in the basement because there was a hospital nearby like late 1800s. And a little girl named Sally was brought by her mom one day and she died during an operation. So the story is that Sally's ghost continues to haunt the house. And but before it became an attraction that you could come stay in, it was a house that other tenants and families lived in for a while. And there was one family who had a boy who was about eight years old, I think, who was staying in this room and said that he would lay in this bed and watch his toys move in the night as if Sally's playing with them. So now people who come to the house, as you can see, will leave toys here for Sally as a sort of, and we left a Margaret, he left Margaret. I will say, I'll tell you what, the whole thing about Sally, they did that bitch, no favors with that self-portrait downstairs. >> That bitch looks like a 43 year old dwarf downstairs. Sometimes she's going to start complaining, Peter Dinkler just stealing her work. >> I mean to be fair, she's got to be what, 140 years old now. >> Oh yeah, yeah. >> Yeah. >> She's been a bit. It's been a bit. >> Yeah. >> So yeah, we're in the room that Sally likes to play in with all of Sally's toys. And there's also a few other spirits that are said to live here. The same boy that lived here would wake up in the night, see an older woman, an older woman strangling him. There's stories of like a man that's talking about a man. >> I hate that we're getting ready to carry this story with this. >> There's another one right down the hall in the master bedroom. Someone who was staying the night here had a dream of a dead boy who was chained to a pipe. And then he wakes up from the dream and he goes to the room and he finds the pipe. And he opens up a crevice in the wall and there's a bloodied shirt that the boy was wearing in the dream. So there's the young boy that was killed, there's Sally, there's the old woman. And also, at some point, there was a tenant who lived here who had a ritual in the basement. And we went in the basement and it's, and you can see where the ritual was because there's a hole into nothing that is literally fenced off. >> Yes. >> It's fucking absurd. >> Isaiah, general first thoughts. >> All right, so I'm going to say, this is pretty, I don't like this at all. >> What's wrong with it? >> There's a giant black scorch mark in the middle of the floor. There's a chair in the corner facing me. >> Hello, and someone's caged a hole in the wall. >> Well, okay, so, okay, all right, hold on, so that's, that's actually fucking a wall. >> Wow, big thing, we're looking at the floor out here. Is this where the sigil was that was painted over? The beels above thing. >> That was on the wall, it was on the wall. >> Did you just say downstairs? >> And according to everything I read, he had a ritual to have someone beels above. That means it's deviled to him or say, tan against it to you. >> Which I have a lot of respect for. If you're going to aim for one. >> Aim for the top. >> Aim for the big one. >> That's why I play around. >> Yeah, I was like, what are we? It's like, I'm here to summon maim and it's like, okay. >> Exactly. >> It's like meeting Hall of Notes and being like, can I meet Daryl, or can I meet Hall, or can I meet Oats? You're like, no, I want to meet Daryl Hall, you know what I mean? So without further ado, one also, I want to say, we should keep an eye on the front door, make sure it's locked, because there was people outside their walk around, she's like, I love this place. You should go, there's the magic eight ball and all that kind of stuff. >> As we came in, every house nearby, I was like peering in and watching us. The next door neighbor, which I'm not going to go into, but I will say, the next door neighbor's house is far more haunting than this year. >> When we rolled up, I was like, there it is, and they're like, no, it's the next door, and I'm like, oh my god, there it is, right here to the right, the right, the right. That one, the two-story one. >> Oh my god. >> It even has a trash can. >> Two trash can. >> Oh my god. >> First impressions, lit. >> First impressions is, I will say this, the second story would, though, is actually worth. >> Also, this blue Ford Focus, why do I feel like someone's going to be in here? This is 100% right here. >> Are you sure about that? >> Yeah. >> It has a trash can, it's the one next to it, I might be the one next to it. >> If this is not the Sally House next to it, then that's just like a more person's house. >> I'm just going to be horrified. >> I'm going to be horrified. >> A person's to lab into the house next to a literal haunted house is unfucking reading. >> That's the one next to it. >> Yeah, there was a good three minutes of Hunter being like this is the scariest house I've ever seen. >> I was like, oh my god, I just want to look at me from the top. >> Yeah. >> I thought it was a ghost there. It's like, no, it's just the-- >> And it's like no. >> The person that's sitting next to it. >> So Hunter's spent like 10 minutes being like, this is the worst thing I've seen in my life. >> I've been horrible. >> I've been, I've been scaring myself silly ever since I've been here. >> I get you not. I went outside on the front porch to help Gary carry something in. And I heard a group of women sing-game. >> Yeah. >> There is some kind of, and it wasn't like a hopped off the plane out there. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Who's? >> If you were going to be a witch, and you're like, I want to hang out some other like fucking witches, why would you not live near a house like this? You know what I mean? >> It was a chorus of women. >> It's a chorus of men. >> The same what you mean to say. A chorus of witches is what you meant to say. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Well, without further ado, should we get in? >> So Imperial Invective covered a lot of his stories on the podcast before incredible author. We'll have all of his stuff linked in the description. >> What was one that he didn't? >> The insorseled in the earth. >> Oh, sure. >> It bleeds it. >> It bleeds it breeds. >> That's a great one. >> Yeah. >> And there's one more we covered by him. I can't remember right now. Which one? >> Fleshgate. >> Fleshgate, that's right. That's right. Yeah. >> Was it Fleshgate? >> Yeah, Fleshgate. >> What are you asking me? I don't know. >> The one about they're showing into the woods, and one of them was a mimic. >> Okay. >> Yeah, sure. >> So, bunch of cool stuff. A friend of the show. We like it. Every time we read him, people recommend this story as one of his best. >> My foot's asleep. >> Okay. >> It's numb up. I tell you what, every time I always sit, and I always sit on my left foot, and I always say, it's my diabetes. That's going to, like, it's got to weigh the circuit. I don't know. So, anyways, add nauseam. This is a three-part chapter one. >> It's fine if your foot falls asleep. But the moaning thing you do. >> That's it. >> That's it. >> Sally's stuff. >> Okay. >> Add nauseam, add mortem, and add infinitum. So, let's start it, man. >> All right. Let's begin. Beginning with our first section, add nauseam. Which? ad nauseam means to illness, correct? I think this is Latin. I thought I legitimately thought that it was just add in, add in finitum means. Oh, ad nauseam means to nausea because we repeated it. So it'd be to illness, to death, ad mordum, and ad infinitum forever. I thought ad nauseam was just was legitimately just a magic card. It is also magic. Well, that's it. What's all I knew if I'm a god damn way, will you? That's just gonna come flying off. It's not coming off me. My foot's all swollen up. Okay, are you getting with our first? Because I am so sweaty and hot here. Do you need a whistle? I need a, I'll tell you why you gotta never swag it this too quick. All right, we'll just wait for a break. How do you wake up a foot? You? You gotta stand up. You gotta stand up. You act? You act? We're about to play in the Super Bowl. I feel like I've been running fucking Oklahoma Drolls all day. All right, go ahead. Have you ever seen a ghost? I don't usually ask the question because everyone will typically start telling a typically bullshit story about seeing an old woman in their peripheral vision one late night. Hearing the voice of their deceased grandfather asking about the kids or maybe even picking up a phantom hitchhiker on a late night after driving for too long. I ask this question because I want you to have your spiritual encounter on your mind and I tell you my story. My encounter with the afterlife wasn't very typical. I doubt that after listening to my story, you'll be able to see yours as ordinary either. I have a cliche isn't it? The whole, another right. Oh, if I tell you my haunted story, I always saw an old woman. Yeah. What would be one where it's a curve ball? We were like, uh, damn. You know? What would you, if you were getting a haunting, I'd be like, you'd, I, if I heard, like imagine this, not a good example. So don't judge me, but like a ficus plant. What do you mean by ficus plant? Exactly. I don't know. Well, you just said ficus plant. A haunted ficus plant. Okay. That's how you can, you wait, you wake up and there, you wake up and there's a plant in your room. You're right. Would that not be kind of creepy? What is, you know, okay, I see. Okay. I'm saying that it's always an old woman. So it took three, too many old, it took three attempts for you to get what the ficus plant does. I was going to be more clear on the first one. It could have been more clear on the first one. You could have actually mind completely, completely, completely clear sweat burning my eyes. And I'm telling you right now that it was, you're not that sweaty. I'm looking at you right now. If you're not that sweaty. It's like, come down and let me tell you my tale. I feel like what's another alternative for that? No, I'm just saying that in, when people tell you their haunted stories, they always say, oh, it's a little kid. It's an old woman. I'm saying that if someone's just like, there's a random plant in my room every night. What's that? That'd be kind of creepy, huh? I'm just, I'm picturing another living object basically. Right. Right. Right. Because you were like a rock. I'm like, who gives a shit? People do that with like cats a lot. Like strange cats. Yeah. I never really care about animals. And what's, I mean, you wake up and there's a grizzly in your room. Well, a grizzly. I bet you care real quick. A haunted grizzly. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's more states than there, you know. What would a haunted grizzly would he talk? If you want him to. I can now speak your language. You don't speak bear with me, motherfucker. That's over talking to each other. He's like fine, you win. All right, paragraph two. It all started in early 2001 when I was 13 years old. My family had just moved to a new city after my father lost his job. He was lucky enough to find work in a small town in Michigan. Down, Alamazoo was a quaint and quiet community. Just Kalamazoo. It's like, I don't know. It's fucking like Willy Wonka town or something. Where do you live? I live in Kalamazoo. It is a real town. I don't care if I'm saying. I wouldn't move there. You imagine going on Zelo and looking at housing Kalamazoo. What state's Kalamazoo? That's what I want to miss again. Yeah, a small town of Michigan. Oh, yeah, there you go. Yeah, it explains it. Clean water in Kalamazoo, they say. Well, yeah, it has to be going somewhere. Leg fall asleep now. I'm just going to lose the only thing I might be paralyzed by this reading. I didn't realize how much my body needed to chair. There's Sally's crib here. I might actually crawl in that area. That won't get us on. We moved there midway through the school year, so I found that I had about five or six months of free time before I could attend school and meet the other kids. My neighborhood was built for younger couples, so there weren't too many kids to hang out with during this time. Cold weather forced me inside most of this time. I was fine with being indoors. I'm an avid gamer and love survival horror games. I spent most of my time in my room, which was in the basement, playing games, and trying to distract myself from the fact that I had left my social circle and was now in a new and unfamiliar place. I was a big fan of Resident Evil and was slowly getting into Silent Hill around that time. Just a small note about my house in Kalamazoo. I had a main floor with a kitchen, living room, and a bedroom bathroom. Basement had a wide open area, my room, and a room with a water heater off to the side. See, because we're in here, I can only imagine this house's basement, so I imagine that dungeon set up with a million percent. Also, you describing that? I'm not even just like my assholes tightening. There's even cracks of thunder outside. You're sitting there like the rumble. People, when you watch this back, you're going to see me looking at my laptop. It's all from reading, but I just have a thousand yards stare like this. There's like, this bear does, like, I don't like a fucking look at any movement. That bear was not in that position. Yes, it was. No, it wasn't because the bear said that because I was going to make a joke when we sat down because it was facing directly at me. Nick's probably bumped into it. It's probably bumped it, but I had on mind like I'm going to make a joke about that bear keeps looking at me. Nick, did you bump it now? The bear's looking at you. No, shake your head. No, fuck her. The bear is looking directly at you. He's looking right at me. Turn to care about me. Turn him. No, I'm not touching that bear. Even him. I'm not touching that bear. You're touching that bear. I'll put my computer up so you can see. Also, while we were in the basement, I took care when I got down there where the sigil was on the ground. They said like the summoning ritual was. Yeah. I saw that and I was like, oh, I'm not going to step on it. And the first thing you did was dump all over it as soon as we got down there. Okay, no one told me about the sigil on the floor. Okay, well, when we walked down, I said, hey, Hunter, that must be where he drew the sigil on the floor. I'm pretty sure I said, and you're like, nah, it was on the wall. And then you stand on it to look on the wall. Where is it? I think the bear knows you did that. No, no, no, you get a bear cam going. I feel like. How about that? Maybe that isn't any cam. Are people fucking in Sally's room? Oh, they have hidden cameras in here somewhere. People always talk about Airbnb stuff where they like, they'll sit there and because those old dudes, they'll sell those, they'll sell those videos and people tell you shit fucking, or they'll just beat the cock off to it or something like that, they sell that shit all the time. How do we know there isn't a fucking Sally cam that's going for sale? Pirate's Bay. Sally cam Pirate's Bay. I feel like there isn't, because like the whole thing with those like keeping Tom videos, there's a market for it because people are looking to like get their rocks off that way. I feel like there isn't a plethora of horror haunted house enthusiasts. Well, I think they got to get the hidden footage. There might not be a lot of people that are into it because there's already like 70 million YouTube videos that people hear. Let's see, what are they doing off camera? Let's see, that's what that fucking teddy bear's looking at. I'm sure they say, but you some guy has a Snapchat story of him getting his dick sucked right here. No, a million percent. Oh, a hundred percent. Him sitting there and he's like, he's doing this in the camera. For what? For what? Has it? Has three days grace? Darn it, darn it, darn it, darn it, darn it, I can explain this here. He's getting his dick sucked. Okay, I can see. One, both of us are tasting that someone who rents out the haunted Sally house. Darn it. Has that came in? And all the stuff. No, I don't think so. So, thank you. To come in here to like the Sally, like sanctuary area where everyone leaves her toys and like letters and birthday cards and stuff and do that, you deserve whatever happens. I'm not saying that they got away scot free. I'm just saying I ate a hundred percent of it. And then they go flying. Oh, a hundred percent staircase. This is definitely not the original window. People have definitely. House was old. It was built sometime in the 1900s. It was like I had. I'm so sorry. God, the blood's going back in my foot and it tingles. No, no, no, no, really good. If I smacked it right now. Yeah, no, no. hurt so bad. When your foot's waking up and something hits it, get it. I'm not. No, I'm doing the way you're saying that. Do it. Yeah, it feels like pins and needles. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. - Oh, many times I've dreamed! (laughs) - This is scary story podcast. - God, it feels like I'm like, I think I can't stop him dying. - I fucking footage on Billy. Oh my God. - Oh my God. - Take your shoes off. - You know what I do? - Yeah. - That's gonna stink. - Well. - Yeah, I'll leave it on. - Let's check. - It's gonna stink soon. - Can I read the story? - I'm sorry, I'm like, winded. I'm sitting here and I'm fucking. - I'm gonna do a cute thing here. I'm gonna give him my belly. - Yeah. - Here we go. (laughs) - You're kidding me. - Yeah, I'll just be a little second here. - Sorry. - Keep reading, just keep reading. Let me do my thing. You just keep reading. - There's no way I can read with you doing this to the side. - This is it. - Okay. - The house was old. It was built sometime in the 1900s and was refitted to be more modern. Asbestos was replaced by insulation. Lead paint was removed, and copper tubing was put in. It reminded me of the old chip of theses, Canundrum. At what point of repairing and replacing parts does the house stop being the same house and become a completely new house? Did I live in a house that was almost a hundred or was it now a completely new building? The house had its fair share of problems. It was freezing in the winter due to poor heating, particularly in the basement. Every now and then, I would wake up to find my breath fogging in the air. I slept with a heater in my room to combat this invasive cold. I accepted this drawback in exchange for the privacy that it afforded me and as a teenager, privacy was of the utmost importance. The house also made sounds at night. My parents told me that it was just settling on its foundation, but I wasn't so sure. It started with the most innocuous of things. Whenever I was settling down for the night, the sound of a door lightly bumping into the frame could be heard. At first, I thought it was just a wind current generated by the heating system or pressure change pushing the door in the basement closed. I told myself that the next few nights it happened. I held tight to that belief when the sound persisted, even after shutting all the doors in the basement to get down on flow through. Another noise that was almost always happening at night was the sound of my bed creaking. At first, I thought it was me turning in bed and making the sound. Then it started happening even when I wasn't moving. It's been a few nights lying completely still, waiting for the sound of my bed shifting. I would always look over at the other side of the bed, but there wasn't anything there. Eventually, began to get used to the sounds and it became background noise. Routine occurrence in my life. - Few days passed. - You ever have anything that that happened to you? (laughing) - He's completely lounging that up all the time. - You lay on your side. - You can use your longer brain. - I've never had anything like that happen to you. - I do, I do, yeah. - Has anything happened like that to you before? - Like specifically the bed thing? - Yeah. - I remember after my grandfather passed away who I was really close with. - Rip. - Jesus. - Why, it's a right, right, hey. - Rest in peace, Gramps. - I had a, I had a dream of lying in the bed and he came in and said at the end of the bed and talked to me and then I woke up. - He became your sleep paralysis. - He were quite a blobby, he became your sleep paralysis. - This was in a completely pleasant way. This wasn't a scary way at all. - What was the conversation? - It was just me saying that I'm afraid I'm going to miss him and he said it's not going to be pretty. - He said shut the fuck up loser. - It's such a big stuff. - He said do you sound like a gay right now? - Damn, do you gay is that all? - Yeah. - That's not what I meant. - Should have missed your grandpa. - Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, that's what I was going to do. - There would say about whenever I'd go to my buddy's house and his grandma would be like, - There's a little boy in the closet. - And we kept thinking that it was one of our friends that was like, like what? When you go in there, nothing is there. So the freak is actually saying, "Oh, shit, I'm sitting around a long time. "I just turned off, she was like a whore black calling." (laughing) - She just was like super drunk up, man. - She was like, oh, last night. - When you get older, you're like, (laughing) - There's a way, hold on, an old woman said, there's a boy in the closet. And your first thought was, must be one of my pat halls, I didn't think everybody was just hanging around, you're goofing around. - Are you saying there'd be a large group of guys? - Yeah, it's like a big hangout. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Okay, so like it's like, - It's like, it's back there. - That's what I thought of your saying. It's like, oh, he gets an old women's closet all the time. - A picture of grandma's outfit. - Yeah, yeah. - But she just drank herself into the imagining. - Oh my gosh, there was one time we were sitting there, Niamen joking. - She's like, you asked for a pizza? - Like sure, that crazy bitch took out a cookie sheet at 450 degrees, and Tottino's pizza's on it. - Fully cooked, she didn't, can I eat a bacon? (laughing) - Like what? - She went, look at the Tottino pizzas. Grab the cookie sheet with her bare hands. - Oh, sizzling, she said it on the oven, didn't flinch. Didn't move a goddamn muscle, and she was like, (laughing) Can I get a bankage and never touch the pizza's once? - Oh, it's a cookie sheet, she left her fingers and then she touched it. - She was just drunk out of her mouth and out of her gourd. - Gosh. - Hey, rip to her too though, dude. She's gone. (laughing) - She actually, she visited me in my dream. She said I got like tons of pussy and stuff. (laughing) - Opposite in my sense. - Okay. - You should run something from your friend. (laughing) - That was funny, I've told like 10 people that story and everyone of them's like, "That's so sweet." And then you come along. (laughing) - You gotta be misrememberin, dude. - Jesus, what the fuck does that? - Yeah, a few days passed with the persistent sounds. I would have forgotten about it, and I not opened my eyes late one night. I had just heard the creaking sound, and I rolled over to look across the bed. Saw another person right next to me. My heart leapt into my throat and my stomach sank. She was facing away from me and her long hair ran down her back. She was wearing a white night gown. I laid on the bed, paralyzed and watched her. Too afraid to move. Too afraid to scream. She rocked back and forth for a few minutes before getting up slowly. The bed creaked and she moved into a sitting position. She had her hands in front of her face. She sat in that position for a few minutes where she got up and moved towards the door. She moved slowly. When she reached the door, her hand extended towards the door knob. She didn't open it. She just phased through the door and it moved slightly with her passing through it. I didn't sleep for the rest of the night. That's interesting. All the sounds you heard, the creaking on the bed, the door bumping, is heard doing that same path every night. When was the night gown, early 1900s? I mean, it's been traditionally a thing for probably several centuries, but they kind of phased out a popularity around like early 1900s, I'd say. At what point do they stop shifting from nightgowns to like, I don't know, like somebody would say like Walmart with like, Cookie Monster sweatpants? Cookie Monster sweatpants talking later. You hear it talking about them? You think it's a hundred years from now? It's just like, yeah, I woke in. There was a morbidly obese woman with cookie monster sweatpants in a Captain America shirt. She phased to the door. I was saying, there's got to be, at a point, there's going to be a shift. I feel like we should cut this, but I imagine there's a lot of bells I'm like, enough to turn that right now. As I roll around on the floor, like, fucking, with that fucking slug gorb galop, or the fucking, I got the gorb galop, but what other, like, yeah. Yeah, somebody, so let's put their air pods. They just look over next to him. Oh, damn, it's a single tear. No, no, no, no, no. I spent the next couple of nights sleeping up stairs in the guest room. I lied and told my parents that it was too cold downstairs. I knew I could tell them what I saw. They were already worried about my adjustment to a new city. They didn't need to think that I was going crazy. I stayed in the guest room for a few nights before they began to get suspicious and started asking if anything was wrong. I went to bed in my room the next night, And I saw it again. I didn't just see her. I heard her as well. I tried to stay up that night, but I eventually drifted off. Because I was about to really go under. I became aware. It's like just like "Budu-duh!" He's a rust-run old time. I'm driving my fault like what's wrong. We can hear all of the damn light. (laughs) (laughter) I mean, I've been ignoring it, but it sounds like I can't. I've tried it. It sounds like a wreck. It's going through a trashcan. 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As I was about to really go under, I became aware of a sound softly repeating in my room. I opened my eyes, and she was there in my bed. She was still rocking slightly, and I realized what sound I was hearing. She was crying softly. She was doing her best to stifle her sobs, but they were just barely audible. I should have been scared, but as I listened to her pitiful bawling, well nothing but sympathy. She rose to a sitting position, and wept for a few minutes before leaving my room. I managed to go to sleep a few hours later on the floor next to my bed, the idea of waking up in the middle of the night and seeing her facing me. That eye, looking right into mine, was a terrifying thought. She didn't seem to be aware that there was someone else in bed with her, and I had no intention of making her aware of my presence. I slept on the uncomfortable floor in front of the heater the rest of the night. She appeared every night in my room for the next week. She always repeated the same motions. At the end of the week, I decided to try and make contact with her. It was beginning to feel like a voyeuristic creep watching her at her most run, unguarded moment. She appeared, let her cry for a few minutes for slowly reaching out my hand. A trembling hand slowly crept across the bedsheets. I was terrified that I might get her attention and provoke her wrath. I drew closer and closer to her shoulder. Blue out of late inside, and reached forward only to see my fingers, stood right through her. It was the oddest sensation I ever experienced in my life. My mind told me that I wasn't feeling anything, but it still felt like I touched her. Later when I was older, I would come across an article explaining Phantom Limbs Syndrome. I talked about how amputees would sometimes feel sensations in their lost limb, despite the fact that it was no longer there. I think that's the closest analogy I can come up with. I was feeling something that was not there, at least, no longer there. It's like when you play VR games and when you get hurt, you feel it in real life. It's like Phantom Pain, Metal Gear Solid 5. It's like what I'm in a VR chat room and say, "Money!" It's like what I'm in a VR chat room and someone walks through me and it hurts extremely bad. My attempt at contact galvanized me. I shot out of the bed and walked around to the other side. She had just risen to a sitting position and was now facing me. She was a few years older than me. I had guests, I would say she was 16 or 17. She had relatively plain features, but there is an endearing quality into her simple style. I was shocked and a little embarrassed to be thinking of her like that. I was busy mentally castigating myself when she stood up and moved right through me. If trying to touch her was discomforting, feeling her past through me was the oddest sensation I ever felt. I had to sit down and catch my breath, still my heart. The next night I tried to make contact again, but met with the same results. Instead of watching her leave the room and make the sound of the door bumping against its frame, I decided that I had to follow her. I had to figure out what happened to her. She moved slowly through the basement, but wasn't heading in the direction of the stairs. She was instead heading towards the boiler room. I followed her to the door, but as soon as I got within reach of the handle, I felt my blood turned cold. My skin pricled. She phased through the door and I stood outside. I was afraid of what might happen to me when I entered that room. I was more worried what I would find when there. I didn't enter the boiler room until a week before class began. I won't lie. Those first few months in Kalamazoo, Michigan, were some of the loneliest in my life. My friends back in Simmsbury, Connecticut were moving on with their lives and I felt like I was being left behind. Left alone. I didn't have any friends in Kalamazoo yet, and to tell you the truth, I was beginning to see this nightly wraith as a companion, kindred spirit. She was alone and sad, just like me. Every night, I would wake up to the sound of her suffering and I would follow her to the boiler room. A week before class began, for me, I entered the boiler room with her. I'd stood outside the door for a few minutes, trying to steal myself for what I might see. My entire body was screaming at me to run back to my room and never go near that boiler room again. But I had to know what happened next. I drew in a deep breath and blew it out. I grasped the door knob and turned it. The door swung into the room and I was at eye level with her feet. I swayed back and forth like a pendulum, powered by her frantic kicking and an attempt to find some purchase. I stifled the screen when I realized that she wasn't levitating like a ghost. She was hanging from a beam in the ceiling. To clearly, she took her own life when she was actually alive. When this house was older, she was depressed and then one night couldn't take any more and went to the boiler room and did that. Do you think that she's depressed and that she's just reenacting it or do you think that she's depressed from the aftermath? I think since this is the same effect over and over, it's like a death echo, like someone reliving life over and over. Like a cycle of sorts. I left the room and went back to my bed. There was nothing more I could do and I had no intention of spending any more time than necessary in that boiler room. I laid in bed and slowly curled up into a fetal position. I prided myself and not being the kind of person who cried openly, but at that moment, the floodgates broke and I wept. My throat felt raw and my eyes stung with tears. I saw it for a few moments before I realized I was not alone. She was in bed across from me and weeping in that same position she had always been in. I tried to find out who she was, but the realtor was tight-lift about the house's breathing. to be as occupants and wasn't interested in chatting. I pressed her for more information, and she finally caved and confessed to not really knowing too much about the house's history. I went to the library, I failed to, what? - And she's fine, it's like, I pressed the real door, she didn't know anything. All right fine, I don't know nothing. (laughing) - You know what I mean? It's like, why would you not just say that for fun? - You didn't, I'll talk. - I'm not sure. (laughing) I went to the library, but I failed to turn up any information when reading a book on the history of the area. I even tried asking the neighbors about the previous owners, but the two families that lived there before ours didn't have a daughter or only had an infant daughter when they occupied the house. I had no idea about the girl who appeared every night and hung herself in the boiler room. It was now a routine for me. I'd wake up in the middle of the night around the time she would appear. I was shamed to admit it, but sometimes I found myself waiting for her. I was hopeful that someday I would break through and tell her what I had wanted to say ever since I saw her. I would tell her that she didn't deserve the fate she was suffering. I would tell her how lonely I was, how desperate I was for someone to talk to. I would tell her, I don't know. I always stayed behind when she left the room. I had walked into the boiler room during the day once and I saw her hanging there. She was gasping and clawing desperately at her neck and she slowly was fixated. She rocked back and forth in the room and her feet frantically kicked around, looking for some purchase to save herself. I did scream then. I had to make up a story about seeing a shadow for my mom when she came up downstairs and saw me pale as a ghost, chivering. I started class and began to make some new friends. I even had a few class makes over to hang out. I remember one time we were playing a video game and the girl passed right through him on her way to the boiler room. My friends couldn't see her nor my parents. Only I could. I wondered for a bit if I was going crazy and that was why only I could see her. But I'm not sure that's the case. Well, at least not going crazy back then. She was repeating, always reliving her last moments. She would start out weeping on the bed then she would rise to a sitting position for a bit before going to the boiler room and hanging herself. This happened almost every night but on a few occasions, I did catch her walking through the doors on the way to her demise during the day. I must have seen her hundreds. No, thousands of times during my time in Kalamazoo. Sometimes I would try and talk to her. Sometimes I would cry. Sometimes I would do nothing. Took me a few years to try and figure it all out but I finally did. I realized what she was doing. I realized what the afterlife was like. There isn't a heaven or a hell, at least not in the literal sense. There are only those last few moments of your life. Reiterating like a broken record. She was reliving those final moments, maybe trying to make sense of it all. Maybe she wanted to choose another path, but in the end she always came around full circle to the news in the boiler room. This is why the concept of death scares me so much. HP Lovecraft said the oldest emotion is fear and the most powerful of all fears is our fear of the unknown. I think he's wrong about that. I know what's waiting for us all when we die and that is the scariest thought I can think of. I'm so terrified that when I die, I will stay behind on this earth, repeating my last moments, ad nauseam. Trying to make sense of my last minutes. This is what is waiting for us all after it is all said and done. And I know that the end is inevitably approaching. The end of ad nauseam. Do you think that these stories are going to be connected through? Yeah, I think it's going to be the same person. Do you mean the same ghost, or is it just going to be this is his encounter with this? It's probably going to be different encounters if I had to guess. So the title ad nauseam at Mortemann Infanum is kind of the idea that like, again, with what we said it being like, to the point of sickness, to the point of death forever, it's like repeating your last moments on and on and on without fail. So I think we're going to see other examples of that. Seems like also this concept of like, the afterlife that he's saying almost feels like a purgatory, like our definition of purgatory, you know, reliving their kind of existing in this state of just like perpetual, scared me. Not gonna over that toilet really got to you. There's tiny little toilet, mm-hmm. You, what the fuck? Oh my God, it's a skippity toilet. No, it's not. It is. It is a skippity toilet. Can his head not pop out? You have to hit the flesher. Well, the flesher pushes him down. What, is there a button or a lever somewhere to make him go, oh, at the base of the toilet. That is the scariest thing that's happened since we got here. That pushes head down. What kind of monster life little sallie, a skippity toilet. See, this is the cookie monster sweatpantser. It's like sweatpants. It's sweatpants with a bunch of bootas on it and it says built like a boota. Or that's one of our audience members. One of our audience members left the skippity toilet. Scroll down a little bit. Do I have to answer that? I can't think of that. Different. Alright, add more to him. Add more to him. I do agree with you about the, feels like a pinnance. Yeah, well, I thought that was kind of like his way of also adding in the ad nauseam. Like, that's my fear of doing this ad nauseam. It's kind of the fun little tie-in. I'm curious to see how. Being stuck in that forever. Yeah, at the last moment, Jim. Add more to him. He's just like, was it a clairvoyance? Is that somebody who can talk to the, like, clairvoyance have the natural ability to see the dad with the other side? That's what I'm like wondering. It seems like this character is like that kind of person. Yeah, yeah, it just has the ability to. Yeah. Add more to him. I was just starting my junior year in high school when my grandfather came to visit. He was my father's father and he had lived in California most of his life. He used to smoke like a chimney. But a few years back, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was put on oxygen and had to give up smoking, which did nothing to improve his cantanker's nature. He lived across the country, but had come up to Michigan to visit with my family. My relationship with my grandpa was always strained. If you wanted to be pleasant, you would say that he was an old-fashioned man. If you wanted to be honest, you would say that he was a racist and a sexist to use to beat his children when they disobeyed him. My father was always honest about how he was treated by him when he was growing up. And because I loved my father, I found my relationship with my grandfather to be adversarial. He originally had come up to visit for a week, but due to health issues, he ended up staying in Michigan for over a year to be cared for. My grandfather's extended stay only served but was strained in our relationship. We rarely talk to him when we did. I managed a conversation in the coldest fashion. Since my grandfather was suffering from lung cancer, he had to carry around an oxygen tank. Manufacturers must have had a sense of humor because they named the gargantuan machine the liberator. The tank was 100 or so pounds and set in a corner by the entrance of the house. The oxygen cord gave my grandpa a 500 feet to move around the house. So the liberator is a massive ball and chain that anchored him to the guest room, kitchen, bathroom, a dining room. Grandfather was suffering from lung cancer. He had to take a regimen of pills to keep himself going day to day. Blood pressure medication, bronchodialaiders, opioids, and about a dozen other supplements and vitamins. The cancer had rotted away as long as the point that the oxygen was necessary to keep him alive. He could barely move without gasping for breath. And when he talked, he came out as a rasp. The sounds of his respirator clicking on and off and his wheezing gas came a fixture of our everyday life. We'd been living here in Kalamazoo, Michigan for about three years before my grandfather came to live with us. At this time, I was accustomed to my nocturnal and sometimes diurnal visitor who wept in my room before proceeding to the boiler room and hang in herself. My latest attempt to contact her was through a Ouija board. Stuck one of my friends into the house through the emergency fire escape the basement had, which was just a ladder built in an alcove that led outside. She believed that there were ghosts and that only a select few were attuned enough to see them. I didn't tell her about my encounters, not only hinted that I thought there was something paranormal happening in my room. She snuck in during the night and brought her board with her. We both set on my bed and put our hands on the Ouija board. I lit a few candles to set the mood. She said quietly, afraid to wake my parents. "Spirits of this house, we besiege thee." I always wondered why people thought ghosts talk like serfs from at evil times, even if they died well after it. If you were trying to contact your loved one, would you talk to them like you were a 1920s gangster? "Yeah, you see? I love you, I miss you every day, pops." She continued, "If there's anyone here besides us, move the plane check." it and make us aware of your presence. Reset for a few moments with our fingers on the plan chat. After nothing happened, she took her hands away and said, "I guess the noises you've been hearing was just the house settling." Cracked a smile because out of the corner of my eyes, I could see the wraith weeping on my bed. A friend was only a few inches away from the ghostly girl who haunted the basement of my home and couldn't even see her. Talked for a bit and then she left. I walked her back to her house and told her, "Good night." When I snuck back into my house, sound of my grandfather's respirator filled my ears and covered up any noise I might have made stinking into my room. A couple of weeks passed, my grandfather's condition deteriorated. He was now confined to the guest room. He barely talked and when he managed, he had a pause between sentences to catch his breath. Sometimes when he overexerted himself, his body was racked with congested coughs and wheezing raps. My mother took care of him because my father was working and I was at school. Out of everyone in the house, my mother's relationship with my grandfather was probably the best. She went out and picked up his prescriptions, cooked food for him, kept him company, and changed his sheets. As per his traditionalism, he treated her more like a servant than a person. West were commands and demands. Despite this, my mom treated him with kindness and compassion. Remember the last time I saw my grandfather, I was getting ready for school and he was telling her that he was going to rest and asked if she could pick up his prescription. He now spent most of his time in bed and was developing bed sores and had to use a bedpan to relieve himself. He had a coughing fit and he covered his mouth with a handkerchief. I think that I saw something red staining that handkerchief, but I realized that that little observation that I make now is tainted by the memory what happened to him later. When I returned home that day, I knew something was wrong the moment I walked through the door. There was something off about the house. There was something missing. Took me a moment to realize what it was. The house was completely quiet. The omnipresent sound of the respirator pumping oxygen was no longer present. The liberator sat in the corner silent like the grave. I went upstairs to find my mother in the guest room, tripping the bed sheets and pillow cases, she had been crying but wasn't at that moment. My mom didn't have to say the words, but she did it anyways. He died. His heart just stopped. There's nothing that I could have done. I pulled her into a hug and she broke into a fresh set of tears. Offered to help her wash the bed sheets, but she told me it wasn't necessary. This part may make me seem like a horrible person, but I was glad she turned out my offer. My grandfather died, it evacuated and the smell was horrible. She washed the sheets, especially could, but ended up throwing everything away. My father took the news like any son would take the news of his father's death. I don't know what I was expecting from him, for some reason I thought he would be angry. Angry at the fact that his father had never told him goodbye, never told him that he loved him, or that he was proud of him. He wasn't angry, he was just quiet for a while. He didn't cry at that moment, but I remember going upstairs from the basement and hearing the soft, hushed sounds of him crying in the night. Try to take my grandfather's death as stoically as possible. I didn't cry until the funeral and then the floodgates broke and I wept to say lowered him in the ground. He may have been a racist, sexist, abusive old man, but he was still my grandfather. He was family and he was gone. The worst thought I had was the realization that even though I loved my grandfather because he was family, I didn't like him. The next month was relatively quiet. My mom and dad dealt with getting his affairs in order and tending to his will. I can't tell you exactly when they started, but I can tell you when I first became aware of the sounds. I was sneaking outside at night to have a cigarette and I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. I'd become so accustomed to the sound that took me a few seconds to realize what was wrong. I was hearing the worrying and hissing of the liberator. We had donated the oxygen system a week ago to the nursing home. I paused in the dark and hallway and listened. It was a slow and steady sound, listening to that noise chilled my blood and made my stomach sink. I must have stopped still and waited for that sound to stop for a few minutes, didn't stop. If anything, sound grew louder. I lied to myself and said it was a trick my mind was playing on me. I went downstairs back to my bedroom and passed by the ghost grill as she proceeded to her death. I kept lying to myself for the next couple of days as the noise of the liberator got progressively louder and was joined by something almost undetectable. The respirator kept going throughout the day. This wasn't like the raced grill whose weeping only manifested at certain times. The noise was a constant and it was growing louder. It took me a few days to really begin to hear the wheezing and gasping beneath the worrying of the liberator. I avoided the gas room at all cost, it was quite a simple thing. There was nothing in there except for the sounds of gasping and wheezing. Be completely honest, I was afraid to enter that room. I could live with seeing the image of the girl in the basement, but I wasn't so sure I could accept seeing the ghost of my grandfather reliving his last moments. I avoided it for a few months before finally so I came into the curiosity. It was my senior year then and I was just wrapping up with graduation parties. Okay. Sorry. Are you ready to get turned it off? I pressed the air conditioner. You pressed the camera if it gets your dick and it turned it off? Holy fuck, wait a break the momentum, that was a fucking, I'm so locked in. My dick turned it off, good fucking lord. I'm only here for a couple days. I'm only here for a couple days, I'm only here for a couple days. I get to see my family, get to see my family, there's no place like Kambuzlu, there's no place like Kambuzlu. There's no place like Columbia, there's no place like Columbia. I had quite a bit to drink that night but it was still capable of driving. Pulled into my driveway and the thought struck me. The thought was that I had to see him before I left home for college in a few months. I had to face the ghost of my grandfather if I wanted to move on with my life. On to the house and approach the guest room. I wasn't prepared for what I would see, I don't think I ever could be. I stood outside the guest room for a few moments, trying to steal myself for what I would see next. I listened to the methodical worrying of the oxygen tank and the discordant gas, sinking coughs that broke through the rhythm. More I listened, more I found my resolve weakening. Another couple of minutes and I knew that I would completely lose the will to investigate so I swung open the door and stepped into the room. My eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. Curtains had been close to the moonlight, giving the room a separate cool feel to it. The room had grown musty and smelled like mothballs and stagnant air. The wheezing and gasping was louder now. It's just in my mind now, but when I recall this moment, I could have sworn that the rasping and haggards hounding breaths were almost deafening. My eyes adjusted enough to see the shade of something on the bed. I adjusted to the light and I could see him clearly. The spirit or echo my grandfather was on the bed. His body writhed as modically on the sheets. It looked like he was having a seizure or stroke or some sort. His hands clawed at the air in front of his face. This motion looked out of place until I realized that he was probably trying to adjust the respirator on his face. He writhed in the bed for a few more minutes before he fell still. He was dead. The room was silent. Turned around and left the room. The door closed behind me, sound of frantic gasping and wheezing started up again. Man, talk about a nightmare, just living through choking like the respirator falling off forever and ever. It's just only happening at his house. It doesn't seem like any of the cleared ones happens outside of the house. Well, these are the only two places. What's the only two people that died? Because it's in the place that they died. It's repeated over and over. Well, I just don't know if it's like, because people have fucking died ever. I just didn't know if he's realistically. He would be walking around and see what he'd do. Like medieval era people. Or I'd just be like, you believe in the story so far that he is actually seeing other people outside of this, but we're just hearing about the occasions in the house. No, I think. I think this is all he's seen so far, but realistically, yes, if you walked around anywhere, you would see the remnants of something, someone killing someone for some reason. Our wrecks everywhere, just every street. Oh my god. The night before heading off to college, rolled over my bed and watched the nightly visitor to my bedroom. She rocked slightly in the bed and wept quietly, and tore it made to know that she was doing her best to keep quiet. Who was she hiding her depression from? Why couldn't she ask for help? I didn't I. She was tragically young. I leaned over to her and whispered to her. I'm so sorry this happened to you. Much else left to say to college the next day, DeVry University. [laughter] Full-sale technology. I'm going to MIT. I'm sorry I can't take you with me. I went to National American University. You want to cry on my bed at MIT? Would you like that? I went to Phoenix Online. [clears throat] I went to Debraw University. Time dredged on and my first semester of college was going well. I didn't have any ghostly encounters in that dorm, which was plus. I don't think I would have managed to focus with the spirit of someone constantly dying from alcohol poisoning and fraud initiations gone wrong. I had friends, but in a sad way, I found myself waking up in the middle of the night, wanting to see, to talk to her, talk at her, at least. I remember I rolled around and I decided to drive home be with the family for Thanksgiving. I wish I just stayed at college. I arrived the day before Thanksgiving and proceeded to catch up with my parents. My mom even rushed outside and hugging me as I pulled into the driveway. My old man greeted me with a beer and we sat on the deck as I filled him in on my life at college. My first semester wasn't over with yet, but I was already adjusted to life at college. It was one of the happier moments of my life. I'm reminiscing about it now, leaves a bitter taste to my mouth. We had a good dinner and I settled down for bed. I was getting ready to drift off to sleep. When I heard the sounds, I had become so familiar with when I was a child. Open my eyes and face the crying girl. I thought of all the usual platitudes that I used to offer to her. You were too young. You had so many moments ahead of you. You could have been happy. I wanted to tell her all of these things. Something else was on my mind. The thought was that something wasn't right. It felt like I was overlooking something definitely important or something that I couldn't make sense of until I saw him one more time. I moved upstairs and went to the guest room. The respirator was still clicking on and off and he was still gasping out his last minutes in that room. Trevitation filled me. My whole body was screaming at me to turn around and my mind was begging the same. I knew if I entered that room and witnessed my grandfather's death again, that I would never be the same. I entered the room many ways and I wished to this very day that I'd never tried to save that curiosity. He was still on the bed. Gasping, climb, struggling in his final moments. I moved close to him and sat on the bed. His body rived and twisted on the sheets. I knew something was off about all this. Something in the back of my mind pushed me forward and leaned in close and watched it all carefully. I watched as my grandfather clawed at the empty air in front of his face. Something was off about all of this. It wasn't clined at the respirator. When I realized what it was, I knew I had no other choice. I went downstairs and grabbed my suitcase, like the house. Oh, that's pretty cool. I don't know that it was happening. His father. it's not his respirator fell off someone choked him to death. Someone strangled him. His dad strangled him? His dad or his mom? Dimensions the dad loved him. When he gets home, Mom's already changing the sheets. She's emotional. It talks about how the grandfather would command her all the time, treat her more like a maid, a daughter-in-law, and then he gets home and she's already cleaned up. Jesus. Okay. So I think it's Mom. That's pretty cool that you put that together from the echo of the death. "I debated whether or not to wake up my parents and let them know why I was leaving and why I would not return." Okay. Maybe he hasn't put together it. I'm pretty sure it's his mom. I think they have why they wouldn't return. I think he knows that. Hey, you killed this person. Maybe that's why he's not returning? Well, he says I wouldn't wake them up to let them know. Well, yeah. He's not going to wake them up and be like, "Hey, I know what you did." I think it's what he's saying. At least that's how I'm reading it. Okay. "I debated whether or not to wake up my parents and let them know why I was leaving and why I would not return." You can call me a coward, but I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't face them with that knowledge. I threw my suitcase in the trunk of my car and drove to the nearest bar. I'd ever needed to drink more than I did at that very moment. I wanted something to give me the liquid courage to leave Kalamazoo, to leave my family. I was almost in tears for the time I reached the dive bar. I swallowed back my emotions, entered the bar, and set at the stool closest to the bar tender. It was a dive, the kind of place that had saw dust on the floor, to soak up sweat, spills, and skull spit. I wasted no time in getting the bar tender's attention. I ordered a double shot of whiskey and downed it as soon as the drink was poured. I ordered another, another, and another. It's midnight rolled around and they were preparing for last call. They decided to perform their night before Thanksgiving tradition. The bar tender would go around and ask what everyone was thankful for this season, give them a free shot at the cheapest liquor they had offer for their response. Old man in the corner said, "We're health!" A young patron who was probably too young to be drinking shouted, "Yolo!" It was promptly denied a shot. A woman around my age, Claire's. "For the life in its adventures." Down the drink. Spanish couple had a booth declared, "Familiar!" Teenage round the bar until he had less came to me. Bar tender came around to me and he asked, "What are you most thankful for?" Pause for a moment. I didn't know what to say. Bar tender tapped his foot, ready to wrap up last call and finish their night. I had to say something. I couldn't think of anything I was grateful for. It was not in the right headspace, and only wanted to drink the memory away. He grunted, "Come on buddy, what are you grateful for?" Said the first thing popped into my head. "And mortem." God fuck off. "What a fucking dog." I'd be like, "And you're not getting a shot." "See you later." "Hey, see you later." "See you later, dead poses, lady." "What's at mortem?" It's death. To death, yeah. What are you grateful for? To death, yeah. I watched the bar tender's quizzical expression by down the shot in order to another. I'd have ordered another after that one, but in some part deep down inside of me, I knew that I would never erase that image from my mind. The image of my grandfather climbed at something in front of his face. The thought of the pillow over him that my mother had been holding down, smothering him in his sleep. The memory of her disposing of the bedsheets and the pillowcase today I returned home from school only made me feel worse. I tossed back the shot and left the bar, not knowing what to do next. I felt sick to death. That's a fun time too. I felt sick to death because his grandpa was so sick too. And also sick to death is ad nauseam ad mortem. Oh, is it sickness to death? Yeah. Yeah, that is fun. The a fun little twist there too. Yeah, you just expected to be him clawing and gasping for air with his life, like with his ventilating machine, but it's almost a weird. The mention earlier of like he's clined in front of his face and you're like, oh, I guess that's a shocking motion. Yeah. But realizing it's a pillow, that's pretty cool. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Yeah. And it's also wonder how cathartic it is for the. It's like all these feelings of just being like the things you wish you could have said or like all the things you wish you could have done, the dad's talking about how abusive he was and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. And it's the mom that ends up killing him. Yeah, it's pretty sick. Yeah. I think that's a pretty cool time. I like the idea of being able. It's very sick sense. Being able to piece together, you know, if someone's final moments would happen to them, by their ghost. Mm-hmm. Well, speaking of ghosts, you know, little Sally down in the basement, she was killed. All her. Downstairs they have literally surgical tools being. They have surgical tools. They took out her appendix. And they have a table. And she does it all. They're like, this is like the table where she died on. What do you think of the. Do you think it's an ethical thing to have that kind of stuff? No. Or does it matter? No. Well, because it's been so much time. If it was last year that I have them, I think people. That's a poor taste. But because it's so long ago, you're like, who gives a fuck and I didn't know? That's what I was saying. Like, is that the thought process? To me, the thought process is, will their family see it? And I'm not talking about like great-grandkids and stuff like that. I'm talking about like, well, their sisters, their son, their mother, stuff like that. It's such a weird attachment from like a human. It is. You know? But to me, that's like history, for example, right? If you were to have. Pompeii is a great example. Where we have all the frozen bodies of Pompeii. When you think about how morbid that is. Oh, sure. You know? Like, if that happened last year, imagine that there's an earthquake this year. And then in 2027, there's a museum you can go to of the petrified bodies from the years. Well, that's what it feels like fucking. Like, I mean, I don't really go on Twitter, but perusing Twitter during the Ukraine war. It feels like all the videos of people dying on both sides. It feels pretty crazy. All the drone footage and all that kind of shit. It's just like, here's death, here's death, here's death. And to that one, there's even something in my head where it's like, well, you're at war with them. So they're the enemy and stuff like that. So there is a layer in my brain that detaches it a little bit. But when it comes to, like, with this house, a child, right? To me, a time does heal it enough that you can be specific. Now is the way it's presented respectful? No. It's pretty, I mean, the whole thing, too, like, making sure that you know that she was, like, in total misery and kind of. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know how respectful it is. I feel like. Yeah, well I think feel respectful or does it feel like a horror gimmick for people. What do you guys think? No, yeah, it's a museum. It's like the Holocaust Museum Wouldn't say it's anything really. I don't think this. All right, add infinite. This is new. Add infinite. We can keep talking. We can keep reading this. This is the Holocaust Museum, the dolls everywhere. Anytime Nick speaks, it's an assault to someone. Turns off, turns off his camera while he came with his with his cock. It has to publicly tell people to. All people I feel like would just be like, oh, oops, yeah, sorry, turned off. And he's like, yeah, my dick turned it off. I can't stop this guy. It pressed into it. Also, also, I'll show you speak what your cock is if it has his own mind. It pressed into it. I bet it not too. I wouldn't be surprised with him. Oh my god, no. Well, should we finish it off with add infinum? Add infinum, the final part. So we now reach the conclusion, my third act, my exeant stage left. God, dude, I feel like this is like, you know, I went to college. I didn't have a lot of friends. Well, not really. It's like, yeah, probably because you're saying shit like this. Like add more to them. Yeah. Oh, hey man. Hey man, there's like a kegger having down the road. Now, add infinum. And you're like, nah, actually, no, actually, we actually just can't. Hey, you want to come hang out? Carp DM. I lied, actually. I was going to take off all my clothes and hang myself in my dad's study. Yeah. He shot himself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, then red form and runs up. And he's like, no. And then there's like, I'm incredibly heartbreaking scene with the mom finds him. And he's like, no, he's okay. He's okay. We'll just scrap this. So it's okay. It's like hard. Damn. I suppose society is great movie. Yeah. Oh, Captain Mike. That's what this fucking guy would do. Oh, Captain Mike. He'd be like, hey man, man, that means that people are going to go grab some burgers and shakes you want to come with. Oh, Captain Mike. Captain. Actually, never mind. I'm like totally vegetarian now. So well, next time think about me, I love, I love plants. But I wish I could still talk and cry next to that crying girl in my bed. Just an insufferable guy through and through. Oh, yeah. Never since. It's a car. Someone ran by the window really fast. Did you guys hear dogs? I did hear that. I heard, well, at first I looked at Harry because I heard, I could have swore I heard somebody say something. Okay. That hurts. Yeah. That's fucked up. They would do that. That's weird. It's free to do that. Wait, hold up. Wait, hold on everyone. All right, add in for them. Add in for them. Also too, I will say the beginning of the story, making the presence of the girl, you know, it has, it's put a different vibe on the house so far for me because the girl was so innocent and like, you know, because when you go into a haunted space, I feel like you're always like, I'm on defense. Whatever. But now it's like, it has a more sympathetic tone, which I should have had. What is that? That was someone banging on the window. That was someone knocking on the glass. Yeah, check on it. That was someone like, yeah, we would do it, but we're like recording and so apparently we're trying to finish this out and apparently somebody's like knocking on the door or something. Okay. Oh yeah, be careful in the stairs. , have a good night. Thank you. It's probably people just fucking with us. Probably. All words. Just put out a hundred dollars in talking about. Just here, here we get shot in the chair. That would, oh my god. Don't even say that. Yeah. Here we, where is? Mary. Did you take the camera? He's fucking with that. Oh my god, I'm checking. This is everyone going down one at a time. Mary, the door's kind of still open too. You got it. He's got it outside. Somebody definitely came back in and entered the house, right? He's got to be screwing with us. Well, I could have been the door just squeaking. I don't know. No, that first one was the first one was going to, yeah. No, I mean, I don't, he might have gone to his car. He's clearly messing with those. He's clearly messing with those, but that was a nod. Yeah, but from it's not him. Yeah, yeah, it was on the glass downstairs. Look at that window. Because you can see this car out there, right? Well, don't you go down there? No. Why do they keep leaving the door open? Well, I don't care. I'm just saying up here. What else is knocking? What do we have for the story so far? Have you liked it? Yeah, I like it. I like it so far. I think it's just waiting for the top, for the balloon to blow up. Yeah, I like it so far. I think it's cool. The idea of this like a loner goes and stuff like that. We could just keep reading because that's good. I don't know. I don't know. I might as well. You find everyone? What is that? Oh, Taco Bell. There's door dashes. Oh, oh. Where did you all go? Maybe you need him all the way down on the court. He wouldn't come to the house. What? Who the fuck knocked on the door though? He knocked. He knocked. Oh, he didn't want to be at the house. He didn't want to be at the house. We thought you guys, that's very, I think we both were getting a little. Well, I thought that you guys were pranking us because Harry goes out and then he never comes back. And then you go, look, and he's like, "Oh, Harry left the door, but you don't come back." And the next like, I have to go downstairs. That's what I was like those moments. There's some prank, there's going to be some scary thing. But then I was sitting here like, they're tapping it to knock on the door. The tapping on the window actually fucked me. Yeah, because it's one thing, if all three of you leave and you're pulling a prank, it's another that you've got a forked trick. All right, get me a burrito while you do this. Here, I can't eat while I'm reading, so I'll just give you the bag. Perfect. You guys want a burrito? Oh, my god, these are so bad again. I need to get rid of you. What's for Sally, too? Oh, yeah, I want to. Hey, hey, you know what? Pour one out for Sally right now on her carpet. All right, add infinitum. So we now reach the conclusion, my third act, my exeant left stage left. I feel like I should rehash my predicament a little. Ever since I was a teenager, I've been able to see things that no one else can. I can see certain spirits. I don't know why I can see some and not others. I thank God that I can't see every dead spirit. Otherwise, my world would be full of billions of people to die before my time. All right, go ahead, after that. I've only seen a handful of ghosts during my life. One being a girl who killed herself in my house. Next being my grandfather, who was put out of his suffering by my mother. These ghosts always repeat their last moment's ad nauseam. Add more to them. I wish I could say that I managed to bear the burden of what I've done. that I had learned about my mother. The reality was that I just lost control of everything. I began. (laughing) - No, I've been thrusting all this time. - Is there a Diablo sauce or? - No, I forgot. - All right. - It's there, Diablo sauce, it's done. - Yeah, I think I need Diablo sauce for this baby-bubbling movie. - That is, it's ironic, but I do get it a lot. I wish I could say that I managed to bear. (laughing) - This really is like a sleepover when you're eight and you're trying to do something in your fringes' geese doing some BS over in the corner. - Damn, dude, it's just scary. - So you're trying to play Xbox as there's a one for like, but monopoly. I'm not playing Xbox, so we play a round of monopoly. - So, Captain, my captain. - That's you right now. - I wish I could say that I managed to bear the burden of what I learned about my mother. Their L.D. was that I just lost control of everything. I began slipping into the downward spiral. I tried to finish up the semester strong, but the mental image of my mother pressing a pillow over my grandfather's face and smothering him to death haunted me. I found that drinking, dulled that thought some, but did not completely obliterate it. I was self-medicating, some success, but the memory was constantly needling away at my conscious, which I will add of what he says put him out of his suffering. It's kind of implying that it was a mercy killing, hurt killing him that way, so maybe not. - Versus hurt, like hating him. - Yeah, yeah. - For lack of a better term, I became a walking chit-chou. I was, they love opening that front door. It's just walking in and out. - Did they order more door dash? - There's no way. - We have these on, dude. - I'm driving. - What'd you say? - As we have pizza on, dude. - Here we go. - I like to put the burrito in the double sauce on the pepperoni. - To Mexican Calzone. (laughing) - Oh, there's my computer. - Oh, shit, that's what you get, that's so what you get. (laughing) - You just pour water all over it. - Shit, to Mexican Calzone, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. (laughing) - Uh-oh, this is not working. - I think we're okay. - This is so working. - No. - Aren't apples pretty good with water resistance? - Oh, yeah. (laughing) - Yeah. - We're my burrito at it, man. (laughing) - Did they only get one ball of glass to share with five people? (laughing) - Oh, it's my bob last right now. 100 made me laugh as I was swallowing that my chest is like cramping. (laughing) - Oh. - Mmm. (laughing) - We'll go look. We're in a haunted house right now, which this is very scary. That bear keeps leaning towards you. - Yeah, it moved. - No, it didn't. - You said it. - No, it didn't shut up. - It's leaning forward from where it was earlier. - He was like, yeah, he was looking more towards me. - I'm telling you. - I'm telling you, I'm telling you. - Additor, additor. - I'm telling you. - Compare the position. I'm telling you, I saw both his eyes. I'm going to see one now. - Shut up. I can't take it with the list. It's just every time. It's not that good. - I'm going to. (laughing) - I've had talk about the four. It is not that good. - Nick, where's my other? (laughing) - I don't care. I don't care. We're reading a scary story. - I've been keeping reading them. - Crouchy beef burrito. - Oh. (laughing) - I was drinking whiskey like it was the waters of the river life. See, there you go, with more stupid beans. (laughing) It's got specific all. (laughing) The memory was more persisted than the ghosts themselves. That reality haunted me day and night. The image of his final moments were branded into my brain. Can you really blame me for getting smashed? Every opportunity I got. Maybe I'm writing all of this to find someone sympathetic. Well, listen to me. I don't deserve it. Or maybe I'm writing this to reach out to someone who could talk some sense into me and give me the answers I desperately needed. I wish I could say that I dropped out of college when I realized that I wasn't doing anything except drinking. But after another round of failing grades, my college politely informed me that I should not return next semester. I didn't bother appealing the decision. I decided not to return home. I crashed with a friend for a couple of weeks while I tried to figure out what to do next. Couldn't bring myself to go back. Couldn't face my mom. Slaved on my friend's couch and drank like a fish thrown into a tank filled with whiskey. I managed to live with my friend for a couple of weeks before he kicked my drunk ass out. He had put up with me for too long. He had spent too many nights cleaning up my messes and turning me on my side when I passed out. He was a good guy, but I think the final straw was my late night confession about the ghost. I think he could handle an alcoholic hot mess such as myself, but throw in my hallucinations, and that was just too much. He calmly listened to my drunken ramblings and waited until I passed out before stealing my cell phone from me and calling my parents. Woke up in my bed at home for my blackout. My father was standing in the doorway and my mom was sitting on the bed next to me. If you were stroking my hair gently like she used to, I'm gonna be honest. What, liking Taco Bell is performative. Oh, I disagree. Yeah, no. You can be okay with it, but like people are like, "Oh, I love Taco Bell." Give me two AM Taco Bell. That's performative. I kind of disagree with that. (laughing) Oh, I disagree. Oh, I got it. (laughing) She whispered to me about how she was here for me and how she was gonna get me through this. It's in that moment that I knew that I couldn't confess what I knew about my grandfather's death to my father. She was my mother. She was the one I ran to when I hurt myself as a kid. Maybe it was a mercy that she did my grandfather. I decided I would try to turn my life around. If only it were that easy. I'm gonna let you in on a few fun facts about giving up drinking after over a year of heavy drinking. First fact being, it's not fun. You sweat like you were trapped in a sauna. You have mild tremors. (laughing) Out of my peripheral, I can just see him examining the burrito. Turn it over and see. You're driving me up a wall right now. These different positions are getting at you. The burrito. You're playing on bunch of toys. - I'm not making a copy dude, I'm sorry. - I don't. - We're in a ghost girl's sacred altar room. You don't have to be comfy. (laughing) You're really good. It was funny now, it's not funny now I'm upset. (laughing) Stop turning it over in your hand. - You look like the guy in American beauty. - Oh, I'm filming the bag. - That's kind of like that kid doesn't he? - Why? - Yeah a little bit. 'Cause you have no emotion on your face. You're fucking like, scaring me man. (laughing) - I can't read you man. (laughing) (laughing) - You have no emotion on your face, he's like, I have to investigate. - First fact being, it's not fun. You have mild trimmers. Unless you're a hardcore alcoholic and then you get DTs, lyrium trimmings. Which are like severe trimmers. I luckily didn't have that, but I did have anxiety. Which was severely compounded by the realization that while I was there sweating, slightly shaking and otherwise feeling like shit in my bed, the ghost girl was right next to me weeping. After a few minutes of this, she would get up to go hang herself in the boiler room and I would make a mad dash to the bathroom to throw a pile. Try to kick my alcoholism. I really did. I really wanted to move on with my life. I wanted a normal life with stupid, meaningless problems. I just couldn't. I couldn't live at that charnel house. When the girl's weeping wasn't getting to me, the wheezing and groaning of my dine that grandfather was assaulting my ears. I managed to live at home for a few months before I fled and went up to Grand Rapids, Michigan. I'd only took a couple of days living by myself with myself before I down to bottle Johnny Walker. My parents tried to get me to come home but I couldn't go back to that place. I managed to convince them to let me stay as long as I called them weekly to keep them in the loop. My father even managed to get me a job outside of town. I worked weekdays cleaning animal cages for a pharmaceutical company. It wasn't most glamorous of jobs, but it paid well enough to support my necessities and me. Fortunately, drinking heavily had become one of those necessities. I managed to keep my habits under control. for a month or so. I would work on the weekday seven to five and then, while away, my weekends, whiskey washed super. I found some friends along the way, some at work, and a few of the bars I frequented. I was just getting a sense of normalcy in my life when everything fell apart. And I started with a phone call. It was the simplest of things. One of my routine calls to my parents. We chatted about the usual things. I caught them up on my work, friends, and life in general. I was talking to my mom, and she mournfully said, "Your grandfather would have been a mouthful of her." This is incredible. This is really, this is an amazing performance, honey. Do you want the rest of the ball, huh? No, I'm okay. Your grandfather would have been 78 today. As soon as those, I loved your first tip. Your grandfather was. As soon as those words were uttered, I heard something click and began pumping a familiar sound to the phone. It was the sound of the liberator. Giant ox. Oh, God, dude, this shit on me. I wonder if you have got to make this watchable. Why do you not? The giant oxygen tank that my grain fell. It died. Okay. All right, that's bad. It died. Trevor, give me the camera. What? Can I get another camera? What happened? Just, it's been, it's been a hole. I'm not at it, but it's truly testing us right now. You're a god, dude, going, the story's good. Oh, it's not good. Yep. What's that? It's a bunch of Diablo sauce. Really? Yeah. How'd you get sauce? We just went there. The Taco Bell is that close. Yeah. That's very kind of you. It's very kind of you. Harry and I found a lot of very creepy old buildings out around here. I would do anything in my life to finish the story. Are you not enjoying it? I think it's pretty good. No, it's good. I'm just saying, like, I just want it. I just, I just, I'm so ready, but I just feel like I'm in the echo right now. I think I said, all right, now at infinite of six times, I tried to start. I heard something click and began pumping the familiar sounds through the phone. Giant oxygen tank, my grandfather owned, which my parents had donated to a nursing home long ago. Sunday became a terrible thing for me because today my parents would call. I'd spend the week dreading the time they would call. I knew it was them before they even spoke. Sound of the respirator droning became almost deafening to me. I had to ask my mom and dad to speak up when talking to me so I could hear them over the sound of the liberator. They became increasingly concerned over my erratic behavior and eventually invited me home for dinner. I turned them down, lying and saying that I already had plans. I knew that if I stepped foot in that house with that spirit, I would lose it. My mom was silent for a few minutes before telling me she loved me. It was getting ready to respond when it began. It was low, barely audible sound, but I heard it. When I heard that sound, my weekend resolved shattered apart. I heard the low pain sound of my grandfather's strain wheezing that was quickly muffled by pillow pressed over his face. I managed to keep myself in check for a few weeks by relegating my heavy drinking to the weekend. That way, it managed to be productive enough to keep myself grounded. Hearing my grandfather's death gas rattling through my mom's phone was too much for me. I fled to my old device and let it take over my life. Went out to the nearest bar and drank myself into a stupor. I'm pretty sure I was still drunk when I went into work the next day. My co-workers knew something was going on when I showed up the next day drunk. I even snuck out at lunch to have a couple of pulls from the flask in my car to get through the day. Try to keep myself in a constant state of an ebriation because I knew that Sunday was fast approaching and being intoxicated dulled the grim realization. My co-workers were tight-lipped about it, but I could tell from their disapproving glares that I was wearing thin on their patients. The next Sunday night, the wheezing was so loud that I could barely hear my parents' voices. I made up an excuse telling them I didn't feel well and hung up shortly after that. I spent the rest of that weekend getting wasted as if my drinking could ward off their upcoming call and their concern. The situation it worked graded and my friends and co-workers began to distance themselves from me, sensing that I was about to self-destruct. I developed my own routine for getting through the week. I'd wake up in the morning and wash my mouth out with a bottle of jack Daniels before going to work. Luckily, I worked in a pretty rural area where my sloppy drive ended up attracting a lot of attention and the sky was still dark at six in the morning. I'd have lunched by myself, take pulls from a flask to steal myself for the rest of the day. I'd become a social pariah at work. After work, I'd visit a bar and have bar food for dinner and a couple of drinks to keep me going through the night. I knew that I was burning through my money, I had accumulated while working, but it was a necessity. When I was sober, I questioned what I heard. Was I really hearing my grandfather wheezing and gasping through the phone or was it my guilt at knowing that my mom had done my decision not to confront or tormenting me? Was it a mercy killing or was a desperation? I'll never know. I managed to make it through another Sunday night call, but I'm almost certain they knew something was happening. Maybe I slurred my words or maybe it was how I spoke, but they knew that I'd fallen off the wagon. It was at this point that I can't really relate what happens next to you all with reliable accuracy. I forgot a large portion of this time due to my alcohol induced days. I spent days in such a stupor that I'm still amazed that I wasn't fired. I have little to no recollection of those days that I was constantly chasing that blacked-out state. I guess I was still doing a good enough job to warrant pain, but I'm not sure how. There's only one memory of this binge that I can remember with clarity. I remember turning over my phone and seeing that it was my parents calling me after weeks of radio silence from them. I hung up the phone and continued poisoning my body. The next moment that I can faithfully recall was a sound. A jarring thud snapped me out of my drunken autopilot and soared me up like a cold shower. My head snapped up in my glazed eyes, glanced around. I realized I was driving and had just sewn down. I regained control of the will and slowed down the car, pulled over to call my pounding heart. Having achieved that, I got out to inspect the damage. There was a halacious dent in the bumper. I examined the areas my stomach began to sink. And I hit something? That thought soared me up. There was no blood on the car, so I reasoned that I hadn't hit anything living. The dent was substantial, so it had to be something large. By the hazard of guests, I would estimate that it was the size of a basketball or larger. I breathed out a sigh of relief before another thought it insinuated itself. What had I hit with my car? I walked a couple hundred yards back, but I didn't see anything. I looked for logs, branches, or any type of debris in the road. My search didn't turn anything up. I reasoned it was nothing, and after confirming that it was around six in the morning, and a weekday, I went to work. I didn't have a liquid lunch that day. I didn't have any lunch at all, really. My stomach in mind was so upset that I doubted I could hold anything down even if I wanted to. They just kept washing the animal cages and went home for the day. Long the way home, I stopped by the side of the desolate, rural road, searched the area again. Turned up nothing to my investigation. I went home and sat in my bed. I didn't have anything to drink. I didn't need either. I also didn't sleep. What had happened on that road? When did I hit? I recall it was a Saturday. I remembered this because I had to check my phone's calendar to find the correct date. Much to my chagrin, I realized that checking my phone to find out what day it was had become a common occurrence for me. I moved to the fridge in a mechanical repetition of my typical morning ritual. I opened the door, expecting it to be barren. I saw a carton of eggs and enough food to make breakfast for myself. It was a shame that I still wasn't hungry. It was around this time that I started to get worried about my health. I hadn't eaten anything since yesterday morning. I sat down on my couch where I typically had breakfast and turned on the television. Dark thoughts began to surface in my brain. My mind flashed back to when I was younger. I was watching the ghostly girl. She would appear almost every night and she was always repeating. She wept for a few minutes before sitting up and going to the boiler room to hang herself. My grandfather spent his afterlife lying in his bed, coughing and wheezing before my mother went to his room and smothered him what I can only hope was an act of mercy. What was I doing if not repeating myself like them? That's I like that connection a lot that he's so terrified of living in a loop he can't come out of but he's doing the exact same thing to himself with the drinking, like pushing himself there. He's created his own hell that he's so scared of. I was filled with existential terror. Horrible thoughts began to fester in my brain. What if I had hit something bigger than a log? Maybe I had struck a tree and gone through my car's windshield. Maybe I was lying on that quiet, world-street dine, or already dead. Was I doomed to repeat a drunken haze before coming around full circle to the moment of my death? I continued with that terrifying mindset before there was some breaking news, and I was saved from that horrible thought and thrown to a much more painful one. The breaking news was an amber alert. Oh, no. Oh, I figured he hit a kid or something. Oh, gosh, dude. Oh, oh, oh. A local nine-year-old boy had gone missing. His parents woke up a day ago to find that he was not in his bed. Police didn't have any leads, but they were confident they would turn something up in their search. I watched his tearful mom pleading with everyone through the TV to please return her boy to her. He was only nine years old. He liked reading video games and exploring the woods near their house. Her eyes rolled up with tears and she repeated, "He's my little explorer. Please come home to me." For some reason, my stomach coiled up tighter than it had before, and I felt sick. It seemed like every channel I flipped to, I was looking at that boy's cherubic face. When it wasn't his picture, it was his mother's weeping and his father's pained expression. I turned off the TV. Couldn't watch anymore. I went to the fridge and got a beer. Cracked it open and I just held it to my mouth when I got sick. I emptied my stomach into the sink. Typically, I felt better after getting sick, but this time, I only felt worse. I went out onto my balcony to get some fresh air. I lived in an apartment on the third floor. We now, and then, I would go out onto my balcony to have a cigarette. Below me, police and people swarmed the streets like ants in a colony. Were they all looking for the boy? My stomach coiled up even more to the point that it hurt. Even though it was early in the afternoon, I went to bed. I was so exhausted, but I still couldn't get to sleep. I spent hours in my bed, turning, writhing, and being unable to make sense of it all. It was around 4 in the morning when I decided that I wasn't going to get any sleep until I knew what had happened out there. I needed the cold, hard truth or reassurance. I had to have the certainty. I got in my car and started heading to where I had had my accident. I wanted to know the truth. Even if it was as horrible as I thought it would be. I've parked my car on the side of the road. As I walked up and down the road, my memory slowly started to recall bits and pieces. I was driving to work, and I was waiting at stoplights, I would take a sip from my flask. It was almost like muscle memory, and sometimes I would catch myself trying to drink from an empty flask, even though I knew that I'd finished it off moments earlier. In turn off the city road, it was heading towards my work via an old country road through the woods. I remember my head drooping down. I wasn't tired, I just wanted something to get me through the day, to get me through the Sunday night call. My head had just snotted down again, and then, thought. I must have walked up and down those dismal roads for about two hours. The sun was just beginning to peak through the night sky, and I didn't have to have to try to explain to any passing cars while I was walking up and down a mile stretch of road looking for God knows what. I decided that my mind was playing tricks on me, and it was just a fiendish coincidence. I pulled around and headed home, as I was leaving, thought that I had seen something in my rear-view mirror on the road. I ignored it. I got home and reflexively grabbed the remote and aimed it at the television. I didn't depress the button because I knew what was waiting for me on the TV. Managed to make myself a sandwich to eat. Still wasn't feeling hungry, but I forced myself to eat it. As I swallowed down the last bite, I regretted my decision to. A sandwich set in my stomach like lead. I spent the rest of the day wandering aimlessly around my apartment. Two anxious to settle down with a book and two nervous to watch television. Dr. My parents that night, but I was too shell shocked to recall anything from that conversation. I can't even remember if I heard the spirit of my grandfather wheezing and gasping into the phone like a perverted caller. If you had a gun in my head and told me to remember that conversation with my family, I would say that I remember talking about work. I would then question why you would hold a gun to my head for such trivial information. I'd say if you assumed that I didn't sleep at all that night. I rolled out of bed and went about my morning ritual. Forced myself to eat a plate of eggs and a slice of toast. I worked late that night. Most of my time was spent trying to correct the multitude of mistakes I made due to being distracted. It was dark when I drove home. I was just rounding the corner when I saw me merge from the woods on the other side of the road. I slammed the brakes, but it was too late and he lifted his tiny hands to his face, blinded by my headlights. He gave a slight cry before being knocked off the road that he had been backhanded by some invisible and vengeful God. A horrible reveal, but the same time that would be pretty funny to see just the kid getting in the zoo. I mean, he's like this. He just says, because there's no car there, but it's an action that's thrown that far. It's just him invisibly like, yeah, yeah, hunter funny, yeah, that nine year old is getting it by drunk drivers. It's obviously the visual I understand. I pulled off the road and looked up and down the streets. There was no one on the road. I was alone in a sense. I walked to the side of the road and proceeded to climb down the slope, scanned the darkness for a few minutes before I found him. He was curled up in the alcove of a tree. He was in a fetal position, cradling his fragile, broken body, stared at his corpse for a few minutes before going home, pointing every single liquor bottle down the drain. I thought he was going to call the police, turn himself in, so I feel like he's building up to it probably, but it is a little funny to be like, you know what? I'm getting clean. No more. Exactly. This was a wake up call. That's the wake up call. For sure. Message received. There's this. So I played Resident Evil 9, right? The guy through all the Resident Evil games who started Umbrella who made the virus, is this guy named Spencer. He's like super, most of the games, he's like an old dude in a wheelchair, he's on life support who's trying to create these viruses so we can find a way to live forever in like a perfect body. In the series, he is directly responsible for the deaths of like a billion people, right? Well, 9 comes out and you find this secret video of him, it's like an interview and he adopted like a little girl, like a baby girl he found, and he's like, in some small way I hope to make up for the deaths I've caused. It's like, no, it doesn't. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. No, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. We're past that. You adopted one living child. Yeah. Right. I think that doesn't count. But here, it's like, you know what, I may have killed a child with my vehicle. But no more time. I'm done hitting the bottle. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. After I emptied out every drink I had in my fridge, which took a while, I stood at the sink for a few minutes before breaking down. I thought throwing it all away would make me feel better, but I only felt worse. I can only describe it like this. Imagine that at some point in your life, something somehow gets knocked loose from you and you realize it's missing, but don't know how to fix it. You live with that emptiness for years before realizing that there's a way to numb it. You can pour alcohol into the exposed wound and for a moment, it doesn't feel so bad. The world seems monochrome and dull. You don't have to care so much. All that pain, all that ache is gone and you can function if only for a little bit. Pretty soon, you realize that this is the only way you can reach the state of disassociation. You keep returning to that found and self-medicating as best you can with what you can until you realize that something's wrong. Just doesn't work like it used to, it doesn't dull those thoughts, it doesn't blunt those memories. At first it numbed everything, but now there's a dull throbbing in your head of what you've done and what you've failed to do and it festers. It eats away at you regardless of how much liquor you pour into it, until you realize that it's not the liquor that's the problem. You pour everything out thinking that it'd be some revelation, some great boon, but it's not. It only feels like that emptiness inside you is grown. Now there's nothing to anethatize, anethanest and it's not anestes, anethatize it, whatever. There's nothing to fucking numb it, and now there's nothing to numb it. There's nothing to solve these issues. You can't piece yourself back together. It doesn't inside you is broken and you don't know if you'll ever fix it. Without alcohol, I couldn't find anything to numb that feeling. I consider placing an anonymous call in in the amber alert, bring some form of closure to his parents, but I couldn't do it. Why? Not yet. Not yet. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it. Come on. I have faith in them. I'm a coward and worse than that. I kept asking myself, "Why me?" All right. Yeah, you sure met that on air? I'm hoping. I'm the driver. I'm the driver. I'm hoping. I'm the victim here. I made this terrible moment about me. I pretended like I was the victim here, but I wasn't. Word, part for bar. I asked myself what I'd done wrong to deserve all of this, as if I didn't already know the answer to that. I'm a selfish coward and no amount of drinking will distract me from that. I managed to drift off to sleep that night, but I kept waking up with the scream in my throat and sweat staining the sheets. Five in the morning, I decided to go into work early. I passed the boy on the way and to work and on the way home. Each time it was a little more graphic, a little more gut wrenching. Stepped out into the road, what was he doing out that early? He raced his hands in front of his face, shield his eyes from my headlights, my car struck him and sent him skipping along the asphalt, whirling dervish, broken bones off the road. I wish I could tell you that I did the right thing, that I called the police or his parents and let them know where the body of their son was nestled in between the roots of a tree. I couldn't bring myself to do it. I'm a horrible person. I'm the lowest of the low. I tried to go about with my life. After a week, the amber alert ended and the world moved on. I didn't. The parents didn't. He's on that road every time I drive to work. I see him stepping out onto the road. He's there with me when I close my eyes. I had foolish thoughts of moving away, and his death is going to follow me. It. Now he is going to haunt me. It's a dead albatross tied around my neck. I'll never forget the sound of his startled gas, the impact of my bumper on his tiny body. A few days after the amber alert was canceled, I returned to that dead road in the middle of the night. I parked my car and watched his spirit living out its last moments. His short life. I hit him with my car and he skipped along the road and off the side. I walked solemnly behind him. I trailed him as he dragged his broken and bleeding body along the dirt. He reached the tree and crawled up in its roots. His body was still there when I returned. I'm and left him withered and putrified. I can't say how long I stood by his corpse. It doesn't really matter in the long run. As I stood there and vigil, I knew that this guilt was going to consume me. Eat me away inside like a cancer. It was in this moment that I knew that I'd be haunted by this and the others for the rest of my life. I'd be dogged by the overwhelming loneliness that the ghostly girl who claimed my bedroom has her haunt. It would be stalked by the feeling of hopelessness that consumed my grandfather as he lay in what would be his deathbed and excruciatingly slid towards his demise. Most of all, I'd be haunted by my murder of that young boy. The fatal mistake was now like a tattoo on my soul. So we reached the conclusion. My conclusion. The iron is almost palpable. I want nothing more than to die at this very moment and I am consumed by an overwhelming desire to live. I know what happens to us when we die. I don't want to live those final moments of my life. My suicide. At nauseam. See myself slicing open my wrist, hanging myself for the rest of eternity. I also don't want to experience the guilt and shame for the rest of my miserable life. I want to embrace the reaper and I want to run screaming from his bony grasp. These sentiments will follow me at Mortem. My mind is constantly waging a war within itself to unload this burden and escape into death and to hold it within me like a dark treasure. Maybe writing this all out will help me achieve some sort of clarity about what I should do next. I doubt it. Although I have to confess in some form or another. I don't know which choice is right or wrong. All I know is that this is hell. Had infinitum. It was a fun ending. Yeah. I kind of like that actually. He didn't. Not that I like they didn't confess, but I think it makes his character a little more complex. Yeah. Well, it's like he he's obviously tormented his whole life by seeing these death echoes and that pushes him to drinking, which leads to another death. So the thing I mentioned, I like the theme in where he becomes so terrified of death knowing that it's just relieving your final moments over and over that he pushes his life to a point where it's kind of like that death, just a misery over and over. It seems like all the echoes ring true with himself to the little girl getting killed and dying echoes the kid that he the child that he killed. His mother killing the grandfather is going to echo how he kills himself and even the grandfather grasping and being sick is like his alcoholism. Yeah. It's kind of interesting how it all just like comes full circle. And it's like he could have learned from all these things, but yet he just decided to like know himself, which you know, it'd be difficult hearing all the things and having to deal with that. But very very interesting news to say. I feel like there's another story about a medium or a psychic or whatever that begins to lose their mind because they see dead people. So that's not familiar to you at all. Now just six cents like you were saying. I mean, six cents of course, but that six cents was interesting because it's from a child's perspective and they don't really understand or grasp that one kind of has, I mean, obviously not with Bruce Willis, but with the child that kind of has a hopeful note at the end of like, maybe they can use this for good to help people and you know, do things like that. And it's like I'm Bruce Willis is dead, which is a part everyone remembers from the ending. I swear there was a movie I watched where it was about a guy who was like, he could see the dead, but he was like terrified by them and he pushed him to drinking and stuff like that. But I can't remember what it was. I don't know. All I know is the story was great. I thought it was a lot of fun. I really liked this interesting to see how all of them kind of tied up and I like that. He kind of like inner, he inner woeve, like basically all of the titles together in a very fun way. We're also really cohesive and in a way, like I said, it just felt full circle. Yeah. So yeah, I think Imperial Invective always has these really cool themes baked into his stories. Like it's whorseled in the earth where it was about like someone decaying, you know, falling apart as they crawl deeper into this cave. And here it kind of feels like pushing your being so afraid of the inevitable that you cause it, right? I think afraid of the ocean that you swim out into it. I think I feel like with a lot of his work, which I might be, I don't know, but I feel like maybe he has, maybe has a drinking problem. No, but I think that really, but I do think that I wonder if like any of his substance abuse or if any of that stuff, because so much of his work is about decaying, numbing. It's about, I mean, this whole story is just literally the ghosts that haunt your past that drove him to drink and how that made him to create a ghost, create his own ghost with his actions. So pretty interesting. And the addiction point, like the addiction that he gets from like dwelling on this so much pushes him to create more of it, both in his own life and the child create another instance of death that has to be repeated over and over. So it's like he was so paranoid of this eventuality that he creates it. Yeah, it's a very, it is a very, and this isn't a negative of the story, but it is an incredibly bad, so what I'm looking for, the opposite of like a hopeful, like triumph, the opposite of triumphant. It's a very defeated ending where it's like, yeah, this horrible thing happened to him. So he made that thing happen and everything got worse, you know, it's a very, it's like he, the narrative continues. No one, no one, no one learned, I mean, it's just no one learned. It's a byproduct of his actions, for sure. Yeah. I think, I think for a story to in the scary house, it felt fun. Like I liked that it also tied in like just with the setting that we're sitting in the ghost girl on the bed, those girl and all that kind of stuff. I think that it's just, it was a fun read for this. And I think that too, it put a very sympathetic, it put, it puts a very sympathetic twist on the dead, yeah, which is interesting where I think a lot of people use it as a catalyst for, you know, fear and things that are trying to attack. And also like the thing I mentioned at the end of the second part where he figures out that his grandfather was killed by his mom, because the way it's grabbing, it's almost like the story there is giving him an option. Like the universe is being like, look, you could use this for good, right? Like, I mean, imagine how that could help with investigations or like trying to answer questions about lost loved ones and stuff like that. There's so much he could do with this capability. I don't know if I read it that way there, I think that he has such an unusual and almost unhealthy view of what death is to wear. I guess it is true that he only sees people related to him, because he mentioned that thing about God. I don't see everybody and I think that like also I just, I don't think that there's ever, it kind of seems interesting of like, I don't know if his dad has a similar thing or if it's like the things that are passed down to you, but it seems like his relationship with death and how it embeds like it instills fear. I think the biggest problem is that he actually never talked to anybody and he like never, he never approached it from that angle. He was like very reserved and the thing that he turned to is numbing his problems. I think that's like ultimately that's the, that's the lesson learned is that I think he should have been more open. I think that he should have tried to understand it versus fear it. I think too, there's also like, if you pull out the supernatural elements, there's still an existing narrative of someone going through addiction, mental turmoil, and not making it better. Yeah. No, this is a very, I would say this is a very realistic understanding of addiction of the catalyst is just supernatural. It's easy to also lie to yourself to lie to others and all that. I mean, like it's, but I think the catalyst that makes it a, like a fun Sunday with a cherry on top is that there's ghosts and that kind of stuff. Though a lot of the description of like his drinking and like, oh, those couple paragraphs about like for a little bit, you can operate. You don't think about the reality. That was giving me wraps of mother horse eyes, you know, with all the stuff with the author they were talking about alcoholism and stuff like that. The the scariest part of all this though is door dashing Taco Bell to a haunted house and eating a done the driver won't come to the door and the driver tapping on the door and being like, can you make me down the road to drop off the food? That actually happened. So you walk to I'm ready in oxen just walks away. I am ready to get out of this position. So until next time guys, we will see you in the next one. Please watch the next one. We're going to be recording next in the basement. We're going to be recording in the basement. There's a lot of really big bugs down there. And I can't wait for them to get all in Hunter's hair. So thank you so much also to our audio listeners who didn't get to see this. Please check out the visuals this time. But if you are listening on audio, thank you for listening on Spotify, Apple Podcast. See we can go and give us nice rating. And also thank you patrons for supporting the show and getting an extra episode, which we're going to upload like a vlog. We're going to vlog and stuff like that for the patrons of us like going around with time spoon kind of everything. Yeah. So it's been a lot of fun. Yeah. And also the way you said like, please watch the visuals. This one was well. It's it's cute. Just watch the audio. Please just look at me. It's too good. All right. That's it. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Wait. I have to say something. I got my back. I'm going to put crickets in his Taco Bellers. I I don't know. [Music]